Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game (5 page)

But somehow Alexandra had survived every one of Eve’s elaborate schemes. The bitch was like one of those novelty birthday candles you couldn’t blow out. And then
bam!
Out of nowhere, a simple act of God had come along and erased her, like the unwanted stain she was.

Alexandra Blackwell, Kruger-Brent heiress and famous beauty. Dead in childbirth at the age of thirty-four.

It was so perfect, it was almost biblical.

Eve heard a loud, feral noise. It took a moment to register that it was her own voice, screaming as the final contraction racked her body. Seconds later, she felt a warm wetness between her legs and the frenzied kicking of tiny legs. A slimy, bloody creature, covered in waxy-white vernix, slithered into the waiting arms of the midwife.

“It’s a boy!”

“Congratulations, Ms. Blackwell!”

One of the nurses cut the cord. Another cleaned up the afterbirth.

Weak with exhaustion and blood loss, Eve slumped back against the sodden sheets. She watched as the nurses cleaned and examined the baby, ticking things off on a chart. Suddenly she felt choked with panic.

“What’s wrong with him?” She sat bolt upright. “Why isn’t he crying? Is he dead?”

The midwife smiled.
Well, how about that for a surprise?
Eve Blackwell had been so detached and hostile during the birth—quite frankly, she’d been an out-and-out bitch to the nursing team—they’d begun to suspect she didn’t
want
her baby. But obviously they’d misjudged her. The concern in Eve’s voice now was unmistakably genuine.
She’s going to make a great mommy after all.

“He’s right as rain, Ms. Blackwell. Here, you can see for yourself.”

Eve took the white bundle. When she looked down, Eve saw a small, olive-skinned face topped with a crown of glossy blue-black hair. The nose and mouth were babylike and nondescript. But the enormous, dark brown eyes with their fringe of black lashes and steady, focused gaze; those were extraordinary. The boy looked up at her, silently scanning her face. To the rest of the world, Eve was a freak. To her baby, she was the universe.

Eve thought:
He’s intelligent. Cunning, like a little gypsy.

She smiled, and though she knew it wasn’t meant to be possible, she could have sworn he smiled back.

“Have you thought of a name for him yet?”

Eve didn’t even look up.

“Max. His name is Max.”

It was a simple name, short, but to Eve it suggested strength. The boy would need strength if he was going to fulfill his purpose and avenge his mother.

Eve had conceived Keith Webster’s child for one reason and one reason only. Because she needed an accomplice. Someone she could mold in her own image, feed with her own hatred, and send out into the world to do all the things that she, a prisoner in her own home, could no longer do for herself.

Max would make Keith Webster pay for what he’d done to her.

Max would bring Kruger-Brent back to her.

Max would worship and adore and obey her, the way that men had always worshipped, adored and obeyed her, before Keith robbed her of her looks.

“Knock knock.”

Keith appeared at the door, bearing a huge bouquet of roses. Handing them to a nurse, he kissed Eve perfunctorily on the top of her head before taking his son in his arms.

“He’s…he’s beautiful.” His voice was choked. When he looked
up, Eve saw that there were tears of joy streaming down his face. “Thank you, Eve. Thank you, my darling. You’ve no idea what this…what
he
means to me.”

Eve smiled knowingly.

“You’re welcome, Keith.”

And she sank into a contented, dreamless sleep.

T
HREE

ROBBIE TEMPLETON FELT A FAMILIAR, CHURNING FEELING in the pit of his stomach as he walked through the revolving doors of the Kruger-Brent building on Park Avenue.

“Good morning, Mr. Robert.”

“Nice to see you again, Mr. Robert.”

“Is your father expecting you?”

Everybody knew him. The receptionists, in their gray-flannel company uniforms, the security guards, even José, the janitor. Robert Templeton was Kate Blackwell’s great-grandson, fifteen years old, with the world at his feet. One day he would take his place as CEO and chairman.

So they said.

Robbie had been coming to this building with his mother since he was a little boy. The impressive, marble-floored atrium with its six-foot flower arrangements and walls smothered with priceless modern art, Bas-quiats and Warhols and Lucien Freuds, was Robbie’s playroom. He’d played peekaboo in the elevators and hide-and-seek down the long, corporate corridors. He’d swung his legs and spun around in Kate Blackwell’s swivel chair till he was too dizzy to stand.

All his life he’d tried to love the place. Tried to feel the passion and pride that everyone assumed he’d been born with. But it was no good.
Walking through the familiar swing doors today felt the same as it always did: like walking through the gates of hell.

His mind wandered back to his seventh birthday. His great-grandmother Kate had promised him a birthday treat.

“Something wonderful, Robert. It’ll be just the two of us.”

He remembered being so overcome with excitement, he couldn’t sleep the night before.
Something wonderful.
A private visit to FAO Schwarz? All he could eat at Chuck E. Cheese? Disneyland?

When Kate led him through the doors of the boring office building, he assumed she’d left something behind there. An umbrella, perhaps? Or her Mickey Mouse ears?

“No, my darling,” she told him, her rheumy old eyes alight with a passion he couldn’t comprehend. “
This
is your surprise. Do you know where we are?”

Robbie nodded miserably. They were at Daddy’s office. He’d been here hundreds of time with Mommy, and it always made him feel weird. It was too big. And empty. When you shouted real loud, the walls threw your voice back at you. Though he couldn’t have explained it, he’d always gotten the feeling that the office made his daddy sad, too. Neither of them really belonged here.

But his great-grandmother saw things differently.

“This is our kingdom, Robert! Our palace. One day, when I’m gone and you’re all grown up, this will all be yours. All of it.”

She squeezed his hand. Robbie wondered where she was planning on going, and how long she’d be gone. He loved his great-grandmother, even if she
did
have crazy ideas about boring old office buildings being palaces. He hoped she wouldn’t be gone too long.

It was a Sunday, and the building was deserted. Leading him into the elevator, Kate pressed the button for the twentieth floor. Soon they were in her office. Installing Robbie in the leather-backed swivel chair behind her desk, Kate sank into the armchair in the corner, the one usually reserved for visiting dignitaries, ambassadors, presidents and kings.

Robbie could hear her voice now.

“Close your eyes, Robert. I’m going to tell you a tale.”

It was the first time that Robbie had heard the whole story of Kruger-Brent, the company that had made his family wealthy and famous and different from everybody else’s family. Even at six, Robbie Templeton knew he was different from the other kids. Even at seven, he wished with all his heart that it weren’t so.

Today, of course, Robbie Templeton knew the legend of Kruger-
Brent by heart. It was as much a part of him as the blood in his veins and the hair on his head. He knew all about Jamie McGregor, Kate’s father. About how he had come to South Africa from Scotland in the late 1800s, penniless but determined, and founded the most profitable diamond-mining business in the world. Jamie had been cheated by a local merchant, Salomon Van der Merwe. With the help of Van der Merwe’s brave black servant, Banda, Jamie had taken his revenge; first by stealing the perfect twenty-karat diamond on which the Kruger-Brent empire was founded and then by impregnating Van der Merwe’s daughter, Margaret—Kate Blackwell’s mother.

The name of the company Jamie founded was a further insult to the merchant who had not only cheated him but tried to have him killed. Kruger and Brent were the names of the two Afrikaner guards who had chased Jamie and Banda as they fled for their lives, their pockets weighed down with Van der Merwe’s diamonds.

Kate herself had no memories of her father, who died when she was very young. But it was clear from the hushed, reverential tones in which she spoke of him that in her eyes, Jamie McGregor was nothing short of a god. She loved to tell Robert how much he looked like his great-great-grandfather. And indeed, if the portrait of Jamie McGregor that hung in Cedar Hill House was anything to go by, the resemblance was striking.

Robbie knew his great-grandmother meant it as a compliment. But he wished she’d stop saying it all the same.

After Jamie McGregor’s death, Kruger-Brent was run for two decades by his friend and right-hand man, another Scot named David Blackwell. Kate fell in love with David. Despite being twenty years her senior, and at one point engaged to another woman, David ended up marrying her. As so often in her life, Kate had seen something she wanted and refused to rest until she made it her own.

David Blackwell was the second great love of Kate’s life.

The first was Kruger-Brent.

When David was killed in a mine explosion shortly after World War II, everyone had expected his young, pregnant widow to grieve for a year or so and then marry again. But it never happened. Having lost one love, Kate Blackwell devoted the rest of her long life to the other. Kruger-Brent became her sun and her moon, her lover, her obsession, her world. Under Kate’s chairmanship, the company grew from being a successful, African diamond business to a global giant, with holdings in copper, steel, petrochemicals, plastics, telecoms, aerospace, real estate, software. Kruger-Brent was in every sector in every market in every
corner of the globe. And still Kate Blackwell’s lust for acquisition and expansion remained insatiable. Even stronger, however, was her obsession with finding an heir. Someone within the extended Blackwell clan who could carry on her good work and take the firm to even greater heights of world domination after she died.

When her own son, Tony, buckled under the pressure of his inheritance and lost his sanity, Kate transferred her ambitions to his twin daughters: Alexandra, Robbie’s mother, and Eve, his scary aunt. Eve and Alexandra’s mother died giving birth to them. With their father confined to a mental institution, it was left to Kate to raise the two little girls.

From the start, Kate Blackwell was determined that
one
of her granddaughters should take over Kruger-Brent when she came of age. For many years, it was going to be Eve. Eve was always the dominant twin, and her succession seemed natural. But then something terrible happened. Something so bad, it had convinced Robbie’s great-grandmother to cut Eve out of her inheritance altogether.

Whatever the terrible thing was, it was a secret Kate had taken with her to the grave. Robbie would have liked to ask his aunt Eve himself what had happened all those years ago, but he was far too frightened. With her shrouded face and strange, cryptic way of talking, Aunt Eve had always given him nightmares. Even his parents seemed a little bit afraid of her, which frightened Robbie even more.

Still, he longed to know what had passed between his great-grandmother and his aunt. Because whatever it was, it was responsible for his own, unhappy position. Like his grandfather Tony before him, Robbie had dreams for a life outside of Kruger-Brent. All he’d ever wanted to do was play the piano. But Kate Blackwell had named him as her heir against his own, and his parents’, express wishes. The force of her will was unstoppable, something generations of her family had learned the hard way.

Robbie smiled at Karis Brown, the head receptionist. A softly spoken brunette in her midforties with a trim figure and dancing, merry hazel eyes, Karis had the sort of face that radiated kindness. Though far less beautiful, she reminded Robbie a bit of his mother.

“Dad’s not expecting me. At least, I don’t think he is.”

There was always the possibility that Mr. Jackson, the principal of St. Bede’s, Robbie’s prestigious private high school, had called ahead.

Karis Brown raised a questioning eyebrow. “Not in any trouble, I hope?”

Robbie shrugged sheepishly. “No more than usual.”

“Well, in that case, I guess I’d better send you up. Good luck.”

She handed him a specially coded card for the elevator that would allow him access to the twentieth floor. All of the Blackwell family’s private offices were on the top two floors of the building, and security was tight.

“Thanks.”

Karis Brown watched Robbie shuffle reluctantly over to the elevators, hands thrust deep in his pockets, and wondered what mischief he’d been up to this time. Like most of the Kruger-Brent staff, Karis Brown had a soft spot for Robbie. How could you not love him, with those soulful gray eyes and that mop of surfer-blond hair and the adorable way he blushed whenever you looked him in the eye? Everyone at the firm knew that Robbie Templeton was a wild child. Ever since his mom died, he’d been flying off the rails faster than an express train on black ice, poor lamb. In the last five years, he’d been expelled from more schools than Karis Brown could count. But to meet him you’d never believe it. He seemed like such a sweet, shy, gentle soul.

The elevator doors closed behind him. Karis Brown hoped Robbie’s dad wouldn’t be too rough on him.

“You did
whaaaaat?”

Peter Templeton was having a bad day. He’d woken up with the daddy of all hangovers. He knew he was drinking too much lately, but the guilt only served to make his pounding headache worse. People told him his grief would lessen in time, but it was four years now since he’d lost Alex and the loneliness was as bad as ever. Evenings were the worst. During the daytime, he’d learned to busy himself with work, or with Lexi.

At four years old, Lexi was a Pandora’s box of delights and surprises. Every day she came out with something new and funny that melted her father’s heart. But by eight o’clock at night, the little girl was out like a light, however hard Peter tried to keep her awake. When Lexi went to bed, it was like someone switching off his life-support machine. By eight-thirty, he’d usually found the whiskey. By ten, as often as not, he was out cold.