Mistress of the Game

chapter Two
IN THE MATERNITY UNIT AT NEW YORK'S MOUNT SINAI Medical Center, Nurse Gaynor Matthews watched the handsome, middle-aged father take his newborn child in his arms for the first time.

He was gazing at the baby girl, oblivious to everything around him. Nurse Matthews thought: He's thinking how beautiful she is.

Nurse Matthews was pleasantly plump, with a round, open face and a ready smile that accentuated the twin fans of lines around her eyes. A midwife for more than a decade, she'd seen this moment played out thousands of times - hundreds of them in this very room - but she never tired of it. Besotted dads, their eyes lighting up with love, the purest love they would ever know. Moments like these made midwifery worthwhile. Worth the grinding hours. Worth the crappy pay. Worth the patronizing male obstetricians who thought of themselves as gods just because they had a medical degree and a penis.

Worth the rare moments of tragedy.

The father gently caressed his baby's cheek. He was a beautiful man, Nurse Matthews decided. Tall, dark, broad-shouldered, a classic jock. Just the way she liked them.

She blushed. What on earth was she doing? She had no right to think such things. Not at a time like this.

The father thought: Jesus Christ. She's so like her mother.

It was true. The little girl's skin was the same delicate, translucent peach as the girl he'd fallen in love with all those years ago. Her big, inquisitive eyes were the same pale gray, like dawn mist rolling off the ocean. Even her dimpled chin was her mother in miniature. For a split second, the father's heart leaped at the sight of her, an involuntary smile playing around his lips.

His daughter. Their daughter. So tiny. So perfect.

Then he looked down at the blood on his hands.

And screamed.

Alex had been so excited that morning when Peter drove her to the hospital.

"Can you believe that in a few short hours she'll be here?"

She was still in her pajamas, her long blond hair tangled after a fitful night's sleep, but he didn't think she'd ever looked more luminous. She wore a grin wider than the Lincoln Tunnel, and if she was nervous, she didn't show it.

"We're finally going to meet her!"

"Or him." He reached over to the passenger seat and squeezed his wife's hand.

"Uh-uh. No way. It's a girl. I know it."

She'd woken up around six with fairly mild contractions and insisted on waiting another two hours before she would let him drive her to Mount Sinai. Two hours in which Peter Templeton had walked up and down the stairs of their West Village brownstone sixteen times, made four unwanted cups of coffee, burned three slices of toast and yelled at his son, Robert, for not being ready for school on time, before being reminded by the housekeeper that it was in fact mid-July, and school had been out for the last five weeks.

Even at the hospital Peter flapped around uselessly like a mother hen.

"Can I get you anything? A hot towel?"

"I'm fine."

"Water?"

"No thanks."

"Crushed ice cubes?"

"Peter..."

"What about that meditation music you're always playing? That's calming, right? I could run to the car and get the tape?"

Alex laughed. She was astonishingly calm.

"I think you need it more than I do. Honestly, darling, you must try to relax. I'm having a baby. Women do this every day. I'll be fine."

I'll be fine.

The first problems began about an hour later. The midwife frowned at one of the monitors. Its green line had begun rising in sudden, jagged leaps.

"Stand back please, Dr. Templeton."

Peter searched the woman's face for clues, like a nervous airline passenger watching the flight attendant during turbulence...if she was still smiling and handing out gin-and-tonics, no one was gonna die, right? But Nurse Matthews would have made a first-class poker player. As she moved surely and confidently around the room, a professional smile of reassurance for Alex, a brusque nod of command to an orderly - fetch Dr. Farrar immediately - her doughlike features gave nothing away.

"What is it? What's the problem?"

Peter struggled to keep the panic out of his voice, for Alex's sake. Her own mother had died giving birth to her and Eve, a snippet of Blackwell family history that had always terrified Peter. He loved Alexandra so much. If anything should happen to her...

"Your wife's blood pressure is somewhat elevated, Dr. Templeton. There's no need for alarm at this stage. I've asked Dr. Farrar to come and assess the situation."

For the first time, Alexandra's face clouded with anxiety.

"What about the baby? Is she all right? Is she in distress?"

It was typical Alex. Never a thought for herself, only for the child. She'd been exactly the same with Robert. Since the day their son was born, ten years ago now, he'd been the center of his mother's universe. Had Peter Templeton been a different sort of man, a lesser man, he might have felt jealous. As it was, the bond between mother and son filled him with joy, a delight so intense that at times he could barely contain it.

It was impossible to imagine a more devoted, selfless, adoring mother than Alexandra. Peter would never forget the time Robert came down with chicken pox, a particularly nasty case. He was five years old, and Alex had sat by his bedside for forty-eight hours straight, so engrossed in her son's needs that she had forgotten to take so much as a sip of water for herself. When Peter came home from work, he'd found her passed out cold on the floor. She was so dehydrated she'd had to be hospitalized and placed on a drip.

The midwife's voice brought him back to the present with a jolt.

"The baby's fine, Mrs. Templeton. Worst-case scenario, we'll speed things up and do a cesarean."

Alex went white.

"A cesarean?"

"Try not to worry. It probably won't come to that. Right now the heartbeat looks terrific. Your baby's as strong as an ox."

Nurse Matthews had even risked a smile.

Peter would remember that smile as long as he lived. It was to be the last image of his old, happy life.

After the smile, reality and nightmare began to blur. Time lost all meaning. The obstetrician was there, Dr. Farrar, a tall, forbidding man in his sixties with a pinched face and glasses that seemed in permanent, imminent danger of toppling off the end of his long, shrewlike nose. The green line on the monitor took on a life of its own, some unseen hand pulling it higher, higher until it looked like a fluorescent etching of the north face of the Eiger. Peter had never seen anything quite so ugly. Then came the beeping. First one machine, then two, then three, louder, louder, screeching and screaming at him, and the screams turned into Alex's voice, Peter! Peter! and he reached out his hand for hers, and it was their wedding day, and his hands were trembling.

Do you take this woman?

I do.

I do! I'm here, Alex! I'm here, my darling.

The doctor's voice: "For Christ's sake, someone get him out of here."

Peter was being pushed, and he pushed back, and something fell to the floor with a crash. Then suddenly the sounds were gone, and everything was color. First white: white coats, white lights, so strong Peter was almost blinded. Then red, the red of Alex's blood, blood everywhere, rivers and rivers of blood so livid and ketchup-bright it looked fake, like a prop from a movie set. And finally black, as the movie screen faded, and Peter was falling into a well, down, down, deep into the darkness, pictures of his darling Alex flickering briefly in front of him like ghosts as he fell:

Flash!

The day they first met, in Peter's psychiatrist's office, back when Alexandra was still married to that psychopath George Mellis.

Flash!

Her smile, lit from within as she walked up the aisle to marry him, an angel in white.

Flash!

Robert's first birthday. Alex beaming, with chocolate cake smeared all over her face.

Flash!

This morning in the car.

We're finally going to meet her!

Dr. Templeton? Dr. Templeton, can you hear me?

We're losing him. He's blacking out.

Quick! Someone catch him!

No more flashes. Only silence and darkness.

The ghosts had gone.

Reality did not return until he heard his baby cry.

He'd been awake for almost half an hour, listening to the doctor and the hospital staff, even signing forms. But none of that was real.

"You must understand, the level of hemorrhaging, Dr. Templeton..."

"The speed of the blood loss..."

"Highly unusual...perhaps her family history?"

"After a certain point, heart failure cannot be prevented."

"Deeply sorry for your loss."

And Peter had nodded, yes, yes, he understood, of course, they'd done all they could. He'd watched them wheel Alex away, her ashen face covered with a bloodstained hospital sheet. He stood there, breathing in and out. But of course it wasn't real. How could it be? His Alex wasn't dead. The whole thing was preposterous. Women didn't die in childbirth, for God's sake, not in this day and age. This was 1984. This was New York City.

The shrill, plaintive cry seemed to come out of nowhere. Even in his profound state of shock, some primal instinct would not allow Peter to ignore it. Suddenly someone was handing him a tiny swaddled bundle, and the next thing Peter knew, he was gazing into his daughter's eyes. In an instant, every last brick of the protective wall he'd been building around his heart crumbled to dust. For one blissful moment, his heart swelled with pure love.

Then it shattered.

Wrenching the baby out of his arms, Nurse Matthews thrust her at an orderly.

"Take her to the nursery. And get a psych up here, right now. He's losing it."

Nurse Matthews was good in a crisis. But inside she was riddled with guilt. She should never have let him hold the child. What was she thinking? After what that poor man had just been through? He might have killed her.

In her defense, though, Peter had seemed so stable. Fifteen minutes ago he was signing forms and talking to Dr. Farrar and...

Peter's screams grew louder. Outside in the corridor, visitors exchanged worried glances and craned their necks to get a better view through the glass window of the delivery room.

Hands were on him again. Peter felt the sharp prick of a needle in his arm. As he lost consciousness, he knew that the peaceful blackness of the well would never return to him.

This wasn't a nightmare. It was real.

His beloved Alex was gone.

The press had a field day.

ALEXANDRA BLACKWELL DIES IN CHILDBIRTH!

To the public she would always be Alexandra Blackwell, just as Eve was forever known by her maiden name. "Templeton" and "Webster" simply didn't have the same cachet.

KRUGER-BRENT HEIRESS DEAD AT 34

AMERICA'S FIRST FAMILY STRUGGLES TO COPE WITH LOSS

The national fascination with the Blackwells was well into its fifth decade, but not since Eve Blackwell's surgical "mishap" had the papers been thrown such a juicy bone. Rumors were rife.

There was no baby: Alexandra had died of AIDS.

Her handsome husband, Peter Templeton, was having an affair and had somehow contrived to end his wife's life.

It was a government plot, designed to bring down Kruger-Brent's share price and limit the company's enormous power on the world stage.

Like Peter Templeton, no one could quite believe that a healthy, wealthy young woman could be admitted into New York's finest maternity hospital in the summer of 1984 and wind up twenty-four hours later on a slab in the morgue.

The rumors were fueled by a stony silence from both the family and the Kruger-Brent public-relations office. Brad Rogers, acting chairman since Kate Blackwell's death, had appeared just once in front of the cameras. Looking even older than his eighty-eight years, a white-haired apparition, his papery hands trembled as he read a terse statement:

"Alexandra Templeton's tragic and untimely death is entirely a private matter. Mrs. Templeton held no official role within Kruger-Brent, Ltd., and her passing is not pertinent to the management or future of this great company in any way. We ask that her family's request for privacy be respected at this difficult time. Thank you."

Refusing to take questions, he scurried back into the maze of the Kruger-Brent headquarters like a distressed beetle searching for the safety of its nest. Nothing had been heard from him since.

Undeterred by the lack of official information, perhaps even encouraged by it, the tabloids felt free to start making the story up themselves. Soon the rumor mill had taken on a life of its own. But by then it was too late for the family or anyone else to stop it.

"We must do something about these press reports."

Peter Templeton was in his study at home. With its tatty Persian rugs, antique Victorian upright piano, walnut paneling, and bookcases crammed to bursting with first editions, it had been one of Alex's favorite rooms, a place to retreat to after the stresses of the day. Now Peter paced it furiously like a caged tiger, shaking the newspaper in his hands.

"I mean this is the New York Times, for God's sake, not some supermarket rag." The disdain in his voice was palpable as he read aloud: "'Alexandra Alexandra Blackwell is believed to have been suffering from complications of the immune system for some time.' Believed by whom? Where do they get this nonsense?"

Dr. Barnabus Hunt, a fat Santa Claus of a man with a crown of white hair around his bald spot and permanently ruddy cheeks, took a contemplative draw on his pipe. A fellow psychiatrist, and Peter Templeton's lifelong friend, he had been a frequent visitor to the house since Alex's death.

"Does it matter where they get it? You know my advice, Peter. Don't read this rubbish. Rise above it."

"That's easy for you to say, Barney. But what about Robbie? He's hearing this kind of poison day and night, poor kid."

It was the first time in weeks that Peter had expressed concern for his son's feelings. Barney Hunt thought: That's a good sign.

"As if his mother were some kind of prostitute," Peter raged on, "or a homosexual or a...a drug addict! I mean, anyone less likely to have AIDS than Alexandra..."

Under other circumstances, Barney Hunt would have gently challenged his friend's assumptions. As a medical man, Peter should know better than to give any credence to the pernicious idea that AIDS was some sort of righteous punishment for sinners. That was another thing the press should be blamed for: whipping the entire country into such a frenzy of HIV terror that gay men were being attacked in the streets, refused employment and even housing. As if the dreaded disease could be spread by association. It was a bad year to be gay in New York City - something Barney Hunt knew a lot more about than his friend Peter Templeton would ever have suspected.

But now was not the time to raise these issues. Six weeks after Alex's death and Peter's grief was still as raw as an open wound. His office at Kruger-Brent headquarters remained empty. Not that he'd ever done much there anyway. When Peter first married Alexandra, he'd insisted to Kate Blackwell that he would never go into the family business.

"I'll stick with my psychiatry practice, Mrs. Blackwell, if that's okay with you. I'm a doctor, not a businessman."

But in the years that followed, the old woman had ground him down. Kate Blackwell expected the men in her family to contribute to "the firm," as she called it. And what Kate Blackwell wanted, Kate Blackwell always got in the end.

But now Kate, like Alexandra, was gone. There was no one to stop Peter from spending entire days holed up in his study with the phone unplugged, staring mindlessly out of the window.

The true tragedy of Alexandra's death, however, was not Peter's retreat from life. It was the wedge that it had driven between Peter and his son, Robert.

Robbie Templeton was Barney Hunt's godson. Having known him since birth, Barney had seen firsthand the unusually close bond between Robbie and Alexandra. As a psychiatrist, he knew better than most how devastating it could be for a boy of ten to lose his mother. If not handled correctly, it was the sort of event that could fatally alter someone's personality. Dead mothers and estranged fathers: two of the key ingredients for psychopathic behavior. This was the stuff that serial killers, rapists and suicide bombers were made of. The danger for Robbie was very real. But Peter point-blank refused to see it. "He's fine, Barney. Leave it alone."

Barney's theory was that because the child had internalized his grief (Robbie hadn't cried once since Alex's death, an immensely worrying sign), Peter had convinced himself that his son was okay. Of course, the psychiatrist in him knew better. But Peter Templeton the Psychiatrist seemed to have shut down for the moment, overwhelmed by the pain of Peter Templeton the Man.

Barney Hunt, on the other hand, was still very much a psychiatrist and he could see the truth all too clearly. Robbie was screaming out for his father. Screaming for help, for love, for comfort.

Unfortunately his screams were silent.

While Peter and Robbie drifted past each other like two ruined ghosts, one member of the Templeton household provided a tiny, flickering light of hope. Named Alexandra, after her mother, but referred to from the start as Lexi, the baby that Alex had lost her life delivering was already an utter delight.

No one had told Lexi she was supposed to be in mourning for her mother. As a result, she yelled, gurgled, smiled and shook her little fists with happy abandon, blissfully ignorant of the tragic events surrounding her arrival into the world. Barney Hunt had never been big on babies - a confirmed bachelor, and closet homosexual, psychiatry was his life - but he made an exception for Lexi. She was quite the sunniest creature he had ever encountered. Blond-haired and fine-featured even at six weeks, with her mother's searching gray eyes, she "smiled whene'er you passed her," like Robert Browning's "Last Duchess," as content to be held by strangers as by her doting nurse.

She reserved her broadest grins for her brother, however. Robbie was entranced by his baby sister from the moment she arrived home from the hospital, rushing to greet her as soon as he got back from school, irritating the maternity nurse by dashing straight to her crib whenever she cried, even in the middle of the night.

"You mustn't panic so, Master Robert."

The nurse tried to be patient. The boy had just lost his mother, after all.

"Babies cry. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with her."

Robbie scowled at the woman, full of contempt.

"Oh, really? How do you know?"

Peeling back the soft cashmere blankets, he lifted his sister to his chest, rocking her softly till her cries subsided. It was two in the morning, and outside the nursery window a full moon illuminated the Manhattan sky.

Are you out there, Mom? Can you see me? Can you see how good I'm taking care of her?

Everyone, including Barney, had been worried that Robbie might have very conflicted feelings toward the baby. He might even become violent toward her, "blaming" Lexi in some simple, childish way for their mother's death. But Robbie had confounded them all with an outpouring of brotherly love that was as unexpected as it was clearly genuine.

Lexi was Robbie's therapy - Lexi and his beloved piano. Whenever he felt the smooth, cool ivory beneath his fingers, Robbie was transported to another time and place. Every other sense shut down and he became one with the instrument, body and soul. At those times he knew his mother was with him. He just knew it.

"Robert, darling, don't lurk. Come in."

The forced cheeriness in Peter's voice made Barney Hunt wince. He turned and saw his young godson hovering in the doorway.

"Uncle Barney's here. Come and say hello."

Robbie smiled nervously.

"Hi, Uncle Barney."

He never used to be nervous, thought Barney. Who's he afraid of? His dad?

Standing up, he clapped Robbie on the back.

"Hey, sport. How you doing?"

"Good."

Liar.

"Your dad and I were just talking about you. We were wondering how things were going at school."

Robbie looked surprised. "School?"

"Yeah, you know. Have the other kids been giving you a hard time? About the stuff in the newspapers?"

"No, not at all. School's great. I love it there."

He likes school because it's an escape from this place. An escape from grief.

"Did you want to ask me something, Robert?"

Peter's tone was tense, his speech clipped. He'd remained seated behind the desk since his son came in, rigid-backed, his whole body clenched, like a prisoner on his way to the firing squad. He wished Robbie would go away.

Peter Templeton loved his son. He was aware that he was failing him. But every time he looked at the boy, he felt overcome by a wave of anger so violent he could hardly breathe. Suddenly the bond that Robbie and Alexandra had shared in life, the love between mother and son that had once been Peter's greatest delight, left him consumed with jealous rage. It was as if Robbie had stolen those hours from him, those countless, loving moments with Alex. Now she was gone forever. And Peter wanted those moments back.

He knew it was crazy. None of this was Robbie's fault. But still the fury corroded his chest like battery acid. The irony was that Peter felt nothing but love for Lexi, the baby who had "caused" Alex's death. In his grief-addled mind, Lexi was a victim, like himself. She had never even known her mother, poor darling. But Robert? Robert was a thief. He had stolen Alexandra from Peter. Peter couldn't forgive him for that.

Even now, Peter sometimes overheard the boy talking to her.

Mommy, are you there? Mommy, it's me.

Robbie would sit at the piano, a beatific smile on his face, and Peter knew that Alex was with him, comforting him, loving him, holding him. But when Peter woke in the night, screaming Alex's name, there was nothing. Nothing but the blackness and silence of the grave.

"No, Dad." Robert's voice was barely a whisper. "I didn't want to ask anything. I...I was going to play the piano. But I can come back another time."

At the mention of the word piano, a nerve in Peter's jaw began to twitch. He'd been idly tapping a pencil on the desk. Now he gripped it so hard it snapped in his hand.

Barney Hunt frowned. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

But Peter wasn't fine. His hand was bleeding. One by one, slow, heavy drips of blood splashed onto the polished wood of the desk.

Barney smiled reassuringly at his godson. "We won't be long. Five minutes and then I'll come and find you. We can play some catch, how's that sound?"

"Good."

Another shy smile and Robbie was gone, slipping out of the room as silently as he had arrived.

Barney took a deep breath.

"You know, Peter, the kid needs you. He's grieving, too. He - "

Peter raised his hand. "We've been through this, Barney. Robert's all right. If you want to worry about something, worry about these damn newspaper reporters. They're the damn problem, okay?"

Barney Hunt shook his head.

He felt for Robert, he really did. But there was nothing more he could do.

Eve Blackwell closed her eyes and tried to fantasize about something that would bring her to orgasm.

"Is that good, baby? Do you like that?"

Keith Webster, her husband, was drenched in sweat, pounding away at her from behind like an overexcited terrier. He'd insisted on regularly "making love," as he put it, throughout Eve's pregnancy. Now that her time was fast approaching, her belly was so vastly swollen that doggy-style sex was the only option. A small mercy for Eve, who was no longer forced to look at Keith's weak, weaselly face twisted into a mask of sexual ecstasy every time he made love to her.

If you could call it making love. Keith's dick was so small, it registered only as a mild irritant. Rather like having a badly behaved child seated behind you in a movie theater who won't stop kicking the back of your seat.

Eve faked a moan.

"That's wonderful, darling! I'm almost there!"

And suddenly she was, her mind lost in a delicious, slow-moving slide show of images from the past:

Herself as a thirteen-year-old, seducing her married English teacher, Mr. Parkinson. When she'd cried rape, she'd destroyed the pathetic little man's life. But he'd deserved it. They all did.

F*cking her way through the military academy that adjoined her and Alexandra's finishing school in Switzerland. How intoxicating sex had been back then, back when men used to throw themselves at her feet!

Stabbing George Mellis in the heart and dumping his body in the sea at Dark Harbor. Just thinking about the look of surprise on George's face as the blade tore through his flesh could sometimes bring Eve to climax.

The world knew George Mellis as Alexandra Blackwell's first husband - a footnote in the great Blackwell family history. In reality, he'd been a sadistic playboy and pathological liar who had once raped and sodomized Eve, a crime for which he ultimately paid with his life.

Of course, Alex never knew the truth about George Mellis. She never knew he was in league with her evil twin sister; never knew that Eve and George had remained lovers throughout Alex's brief marriage to him; never knew that the pair of them had intended to murder her and steal her inheritance, or that Eve had been forced to murder George instead when their plans went awry.

Alex never knew the truth. But Eve knew. Eve knew everything.

Not that Eve had minded killing George. In fact, it had been a pleasure.

Keith Webster increased the pace of his thrusts, shaking with excitement as his delicate surgeon's hands reached around for his wife's enormous, pregnancy-swollen breasts.

"Oh Christ, Eve, I love you! I'm coming, baby, I'm coming!"

He let out a sound that was half groan, half whimper. Eve pictured George Mellis at the moment of his death, then mentally substituted Keith's face for George's. She orgasmed instantly.

Keith slid off her back like a toad slipping down a wet rock. He lay back against the pillow, his eyes closed in postcoital contentment. "That was incredible. Are you okay, honey? Is the baby okay?"

Eve stroked her belly lovingly. "The baby's fine, darling. You mustn't worry."

Keith Webster had been neurotic about his wife's pregnancy from the start, but Alexandra's death a few weeks ago had heightened his anxiety tenfold. It was common knowledge that Eve and Alexandra's own mother, Marianne, had died giving birth to them. Now the same fate had befallen Alex. It was easy to imagine that Eve might be next. That some unseen genetic fault lurked in the shadows, waiting to snatch his beloved from him.

Keith Webster had loved Eve Blackwell from the moment he set eyes on her. It was true that shortly after their marriage, he had deliberately mutilated her face. Playing on Eve's innate vanity, he had persuaded her to let him perform a minor operation to erase the laughter lines around her eyes. Then, once he had her under anesthetic and utterly at his mercy, he had proceeded to destroy her beautiful features one by one.

At first Eve had been angry, of course. He'd expected that. But now she saw things clearly. He'd had to do it. He had no choice. As long as Eve remained so mesmerizingly, intoxicatingly beautiful, he was at risk of losing her. Losing her to other, less worthy men, men who could never love her the way he did. Men like George Mellis, who had once beaten Eve so badly she had almost died. Keith Webster had restored her looks after that attack. It was the day they met. Eve had been so deliciously grateful afterward, he'd fallen in love with her on the spot.

But what Keith Webster giveth, Keith Webster could also taketh away.

It was a lesson Eve needed to learn.

Others might find his wife's grotesquely scarred features repellent, but not Keith Webster. In his eyes, Eve would always be beautiful. The most beautiful creature on earth.

Keith Webster had no illusions about his own appearance. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a slight, shortsighted man with only a few wisps of sandy hair left clinging to his otherwise bald head, like seaweed on a bare rock. Women had never been interested in him, period, never mind women as insanely attractive as Eve Blackwell. He'd felt no compunction about blackmailing Eve into marriage (Keith knew she had murdered George Mellis and threatened to go to the police if she didn't marry him) and he felt no guilt about it now. After all, how else was he supposed to possess her? To fulfill her destiny, and his own?

Once again, Eve had given him no choice.

Resting a loving hand on her baby bump, Keith felt replete with happiness. Terrified of being photographed and ridiculed like a carnival sideshow, Eve had become a virtual prisoner in their penthouse apartment since he "re-created" her, as he liked to think of it. With nothing to do with the long, lonely hours of her existence but cater to his every whim, she had finally capitulated and given Keith the one thing he desired above all others: a baby, their baby, a living, breathing affirmation of their love.

What more could any man ask for?

She'd had a rotten pregnancy, poor thing, with violent bouts of morning sickness throughout. Although Keith knew there had never been much love lost between his wife and her twin sister, he was sure that Alexandra's sudden death must have frightened Eve.

Still, only a few weeks to go now.

Bending his head reverently, he kissed his wife's belly, murmuring endearments to his unborn child.

Soon the baby would be born. Then all their troubles would be over, the pain of the past forgotten.

Eve's labor was long and agonizing. While the press huddled like baying bloodhounds beneath her hospital window, Eve spent sixteen grueling hours feeling her body being ripped apart from within.

"Are you sure you won't consider a pain killer, Mrs. Webster? A shot of Pethidine would really take the edge off your contractions."

"My name is Blackwell," Eve hissed between clenched teeth. "And no."

Eve was adamant. No drugs. No relief. She had conceived this child to wreak her vengeance, to bring righteous suffering to her enemies and to reclaim her stolen inheritance: Kruger-Brent. It was right that he should be born from suffering. That the first sound he heard should be his mother's screams.

If she didn't despise him so intensely, Eve might almost have felt sorry for Keith Webster. The pathetic, inadequate milquetoast she'd been trapped into marrying actually believed she was happy to be having his child! Hovering over her like an old maid, full of pity for her morning sickness...except it wasn't morning sickness at all. Eve's violent bouts of vomiting were triggered by pure revulsion. The very idea of Keith's seed growing inside her was enough to make her retch.

True, she had allowed him to impregnate her. This baby was no mistake.

He thinks I conceived out of love.

Eve laughed aloud. The arrogance of Keith's madness knew no limits.

The truth was that Eve Blackwell hated her husband. Hated him with a murderous passion so strong, she was surprised the nurses couldn't smell it on her skin.

When Keith had first removed Eve's bandages and shown her her ruined face, five long years ago, she'd screamed until she passed out. In the weeks that followed, she had sobbed and raged, her emotions swinging wildly from shock to disbelief to terror. At first she'd been so desperate she had actually clung to Keith. Yes, he'd done this terrible thing, but he was all she had. Without his protection, she feared being flung to the wolves, torn to shreds like a hunted animal. As the years passed, however, Eve stopped worrying about Keith abandoning her. She realized, with amused horror, that the man was so deranged he actually still found her attractive. Keith Webster had turned Eve Blackwell into a monster: the Beast of the Blackwells. But she was his monster. To Keith, that was all that mattered.

"The baby's crowning, Mrs. Web - Ms. Blackwell. I can see the head!"

Eve wished the nurses would stop smiling. Didn't they realize the agony she was in? It was like being attended by a troop of giddy schoolgirls.

Thank God Keith had agreed to stay in the fathers' waiting room.

Eve had begged him: "I want you to still find me sexy, my darling. You know what they say about men who watch their wives give birth. It ruins, you know, that, forever."

Keith insisted that nothing could dim his passion for her. But to Eve's astonishment, he'd agreed to stay away.

"One more push! You're almost there!"

The pain was so strong Eve was surprised she hadn't lost consciousness. Like a riptide it pulled at her till she was no longer aware of anything but the sensations deep inside her womb.

She thought about Alex, realizing for the first time how physically painful and terrifying her sister's death must have been.

Good.

It was ironic. Eve thought about all the time and effort she'd put into trying to kill her twin over the years: setting her nightgown alight at their fifth birthday party; arranging riding accidents, sailing accidents and finally the whole complicated murder plot with George Mellis. (Knowing George was both penniless and psychotic, and that his rich-playboy routine was all an act, Eve had encouraged him to woo and marry her sister. The plan was for George to win Alex's trust, persuade her to make a new will that left him everything, including her controlling stake in Kruger-Brent, then get rid of her, splitting the inheritance with Eve.)

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.