MAX WEBSTER TOOK THE SHINY RED PACKAGE FROM HIS mother and turned it over excitedly in his hands.

It was heavy. Something solid. He decided it was probably not a toy, despite the childish wrapping paper and jauntily scribbled HAPPY BIRTHDAY in gold glitter across the top.

"What is it?"

Eve Blackwell smiled at her son, her eyes dancing with anticipation.

"Open it and find out."

It was Max's eighth birthday. A striking child, with a predatory, aquiline nose, ink-black eyes to match his hair, and cheekbones most fashion models would have killed for, there was something both feminine and adult about him. Max had none of the fat-cheeked innocence of his friends. Max was knowing. He was lean. He was wild. If other little boys were puppies, Max Webster was a cougar in their midst, as dangerous as he was beautiful.

Less than an hour ago, the Fifth Avenue penthouse Max shared with his parents had been crammed to bursting with fat-cheeked, eight-year-old puppies, all eager to ingratiate themselves with their famous classmate. The party had been Max's father's idea.

Keith Webster said: "The boy needs friends, Eve. He needs to socialize. It's not normal for a kid his age to spend every minute of his free time with his mother."

Eve did not object. She simply retired to her bedroom for the duration, locking the door. The party went ahead, and Max was inundated with presents: Transformers and Skalectrix and Hornby train sets and Action Men galore. Everybody ate a lot of cake and s'mores and drank Coke till it came shooting out of their noses in frothy black torrents. Keith Webster took pictures.

Afterward Keith Webster asked his son: "So, sport, d'you have a good time?" His face beamed with love and pride.

Max nodded. Sure, Dad. It was great.

Max waited for Keith Webster to leave. Sunday night was Keith's regular softball game. He and some of the other surgeons from the hospital had gotten a team together to help relieve the stress of their life-and-death jobs. As soon as Max heard the click of the front door, he went in search of his mother.

"Are they gone?"

"Yes, Mommy."

"All of them?"

"Yes. It's just us now. I'm sorry it took so long."

Eve unlocked her bedroom door. Dressed in a chocolate silk kimono-style robe that fell open at the front to reveal matching lace underwear, she pulled her son close. At eight, Max was still a fairly short child. The top of his dark, gypsy head reached just above Eve's navel. Pressing his cheek against her smooth, flat stomach, she felt him inhaling her scent, a mixture of Eve's own feral smell and the Chanel perfume she had worn since girlhood.

All Max did was breathe. But Eve could feel the adoration in his small, compact body. A familiar rush of power made her flesh tingle.

"Come, sit down on Mommy's bed. You can have your special present now."

Max watched, delighted, as his mother retrieved the package from her glove drawer. This was what he'd been waiting for. Not some asinine party with a bunch of kids from school who'd only come over in the first place because they wanted to gawk at his mom. As if Max would ever let that happen!

He thought again about Keith Webster. His father. How he loathed him.

So, sport, d'you have fun?

Fun? With you?

Max longed for the day when Keith Webster would be gone. Then he would have his beautiful mommy all to himself. Then he could finally stop pretending.

With trembling hands, he tore at the wrapping paper. Inside he saw a glint of black metal. A train?

"Do you like it?"

Eve's voice was husky, barely a whisper. Max gazed at her face. With the outside world, his mother always went to great lengths to hide herself. But not with him. Max was special. He got to see the real Eve Blackwell, scars and all. He loved her so much it sometimes made him weep.

"Mom!" He gasped. "Is it...real?"

"Of course it's real. And very old. It's been in my family for a long, long time."

Lovingly, Max stroked the gun's trigger, his childish fingers caressing, exploring. Such power. And it was all his.

Eve said: "You're almost a grown man now, Max. You're too old for toys. Keith doesn't understand that, but I do."

Eve Blackwell always referred to her husband by his Christian name in front of their son, never as Dad or Daddy. In the early days, Keith had complained about it.

"I wish you'd drop the whole first-name thing. It's creepy. Max doesn't call you Eve."

But Keith's sporadic efforts to introduce the d-word into his son's vocabulary always petered out after a few weeks.

Eve would insist: "It's not me, darling, it's Max. Besides, I don't see that it's such a big deal. It's just one of his little quirks. The more you go on about it, the more he'll dig his heels in. You know what children are like."

"Does Keith know you've given it to me?" Max asked, still mesmerized by the gun. It was perfect. Like his mother.

Eve smiled. "No. It's our secret. I'll keep it in the safe for you so as not to arouse his suspicions. You may take it out whenever you wish. Just ask me and I'll get it for you."

A shocking thought suddenly occurred to Max.

"It isn't Uncle Peter's gun, is it? The one he...you know. When I was little?"

Four years earlier, Max's uncle, Dr. Peter Templeton, had almost shot his children in a drunken rage. No one was sure whether he'd intended to kill himself, or Lexi, or Robert. Peter himself was too drunk to remember. All anyone knew was that the housekeeper had arrived at the Templeton brownstone early one morning to the sound of shots, that she'd wrestled the gun from Uncle Peter's hands, and that in the process she'd been shot in the arm.

The woman had been paid off, of course. Max overheard Keith saying that the check was "in the millions," but evidently the money had been well spent: the story never made its way into the press. From that day on, Max's uncle Peter had not touched a drop of liquor. The gun he used had mysteriously disappeared.

Eve shook her head.

"No, darling. It's not Uncle Peter's gun. It's far more special than that. This gun once belonged to my grandfather, David Blackwell. Your great-grandfather."

Max's eight-year-old chest swelled with pride. He loved to hear his mother tell stories about her family. His family.

Max's earliest memories were of his mother's deep, sensuous voice lulling him to sleep with tales of his great-great-grandfather Jamie McGregor and the thrilling empire that he founded. Max's first word was mama, his second Kruger and his third Brent. While other boys dreamed about dinosaurs and Superman, Max's subconscious glittered with the stolen diamonds on which Jamie McGregor had built his fortune. My fortune. Max Webster had no need for fairy tales, of wronged princesses and dragons and gingerbread castles. His mother was the wronged princess. Eve had had her kingdom stolen from her and been imprisoned by his evil father in her penthouse tower. He, Max, was Eve's avenging knight. Kruger-Brent was their castle. As for the dragons to be slain, there were too many to count. Everyone Max knew was an enemy, from the despicable Keith, to the boys at school who made fun of his mother, to his Templeton cousins, Robert and Lexi.

Your cousins have stolen your inheritance, my darling. They have taken what's yours and cast you out like a serpent in the desert. Just as I was cast out.

Max's mother made their struggle sound mythical. And so it was. Eve had been cast out of the Garden of Eden. Max was the chosen one, the prophet, the messiah. It was Max who would restore the promised land to Eve.

Only by returning Kruger-Brent to his mother would Max win the greatest prize of all: her love. That was their covenant, sealed with the blood of his birth. Max thought about it constantly.

Until that day, the glorious day when he fulfilled his destiny, he must learn to survive on the scraps of love Eve tossed him. Usually his mother was cold and distant. Her constant physical presence in the apartment was like exquisite torture. Max longed for her embrace like a scorched riverbed longs for rain, but time after time he was denied. Keith Webster could touch her, with his sick, cold hands. But Max could not. On the rare occasions when his mother held him close, like today, the little boy felt he could move mountains. Pressed against her, lost in the intoxicating smell of her skin, joy coursed through his child's body like heroin.

Eve stood up. Drawing her silk robe more tightly around her, she walked over to the window.

Max sat alone on the bed. As always, he felt his mother's leaving like a physical pain. He clasped the gun, her gift, pressing it lovingly to his cheek.

"Your great-grandfather David never used that pistol. Never fired a single shot."

Eve was looking out the window. She seemed to be speaking to herself rather than to him.

"He was too much of a coward."

Max took the bait, an innocent lamb gamboling to the slaughter. "I'm not a coward, Mommy. I'm not afraid to use it."

Eve turned around.

"Is that so? And what will you use it for, my darling?"

Max didn't answer. He didn't have to.

They both knew what the gift was for.

I'll use it to kill Keith Webster.

I'll use it to kill my father.