The Kingmaker

I hadn’t thought of that in years, how she used to chase us around the house yelling, “I’m looking for all the king’s men!”

“I’m so glad you’re with Owen while he’s running,” she continues. “He needs someone he can trust, and politics is a dirty game.”

“One he’s been playing for ten years,” I remind her dryly.

“Yes, but this is another level. It requires even more ruthlessness.” She pauses to laugh. “And we both know you’re ten times as ruthless as your brother.”

“Not sure how I feel about that, Mom. Thanks?”

“You get it from your father,” she says, humor and affection in her voice. “You both play dirty when you have to. I’m glad Owen has you at his back. Take care of your brother, son.”

It should be an odd request considering I’m younger, but she’s right. Owen has a heart of gold, but I’ve always been the fighter of us two.

“I will, Mom,” I promise. “I got him.”

“Would you, um . . . like to speak with your father?” she asks, her voice trying to sound normal.

I try for normal, too, as if my father and I talk every day instead of once every few years. “Sure.”

It is Christmas.

“Okay,” she says, clearly happy and relieved. “Let me get him. I love you, Maxim.”

“Love you, too, Mom.”

“Maxim.” My father’s deep voice booms over the phone, and I’m transported back to sunlit days standing in water past our knees, him yelling down the river while we cast lines fly fishing.

“Dad,” I reply, keeping my voice even. “Merry Christmas.”

I remind myself that I’m not that college kid he reamed for not being ruthless or focused enough. Not the one who wondered if my father was right when he said I’d never make it without the protection of his name. I’m the man who fled his father’s shadow and flew on his own.

“Merry Christmas,” my father says. “I hope it’s been good for you so far.”

“Yeah, great.”

“You’re in Aspen?”

How the hell does my father always know where I am? “Uh, yeah. With David and Grim.”

“Be sure to give them our best.” A long pause neither of us seems to know how to fill follows before he continues. “It’s good you’re in DC with O.”

“Yeah,” I reply, grabbing hold of something we can agree on. “I think he has a real shot. Actually, according to all the numbers, the best shot. He leads in every early poll.”

“I don’t trust polls, and I don’t trust that girl he has running his campaign. Under the expensive clothes and fine education, she’s the same bothersome baggage who tried to stop my pipeline. And she keeps trying to stop them, little nuisance.”

I clamp my teeth around the sharp edges of the words I want to hurl at him.

“She’s the best in the business, Dad,” I say, my voice stiff as a mannequin. “They don’t call her the Kingmaker for nothing.”

“You think I don’t know about the soft spot you have for Lennix Hunter?” he asks, a bitter note entering his voice. “That dick of yours is gonna lead you somewhere you don’t need to go one day. Oh, wait. It already has. Amsterdam, wasn’t it?”

I grip the phone until I think it might snap in my fingers. “Stay out of my business, Dad.”

“Tell her to stay out of mine.”

“You know I can’t control Lennix. Every time you try to lay a pipeline on tribal ground, she’s coming for your ass.”

“Well she better hope I never come for hers.”