Chapter One
He closed the front door shut as a blue sedan drove out of the driveway. The driver had taken his heart and stabbed it to death right in front of him.
Waltz breathed out slowly, looking down at his hands, slowly reaching for his wedding ring.
A forty-year relationship, a thirty-year marriage over.
Waltz struggled to twist the ring off, feeling the ache as it refused to move past his knuckle. He sighed, giving up.
The sound of the home phone ringing forced Waltz to jump, but he ignored it as he stood alone in the lounge room, taunted by the emptiness that had once been full of love – the photos of him and his wife now missing from the walls, the sound of her saying his name nothing more than a memory.
“Waltz, it’s Judith. How’s the book going? Any chance of getting a read soon?” His agent’s voice said through the answering machine.
Pain etched through his sigh as Waltz felt the weight of the world drop against his shoulders. It was only 9 a.m. – he wasn’t in the mood to push the day forward, let alone sit behind his desk and write.
In Judith’s words: “Waltz, it’s been forever. Can’t remember the last time I saw something new.” She wasn’t wrong – the last book the Central European-born author had published was five years ago, before everything went to shit.
If his wife hadn’t left him… If his wife hadn’t served him divorce papers…
Finding hatred in the silence, Waltz forced himself to his home office, trying to find solace in the one thing he had always turned to.
