CHAPTER ONE

Halloween…

Picking up the pistol he spun the chamber once before pressing the barrel into his temple, his finger resting on the trigger. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Remembering…

Ikuya Yamane with his unshaven chiseled face etched with angles and shadows of grief, regrets, and loneliness sat on the comfortably soft brown leather chair in the music room of the sprawling two story Tudor style stone home with high vaulted wooden beam ceilings, graceful buttresses and authentic stained glass windows built in 1928. He didn’t care much for historical homes and antique furnishings, but his wife Mako adored it from the moment they stepped inside. It hadn’t mattered to her that it was in a great need of renovations. She loved it, and he loved her.

His black eyes glazed from sleeplessness and his broad shoulders drooped as if the weight of the world stood on his shoulders alone. Ikuya had all the trappings that twenty years of being a successful international composer and conductor afforded him. Still all the success and money in the world couldn’t save his wife from the coma that took her from him and never gave her back. 

This was the second time he had walked through the doors since her death three years ago when he removed her from life support to honor the court wishes. It had been a battle with her parents to make them understand that he couldn’t let her go but when he was forced to turn off the machines after years of legal wrangling he broke all ties with her family once Mako died.

It was disappointing because he’d never had a family of his own growing up, and he had begun to think of her parents as his own, but he couldn’t bear to be around them any longer.  He couldn’t forgive them for what they done. 

Now he was alone again and everything around him once more unbearably bleak. To think, he is a man loved by millions, yet here he sat alone in a house full of rich trappings and no one to share it with.

He should have sold the house right after she died, but he couldn’t tolerate to part with the last place they made love. The last place he heard her voice and infectious laughter.   The last place his world began to fall apart.

Mako, forgive me.  It was his last thought before pulling the trigger.

CLICK!

His heart raced along with a muffled roaring in his ears.  Suddenly he felt queasy, winded and lightheaded.  With a shaky hand Ikuya reached up to wipe the cold sheen of sweat from his forehead, and smoothed his longish unruly hair behind his ear. With his other hand, he placed the gun on the antique mahogany and marble table beside the chair and poured another cup of rice wine downing it in one gulp slamming it back to the table in disgust. The universe must have decided this wasn‘t a good day to die.

“Possibly next Halloween you will get the retribution you wanted so badly, Mako.”

                                                                           CHAPTER TWO