Between Commitment and Betrayal: An Arranged Marriage Romance

CARL MILTON PASSED at 8:01 p.m.

Authorities were directed to call his wife.

By about 8:02 p.m., his wife, Melinda, called to ask who was taking over his shares of the company.

I would give the press about ten more minutes until they called with questions. Vultures. Every single one of them. They swooped in on a wounded animal, ready for their feeding frenzy immediately. I may have been wounded, but I wasn’t dead, and I would protect our legacy—Carl was my family for all intents and purposes—at all costs. Even if it meant going up against his wife, the press, and the whole damn empire we’d built together.

Carl had given me a place to call home during my years in the NFL. He’d made me believe in myself more than anyone ever had. He’d accepted my father and mother not just as working-class Greek immigrants, but as equals—treated them the way they always should have been. He gave us all purpose and trusted us with his business.

He was family.

And we didn’t scavenge on family even when they passed.

I knew I had to call my brothers, figure out the staff, the press release … knew I had to do a million things.

All the things Carl was good at. He’d been the charmer, the type who could soothe the press, handle the administrative work, and focus on the business when I didn’t want to. I played ball, I worked out, I posed for a shot with my Super Bowl ring and smiled at people in my face. I didn’t organize things. I didn’t want to.

Yet, now, I’d have to.

I’d need to be the man to make everything work, even if I couldn’t incite my staff to resuscitate the person we needed most. I couldn’t get a heartbeat. I couldn’t bring him back.

I prompted them to try more times than I could count before the doctor called it. Then, I snapped at my staff to get out. I heard an announcement not long after that the gym was closed until further notice, that everyone needed to evacuate the premises immediately.

I stood in that hot sauna as they loaded his large body onto the stretcher. As they carted him away, my life changed before me.

It might have been seconds or minutes or hours when I heard her voice so soft behind me. “You’re going to overheat, Declan.”

The name she never spoke left her lips out of compassion, trying to pull me back from the darkness that was enveloping me.

When I turned, I saw how she bit her lip as she looked at me. Then, she stepped up and wiped at my cheeks, I saw the tears there. Yet, I felt cold, numb, in shock. I blurted out, “Did you close the gym?”

She nodded. “I thought it best given the circumstances.”

Something ugly brewed up inside me. Cold and vicious and hardened from losing the man who’d given most everything to me. “He wouldn’t have wanted us to close down the gym. Not even for a minute.”

“Oh. Well …” She pulled her hand away and fisted it. “We have to mourn him, and we have to take the right steps. We can’t just drive forward.”

“We’ve always driven forward. It’s Carl’s way, Everly.” It sounded callous coming from my mouth. Yet, the woman hadn’t been here. She hadn’t seen how hard we’d worked for this, how much we put in to get here. “We open first thing tomorrow. It’ll be an all-hands-on-deck situation to deal with his passing. So, make sure to look your best. The press is going to have a field day with this one.”

Her jaw dropped as I started to walk past her. “You can’t be … Are you even going to take a moment and stop to consider that my father has died?”

I dragged a hand over my face and took a deep breath. Carl Milton would have wanted us to play ball. Always. The man was all about the legend and empire. “No, because my business partner wouldn’t have wanted me to.”

“You knew him much better than I did, Declan.” She took a breath, and it quivered like she knew what it might be like for me to grieve him. “You can’t bury the pain and loss deep inside like it hasn’t happened. You have to feel the past and—”

“You know that from experience, Everly?” Something shuttered behind her eyes, and she shut down the emotion, closed me off to it like she had the night in the SUV.

When she glanced back at me though, her blue eyes burned with a new fire. She glared at me when I brushed past to close down the sauna. The medical staff was now talking with the police, and we had to deal with press, call lawyers, figure out next steps. We didn’t have time for mourning.

Everly was on my heels. “What are we going to say to everyone who loved him? ‘Mr. Hardy doesn’t care. It’s still time to work’?”

“Everyone employed here will understand. Most of us have been on this team for years, and just because you came in a few months ago—”

“What? I don’t know or care enough? Is that what you were about to say?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You know what, Mr. Hardy? Fuck you.”

“Good. You’re finally getting it. Feel the anger rather than the sadness and hang on to that pride you have. When the press gets ahold of the news, you’re going to need it.”

She was too pure for this world, too foreign to understand that an empire like this one would crumble and rip you apart if you weren’t careful.

“Everly!” I heard Wes’s voice before I saw him. It grated every nerve. “Jesus, I came as soon as I heard.”

I glanced at my watch. Two hours. Her father had died, and it took her “casual” hookup two whole hours to get here when I know he doesn’t work a nine-to-five.

“You shouldn’t be in our gym right now. It’s closed,” I pointed out.

“Come on, man,” he grumbled as he tucked her in under his arm.

At the same time, she mumbled, “Oh my god.”

Still, she curled into him like he might be able to comfort her. Like his arms would be enough. “I’m sorry to hear about—”

“You both can go.” I turned away from them as Melinda, Anastasia, and Clara arrived.

“What happened? Who was on the medical staff tonight?” Melinda buzzed in. Her coiffed blonde hair perched and wrapped perfectly in a bun told me she’d gotten ready for the press. Her pantsuit was a black, like she knew she had to mourn, and Anastasia and Clara were dressed the same.

Anastasia—hair as blonde as her mother’s, the perfect face of makeup, and the woman I’d always entertained because she was related to Carl—gripped my arm with tears running down her face. Suddenly, her touch made my skin crawl, like she was poison ivy that I needed to get away from. “I’m going to miss him. I can’t even understand how this happened.”

I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder to see if Everly was still there, if she was going to console her family.

She chewed her cheek with her plump lips pursed before she sighed and pulled Wes with her. She cleared her throat, and instantly Melinda’s and Anastasia’s eyes flew like daggers to her.

“I’m so sorry for your loss. We did everything we could but he …” Everly’s voice shook as she bravely held Melinda’s eye contact and wrung her hands in front of her bare stomach since she was still in her damn workout clothes.

“Why are you even here?” Melinda spit out the question like an accusation.

“I … What? I work here.”

“So? You think that affords you the right to be here?” She smoothed one manicured hand over the strands of her bun. “Get employees off the premises, Declan. This is a private family matter now. We need to make sure we handle this correctly with the press for our company.”

“Melinda—” I started.

“Look outside, Declan.” She pointed, and when I did, the swarm in front of the windows around the ambulance and police cars was intense. Photos were being taken, flashes going off I hadn’t previously noticed.

Shock of losing a man as close to you as your father doesn’t hit in the first few minutes. Or maybe it does and that’s what keeps you from crumbling.

None of this was good for Everly. She wasn’t used to it. “Go home, Everly. I’ll make sure we contact you about Carl’s funeral arrangements.”

“If you’re invited,” Melinda added.

Everly’s face paled and then reddened.

“Melinda.” My voice snapped out like a whip getting them in order just as Clara grumbled that Carl was her dad too and not to be so cold while Anastasia elbowed her. “I’m going to say it once so we’re clear. Carl made it known to me the day I met Everly. She’s a part of the HEAT empire, she’s a part of the family. Our family. You treat her that way or you answer to me. You understand?”

Melinda raised her chin and pursed her lips. “We’ll see about that.”

“Mom!” Clara screeched at her mother’s boldness, and they all started bickering, but I was only focused on Everly. She had backed away, shaking her head at me. She held in the tears, refusing to let them fall, refusing to give us an inch of her emotion. The way she didn’t engage, the way she still stood tall, and the way she glanced at me and mouthed “Goodbye” made me want to grab her hand and pull her back to stay.

Carl would have been proud of her.

And I was certifiably in awe with her after that moment. She was strong in a way I didn’t see from other women around here. It made something deep in my gut burn as she walked away with Wes’s hand on the small of her back.

I took a breath and tried to organize the list of things I had to do. The next few days would be brutal.

I DID IT ALL. I called our PR company, brought in my assistant, called my brothers, and worked closely with Melinda and her daughters to organize the funeral.

We all lost sleep, mourned his loss, but carried on. I saw her blue eyes at the funeral where she didn’t look bothered at all again. She didn’t stand next to her stepfamily, but instead sat in the pews of the church with everyone else.

A woman with long dark braids who had the same exact bone structure as Everly sat beside her rubbing her arms as the pastor gave his sermon. Then, they both approached the receiving line at the wake, told the family—and me—they were sorry for our loss, as if they hadn’t lost anyone. As if they were strong enough to give sympathy even when they deserved it too.

Everly Belafonte couldn’t be bothered with what should have been, it seemed. I knew she should have been afforded a moment at that funeral to break down. She didn’t. She should have been afforded a damn moment to commemorate her father, but Melinda took on the whole eulogy with her daughters. Everly didn’t bat an eye even.

I wanted to shake her, tell her she deserved it all, that Carl would have wanted her to have something.

But I couldn’t. I had to be the king of this empire now.

Two days after the funeral, my brothers and I all got the call. “There’s a will reading for Mr. Carl Milton. It’s rather unique in that he wanted you and your brothers to attend with Everly first. You will each be read the conditions of the will one by one. I know it’s unorthodox, but we’d like you to come in—”

“Just give me the time and the place. I’ll be there if that’s what Carl wanted.”

I’d do anything that old man wanted now that he was gone, I thought.

Well, I thought so at least until I heard what he asked me to do in that damn will.