Page 16 of Between Commitment and Betrayal
Carl Milton passedat 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 myfatherhas 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.
