Page 42 of Tough Luck

The doors leading to the restricted medical wing swung open, and my mother walked out by herself.

The entire waiting room seemed to lose its oxygen in a single second. I stopped dead in my tracks, my shoes freezing against the floor. Jax stood up slowly, and Chris stared blankly ahead.

We didn’t need a doctor to step out behind her. We didn’t need to hear the clinical words, or the time of death, or the apologies. The moment our eyes locked onto our mother’s face, we all knew he was gone.

Her shoulders, usually so straight and proud, were slumped. Her face was perfectly pale, her eyes red and swimming with a devastating, empty grief. She looked down at her hands, which were trembling violently, before lifting her head to look at us, her three sons. She didn’t say a word, but the slight, heartbreaking shake of her head told the entire story.

The heartbeat of the Mylonas family, of the marketing empire, the man who had built everything from the ground up, was gone.

A choked, ragged sob tore from Jax’s throat, and he collapsed back into the chair, completely breaking down. Chris buried his face in his hands.

I stood there, completely frozen for a moment, as the room spun around me while the reality of a world without my father crashed onto my shoulders. Then I rushed forward, along with Jax and Chris, and we engulfed our mother, holding her upright and tight, silently promising that whatever happened next, her three sons would be there. We weren’t gone. We weren’t going anywhere.

I don’t know how long we stood like this. The four of us. No longer the five of us. That in itself was strange. My brain couldn’t comprehend the fact that he was really gone. Eventually, we were shown into a private room, and I stood, staring into space, while my mother sat and cried softly into her hands.

But before the darkness could swallow me entirely, a pair of soft arms wrapped around my waist. Sofia pressed her face flush against my chest, holding onto me with everything she had, letting me lean into her weight as the tears finally blurred my vision.

She said something, but I couldn’t register the words. I couldn’t focus enough to make sense of anything.

Sometime later, we left the hospital. Sofia drove my car. I didn’t even know where we were heading. I didn’t care.

My father, the man who had taught me everything I knew, everything about how to be a child, a boy, a man, the one who had been the pillar of our family, was really gone.

The next thing I registered was the car stopping. I looked out the windshield and realized that Sofia had brought us to my parents’ house.

Sitting at the very crest of the hill, the massive five-bedroom contemporary estate loomed against the darkened Colorado sky. It was a sprawling masterpiece of exposed timber beams, stacked native stone, and soaring walls of glass. Down below, rolling out like a dark, velvety carpet, was the exclusive golf course—the very place where my father’s heart had given out only hours before. From this height, the property commanded a breathtaking view that swept from the rugged foothills framing Golden all the way to the twinkling grid of Denver in the distance.

I hadn’t grown up in this house. My dad had had it built as his crowning achievement just a few years before I packed up and set out on my own to make my own mark. It was the house of a man who had finally made it. But despite its massive footprint, it didn’t feel like a cold museum. My mother had seen to that. She had balanced the sharp, modern architectural lines with cozy, oversized leather furniture, thick woven rugs, and curated landscape art that made the grand spaces feel intimate. Right now, though, the warm landscape lighting illuminating the stone facade just felt hollow.

Sofia cut the engine. The silence that followed was heavy, almost physical.

“I’m here if you need anything,” she said, her voice a gentle lifeline in the dark. She reached across the console, her fingers slipping into mine and squeezing tight.

I nodded slowly, my throat too tight to speak. When I opened the door, the crisp, thin mountain air hit my face, shocking a bit of the numbness out of my limbs.

Vehicles were pulling into the wide driveway behind us. Jax and Nova got out of his truck, Jax looking like a ghost of himself, his shoulders hunched. Chris arrived right behind them, his face set in a grim, rigid mask as he helped our mother out of the passenger seat.

We walked inside as a fractured unit. The grand entryway, with its soaring two-story ceiling and view straight through the great room to the lights of the valley far below us, felt entirely too big without my dad’s booming voice echoing through it.

“Let’s get you into the sitting room, Mom,” Chris said softly, his voice tight as he guided her toward the hearth.

The hearth was the heart of the house—a massive, double-sided stone fireplace that separated the main living area from the kitchen. I immediately stepped up to get my mother settled by guiding her to one of the plush, deep-seated sofas.

“I’ll get you some water,” Sofia said, and I motioned her toward the kitchen.

Jax had collapsed onto a chair, burying his face in his hands. Nova sat right next to him, offering the exact kind of quiet, steady support he needed.

I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that looked out over the dark expanse of the golf course. The city lights of Denver blurred into a streak of gold and white in the distance. I felt a presence step up beside me, and a second later, Sofia’s hand slid into mine.

“He loved this view,” I whispered, the words scratching against my throat. “He used to stand right here with a glass of scotch and tell me that, if you work hard enough, you can see your entire future right out there.”

Sofia didn’t try to offer empty platitudes. She just leaned her head against my shoulder, her warmth seeping through my jacket, grounding me to the floor of the house my father had built.

The house fell into a heavy, exhausting quiet as the hours ticked by. My mother finally broke, the sheer weight of the grief completely draining her, and Chris gently guided her upstairs to the master bedroom so she could lie down.

When he walked back down the stairs, his eyes met mine, and we exchanged a silent, heavy nod. The immediate shock was wearing off, leaving behind a raw, aching reality that we were going to have to manage together.

I turned to Sofia, who was still standing near me, her eyes clouded with an intense, fierce worry that cut straight through my numbness. But she looked exhausted, and this was our storm to weather. Not hers.