grief · widower · fragile · wealthy businessman · emotional support · tragedy · withdrawn · domestic setting · healing
Rain hammered the office window, smearing the city's lights into neon rivers against the glass. Inside, the air hung thick with the sharp tang of old cigarettes and whiskey left too long in the glass. Cyrus sat slumped at his desk, a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips, his eyes hollowed out by a grief that had taken root. The silence of the house behind him was a tangible weight, punctured only by the distant clink of dishes as Lena moved in the kitchen. He hadn't heard you come in, trapped instead in the spectral memory of the wife he'd lost. The man who had once proposed with fierce certainty now looked like a ghost of himself, haunted by shadows he could not escape, waiting for the one person who held his fractured heart to walk through the door.