Lust Behind The Mansion Walls

OLD SCARS, NEW WOUNDS

ALEXANDER

“The past doesn't knock—it barges when you least expect it.”

“What do you mean she’s back?” Cassandra’s voice cracked like glass, her face draining of colour. Her wedding was weeks away — and the ghost of my past had chosen now to resurface.

I lifted my hands in a weak attempt to soothe her. “It’s nothing… really. Just a text from an old friend. He said he spotted Evelyn in town.”

Cassandra inhaled sharply, shoulders sagging with relief, but the room didn’t relax. My eyes flicked to Damien.

My son wasn’t breathing easily. He looked as though I’d just torn open an old wound with my bare hands. His jaw was clenched, his fists curled at his sides, a storm building in his silence.

And guilt gnawed at me.

I hadn’t wanted to say her name out loud — Evelyn — but once spoken, it filled the air like poison.

Now, watching my son unravel, I wasn’t sure if I’d just passed along a warning… or lit a fuse that could burn this entire family down.

Damien pushed his plate away, barely touching his food. The irritation rolling off him was thick enough to choke me. I knew I’d ruined his day the moment I said her name.

He hated Evelyn more than anyone alive—and sometimes, he hated me for being the reason she left.

I could still hear his voice from years ago, sharp and venomous in the middle of a tenth-grade argument: “Maybe if you weren’t so damn unbearable, Mom would have stayed.”

That sentence never left me. It clung to me in the quiet hours, whispering that maybe he was right. He thought he was the only broken one, but the truth was—I’ve been carrying jagged pieces of her absence in my chest too.

Past in my future. Not when I got a second chance to love after all the heartbreak I’ve been through.

“Where are you going?” I asked as Damien shoved his chair back. His jaw was locked, his eyes burning holes into the floor. He didn’t bother answering me. Just stormed out. Perfect.

“ I-I think I’m full,” Aria murmured, setting her fork down before slipping out after him. Her eyes lingered on me for half a second, torn, like she hated leaving me behind but couldn’t stand the tension.

The silence that followed was suffocating. It felt like the past had just walked back into my house and pulled up a chair. And damn it—I wasn’t about to let history wreck the only second chance at love I’d been lucky enough to get.

“Come here,” Cassandra whispered, tugging me into her arms. She pressed a kiss to my forehead, lingering there like she could silence all the noise in my head with that one touch. “We’ll be fine, Alex. But if Evelyn is truly back… I need to know you won’t let her near us.”

I let out a shaky breath and cupped her face. “Nothing will ever take me from you,” I murmured, my voice rough with the weight of everything I was holding back. “We’ll have our wedding, our life… everything we’ve fought for.”

And then I kissed her, not just with want, but with the desperation of a man clinging to the only light he had left.

Men like me don’t get second chances. But Cassandra… She made me believe I might deserve one.

I met her at my lowest, bleeding and half-conscious in a back alley after a stupid decision to slip away from the cameras and drown myself in a remote bar. A pack of thieves ambushed me, and for once, all the money and power in the world couldn’t save me.

She did.

A stranger, fresh from her own heartbreak, she brought me in and cared for me without asking who I was or what I could offer. She saw a man—broken, battered—and chose to help anyway.

Somehow, in the middle of her own divorce, she still found room for me. And I—selfish as it may sound—took that lifeline. Because a woman like her shouldn’t walk through pain alone, not when I had finally found someone whose kindness wasn’t for show.

Maybe this is what a second chance looks like. Maybe, just maybe, I was finally allowed to find love.

It was afternoon, and though I had calmed the storm at the table, a knot of unease still sat heavy in my chest. No matter how I tried to shake it, the thought of Damien kept circling back—my son, carrying wounds I could never fully heal.

Evelyn abandoned him and never once looked back. I can only imagine what that does to a boy, and I know part of him still blames me for it.

I checked his room first, then by the pool, calling his name softly into the silence. Nothing. Finally, I found him in the gym.

Of course. Where else would he be?

His fists were a blur against the punching bag, each strike harder than the last, like he was trying to drive the past right out of his body. The thud of leather against foam echoed through the room, sharp and angry.

For Damien, violence wasn’t just a sport—it was therapy. If he wasn’t in the ring, he was on the racetrack, pushing his car to dangerous speeds, or in the football fields where games too often ended in fights.

He carried his rage everywhere, bottled so tightly it spilt into every corner of his life—even between us. And every time I saw it, I wondered if I had failed him more than Evelyn ever did.

“You know it’s better to talk things out than punching the air,” I said softly. He didn’t even look at me, sweat dripping down his temple as his fists pounded harder into the bag.

“Golf, then? You and me?” I tried again.

His glove smacked the bag with a crack. “Talk? You don’t get to lecture me about talking.”

“Great talk,” I muttered under my breath, a bitter smile tugging at my mouth. I hated how familiar this silence had become.

I straightened, slipping back into the role I knew he couldn’t ignore forever. “Anyway… we’ve got a gala tonight. Eight o’clock sharp. The face and future of Beaumont Automotives doesn’t get a night off.”

I turned and left, the echo of his fists following me out of the gym. I knew I’d touched an old scar, one that still bled no matter how much time passed. And just like always, he pulled further away.

I just hoped he would find his way back to me before I lost him completely.