Chapter 5 – Finn – Ghosts of Lifetimes Past
The forest waits at the edge of the property like it’s been sitting there for ten years with its arms crossed, daring me to return.
The grass is slick with dew, the air thick enough to chew, and the trail yawns open in front of me like it never forgot me.
Roots claw through the dirt, moss climbs over the stone markers, branches lean in too close.
I start at a jog, setting a steady pace. Running is supposed to clear your head, but that’s only achievable if your head isn’t already a landfill of shit.
Every bend looks exactly the same. My mother used to run this trail with me, before the poison crawled inside her and started hollowing her out.
She’d lace up her sneakers—beat up old things that were nothing like the sleek ones I’d picked up in Manhattan—and still manage to keep pace with me, even when I pushed too hard.
I can hear her now. “Running’s supposed to make you stronger, Finnick, not break you.” She’d say it every time, smiling, even when I knew she was out of breath.
I can still hear her laugh in the branches, see her ponytail bouncing, fucking feel the moment it all stopped mattering.
It’s too soon when I hit the bend where she collapsed. Though the air is clear now, my chest tightens like it did that day. Fourteen years old and carrying her body back up the trail, telling myself everything was going to be okay when I already knew it wasn’t.
I don’t slow down.
I refuse to.
Fear’s useless, and I’m not giving this place the satisfaction of seeing me flinch.
The forest presses in on me, dragging the ghosts out whether I want them or not.
My feet come down harder and harder, till my legs are burning, lungs raw.
Because if I stop, I’ll have to remember too much.
The storm from all those years ago lingers here too.
The night I left. The sky split open with thunder, the trees shaking like they wanted me to go, and me slamming a car door so hard Eleanor recoiled.
Ariane stood in the hallway, her eyes wide and accusing, and I drove away anyway.
Every step feels like I’m still running from that moment, and the fucking forest won’t let me forget it.
I push myself to go faster, because the trail is endless and I won’t give it the win. My shirt sticks to my back, sweat stings my eyes, and still, I run on. You can outrun a lot of things. Mistakes, memories, even people… But everywhere I go, there it is: guilt.
By the time I break out of the trees and into town, the sun’s finally up, burning pale in the sky. My shirt clings, soaked through, and every muscle in my legs burns with ache, but I keep moving.
The town looks exactly the same. Someone may as well have pressed Pause the night I left.
There’s the same diner with peeling paint.
Here’s the same mural on Harrow’s hardware store wall—that was fucking ugly then and fucking uglier now.
The same cracked sidewalk where I ate shit on my bike when I was ten.
Time didn’t move here. It just sat and waited, like it knew I’d have to come back eventually.
Even if it’s against my will.
I push open the door to the coffee shop, and the bell above it jingles in that shrill, fake-cheerful way that makes me want to rip it down.
The smell hits me next, lowkey burnt beans drowned in cinnamon, the exact same shitty scent it wore a decade ago.
The barista beams like he’s trying to win a customer service medal, and the rest of the room goes quiet, staring at me like I’m a fucking sideshow.
“Finn Wagner?” a man calls from near the window, voice too loud and obnoxious. Who the fuck even is that? “Back from New York? Big city couldn’t keep you?”
I don’t bother with trading witty repartee. Just a nod will do.
Behind me, someone whispers, not even trying to hide it, “Didn’t he used to date the mayor’s daughter? They were caught kissing at her wedding?”
Of course. This town never forgets. It hoards gossip like treasure, keeps it pristine, and ready to drag out the second you walk back in.
I step to the counter and order a black coffee, because if they so much as wave whipped cream at it, I’ll throw the cup in their faces.
I slap a twenty on the counter for a drink that costs two bucks, and the kid behind the register blinks at it like its counterfeit.
As I start walking away, he turns to his coworker, trying to whisper, failing spectacularly, “He used to scare the shit out of us when we were kids.”
I let the corner of my mouth twitch because that one’s almost funny. Used to?
Coffee in hand, I shove the door open with my shoulder, the bell jingling again behind me. This town hasn’t changed one fucking bit. Not the place, and definitely not the fucking people. They couldn’t mind their damn business then, and they can’t now.
Some things never change. And maybe that’s the problem.
I take a long, bitter swallow of coffee that scalds my tongue. I almost welcome the burn, because pain at least feels honest. Doesn’t matter how far I run—Manhattan, Paris, Tokyo, India—this town waits, patient and smug, and the ghosts keep pace like they never left.
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They coffee’s mostly gone by the time I make it back up the drive, and it does nothing to wash the taste of this fucking town out of my mouth.
The estate lurks like a behemoth, the same way it always has.
Only, it’s too refined now. That’s a given, with how Eleanor’s been playing dollhouse with a place that used to be home.
I cut in through the side door and I still remember the way it used to slam when I came barreling in as a kid, mud up to my knees, my mother’s voice following me down the hall, laughing instead of lecturing.
Now, the paint’s been changed, the floors refinished, the old scuff marks and fingerprints scrubbed out like they never existed.
Eleanor’s voice echoes piercingly from the main hall, crisply rattling off orders about floral arrangements and which PR photographer is allowed to shoot from which angle.
She doesn’t sound cruel, exactly. There’s a clinical curtness to her every word, like perfection is oxygen and, if she doesn’t control every detail, the world as she knows it will fucking end.
I don’t hate her. It can seem that way, but I really don’t.
We’ve always managed to be civil, even occasionally friendly, but walking through this house now is like walking through someone else’s version of it.
Every trace of my mother’s touch is gone.
The curtains she picked, the colors she loved, the stupid ceramic lamp she bought at a yard sale because she said it looked “cheerful.” All of it, erased.
She’s a ghost in her own house, and Eleanor painted over her bones.
I move down the hall, and the new housekeeper rounds the corner too fast, a tall vase clutched in her hands. She nearly drops the damn thing when she sees me standing there. The water inside sloshes hard enough to spill over the rim.
“Sorry, Mr. Wagner,” she stammers, gripping the vase like it might save her. “I didn’t know you were…”
“This is my house,” I cut in, eyes narrowed.
Her nod is too quick and desperate. She angles her gaze anywhere but my face before hurrying off like she’s afraid even her footsteps might offend me.
I don’t blame her. I know what people see when they look at me. Fierce edges and zero softness. A man carved out of steel and silence, with nothing left to offer but the warning that you aren’t supposed to get too close.
My phone has been buzzing nonstop all morning. I take the stairs two at a time, already thinking about the inbox waiting for me, when I hear Eleanor’s voice slicing through from down the hall. Involuntarily, it slows me down. The door to her study is open. And Ariane’s standing inside.
She’s by the window, pale yellow sundress catching the late morning light like it was made for her.
The fabric clings to her body in ways I wouldn’t even dare imagine, cinching in at her waist before flaring out to spill over her full hips.
It clings to her bronzed skin, kissed by summer.
Her arms are folded across her midsection, drawing attention to the soft swell of her breasts beneath the neckline, a hint of cleavage shadowed by the angle of the sun.
Her hair, chestnut brown with strands that glint like copper when they catch the light, falls in loose waves down her back, almost brushing her shoulder blades.
A few wisps frame her face, stubborn and wild, the kind you want to tuck behind her ear just to see what expression she’d make when you did it.
Her legs are long and toned, calves flexing just slightly where she keeps shifting her stance against Eleanor’s voice, her weight shifting from her heels to the balls of her feet and back.
The light from the window paints her skin gold, tracing the soft muscles of her thighs, the curve of her knee, the delicate arch of her ankle.
She’s barefoot, toes pointed against the carpet, and for some reason that hits harder than the rest, like she belongs here in a way I don’t, like she’s the living proof this place can still be soft if it wants to be.
Eleanor is fussing in the mirror, pearl necklace clutched between her fingers, her words tumbling fast and hard. “We’ll have the photographer capture you with the Senator’s wife. Graceful and modest.”
Ariane stays quiet. She just stares out the window like she’s trying to find a reason to live on the other side of the glass.
I step forward before I can stop myself, my voice cutting through the tension. “You’re treating her into a mannequin.”
Eleanor freezes in the mirror, her eyes shifting to me with that cold-blue stare. “Good morning to you, too.”
Ariane turns at the sound, and the shift feels seismic. Her eyes, hazel-green, distinct even in silence, lock onto mine, and for a breath it’s just the two of us—no pearls, no study, no script.
Then my gaze drops before I can stop it, straight to her left hand.
Julian’s ring gleams there, smug as hell, catching the light with every subtle move of her fingers.
My stomach knots, ugly and hard.
If she notices the focus of my attention, her face gives nothing away. She’s more impenetrable than I would’ve given her credit for. Unfortunately, that makes her more irresistible instead of less.
“We’re building a narrative, Finn,” Eleanor snaps, the biting sound of her voice slicing the moment apart.
“Something your father understands. We’ve built this empire together, and appearances matter, as much as all of us would like for them not to.
That’s the society we exist in. We need to keep up. ”
Keep up.
Well, that’s a fucking understatement.
Eleanor isn’t wrong. Dad’s empire is twice the size because she put a knife to its throat and dragged it into the modern age. That doesn’t make me like it. Or her, when it comes to making us all participate in these performative fucking parades.
“He understands how to love a stage prop. Just not his son,” I agree coldly. My gaze still remains on Ariane.
The room clamps down tight. Eleanor’s hands falter, her throat bobbing like she’s swallowed glass. Ariane’s lips part, just barely, like she’s about to speak, but nothing comes. She closes them again, swallowing whatever truth she might’ve let slip.
The hush is brutal. A chokehold. Full of things none of us will ever fucking say.
Eleanor clears her throat, smoothing her dress like she can iron the moment out of existence. “Would you like to be in the pictures with Ariane, Finn?”
I bark out a laugh, low and almost shrewd, more weapon than humor. “Yeah, that’s a great idea. Nothing screams ‘wholesome family values’ like putting me in a spread. Might even scare the donors into writing bigger checks. Or send them running for the fucking hills.”
She bites her lip and doesn’t say anything more. It doesn’t feel like a victory. Ariane has fully turned away from me, now.
I shove away from the doorframe, shaking my head, and stride back down the hall. By the time I enter my room, I’m already whipping my sweat-damp shirt, as if it’s going to be that easy to sweep the entire morning away.
With a swipe of my fingers across the trackpad, my computer comes alive on the desk.
Before I’ve even logged in, my phone is buzzing again: emails stacked on top of emails, Eric hammering me with updates, demands, reminders.
It’s the usual shitstorm that comes with running Capital City Corp.
I ignored it all morning, but there’s only so long you can outrun a flood before it drags you under.
I crack my neck, slide into the chair, and start typing.
Contracts, quarterly projections, investor calls to reschedule.
Some asshole in Toronto to deal with, who thinks he can bluff his way through a merger.
We’ll crush him before the weekend’s out.
A potential acquisition in Berlin is bleeding money, and I’ve got three proposals on how to gut it clean.
Hours slip by like they always do when I bury myself in the grind.
That’s the one good thing about owning a software company, everything lives online.
I don’t need to be in some glass tower in Manhattan to tear down a competitor or close a deal. I can do it right here, in this overpriced mausoleum of a house, with the lake glittering outside my window.
I take calls, mute my mic, curse into the empty room, and keep going.
By the time I look up, the sun’s shifted across the floorboards and my coffee cup is empty again, abandoned in the corner.
My shoulders ache, my eyes burn, but the numbers fall into place the way they always do.
Work is the only thing that still listens when I tell it what to do.