Page 124 of Creeping Lily

We’d driven for hours after he shot Linc.

Shot him.

The image keeps slamming into my skull like a hammer—the deafening roar of the gun, the way Linc’s body jerked, the red blooming across his chest. The look in his eyes as he sank to his knees—steady, unflinching, even as his life leaked out onto the floor. My lungs seize up, my breaths coming shallow and fast, as though I can’t pull in enough air to survive the memory.

“You murdered him!” The words break out of me like glass shattering, jagged and sharp. “You killed your own brother!” My voice cracks, the accusation twisted with disbelief, horror.

Bentley says nothing. His silence is worse than anything he could possibly say.

“I watched him fall, Bentley!” My words spiral into a sob, my chest heaving. “I watched the light go out of his eyes and you—” I choke on the rest, tears stinging so hard they blur the world around me. “You didn’t even look at him. You just… walked away.”

I yank against his hold, clawing at his wrist, but his grip only tightens.

He drags me like I’m nothing. Like Linc was nothing.

The thought guts me.

“You don’t get to erase him!” My voice is breaking apart now, trembling with both fury and grief. “I will remember him until my last breath, and I hope you hear his name in your head every time you close your eyes. I hope it haunts you. I hope it guts you from the inside out.”

Bentley yanks me down a final set of concrete steps, the air growing colder with each one. The cellar is ancient—walls sweating moisture, the air heavy with mold and the copper tang of rust. It smells like no one’s been down here in years, like it’s been waiting for something ugly to happen.

I stumble as he shoves me forward. My shoulder clips a stone wall and pain flares down my arm, but Bentley doesn’t slow. His face is carved from ice, his eyes dead and fixed ahead.

At the far end of the cellar waits a heavy metal door—bars crisscrossing like a cage. He hauls it open, the hinges screaming, and shoves me inside hard enough that my knees hit the cold, gritty floor. The sting shoots up my legs, but before I can turn on him, the door slams shut with a metallic clang.

Bentley locks it in one sharp, practiced motion. The sound of the bolt sliding home is final. It’s the sound of being buried alive.

And from the other side of the bars, he just looks at me—like shooting his own brother and throwing me in a cage is nothing more than a day’s work.

“I hate you!” I hiss. “You murdering, traitorous, lieing bastard.”

“Don’t make me come back in there and tie you up, Lily,” Bentley warns, his voice steely.

“Why are you doing this?” The words scrape out of me, thin and shaky. I hate the sound of it—hate how small I feel—but somewhere in the back of my mind, I keep thinking that if I plead enough, I’ll wake up from this nightmare.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says again, like repeating the lie might make it true.

“Oh?” I drag what little courage I have up from the pit in my stomach and force it into my voice. “So you’re just going to leave me down here until the rats decide I’m worth a taste?”

His mouth twitches—not a smile, just that faint, condescending curl that says he’s already won.

The reply doesn’t come from Bentley. A deeper voice cuts through the stale air. “I see you still have that vivid writer’s imagination.”

I jerk toward the sound. From the shadows beyond the bars, Tom Walker—Senator Tom Walker—steps into the sickly light. The sight of him punches the air out of my lungs. I shouldn’t be shocked he’s here, but I am. And worse—he’s not shocked to seeme.

The former senator, I remind myself bitterly.

“Where’s your brother?” Tom asks, his voice measured, almost casual.

“Gone,” Bentley says flatly, meeting his father’s stare. “He’s dead.”

Something shifts in Tom’s expression. He dips his head, just slightly, and for a moment I think I see grief—but it’s cold, controlled, more a nod to protocol than to love.

“I told you not to,” Tom says.

“It was either kill or be killed,” Bentley fires back, his tone defensive, his jaw set in stone.

“Liar!” The word rips from my throat before I can stop it, echoing off the damp concrete.