Page 126 of Creeping Lily

“Until he went rogue,” Tom says, his tone turning sharp. “Too righteous for his own good. Refused to play the game the way it’s meant to be played. Walkers don’t get to choose their path—they’re born into it. They’re made for greatness.”

“You’re sick,” I spit.

He studies me like a man dissecting a specimen. “He never could stay away from you. I knew you’d be his undoing.”

“You killed him. Don’t youdareput his death on me,” I snarl. “Your greed and your ambition killed him. You’re both cowards—Bentley and you alike.”

“Watch your tone, Lily,” Bentley’s voice cuts in as he returns,stepping into the dim light. He tosses me a bottle of water but keeps the sandwich in his grip, dangling it like bait.

“If you’re keeping me here against my will, don’t expect compliance,” I tell him. “You’re going to kill me anyway, so I’ll make your life hell on my way out.”

Tom sighs like I’m a difficult child. “Oh, Lily. Bentley’s not going to kill you.” He lets the pause stretch just long enough for dread to crawl over my skin. “He’s going to marry you.”

63

LILY

Spousal privilege.

Bentley thinks he can buy it with the currency of my freedom.

They’re out of their minds.

The choice they’ve laid before me isn’t really a choice at all—it’s a sentence. On one side, marry Bentley, gift-wrap his public image, and shield him from the fallout of a rape allegation that could ruin his campaign. On the other side, wither away in this damp, stinking basement until the walls swallow me… or until the rats do.

And yet—given the options—I’d take the rats. Every time.

The thought of being Bentley’s wife for even a single day makes my skin crawl, like thousands of unseen insects skittering beneath it. The idea of himowningme in any way turns my stomach until bile burns the back of my throat. I can survive darkness. I can survive damp. I can survive hunger. But I will not survive beinghis.

My refusal detonates between us.

Bentley’s face twists into something dangerous—cheeks flushed, jaw locked, eyes narrowing into slits so sharp they couldcut glass. I’ve never seen him so ugly. His fury is a physical thing, radiating off him in waves that make the air thick.

Beside him, his father doesn’t shout or command or try to control the narrative. His disapproval is etched in the curl of his lip, the rigid set of his jaw. Where Bentley burns, Tom freezes. And his ice is somehow worse.

Once upon a time, I thought Tom was a pillar—steady, respected, the kind of man who knew how to command a room without raising his voice. In the absence of a father figure, I’d been drawn to that warmth, to the easy way he could make people feel like they mattered.

But blood runs thicker than sentiment, and ambition runs thicker than both.

The man standing in front of me now isn’t a protector. He’s an architect of ruin—mine, Linc’s, and anyone else who gets in the way of his legacy. I don’t know why he resigned from the Senate, but I don’t need the details. The truth is in the way he watches me now, his gaze like a scalpel: cold, precise, and cutting straight to the bone.

Every move he makes, every word he speaks, is aimed at one singular goal—putting Bentley in a Senate seat, no matter what bodies he has to bury to get there.

And if I’m not careful, mine will be one of them.

“If the roles were reversed and it was Linc in my shoes,” Bentley sneers, his voice dripping with venom, “you would’ve married him without a second thought.”

“But the roles aren’t reversed,” I shoot back, my tone cutting and cold, “and you aren’t Linc.”

The words land like blades, each one aimed directly at the softest part of his ego. I see it—how my defiance cuts through the armor he wears, how it makes his jaw tighten just a little too much.

His sneer twists into a smirk, the kind of smug expressionthat makes my stomach turn. “I always knew you had a thing for him,” he says. “Shame I beat him to it.”

His arrogance is a slap to my heart, but it’s his blindness to his own decay that stings deeper. I shake my head, disgust curdling in my chest. This man standing in front of me—manipulative, cruel, so sure the world owes him something—feels galaxies away from the boy I once knew.

The boy who held my bike steady while I learned to ride. The boy who scraped his own knees just so mine wouldn’t hurt so bad. The boy who swore up and down, every summer, that I was his favorite little sister. That boy is gone—burned out of existence, replaced by this stranger who looks at me like I’m a problem to solve, not a person to protect.

“What happened to you?” My voice wavers, a mix of grief and rage. It’s not just a question—it’s a plea. I’m clawing for any shred of the person I used to trust, the one I thought I glimpsed last week when he came to campus. That day he’d shown a softness, a flicker of humility. But now, standing here, I have to wonder if that version of him was just another mask he wears when it suits him.