Page 65 of Creeping Lily

LILY

S pousal 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 him owning me 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 being his.

My refusal detonates between us.

Bentley’s face twists into something dangerous—cheeks flushed, jaw locked, eyes narrowing into slits so sharp they could cut 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 expression that 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.

For a moment—just a heartbeat—his face changes. His eyes falter, like my words cracked something beneath the surface. But it’s gone in an instant, replaced by the same cold mask of indifference. He turns his gaze away like my question is a weight he refuses to carry.

“You happened, Lily. You happened.”

The words fall like dust between us, and I’m left staring at him, confused, searching for meaning he won’t give me. Before I can press him, another shadow steps forward.

Tom Walker.

His presence is like a wall closing in—imposing, suffocating. “Enough of this,” he snaps, his voice sharp and unyielding. “We have bigger matters at hand. Bentley, focus. We need to think about the next steps.”

Bentley nods, but he doesn’t look at me again. Not once. He turns slightly, and the two of them start talking in hushed voices, their words meant to exclude me entirely.

“Wait!” My voice cracks with rage. I step to the bars, my fingers curling tight around cold metal. “Are you just going to leave me down here?”

Tom glances back over his shoulder, his mouth curling into a reptilian smile. “Well,” he says, voice slick as oil, “you did opt for the rats.”

Then they’re gone—slipping into the hallway, their footsteps a fading echo in the hollow dark.

I know their plan. They want to break me. Grind me down until I’m begging to play by their rules. To them, I’m as insignificant as the vermin that will eventually find me if I stay down here long enough.

The cold presses in from the stone walls, but it’s nothing compared to the deeper chill—the kind that comes from knowing there’s no one coming for me. Linc—Titan—is gone. No one else knows where I am.

The room feels smaller, the silence heavier, every shadow stretching longer.

This is my world now: me… and the rats.

I think about him as I sit curled in the corner of this dead, airless room, knees drawn to my chest, chin pressed into bone.

My mind won’t let go of him—Lincoln, Titan.

The names are knotted together now, impossible to pull apart.

Lincoln was Titan. Titan was Lincoln. My protector. My stalker. My… what, exactly ?

Was. That word hangs around my neck like a weight.

He’s gone. Again. This time, for good. I press my forehead into my knees, shaking my head as if I can throw the truth off me.

Why come back just to die? Why show up at my door if he knew it would end like this?

Why not give me the chance to understand—where he’d been, why he’d turned himself into a masked vigilante, what it had all meant?

Now I have to mourn him twice. And twice is too many for one heart to bear.

The thought slices through me and I let it.

Lincoln always wanted to fight for the underdog, to stand between the helpless and the monsters no one else would face.

He hated the establishment, hated everything it stood for.

Maybe that’s what led him here—to hunting predators like Larry Shine and worse.

Maybe this was his way of giving the world something it had never given him: a second chance.

I want to hate him for it—for the choices, the lies, the walls he built—but I can’t. I understand him, even when I wish I didn’t. Maybe if I’d lived a life like his, stared into the same abyss, I’d even cheer him on. But I’m not him. I never was.

Bethany used to say I wore rose-colored glasses, that I refused to see the world for what it really was.

Maybe she was right. I thought I’d seen enough to understand it, to navigate it, but I was wrong.

The world is darker than I imagined—darker than I wanted to believe—and now those shadows are crawling closer, hungry, ready to pull me under.

Bethany. Justin. My friends—they’ll notice I’m gone. They’ll worry. Maybe they’ll come looking. The thought twists my stomach into knots. What if they walk straight into this nightmare? What if my silence drags them down with me?

My head lifts, pulse pounding, as one name shoves all the others aside. Bentley Walker. Lincoln’s brother. The man who believes I’m the only loose end to his evil past. Does he really think killing me will erase it all? That no one else knows? That I’d keep my mouth shut forever?

He’s willing to gamble his entire future on that one thing—on my silence.

Maybe I didn’t tell anyone.

Maybe I did.

And for the first time, I realize that’s my most dangerous weapon. My silence isn’t just a shield—it’s a blade.

The question now is simple.

Do I use it?

Or do I let the shadows win?

The shadows think they’ve already won.

Bentley thinks he’s caged me, that down here I’m powerless. But power doesn’t always come from the ability to move or strike—it comes from the ability to wait, to watch, to choose the exact moment to cut.

And I will cut.

I lean my head back against the cold stone wall, letting the damp seep into my skin. My pulse slows. My breathing evens out. The grief still sits in my chest, heavy and hot, but now it’s being reshaped, reforged into something sharper.

Lincoln’s death isn’t just a wound—it’s a warning. A reminder of what happens when you underestimate the Walkers. But it’s also a reminder of something else: they bleed like anyone else.

Tom Walker hides behind his decades of influence. Bentley hides behind his campaign smile. But they both forget that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones—and I’ve been collecting rocks my whole life.

They want me broken. They want me begging. They want me quiet.

I can play quiet.

I’ll sit in this damp cage and I’ll let them think they’ve won.

I’ll let them walk past me without a second glance, convinced the fight’s gone out of me.

And when they stop looking over their shoulders—when they get comfortable—that’s when I’ll cut their throats.

Figuratively. Literally. I haven’t decided yet.

Bentley thinks my silence is his shield.

He doesn’t know it’s already a noose.

And I’m the one holding the rope.