Page 67 of Creeping Lily

LILY

I don’t know how long I’ve been down here.

Days blur into nights, nights blur into something worse.

The air is heavy with damp, the kind that creeps into your marrow until you forget what warmth feels like.

My back presses against the rough stone wall, its cold bite a constant reminder that this place isn’t meant to be survived—just endured.

I refuse to fold. I won’t shiver, won’t beg, won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me broken.

At certain intervals—hours, maybe half-days, I can’t tell anymore—Bentley comes.

He always comes alone. A sandwich. A bottle of water.

Enough to keep me breathing, not enough to keep me strong.

At first, I wouldn’t touch either, suspicion clawing at my throat.

Poison seemed like the simplest explanation.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realised: if they wanted me dead, I’d be lying in the dirt beside Linc already.

Bentley had a clean shot back at the cabin.

He could have ended me right then—my blood soaking into the same ground as Linc’s.

But he didn’t. Which means he’s keeping me alive for something worse .

Something I haven’t seen coming yet.

The sound of footsteps tears through the silence, sharp and deliberate. They echo off the stone like a countdown, each step a nail driven into the coffin he’s building around me. My heart tries to pound its way out of my chest, but I force my breathing into something slow, even.

Bentley appears at the far end of the corridor, the dim light catching on the perfect lines of his tailored suit. He shouldn’t look this clean down here. It’s wrong. Like a vulture wearing silk.

He stops just outside the bars. The smile on his face is thin, carved from something cruel. It doesn’t reach his eyes—nothing ever does.

“You’re looking pale,” he says, voice dripping with fake concern. His gaze sweeps over me like he’s appraising damage on a piece of property, and my stomach twists, hard enough to make me nauseous.

I meet his stare head-on, my glare sharpened to a fine point. I want him to feel it. I want it to cut.

Because if this is the game we’re playing, I’m not going to lose by dying quietly.

“Let me out of here, Bentley. This is madness.” My voice scrapes against my throat, the words more plea than demand, but I refuse to lower my gaze.

“I gave you a choice, Lily.”

He says it like a saint recalling his charity, like I should drop to my knees in gratitude. That so-called choice—his generous alternative to leaving me down here with the rats—was to marry him. I’d rather suffer with vermin gnawing at my bones than tie myself to him for life.

Foolishly, I’d thought that after a few days, he might regain some sliver of humanity and let me go.

Clearly, I was wrong. Bentley doesn’t do kindness.

He only acts when there’s something in it for him.

And his father? The thought of him is bile in my mouth; that pathetic, spineless excuse for a man is no better than his son.

“Choosing between you and the rats is not much of a choice,” I snap, every word edged like broken glass.

Bentley freezes. Just for a heartbeat. The tiny pause is enough to show that my words hit him where it hurts most. Then his face shifts, composure shattering like glass under a hammer. Fury rolls across his features, dark and sudden as a storm.

“You ungrateful little—” His voice cuts through the cold air like a whip as he steps closer to the bars.

The polish in his posture cracks, exposing something raw and predatory beneath the tailored suit.

“Do you have any idea what I’ve done for you?

What I’ve sacrificed? And you dare compare me to vermin? ”

I push forward until I’m so close I can see the faint tremor in his jaw.

“What you’ve done for me?” My laugh is sharp, humorless.

“You mean locking me in a cell and throwing me scraps of food like I’m an animal?

You mean dangling some twisted offer like I should be grateful for the privilege of your ring on my finger?

Or perhaps raping me is your idea of a sacrifice?

Spare me the martyr act, Bentley. You’ve never done anything that didn’t serve you first.”

His jaw flexes. A vein ticks at his temple. “You think you’re clever, don’t you? That you’re above me. I’ve given you a way out, and you spit it back in my face.”

“A way out?” I let the scorn drip from my voice. “Marrying you isn’t an escape—it’s a death sentence. And I’d rather dig my own grave than live in yours.”

His fist slams into the bars, the metal vibrating with the force, the sound ricocheting through the cold, wet stone until it feels like it’s in my bones.

“Watch your mouth,” he growls, voice low and dangerous.

“I’m the only thing standing between you and ruin.

You think you’re untouchable? Push me, Lily. See how far I’ll go.”

I cross my arms, my defiance a shield against the rage radiating off him. “Go ahead. Show me. But you can chain me up, starve me, threaten me all you want—you’ll never own me. Not my body. Not my mind. Not one single hair on my head.”

His lips curl back, his eyes flashing with something sharp and murderous. “You saw what I did to Linc,” he says, his tone a serpent’s hiss, a reminder of exactly what he’s capable of.

My throat tightens, but I tilt my head, keeping my voice steady even as grief rakes its claws through me. “I saw. And Linc is in a better place now than he ever was breathing the same air as you. That man was always too good for you and your diseased family.”

The last words wobble, my voice fracturing under the weight of loss. I bite down hard, holding the tremor in, refusing to give him that satisfaction.

“He’s gone now,” Bentley says softly, almost gently. “I’m all you have left.”

I let the venom coat every syllable as I meet his gaze. “That’s factually inaccurate, Bentley. I still have the rats.”

His smile falters, and the air between us thickens until it feels like I’m breathing through wet cement.

There’s too much history wedged between us, breaking in the silence—too many things unsaid that should have been screamed years ago.

I can’t reconcile the boy who used to sneak me candy behind the bleachers with the man standing here now, his shadow stretching long and sharp over the damp stone.

This isn’t the Bentley who once knew my secrets.

“Why are you fighting this?” he asks, his voice dropping an octave, weighty and almost intimate, like we’re sharing something private instead of a prison cell. “We could be good together, you and me. You’re smart, beautiful, strong. You could stand beside me, not against me.”

“Beside you?” I echo, my tone serrated, my words sharpened for the kill. “You don’t want someone beside you, Bentley. You want a puppet whose strings you can yank until her joints snap. And I’m not built to bow.”

His jaw tightens, the perfect polish of his expression cracking just enough for a wisp of the rage underneath to seep through.

He forces a smile, but it’s hollow—like his mouth learned the shape without his eyes ever agreeing.

“You think you know me, Lily. But you don’t.

You have no idea what I’ve been through.

What I’ve had to do to protect this family. ”

“You’ve done nothing but raze everything and everyone in your path.” The words burn my tongue on the way out, but I feed on the bitterness. “What happened to you, Bentley? Where did it all go so fucking wrong?”

Something flickers in his eyes—anger, pain, regret—raw and unguarded, and for one heartbeat I almost see the boy I knew. But then it’s gone, smothered under the cold, calculating cruelty I’ve come to expect.

“You want to know where it went wrong?” His voice is low now, dangerous enough to feel like a blade pressed to my throat. “It started with her. My mother.”

The admission knocks the wind out of me. The words hang in the dank air, heavy and damp, and I say nothing—because anything I say will either push him further or make him shut down completely.

“She broke after what happened to you,” he says, each word bitter enough to corrode steel.

“She wanted to go to the police. Wanted to make it right. My father wouldn’t have it.

Said it would ruin us. Said our family’s reputation came first. And when she wouldn’t back down… he found other ways to deal with her.”

The air in the cell feels heavier, pushing on my chest. “What did he do to her?”

His smirk sharpens into something cruel. “He started spiking her food. Slow, steady. Just enough to make her seem… unstable. People believed she was losing her mind. Even I believed it.”

Rage surges hot and fast in my veins. “And you let him?”

“I didn’t know,” he snaps, and the thin thread of control frays. “Not until it was too late. She figured it out eventually, filed for divorce. But then she found out the truth about Lincoln.”

My pulse stutters. “What truth?”

“He wasn’t hers.” The words fall cold and flat, as if saying them costs him nothing. “She found out Lincoln wasn’t her son.”

The weight of it crashes into me, threatening to crush my ribs from the inside. I already knew Linc wasn’t theirs—not really—but did that truth demand the ruin that followed? There had to be more. “So your father committed her. To silence her.”

Bentley nods, a sharp, decisive movement, his expression carved from stone. “Had her sent to a psychiatric ward. Said it was for her own good. All to keep the scandal from touching our perfect little family.”

The disgust in my gut curdles into something jagged. “You’re just like him,” I say, my voice so cold it burns. “You’d destroy anyone in your way without losing sleep.”

His eyes darken, his fingers curling around the bars like he wants to bend them in half. “I’m nothing like him.”

“Then prove it.” I step closer until we’re only inches apart, until I can feel the static of his rage bleeding through the bars. “Let me go. Do one right thing before you rot in your own filth.”

For a long moment, he just stares at me, his jaw clenched so hard I swear I hear the grind of teeth.

His breath is sharp, deliberate. And then—without a word—he spins on his heel, walking away, his footsteps echoing down the corridor until the only sound left is the distant drip of water in the dark.

The cell swallows me again, and I’m left with nothing but my own heartbeat and the knowledge that whatever humanity is left in Bentley… isn’t enough to save me.