Page 74 of Creeping Lily

TITAN

T he Walkers didn’t just build a web of lies.

They built a labyrinth meant to trap, to crush, to suffocate.

Every thread is slick with disease, every knot tied in blood, every strand tightening the more I pull.

It coils around my throat, daring me to breathe while reminding me who spun it.

Tom Walker. Always Tom. The center of the web.

The puppeteer who smiled like a father and schemed like the corrupt politician he was.

The lodge breathes with ghosts tonight. Moonlight leaks through the cracks in the boarded windows, pale streaks across the walls like skeletal fingers.

The air is dense; I feel it pressing against me, like the weight of the past has taken on flesh and bone just to suffocate me.

Every corner hums with secrets, every creak of the old floorboards whispers of sins buried but not forgotten.

And it all comes back to him. To Tom. To the perfect family portrait he fought so hard to frame in gold. Lies that began with a dead baby. A tragedy that should’ve ended in grief. Instead, it was scrubbed clean and rewritten into something monstrous.

The truth peels away in layers, slow, jagged, cruel—like tearing scabs off wounds that never healed.

Olivia, the woman I once called mother, smothered her child in sleep.

A baby boy. He should have let her grief destroy her.

It should have been the end. But Tom Walker doesn’t believe in endings, not when he can twist them into beginnings.

He didn’t mourn. He didn’t falter. He didn’t even hesitate.

He found Larry Shine, a man who lives in places sunlight doesn’t touch.

A fixer. A parasite who feeds on desperation, trading in secrets, favors, corpses.

Shine didn’t just clean up problems—he erased them.

For the right price, he gave Tom exactly what he wanted: a breathing child to fill Olivia’s empty arms. A replacement. A mask.

Me.

The thought curdles in my stomach. Some nameless baby ripped out of the arms of a mother who’d just given birth to him, traded like currency, handed to a man who only wanted a prop for his facade. Not a son. Never a son. Just a pawn. A symbol. A lie.

Why? That’s the poison in my veins. Why didn’t he let grief do what it was meant to do—end things? Why build a legacy on theft and deceit? Why tether me to his name like a chain around my neck?

Because Tom Walker never cared about grief. He cared about control. Every move he’s ever made was a calculation. Olivia’s tragedy was just another number in his ledger. The baby she lost, the baby he stole—they were pieces on his chessboard. And when that wasn’t enough, he moved on to Lily.

He set her up as neatly as he did me. A scholarship, a future, all wrapped in the perfect bow.

But nothing about it was kindness. No. It was strategy.

A guarantee that when her life ended, it would be an easy cleanup.

Another girl swallowed by Colt University’s statistics, filed away in some police folder nobody would ever look at twice.

She wasn’t a daughter to him. She was collateral.

A pawn. Another mask to wear until it cracked.

My fists tighten until the bandages on my shoulder strain, the ache sharp enough to keep me tethered.

I rise from the chair, every movement stiff, deliberate.

The room tilts, but I force it steady. Because I see it now.

Olivia’s lost child was just the first victim.

Lily is the latest. But she won’t be the last—unless I end it.

I stop in front of the fireplace, staring at the blackened glass of the mantle clock.

My reflection glares back—fractured, distorted, a funhouse mockery.

The mask is gone—stripped from me like a second skin I can never crawl back into.

Lily made sure of it. She didn’t just insist I discard it; she demanded it, like tearing away the last excuse I had to stay hidden in the dark.

Now there’s nothing between me and her. No silicone, no shadows, no lies to shield the wreckage of who I am. Just raw flesh, scarred truth, and the one woman ruthless enough to look me in the eye and tell me to stop pretending I need the mask at all.

I send Lily out with Justin. My voice leaves no room for argument—low, edged, the kind of tone she knows means it isn’t up for debate. She clutches my shirt for a heartbeat too long, her wide eyes begging me to let her stay. But I can’t. I won’t let her see this.

Because what comes next will stain everything.

The door clicks shut behind me, and the sound is final—like the slam of a coffin lid. Silence cuts through the room, sharp as a blade, leaving only the rasp of my breath and the pounding in my ears .

It’s just me. And them.

Tom Walker sits slumped in the chair, the man who once called himself my father.

The man who took a broken boy and sharpened him into a weapon, then turned that weapon against the only thing that ever mattered—Lily.

His eyes follow me in the gloom, cold, calculating, as if even now he wants to own me, control me, cage me. As if he still has any control over me.

And beside him, Bentley. My brother. Blood that should have been bond, shield, loyalty. Instead, he sold me out. He sold Lily out. I see his lip curl even now, like he still thinks he’s above me, like betrayal is his birthright.

They’re bound. Stripped of power. Reduced to pale, sweating men under the half-light that spills across the room. But I don’t see men when I look at them.

I see the hands that reached for Lily’s throat, the same hands that would’ve crushed the light out of her if I hadn’t been there.

I see the animals who conspired to break her, to ruin her.

I see vultures. Parasites. Leeches fattened on my silence.

And that’s when something inside me—something black, something ruined and long-starved—snaps loose.

It isn’t a sound. It’s a feeling. Like the crack of bone. Like the shattering of glass underfoot. The restraint I’ve been clinging to, the mask of control, fractures down the middle and splinters into nothing.

I don’t feel the floor beneath me anymore. I don’t feel air in my lungs. All I feel is the weight of rage rising, blistering, consuming everything until there’s no room left for mercy.

The crack inside me widens until there’s nothing left to hold it back. My fury swallows the air, thick and choking, and for a heartbeat I just stand there, staring at them. At the ruin of what they were supposed to be. Father. Brother. Words that should mean safety, belonging, family.

Instead, they’re poison on my tongue .

Bentley sneers, even tied to the chair. “Go on then. Do it. You’ll always be what he made you.” He jerks his chin toward Tom, daring me, spitting defiance in the face of his own death.

I don’t give him time to breathe another word.

My fist slams into his jaw so hard the crack echoes off the walls.

His head snaps back, blood spraying from his mouth.

I hit him again, harder, until his teeth rattle loose.

Until the chair creaks under the violence.

Until my knuckles split and I don’t even feel it.

Tom chuckles, a wet, rattling sound. “That’s my boy,” he rasps, smug even with the noose of death tightening around his throat.

That laughter is fuel to my fury.

I grab the knife from the table, the steel gleaming dully in the half-light, and I drive it into Bentley’s gut.

Slow. Deliberate. His howl rips through the room, high-pitched, desperate, the sound of a man realizing he’s waiting for nothing but death now.

Blood gushes hot over my hand, slick and burning.

I drag the blade upward, carving through him inch by inch.

The smell hits—iron, decay, and betrayal.

I lean close, my voice a snarl in his ear. “You never should’ve touched what’s mine.”

His eyes roll, wide and frantic, but I don’t stop. I want him to feel it. To know what it means to be gutted by the man he tried to destroy.

Tom shifts in his chair, muttering curses, prayers. I turn to him, Bentley still twitching at my feet. The old man doesn’t look afraid. That’s what makes me hate him most. He thinks he owns even this moment. Thinks he still has his claws in me.

“You thought you could erase me,” I snarl, pressing the knife under his jaw. “But you were wrong. I was born in fire long before you ever touched me. And tonight, my fire will burn you.”

I slash. One brutal pull, and his throat opens like a second mouth.

Blood erupts, hot and arterial, spraying my face, coating my chest. He chokes on it, eyes bulging, head nodding furiously at the shock.

I don’t move back. I hold him in place, forcing him to meet my eyes as he drowns in his own life.

His life falters, strength draining, until his head drops forward and the light goes out.

Bentley whimpers on the floor, still alive, dragging broken breaths through torn lungs. I crouch low, watching him writhe. The rage inside me is ice now, sharp and cold.

“This is justice,” I whisper, driving the knife into his chest, straight through the heart. His body jerks once, twice, then goes slack.

The silence after is worse than the screaming. Heavy. Suffocating. The only sound is my breath, ragged, and the drip of blood hitting the floor.

I stand in it—ankle-deep in the carnage of the only family I ever had. My hands drip red. My chest heaves. And all I can think is that Lily will never have to see them again. Never have to feel their shadows crawling over her skin.

I’ve gutted my blood, carved out my past, slaughtered the men who made me.

And I’d do it a thousand times over.

For her.