Page 76 of Creeping Lily
I throw him into the trunk like the trash he is and slam it shut hard enough to rattle the hinges. The short drive to the cathedral is silent except for the hum of the engine and the faint, pathetic thuds of him shifting inside the boot.
The cathedral rises against the moonlight, its jagged silhouette like daggers in the dark. The irony isn’t lost on me—bringing him to a place built for mercy and sanctuary, when what’s waiting for him is judgment, plain and final. But sanctity is for the innocent. Men like him? They get reckoning.
The thud of the door echoes through the quiet when I kick it shut. He’s barely conscious now, head lolling against my back asI carry him through the cold. Every step toward the cathedral’s entrance feels heavier, his weight pressing into my shoulder like the weight of every other man I’ve put down in the name of something resembling justice.
Inside, my boots strike the marble in slow, deliberate beats. The vaulted ceiling swallows the sound, the air thick with the faint trace of incense—sweet and cloying—mixing with the metallic tang of his blood.
We’ve kept the illusion alive here. On the surface, this place is all gilded icons and candlelight, open for tourists, music videos, charity events. Faith preserved for the public eye.
But the truth is buried deeper. Below the marble floors, beneath the tourist routes and prayer benches, is a place that doesn’t exist in any record. Down there, faith doesn’t live. Justice does—and it doesn’t kneel to anyone.
I drag him to the far side of the main hall, to a plain wooden door no one looks twice at. My fingers punch in the code, and the lock clicks open with the soft finality of a coffin lid closing.
He stirs when the colder air of the lower levels hits him, his sluggish fight returning in weak twitches of his limbs. It’s almost comical, but I’m not in a humorous mood tonight.
I drop him on the stone floor, and his body folds like a discarded ragdoll. He groans, turning his face toward the shadows, but one sharp kick to the ribs keeps him grounded.
“Don’t,” I growl, my voice low, the word laced with enough venom to drop him back into stillness.
The rope is right where it always is, coiled neatly in the corner. I grab it, kneel, and bind his wrists to the base of a column so thick and ancient it’s seen more sins than any priest ever could.
When I rip his mask away, I’m met with a face so ordinary it’s insulting—mid-to-late forties, nothing special, nothing remarkable… except for his eyes. Flat, soulless. Staring at me like he thinks he knows fear.
But I am fear.
“This,” I say, crouching low until my shadow swallows him, “is where you tell me who sent you after her.”
He shakes his head, breath ragged. “I don’t know what you’re?—”
“Wrong answer.”
The knife slides from my jacket with a whisper, the blade catching the candlelight in a sharp gleam. I drag it slow across the floor, letting the steel bite into stone. The screech of metal against marble scrapes its way into the silence until it’s all he can hear.
“Try again.”
His chest heaves, eyes darting toward the door he’ll never reach. “I was hired,” he blurts, words tumbling over themselves. “That’s all. Just a job. I was only doing my job.”
“By who?” My voice is sharp enough to cut without the blade. “Why her?”
He hesitates. I let the knife’s point press against the stubble of his cheek, just enough for him to feel the weight of his choice.
“Tom Walker!” he spits, the name cracking in the air like a curse. “It was Tom Walker! Said she was a problem that needed to be taken care of.”
The name hits me like a fist. Of course. Bentley’s too tangled in his own cowardice to get his hands dirty. But Tom? Tom doesn’t flinch when it comes to tying up loose ends.
My grip tightens on the knife. “Why?”
“I don’t know!” His voice is high now, almost breaking. “He just said to make it look like an accident. Said she knew too much.”
The air thickens around us. My pulse is a roar in my ears. Tom Walker wanted Lily gone—not because of what happenedbefore, but because she’s dangerous to him now. Because she could burn his entire world down.
“You touched my girl,” I whisper, the words shaking with fury. My mind flashes to Lily’s terrified face, the sound of her pants scraping against rough bark as she struggled under this filth. The image is gasoline, and I’m the lit match.
Tom Walker would have ruined her twice—first by letting his son walk away after what he did to her, and now by sending this parasite to silence her forever.
The blade trembles in my grip, not from fear, but from the sheer restraint it takes not to open this man from throat to gut in one smooth motion. “You picked the wrong girl to mess with.”
“No, please,” he begs, desperation stripping his voice raw. “I was just following orders?—”
