Page 131 of Creeping Lily
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, voicelow 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 sharingsomething 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. Andwhen 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.
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