Page 7 of Keeping Lilith

Now the walls were as bare as the day she had been shown her accommodations.

“Does it look like there’s anything I would want to keep here?” She wasn’t usually this snarky. In the mental conversations she had with herself, she’d been as snarky as hell, but any actual spoken conversations, she kept her voice low and her answers to yes or no, or the bare minimum.

“No, but I had to ask anyway. How about we leave?” Irish suggested.

Lilith looked at the door. She could walk through it and never have to come back to this place. But what was beyond that door was scary and unknown. Did she have the courage to face it?

What if she failed again?

Perhaps she was that weak and submissive person she kept telling herself she wasn’t.

Chapter Four

Everything in Julianwanted to rush over to Lilith and pull her into his arms. Tell her over and over that she was safe and that no one would hurt her ever again. Yet he didn’t have that right. He’d forfeited it when he’d spent half his life believing the lies of a man his parents had thought the world of.

Irish escorted Lilith out of the hut, leaving Julian alone to look at the space she’d lived in. It was dirty and the lingering smell of body odor hung in the air, but it didn’t detract from the fact that somehow, some way, she’d chosen this existence again.

He still didn’t know how Lilith had ended up here because he hadn’t been able to ask her.

Her hostility toward him wasn’t a surprise. It was what he deserved.

Lilith had caught his attention when he’d been walking around the Freedom and Love compound. She’d been sitting on the porch of the small house she and her family had lived in. She hadn’t seen him, but he’d been captivated by her beauty. He’d wanted to go up to her and talk to her. Find out if her laugh was melodic. If her skin was as soft to touch as it looked. Find out if her hair smelled like summer blossoms.

He’d never had those thoughts before when he’d looked at the women in the commune. Women and girls who had been chosen to become wives. At first, he didn’t understand what was causing him to think that way. Feel that way. Didn’t know that it was sexual attraction he was feeling toward Lilith.

The day he’d turned fifteen, he’d been taught that a woman’s place was to arouse a man using her mouth and tongue, then to lie back while he humped her until he reached his pleasure, then withdraw and tell her to leave him alone. It shamed him now that he'd used women like that. Had believed it was his right to treat them like they were nothing but a vessel for him and the other men to use, until Ralph decreed they were to be married.

He hadn’t known that touches between a man and woman were supposed to be mutual. Pleasurable. That the act of sex meant something, not as a duty or enjoyment and fulfillment for the man alone.

At the time,Julian had kept what he thought about Lilith to himself, but every chance he could, he watched her from afar.

During that time, his perspective had changed, and he knew what was happening to the women and girls around him was wrong. His parents were trying to force his sister back, and strangely, that hadn’t sat well with him. All he’d known was he couldn’t let it happen, so he’d used his privilege of coming and going from to the compound to contact the FBI and started the task of bringing Freedom and Love to its knees.

It was close to when the case with Rose and the FBI was building to a head that he’d found himself standing near Lilith, and he’d done what he never should’ve. He talked to her. At first, she hadn’t wanted to speak to him—she knew the rules—but he’d cajoled her into talking to him. He’d felt at peace, and he hadn’t had to be someone he was learning he wasn’t. At the time, he’d thought they hadn’t been seen, but they had. Ralph had questioned him about the encounter and reminded Julian of hisstanding in the commune,that Lilith was nothing but a useless woman. To his shame, he’d twisted their interaction so she was to blame for it, not him. Ralph had given him a look Julian hadn’t liked, and then announced that Julian was to be married, and to prove his worth to Freedom and Love, Ralph expected Julian to mete out a suitable punishment to Lilith.

That was when Julian had upped the timeline of bringing Freedom and Love down. He wasn’t going to marry the child that Ralph had picked out for him. Nor was he going to hurt Lilith.

And yet, he’d done just that: ignored her and walked away as she’d tried to talk to him. The devastation shining in her green eyes still haunted him to this day.

Julian sighed. Nothing good would come of standing there staring into space, recalling a past that should remain where it was. There were things he needed to do. Parts of his job that he couldn’t ignore. Irish would make sure that Lilith was taken care of. That she would be safe.

Turning his back on the hut, he trudged back up the hill to the house. Agents swarmed the area. Checking to make sure there were no bunkers or other places where people could hide and not be taken.

He reached the main house and walked to Staunton Rello’s office, where he ensured every ID or evidence was meticulously recorded and placed in folders with each person’s name on it. By the time he left, it was dark, and only a handful of agents remained in the vicinity.

“You did a good job, Bennington. Eliminated another asshole and gave people back their lives.” Mac Porter, the FBI Agent who headed the taskforce he was part of, slapped him on the back. “It was a good, clean raid. I like when that happens.”

“Yes, sir, I’m pleased it went well. Fox and the others from Alliez run a tight ship.”

Julian wanted to give credit where it was due. Sometimes when they didn’t have the guys from Alliez helping them out, things went a little off plan.

“They’re a good outfit. Now you go home and take a couple of days off.”

“Thanks, Mac, but I need to get make sure all this gets to the people it belongs too.” He pointed to the box containing files of information he’d gathered.

One specific file he wanted to deliver personally, but first, he had to find out where Lilith had gone.

“Leave it with me. I’ll drop it off at the area we’ve got set up for them. The team are processing them all now, getting their details. Once that’s completed, they can then pass this information on,” Mac said.

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