“Yes, but it’s more formal than that.” He glances at me. “They’rethe Fathers, and we’rethe Sons.Over at the sorority house, it’s the same,Mothers and Daughters.Together, we make upThe Order, an organization that goes back hundreds of years. Pilgrim days. Most of us can trace our ancestry back to when this land was first colonized and even earlier. The Mayflower.”
He pauses, watching me.
“The town and the college, they know we have control. They follow our lead because they like the results and they’re afraid of the consequences if they disobey, but they don’t know about The Order specifically. Not really.”
“What’s the goal?” I ask. “To make money?”
“Money’s just a byproduct of what we do.” He leans back, his voice steady. “The main goal is power. Our members hold positions in government, business, and law enforcement. Every industry. Here, across the state, even globally. Every year, we don’t grow in size, we grow ininfluence.We’re trained to help each other, to boost each other, so we all climb higher.”
“Like a rich guy version ofyou scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours?”
“Yeah. That’s it.”
“But why?” I ask. “More power, more money, for what? What’s the endgame?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitates. “There are rumors of a higher purpose, something long-term about building a perfect world, whatever that means. There’s a chant they make us learn, starting from when we’re young.” He points a finger at me and says, “You can never, I meannever, repeat this, okay?”
He waits until I nod in agreement, then Thomson straightens. He sits up tall. In a deep voice, low and steady, like he’s reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, he recites:
“We are THE ORDER.
We BOND in blood.
We rise in POWER.
We seek PERFECTION.”
The words send a chill down my spine.
“What does that mean?” I ask, exasperated.
He shakes his head. “I’m not sure. They keep it vague. Don’t give us details. Not yet. Right now, we’re foot soldiers. We’re trained from birth, both the Sons and the Daughters, to fight, shoot, handle knives. They make sure we’re lethal. When we’re older, we get orders from the Fathers, and we follow them.”
“No questions asked?”
He nods, slowly.
I stare at him. “What kind of orders?” A beat. “Like…to kill people?”
His silence is deafening.
I go still. “Is that why Carrson murdered that guy?” My voice drops. “Did a Father tell him to do it?”
“No.” Thomson shakes his head, jaw tight. “Carrson had to do that. The man was part of a rival gang called the Jackals. They’re our biggest competition in the drug and weapons trade.”
I just blink at him, trying to process the wordsdrug and weapons tradebeing spoken so casually.
“For the past month, they’ve been selling a batch of cocaine laced with fentanyl,” he continues. “Two kids overdosed. One was only fifteen.”
My stomach turns.
“That guy, the one you saw, gave us intel on the stash location but Carrson had to beat it out of him. Once that happened…” Thomson exhales, his gaze flicking to the shadows as if someone might be listening. “We couldn’t let him go. If word got out that we tortured a Jackal, it would’ve started a war with their leader. Silas Creed.”
The name hangs there, heavy.
“He’s not just clever. He’s a ghost. We can never catch him, never pin him down, but somehow he always knows what we’re up to. He’s a bloodyson of a bitch. A war with him? Sure, we would’ve won, but it would have been messy, noisy. Can’t exactly stay a secret society if we get splashed across every media outlet.”
My throat goes dry.
