“If this society is legit, then we can assume they outnumber us,” Lincoln continues sternly. “Which means they might have enough power to back up their threat. I say we play it by ear. See what they ask, and on the back end, we investigate everything on The Society. We’ll have to discover who they are and what dirty little secrets they have. We all know everyone has a skeleton or two hidden in their closet. We find out theirs, and then we’ll try to come to a compromise, exchanging their dirty little secret for ours.”
“And what if that doesn’t work? What if we can’t even find out who is behind this, let alone what shit they’ve done in the past? Or let’s say we do. Let’s say we get the names of every last fucker in The Society, and we tell them we got dirt on them, too. What’s to stop them from coming after us anyway?” Easton asks, concerned that Lincoln’s plan may not hold water to it.
Our grim brother just shakes his head and replies, “That won’t happen. They don’t want us, East. If they did, they would have outed all of us by now. No. We’re not their end game. We’re just the means they believe they can use to get whatever they want.”
“Are you sure?” I croak out, hoping Lincoln’s logic is on the money.
“Positive. They want something, so we’ll play along and pretend to give it to them,” he says, throwing us a sinister smile.
It makes me cringe, seeing it on his face. It reminds me too much of another smile I saw that horrific night. A grin that comes to me in my nightmares, taunting me how none of us will ever truly escape our fate. We sealed it that night with the pact we made out of blood, and this ominous letter might just be the beginning of our demise.
“What if what they want from us is a reenactment of what we did last spring?” Colt asks, making the shivers down my back more profound.
I don’t dare look away from Lincoln’s face, hoping the compassionate friend I grew up with still lives and breathes inside him.
“Then they’ve drawn a line we aren’t willing to cross. And if that’s the case, we’ll wait for them to show their hand. I don’t think they’ll go to the authorities. I’m positive it won’t come to that. Blackmailers never want justice. They are only in it to gain something in return.”
My lungs breathe a little easier, relieved that Lincoln still has his soul intact. But as his last words begin to take root inside me, it dawns on me exactly what this little letter means.
“So that’s it, huh? We’re being blackmailed.”
I know I’m stating the obvious, but saying the words out loud just cements the idea. It makes it easier for me to confront and deal with it better.
“Afraid so,” Lincoln adds coolly, erasing any doubt that there could be something more to this than just good old-fashioned blackmail.
“Fuck!” Easton shouts, falling to the bed while cursing the sky above him.
Colt gets up, leaving the whole bed for Easton to have his meltdown, and walks over to the window to scour the eerily remote scenery.
“You okay with this, Colt?” Lincoln asks his cousin, walking to stand beside him, as both take in the dark, green backdrop of Oakley woods.
“You want the truth? I’m not okay with anything as of late. But if you want us to play along, then that’s what we’ll do. At least for now,” he hushes at his side, and this time, it’s Lincoln who places his hand on his cousin’s shoulder, offering a light, consoling squeeze.
“Fuck it!” Easton exclaims, jumping off the bed. “I’m in too. Whatever it takes, Linc. We got you.”
“Finn?” Lincoln swings his head over his shoulder my way, waiting to see where I stand in all of this.
Is there really a choice? No, there isn’t. It’s not only Linc’s life at stake. We’re all in this. If one of us goes down, we all go.
“Yeah, I’m in.”
“Good.” He gives me a grateful, tight nod, but he knows as well as I do that my hands are tied like his.
“These assholes think they have us over a barrel, but they fucked up. They have no idea what kind of devastation we can bring,” Colt states, trying to uplift our spirits.
However, it does nothing for me. It only makes me feel even more uneasy.
The Society might not have an idea of what depths we are willing to go, but we sure do. We are capable of doing the most heinous things if one of our lives is on the line. We proved our loyalty, and now I guess it’s being put to the test again.
The rest of the morning is spent talking about how we are all going to handle this. Lincoln and Colt hatch out a plan to get their hands on anything related to The Society, leaving Easton and me to handle the commands they throw our way. Like good little soldiers, we wait on orders from their general, which is fine by me. I’d rather be doing something on the front lines than stuck in some dusty old library reading shit that will make my head spin.
I’m just not sure what that will be, though. I don’t do well with surprises, so I’d rather know what to expect than be taken off-guard.
When I finally get home a few hours later and see a black envelope with my name on it sitting on top of the lobby desk, I realize that The Society is as impatient as I am to get this show on the road. And lucky me, I’m the first one they decided to set their sights on.
Fuck them.
They want to play? That’s fine with me.
I’m used to playing dirty anyway.
Chapter 3
Finn
I fiddle with the envelope in my hand, while Easton drives us to God knows where. The minute I saw the fucking thing in the foyer, amongst the forgotten junk mail, I immediately grabbed it and called Easton, ordering him to haul his ass over to my house.
I have no idea when the letter arrived, but I’m hoping that no one in my family saw it before I got my hands on the deplorable thing. Thankfully, my mother has been consumed with my baby nephews and nieces that she pays little mind to anything else, much less mail. And unless the letter comes from Chapel Hill, my father isn’t interested in it either.
Still, it was careless of The Society to send the correspondence to my house. For all I know, my own black, sealed envelope could have come on the same day Lincoln received his.
With the numerous people passing by in our foyer, someone might have gotten curious enough to see what it contained. It was reckless of our blackmailers to do such a thing.
I get them sending it to Lincoln’s house since his place is basically an empty mausoleum. But my house? It’s always full of people.
My two older brothers live close by with their respective families and come over for almost every meal, bringing their wives and small children in tow. This makes my house a revolving door of hectic activity, filled with grubby little hands and siblings who are always in each other’s business.
I mean, who sends letters nowadays when an email will suffice? I guess fucking secret societies prefer to do their dirty work the old-fashioned way. It does make it harder to track down who the assholes are, that’s for sure. And even though there is a risk involved in them contacting me this way, the actual danger falls solely on my shoulders—meaning I’m the one who will need to be on the lookout twenty-four-seven, since I’m the one with everything to lose, not them.