Page 32 of Broken Princess
“Yes.”
“All right. Here goes.”
I filled him in on everything. The existence of the Order. The contract binding Willow to me. The suspicions we shared about the Order’s true nature. The facts we’d managed to confirm so far. Q’s identity. Willow’s sudden disappearance from the White House Christmas party.
When I was done, Rowan let out a long sigh and leaned back in his chair.
My forehead wrinkled. “You don’t seem particularly surprised about any of this.”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I’m not. You just confirmed almost every suspicion I’ve ever had.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve suspected that there was a deep-state secret society in D.C. for years. I just didn’t know any details about it.”
My brows furrowed. “You heard the part where I said my mother is the leader, right?” I asked. “Surely that came as a surprise.”
Rowan shook his head. “Nope. She’s been number one on my list of suspects for the society leader for about four years now.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I wouldn’t joke about this stuff. Especially if Willow’s in trouble.”
“Then how the hell did you know about the Order?” I asked, eyes widening. “Why was my mom your prime suspect when no one else had a damn clue?”
He leaned forward. “If I tell you, do you promise not to mock me for being a crazy conspiracy theorist?”
“Of course I won’t. If you figured out all of this stuff on your own, then you might actually be the sanest person I know.”
“Like I said before, I didn’t exactly figure anything out. I just suspected a few things.” He hesitated and leaned back again. “So this is the part you’ll want to mock. I’m an active member on TruthAnon. Have you heard of it?”
“I think so. It’s an online conspiracy theory forum, right?”
“Yeah. It’s where all the tinfoil-hat crazies congregate. Like me,” Rowan said with a rueful smile. “Anyway, about five years ago, a new member joined. They only made one post, and it got deleted a few minutes later. A lot of people took screenshots, though, including me. After that, the hardcore theorists on the forum went nuts trying to dissect it.”
“What did the person say?”
“The first thing they said was that they’d chosen to post on the forum because they knew they would sound totally crazy to anyone else, like their friends or the media. We were the only people who wouldn’t dismiss them as a lunatic right off the bat.”
“Fair enough.”
“They claimed they had information about an explosive scandal, and they wanted us to look into it for them and expose it to the world, because they weren’t sure how much time they had left to do it themselves.”
“What was the scandal?”
“They said they knew for a fact that there was a secret society operating out of Washington. Apparently this society has access to all the money and power you could possibly imagine, and they’re up to a lot of shady shit. They have a stranglehold over politics in this country, and everything that happens in that arena is because of them. Oh, and they also said the society was planning to assassinate a president somewhere between 2018 and 2020 in order to create chaos in the country.”
“That sounds pretty accurate so far.”
Rowan nodded. “Yeah. Everything you just told me matches up to it,” he replied. “Anyway, the original poster was very vague, which is unfortunate. They didn’t name the secret society or any of the members, even though they claimed to know a lot about it. The whole thing seemed very rushed. Like they were afraid of getting caught at any second.” He paused and held up a hand. “This is the part that sounds ultra-crazy. The post ended by saying the supreme leader of the society is a lizard.”
I snorted. “A lizard? Are you fucking serious?”
“Yep. Most people on the forum thought the whole thing was a joke.”
“No shit.”
“Some of us didn’t,” he said with knitted brows. “I’ve been hearing rumors about a deep-state secret society for years, so that post was like catnip to me.”
