How to Raise an Assassin

CHAPTER 38: A FRIENDLY SUBURB WITH DARK SECRETS

Dropping the whole "I left my parents to die," was a great thought to enter a family dinner upon with your parents. While my mom hugged me after not seeing me for a while, I was pretty lost on what to think. My father was the problem. Even Momma Emma said so. I needed to change the way he thought or take more drastic measures.

Still, I wasn't sure how a twelve-year-old girl was supposed to change the mind of a staunch believer in the philosophy of wealth and diligence.

The mid-term exams were over, and I managed to pass most of them with C's (hey I was out for a while and C's get degrees). I was formally let off the team by Coach Beckham, which I expected considering I was in a coma for a while and missed too much. Either way, it was one less commitment I had to follow through on. Now that school was out of the way and I didn't risk getting left back, I returned with Ash back to the hive for stage seven.

For two weeks while studying for midterms, we didn't talk about our families or the initiation. Ash was my tutor, and I was focused on catching up on school. Whenever we had free time, we'd head to the hot tub to see the sunset, knock down some pins in the basement bowling alley, or watch a new film that was released in theaters in my family's private movie theater. A couple of days, when the weather got warm enough for us to go out and play some tennis, Ash suffered a terrifying defeat by my hands. I was pretty sure he felt that hitting it outside the green box was the way to win. I didn't tell him until the last set when he looked up at the automated score tracker and saw he was getting demolished. His face looked like a child who saw a lump of coal in his stocking. I fell down on the court and laughed.

The two-week break came and went. Business was about to resume. My father emailed us warning of more contracts coming in. I was dreading receiving them. I couldn't continue going through with them, except perhaps the one for the Mayor. And even that one would be controversial.

It was on the bus ride to Royden that I asked Ash how his father had become Swarmmaster.

Ash was almost silenced by the question. The boy used to idolize the Locusts and his father when I first met him about a month ago. Now, he shied away from the topic.

"It was after my mother's death. Before that, he was a police officer. My mom was on the city council. She proposed a bill to raise taxes on the rich and redistribute the funds towards education and healthcare. That wasn't the spark. It was the Anti-Criminal Organization bill that probably tipped the glass over."

"I've heard about it," I recalled my father mentioning the disgraced bill in conversation once. Apparently, it would call for the National Guard and FBI to replace police authority in the handling of gang activity since the police department was vastly corrupt. And if Ash's father was a police officer, then his wife probably heard of the department's corruption firsthand through her husband. Plus, my father did pay a lot of cops to look the other way, so the councilwoman wasn't off.

"When she died at the suspected hands of a Reaper member, my father personally took the case to find the culprit. But after a year of dead ends, the department dropped the case, and it pissed my father off. He joined the Locusts and for six years, rose through the ranks until, making his way to becoming close friends with the Swarmmaster before him: Swarmmaster Nile."

Swarmmaster Nile wasn't an unfamiliar name. My family knew he was the leader of the Locusts, unlike today where the Mayor's position is still kept under wraps. Choosing not to let my father in on that information was crucial because if that was the case, Ash would be parentless by now.

The bus stopped at Royden and we got off and made our way to the hive's entrance. On the way down, Ash continued telling me how his father, upon receiving the Swarmmaster mantle, launched a late entry into the mayoral race. He won on his campaign to end corruption, redesign the flawed system of Chicago's local government, and restore balance to the city. Now he felt he had legitimacy both in the underworld and the political world.