Rule 4 - Swayze

"That"s crazy, right? He can"t hold their inheritance hostage like that. He"s dead." Koi tossed his Jason mask on the table and pulled a hoodie over his head. He went to his bed and flopped onto it, face first. We were the only ones who had a cabin to ourselves. Everyone else had 6-15. We needed space for a card table and all of our other shit. One of the perks when you lose body parts here.

Andrew sat at the table, waiting patiently for me to dig out my box.

"It doesn"t surprise me," he chimed in. "She was Mr. Risky"s favorite."

"How do you even remember that?" Koi huffed.

"I don't know, just do." I looked away quickly. "They were always complaining about how their dad treated her. They hated her."

Koi and I exchanged a look.We"d talked about it on and off throughout the years. We"d theorized about why she left. Was it because of her siblings?

"Honestly, it wouldn"t surprise me if they killed her. That or the mom. Would you want to raise a kid that wasn"t yours?" Andrew snickered. "She"s their half-sister, did you know that?"

I rolled my eyes. Everyone knew that.

"Who knows, maybe she"s buried under one of the newer rides or something," Koi joked and glanced at me. He was just as nervous as I was with this topic.

"Oof, that"s dark, man." Andrew laughed. I went to the table and tossed him a small, plastic baggie. He snatched it up and held it up to the light. "Do you mind if I..."

I waved off his concerns and sat across from him and kicked my feet up. "So, basically, this summer is going to suck ass unless they find her. I"m tempted to go out and look myself."

"I"m telling you." Andrew shook his head. "Little bitch is dead. Probably got kidnapped, held for ransom, and then tossed when the cheap-ass uncle wouldn"t pay. He doesn"t even like the other kids. Why would he help her?"

Andrew's idea that someone being a bastard made them less than everyone else was starting to piss me off. He saw me glaring and shrugged innocently.

"It"s been seven years. She was just a kid when she went missing. The police searched for weeks."

"What if she left willingly?" Koi blurted.

My head shot up and I gave him the look to shut the fuck up. He closed his mouth, but I knew what was resting on his tongue.

"I mean, maybe. I"d get it. Her siblings were assholes to her. The mom too. She got bullied at school and then had to come home and be bullied there too." Andrew took a rolled-up dollar bill and quickly snorted his line.

Koi took the straw, inhaling a line himself. "I remember Domino a bit from school. Her sister was a bigger bully to her than anyone else. She was real shitty about the leg thing."

"It wasn"t even that bad," I argued. "Like, an inch or some shit. Marisol was just bitter because people liked her sister more than her." It was true. Domino had been the prettier of the Risky sisters and ten times nicer.

A knock on our cabin door pulled our attention.

"Yeah?" Koi called out.

The door opened, and Fabian entered.

"Hey! What"s up? Andrew, I wanna talk to Swayze and Koi alone for a second. You wanna go find something to do?" His dark, mustache was styled with beeswax, and the curls almost touched his eyes as he faked a smile.

Silence filled the cabin as Andrew put his coke away and left the cabin. Only once the wooden door was shut did Fabian turn to us.

"So, you heard the news."

"I heard the rumors." I motioned for him to sit. "Is it true? You can"t get your money until they find your sister?"

He nodded. "Yep, dear old dad, even from the dead letting us know where we all stood with him. We don"t get shit unless she"s here too."

I reached for my box. "That sucks. You need something to take the edge off?"

"You sure you're supposed to be doing that shit?" He eyed the cocaine on the table. "One kidney and all?"

"Mind your own fucking business. You needed something?"

He plucked the rolled-up bill from my fingers and leaned forward, doing the line I"d prepared for myself. "Yes, I need to know what you and my sister talked about right before she hopped that fence and ran."

It was like ice water thrown in my face. I blinked furiously, trying to comprehend the words he"d just said to me. The Risky kids were the only ones in this fucking place that dared speak to us on our level, and fuck if they didn"t abuse the privilege.

"Yeah, I fucking know. So spill. What did she say to you two?"

My palms were suddenly clammy. "What are you talking about?" I tried to lie, but he"d rocked me to my core, and I couldn"t hide that. "We—" I started, but I was speechless. So many questions were speeding through my mind, and I wasn"t even high.

"I saw the surveillance cameras. That morning, it was pure fucking chaos. I slid downstairs and looked through the camera footage before anyone else could and saw you, Koi, and…" He paused, clearing his throat. "Dennis running around the park, and then you two went back for something. When I focused on your camera, sure enough, there you two were, standing with Domino before she hopped the fence. So tell me, what do you know about my sister"s disappearance?" He leaned forward, his dark, almost black eyes boring down into my soul.

"I wouldn"t call it a disappearance. She left." Koi shrugged, trying to play it cool. His leg began to bounce under the table. "You saw that."

"Did she give a reason?"

I lifted my eyes to the ceiling, pretending that it was hard for me to remember. I couldn"t look at Koi. "No, I don"t think so. I tried to stop her. She was pretty determined to leave."

He laughed. "You tried to stop her? That"s not what it looked like to me. See, on camera, it looked like you guys were saying goodbye. I know your history. Everyone knows you and Koi will fuck anything that moves, even each other." He paused, waiting for a reaction. We stared deadpan at him. Our sexuality and relationship with each other was old news. He sat back, disappointed he didn"t get the reaction he was hoping for. "Did you guys fuck my twelve-year-old sister?"

I snatched the rolled-up bill from him. "First off, don"t say it like that. It makes it sound like I'm a pedophile. And even if we did, we would have been like fourteen, not grown-ass adults. But I didn"t, so it doesn"t matter. Your sister didn"t say shit about why she was leaving, just that she was, and not to tell anyone. So, we didn"t. We figured she must have had a good enough reason to leave all that money behind. It wasn"t our business."

"Why didn"t you tell anyone?"

"Why didn"t you?" Koi snapped back. "If you saw the tapes, why didn"t you come around when it happened? We were kids; we would have folded."

Fabian frowned. "I deleted the footage and then considered asking you about it, but everything was so crazy, and then the whole Dennis thing."

"Don"t," I warned and stood up from the table. My stomach knotted just at his name. I could barely bring myself to think about it anymore. My hand instinctively went to my side, where my newest tattoo sat. Sure, Koi had lost his eye and I'd lost a kidney, but we were the lucky ones. Dennis lost his life.

"I know." He put up his hands. "It was fucking chaos. That entire summer was a mess. One fire after another, and no one could keep up. I agree with you, she probably had a good reason. My brother and sister were assholes. My mom too, always hated her, you know, because of who she was."

Domino was the love child that was conceived very close to the same time as the twins, Marisol and Mattias, were. It was a whole scandal when Mr. Risky"s mistress died three years later, leaving him their child. Domino was brought to the Risky mansion and raised with all his other children.

"I don"t need to hear your family drama, man, I"ve got my own issues." I rubbed my side, my fingers tracing the scar hidden underneath the fresh ink. This entire conversation was stressing me out. This was not my plan for the summer. "I"m sorry we can"t help you more. The girl wanted to run away, so we let her. We probably should have stopped her, yeah, but we were kids. We thought she"d come right back."

But she didn"t.

We were the last ones to see her. She could have died that day and none of us would have known.

"See, that"s where you"re wrong. You can help me." Fabian stood, the chair squeaking against the floor. A slow grin spread across his face that sent chills down my spine. "I found her, and I need help sneaking her back in."