Page 8 of Kings & Chaos

“Why did you lie?” I asked.

“It’s complicated,” Neo said.

“No, it’s not,” I said. “Emma has been missing for two years. You could have helped the police, but you lied to them instead. And then you lied to me.”

It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did.

He turned around, fire flaring in his eyes. “If you think the police could have done a thing to find Emma — with this information or without it — you’re more naive than I thought.”

“I’m not naive,” I said. “But I know the statistics. The odds of finding a missing person decrease with every hour they’re gone. Even if we tell the police now—”

“No one is telling the police,” Oscar said firmly.

I was pretty sure my mouth dropped open in shock. Oscar and Rock were supposed to be on my side.

Except I’d forgotten that they were never really on my side. I’d let my feelings for them confuse me even though I’d reminded myself over and over again that I couldn’t trust them.

“Rock said you didn’t do anything to hurt Emma,” I said.

“We didn’t,” Oscar said. “But going to the police would be a bad move.”

I took a deep breath, trying to calm the storm of emotion battering my nervous system. “Tell me everything that happened that night.” I looked at each of them. “And I mean everything this time.”

“We saw her at the quarry party,” Rock said. “She was hanging with the Knights. We came home, and a couple hours later, Emma showed up here.”

“Why did she come here?” I asked.

There was a tiny beat, almost imperceptible, before Neo spoke.

Enough to make me know he was being careful.

“She’d been looking into the disappearance of the other Bellepoint girls,” he said.

I knew it was true from Nikki, but that didn’t answer the biggest question of all.

“What does that have to do with you?” I asked.

“She’d… talked to us about it before,” Oscar said.

“Wait… were you and Emma friends?” My stomach turned a little at the next thought. “More?”

Oscar’s eyes widened. “Not more. No. We were never that with Emma.”

I exhaled my relief. Maybe it was petty, but with everything else I had to deal with, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get my head around the idea of sharing the Kings with my missing sister.

“Not friends either,” Rock said. “Not really. Not the way you probably mean it.”

“Then… what?”

“She came to us for help,” Neo said quietly. “When she realized something was up with the Bellepoint girls.”

“Why you?” I asked.

Neo shrugged. “We were family. Of a sort.”

“What aboutfamiglia oltre il sangue?”

I could almost hear everyone at the quarry party repeating it in unison.

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