Black Hearts (Sins Duet #1)

Javier Bernal stands at the edge of his property, where the lush lawn starts to peter out into the thick jungle that continues all the way down to the ocean’s edge. He narrows his eyes at the lumps of rocks that scatter along the grass and feels his heart rate go up a notch.

This was where he was going to put in his beloved koi pond, one of the first things he vowed to do when they took over this land a few years ago. But time, as usual, got away from him. Now there is just a pile of rocks that represent the best of intentions.

He’s surprised at the bitterness welling in his throat. It seems the older he gets, the more his intentions lose their hold. It’s been a nonstop climb back to the top and he’s getting tired. He needs someone with new life to run the show.

Someone like Vicente.

But Vicente hasn’t yet been broken. Javier knows you have to break the boy to create the man. And there’s no one to break him but Javier. Sometimes you have to hurt the ones you love to make them stronger, and while Javier would fight to the death to protect his son, he also knows he’s the only one who can make Vicente the man he needs to be, even if it destroys both of them in the process.

It breaks Javier’s heart.

Having to do this to him.

“Javier?” Luisa calls out softly from behind him. He doesn’t turn around but he relaxes slightly when he feels her thin, soft arms wrap around him from the back. “What are you doing?”

“Dreaming,” he answers. The more in the dark his wife is, the better. She wouldn’t quite agree. Then again, she babies Vicente too much. “Do you remember when we were first together, that old compound? I would find you down by the pond, staring at the fish.”

“I was planning my escape,” she says mildly.

He nods. “Do you think you would have been better off, in the end?”

“Are you serious?” She lets go and comes around in front of him. The dire puzzlement on her face is a tonic to him.

He gives a half-hearted shrug. “If you had escaped, you would never have had to live the life of a wife of a drug lord.”

Her puzzlement turns to annoyance, which makes him chuckle inside. There’s no one more beautiful to Javier than his wife, yet when she gets feisty and riled up, her beauty is increased tenfold. He’s nearly in awe of it, even still.

“Need I remind you that for the last twenty years or so, I’ve been an equal partner in these operations, not just your damn wife,” she says viciously, poking a long-fingered nail into his chest. “I’m not like the rest of those fucking women, sitting around with the other wives and talking gossip and discussing your mistresses. Without me, you never would have risen up.”

Javier raises his brows, wondering briefly if that’s innuendo or not. She does tend to get turned on when she’s on fire. “You’re very right, dear Luisa.” He grabs her finger and raises it to his lips, gently sucking on it.

She tries to glare at him but her eyes soften into liquid pools, dark as teakwood, and he can see her pulse moving delicately along her throat. He’s been worried about her lately so to see this zest return is nothing less than comforting.

“And need I remind you,” she says, hesitantly taking her finger away, “that I chose not to escape. I chose to stay with you. I chose you and all of this, all the ups and all the downs. If I had left, we wouldn’t have Vicente or Marisol. I would have never known this peace.”

“Are you at peace?” he asks curiously. He’s not sure if he’s felt peace for more than a minute of his life. Maybe while he’s coming inside Luisa and the seconds afterward, or the moment he pulls a trigger, ending someone’s life. That peace is fleeting though.

But Luisa doesn’t seem so certain either. She looks away, toward the rocks where the pond should be. “I have moments of it. That’s enough.”

“Javier,” Oscar Barrera’s voice comes from behind them.

What fucking now? Javier thinks. Can’t I stand here and admire my nonexistent pond in peace?

But when he turns around with a heavy sigh to face Barrera, he sees he has news.

“Vicente’s card has been used at the Intercontinental,” Barrera says. He’s Javier’s right-hand man now that Vicente is gone, and has been monitoring his whereabouts when he can. Not that there have been any whereabouts to go by.

Javier wasn’t that surprised to lose contact with Tio and Nacho though he admits it happened rather quickly. It only made him admire his son more.

“Oh, thank god,” Luisa says, hand to her chest. “Can you be sure it’s Vicente using the card and no one else?”

Ever since they lost Tio and Nacho, she’s been worried, too worried, Javier thinks, that something happened to Vicente as well. She doesn’t seem to understand exactly what Vicente is capable of, and it’s quite clear by now that their son has no problems disposing of the people who were meant to protect him.

Then again, Javier knows they were never meant to protect him at all, merely watch and report. Vicente doesn’t need protection over there, not yet.

“We can’t be sure,” Barrera says patiently, “and Vicente is most likely booked in the hotel under another name. The hotel was booked through a website. Two thousand dollars a night.”

“Jesus,” Javier swears, exchanging a look with Luisa. “The girl better be worth it. All right, well. This is good news. It tells us he’s still in San Francisco. Let’s send Parada out on the first flight tomorrow morning.”

“Why tomorrow when he can go now?” Luisa says.

“Patience,” Javier says, giving her a slow smile. “These things take time. You know this by now.”

She lets out a ragged sigh and heads back toward the house with Barrera. Javier turns back to face the rocks and starts mentally landscaping the place all over again.

Dear son, he thinks, let’s see how alike we really are.





Chapter Eight





Violet




I must be getting played.

There’s no other explanation.