Black Hearts (Sins Duet #1)

This is Santa Muerte.

I stare at her feet in black combat boots before I slowly gaze upward to where bone-white skeleton legs disappear under a purple gown.

I blink into the light until I see Santa Muerte’s face.

I wish I hadn’t.

Though her face is just a skull, blackened with ash, with long thick black braids that hang down on both sides, her eyes glow within their dark pits.

I can feel them on me, burning through.

These are Violet’s eyes.

She has become the Saint of Death.

Tonight, she has come for my family.

With revenge from her family.

“You caused this, Vicente,” my mother hisses to me, and when I look at her, she’s nothing but skeleton too. “You caused this.”

“You caused this,” says the skull of Marisol.

“You,” says Diego. “For what purpose?”

“For love,” I say, looking back at Death. “I did this for love.”

Santa Muerte leans over, her heavy braids swinging forward until her ghoulish face is right in front of me. My eyes are locked on to her sockets, where I know Violet is, where I can feel her radiating outward like damaging rays.

Ultraviolet.

“Didn’t your father ever teach you,” Violet’s voice, rough and demonized enters my brain, taking over my head, “that love is what gets you killed?”

Then she kisses me with cold bones.

And I am swept away into the black.

The sound of flapping wings takes over.

Then fades.



When I wake up, I’m shaking and covered in cold sweat. I can’t remember the last time I had a fright like that and it takes me a moment to figure out how to breathe.

I’m in bed, in my hotel room. It smells like sex from earlier and I breathe it in deep.

Violet, Violet, Violet.

My hands can still feel her skin yielding to me, the breathless gasps from her mouth. The way she writhed underneath my tongue, her eternal sweetness filling my mouth.

The tight, wet slide as I pushed myself into her. Over and over again.

I move my hands over my cock, hard and thick already, slowly stroking up and down.

What are you doing? a voice whispers in my head. It’s loud, commanding, swirling up from the deep.

I ignore it. I keep stroking myself, desperate for thoughts of her.

It persists.

Why are you even here?

What good will this do when your fun is over?

What do you really want?

Her. I want her. For now, I just want her.

I tell myself I’ll figure the rest out later.

Even though I know there is no later.

Not for us.

Not ever.

Violet is the means to an end. She’s a pawn in a game I’m not sure how to win.

Why are you here?

To win the respect of my father.

Why are you here?

To understand my father.

Why are you here?

To distance myself from my father.

Why are you here?

To find out how to beat my father.

And then what?

To take over the cartel. With no interference.

To become king.

To rule my way.

Then you know what you must do.

You must plan.

You must execute the plan.

Use Violet to get to her mother.

Befriend the McQueens.

Learn from them.

Then kill them all, except for her.

The reason you thought you came here.

Then take her to your father.

She’s collateral.

She’s a bargaining chip.

She’s an offering.

And if it all falls through?

Then you’re no better than he is.



I wake up again. A dream within a dream. Motherfucking inception.

I blink at the grey dawn slowly coming into focus through the open curtains and dig my nails into my arm until they bleed.

It hurts. It’s enough to tell me I’m awake this time.

The voice still resonates in my head.

Reminding me of why I came here to begin with.

It was never about Violet.

And yet here I am.

I slowly get out of bed and head into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. While it percolates, I flip through the room service menu for breakfast options. The dishes from last night are laid out on the coffee table, and the memory of us eating it, naked, stirs something inside me that I don’t wish to wake up.

We made rough plans last night to meet today after her class. Part of me wants to cancel and take the time to get my head on straight, to think about the plan and what to do next.

But the other part of me realizes that this is what I have to do next. Get to know Violet better. Earn her trust. Fuck her pretty little brains out.

It’s not my fault that I want this, that I enjoy this.

I wonder if this is how my father felt?

Or was it Ellie that played him?

I’ll find out soon enough.



Violet is lost in her own world.

I should just let her be.

Respect her space.

Don’t get involved.

Not now. Not ever.

I have a feeling that whatever she’s stewing over and the way it’s translating into her stabbing her maraschino cherry with her straw repeatedly as the two of us sit side by side at an outdoor patio, along a high-top table overlooking the bay, has got nothing to do with me.

But the more information about her life she gives me, the more I can use it.

“What’s on your mind?” I ask her.

It takes her a few moments to look up. “Huh?”

“You’re stabbing that cherry like it’s wronged you. Has someone wronged you, mirlo?”

“Mirlo?” she repeats. It sounds so cute coming from her mouth.

I run my hand over her dark hair that’s shining in the sun. “You have blackbird hair. Mirlo, in Spanish.”

“Oh.” She attempts a smile but fails. Her lower lip pouts slightly and I take the opportunity to kiss it, licking the cherry juice from the inside rim.

Her eyes are closed when I pull back and she slowly flutters them open. Every time she looks at me like that, right after I fuck her, right after I kiss her, it undoes something inside me. Something that should never be unraveled and yet I’m helping her pull the strings.