Black Hearts (Sins Duet #1)

“As I was asking,” I remind her, running my thumb over that sweet lip.

She squints at me and then pulls her sunglasses over her eyes, a barricade. It could also be that this is the first truly sunny day since I’ve been here, so the sun is extra impactful, and everyone around us is dressed in summer gear. I guess that’s the thing about San Francisco, all their seasons are ass-backwards.

“Wronged is a strong word,” she says slowly, her attention back to the ferries darting across the bay. She’s back to stabbing the cherry again. “Or maybe it’s the right word, I don’t know.” She sighs. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything,” I tell her, displaying my palms.

“Do you have a good relationship with your parents?”

I nearly laugh. “Do I?”

“Yeah.” She’s totally serious.

“Well,” I begin, not sure how much to share. Then I decide, fuck it, I’m all in if she gives me her truth. “Not really. No.”

“Why not?”

I open my mouth then close it, thinking, because they aren’t good people. “It’s just always been that way,” I finally say. “My childhood was very…unusual. Because of my father’s business.”

“Selling avocados?”

I give her a half-smile. “Si. The avocados. My father was very busy and the job is very stressful, so I rarely saw him.”

“He was away on business a lot?”

“Hmmm. Not that often. The business came to him. We lived in a big property. He was always in his office or one of the secondary houses. My sister and I were always elsewhere. We were kept very separate from what he did.”

“You have a sister? How old?”

“Three years younger than me.”

“And how old are you anyway?”

“Young enough to get away with everything and old enough to know better.”

She frowns but I continue. “Anyway, my sister, Marisol, she was babied a lot by my mother but I wasn’t so much. She got most of the love, I got the tough version of it. I guess because I was the boy. Was your brother treated differently?”

“Not really, no.”

“It doesn’t matter. It is what it is. My father is a man who…well, honestly, at times seems incapable of love. Which is an odd thing to say because I know he loves my mother and he loves his children. I just think it’s different for him.”

Just as it’s different for me.

“And your mother?”

“My mother did her best with me, but as I got older I could see…things were changing. She became more distant, like she wasn’t sure how to be a mother to me.” I pause. “She began to fear me.”

Violet stops stabbing and gives me one hell of a look. “Why would your mother fear you?”

“Because she thought I would grow up to be like my father.”

“And did you?”

“I don’t know yet. Time will tell, I guess.”

“And…that’s a bad thing?”

I shrug with one shoulder, palming my beer. “It depends who you talk to. My father is one of the most respected men in the whole country. He is also the most feared. Some might call him good because he has done a lot of good for the communities. Avocados are a popular business, and that business keeps a lot of people employed, and a lot of excess money goes toward funding villages and towns. Those people see him as a savior. Without him, many would suffer. Ironically, with him, many suffer as well.”

“And the other people?”

“The other people want him dead.”

She blinks at me. Whispers, “Dead?”

“If he’s dead, they can take over the business and get all the power. Right now he doesn’t have all the power. At one time, he used to. But since then he’s lost a lot of it. It’s been fractioned and we need to figure out a way to unite the, uh, businesses. But many still consider him el jeffe of el jeffe. He certainly does.”

“Your father isn’t a farmer. Is he?”

I look her dead in the eyes. “Is your mother really a photographer? Is your father really a tattoo artist?”

She swallows hard, her gaze caught in mine, eyes flecked with fear, but manages to nod. “Yes. They are.”

I believe her. She knows nothing at all.

“At least…that’s what they do now,” she says slowly, cautiously, like she’s uncertain that once the words leave her mouth, they become truth. “Sometimes I wonder…who they used to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t really explain it.”

“Try.”

Her brows knit together. “I don’t know…”

“You can trust me,” I tell her. “You know this.”

Trust me.

She nods. “Okay. I trust you.”

I supress a victorious smile.

She takes a deep breath. “This will all sound weird.”

“It can’t possibly after what I just told you.”

“I don’t know about that. My brother and I were always told that my grandfather, my dad’s father, died a long time ago. He never talked much about him but we knew that much. My grandmother, of course, apparently died long ago too.”

“Apparently…”

“Yeah. Well, now I don’t know. Because a few weeks ago I found a letter addressed to my father. There was no return address, but it was stamped in California. Mailed locally. Inside was a newspaper clipping.” She takes her phone out of her jacket pocket and quickly scrolls through it before placing it next to my drink.

I pick it up, shielding the glare from the sun, and eye the photo on the screen.

A picture of a newspaper article.

I quickly read it.

I’m surprised.

I glance at her. “Do you know what Mexican drug cartel it was?”

“No,” she says softly. “I don’t know any of this. Why? Do you think…do you think you could help find out? Because my brother Ben has been looking into it and…”

“What did he find?” I ask a little too sharply.

She doesn’t seem to notice. “He wouldn’t tell me everything. Says he needs to talk to me this weekend. But he said that he doesn’t think it was a Mexican cartel. He thinks it was the mafia.”

This is new. “The Italian mafia?”

“I guess. He said he found a news report from 2014 that mentioned our father in conjunction with a kidnapping attempt.”