Black Hearts (Sins Duet #1)

I can just imagine the conversation.

Let’s go in there and have a nice dinner. Violet deserves to be happy.

I give her hand a squeeze.

She does deserve that. And so much more.

With the dinner ready, thanks to Ben, we all sit at the table. Violet and I are beside each other across from her parents with Ben at the end. The tequila is put aside for later, and a few bottles of red are laid out along with the food.

Ellie looks very beautiful tonight, just like her daughter, but I enjoy it so much more when I’m watching her squirm. Her thin brows come together, her jaw locking every time she glances across the table at me.

I pretend not to notice for the most part, but every now and then our eyes meet and I give her a look that makes her nostrils flare.

What do you think you know? I ask her silently. Am I the big bad wolf at your door?

Camden seems to have eased off a bit, which I suppose is good. While I don’t think too much of the man, he’s not really my concern anyway. Though it has to piss off my father that he’s the one who won in the end.

Then again, my father was the one who won the country. Too bad in our line of work it never matters how well you did in the past or how respected you were. All that matters is what happens with the here and now. The past is just ground beneath your feet, there to hold you up or be left behind.

“Vicente,” Ben says, bringing me out of my head. “Where in Mexico are you from?”

I clear my throat with a sip of wine “Outside a small town, just north of Mazatlán.”

“Is that the good part of Mexico or the bad part?”

“Oh, they’re all good parts.” I smile at him.

Ellie seems to grumble at that and I’m pretty sure Camden just kicked her under the table.

“Did you know Mom and Dad went there when you were three?” Violet says to him.

Ben stares at his parents. “I didn’t know that. Does that mean I’ve been there?”

“No. You stayed with your grandfather,” Ellie says quickly before busying herself with her wine.

“Where did you go? Near where he’s from?”

Ellie gives me a poignant look. “No, I think we got stuck with the bad side.”

“But there are bad sides to every country, Mrs. McQueen,” I remind her. “Even in your fair city of San Francisco, I bet behind every smiling, rainbow-painted face, there’s something dark and dangerous.” I gesture to the house. “I bet inside these walls there are untold horrors. I bet beside your bed you keep a gun.”

“Yeah right,” Ben says with a snort. “You must mean my bed. I’m the one with the gun. My parents are very much against owning one.”

I eye them. “Is that so?”

Camden clears his throat. “It doesn’t mean I haven’t handled one back in the day. I just don’t believe in them now.”

“Back in the day?” Violet asks. “Seems like there’s a lot you guys did back in the day. Secret trips to Mexico. Guns…” She pauses and I know she’s trying hard not to mention the article. “Silver-tongued serpents...”

That’s a new one. I raise a brow, wanting to know more. “Silver what?”

Ellie abruptly gets up, her chair noisily sliding back on the floor. “I think it’s time for dessert,” she says, avoiding everyone’s eyes as she grabs her plate, hastily tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Can the dessert be the rest of the tequila?” Camden asks before he gets up and starts to clear the table.

“Yes, please,” Ben says.

I know I should play the part of the dutiful boyfriend (fuck, does that word sound foreign) and help clear the table, but when Violet volunteers, her mother insists that we all go relax elsewhere.

There’s nothing like a cigarette after a big meal, so I excuse myself and sneak outside alone, sitting down on the bottom step and taking in the damp air and nicotine. Though the traffic of Haight hums nearby, here it’s quiet. You can almost pretend you’re not in a city at all. It’s the suburbs on crack.

Such a nice little life.

A nice little lie.

I don’t know why it is that I’m so determined to shake this family up. Aside from the obvious, for what I came here for.

But now that I’m here, I want to expose them for what they are. I want to show Violet that her instincts have always been correct. At least I was raised in a house where everything was laid out on the table, for better or worse. I watched my father torture and kill a man when I was eleven years old. I learned how to shoot an AK at fourteen. I’ve been with him when he’s put bullets in people’s heads. I’ve watched him make deals that I knew were based on lies.

And I turned out just fine.

Violet, on the other hand, has been raised to believe that something is off about her life. She’s been sheltered from who her parents truly are. And because of that, she doesn’t know what she truly is.

The Bernals aren’t good people.

The McQueens aren’t either.

The sooner Violet knows this, realizes it, the better off she’ll be. That sensitivity she has will be her strongest asset once she learns to let go of who she thinks she is.

She could be whatever she’s been afraid to be.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night.

Take these sunken eyes and learn to see.

The only problem, of course, and it’s a big problem, is that when she does see, and she will, she’ll see me for every lie that I am.

The door opens behind me and I look up over my shoulder.

It’s Camden. He closes the door behind him and stands there, the lights from the house causing shadows to fall over him.

I ease to my feet and stare up at him, taking a long, lazy drag of my cigarette.

He watches me as I exhale, not saying a word as the smoke billows around me.

I hold out the cigarette. “Do you smoke?”