Black Hearts (Sins Duet #1)

Then I turn and head down the street, collecting my pride.

She calls after me but I just wave my hand and keep going.

If I turned around, I’d see her swallowed by the mist.





Chapter Fourteen





Violet




I stand on the street watching Vicente disappear. When he rounds the corner, the fog drifts in, like it was waiting to roll down the street and greet me. Like it felt safer with him gone. Like he burned too hot for it.

Vicente could light water on fire.

With this thought, I breathe in deep and head back inside the house. As much as I worry about him, that I hurt him somehow (which I didn’t think was possible seeing how in control and self-assured he’s been), there’s something else on my mind.

Not on my mind. Wrong use of words. It’s more like it’s infiltrating my brain, making sure my thoughts turn to this one horrible thing.

Ben isn’t my full brother.

I just can’t believe it.

I can’t.

I hurry back inside to find him.

While Vicente had gone outside to smoke and Mom was busy with the dishes, Ben pulled me aside and down the hall near the back door that leads to our tiny brick courtyard.

In a broken whisper he told me that the article he found, the one that Dad was cleared for, mentioned the woman’s name, Sophia Madano, and her son Ben.

They were once the McQueens.

So he did some searching.

Found out Dad was married before.

Then fucking Mom called Ben into the kitchen to help her with something and now I’m left with information I don’t know how to process.

I knew I couldn’t go back to the hotel with Vicente, even though he’s been so good dealing with my crazy (lying, fucking lying!) parents. I wouldn’t be able to leave Ben, I wouldn’t be able to leave without knowing more, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on Vicente.

I had to stay and he had to go.

I might have hurt his ego to push him out of here, but right now it can’t matter. Tomorrow it will. But tonight, I have to be here for my brother. I have to know the truth.

I look in the kitchen, but I don’t see him. I pop my head into the living room to where my parents are just settling down on the couch with the wine.

“Where’s Ben?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Mom says, looking above her at the ceiling. “In his room, maybe?”

Oh god, I can barely look at them. How much does she know?

“Where’s Vicente?” Dad asks.

I can’t look at him at all.

“He left,” I say through grinding teeth.

I don’t have to stick around to see the look of relief on their faces.

I head down the hall and up the stairs.

My bedside light is on in my room. Ben is sitting on my bed drinking the tequila straight out of the bottle. For a moment, in this strange prism of time, I can see it. See him for who he’s always been. His skin has always been darker than anyone’s in the family. His nose is Roman and out of place. Even his eyes have a different angle to them.

I close the door behind me and he looks at me through drunken eyes.

“Sophia Madano is my mother. I’m fucking Italian.”

I can only shake my head, hugging my arms to chest like the room has grown cold. “Tell me again. Everything. I don’t understand…”

“And you think I fucking do?” He waves the bottle around and then laughs sourly. “Look, Vi. I’ll tell you what I know. Dad was apparently framed to look like he kidnapped his ex-wife and child. He never did it, which I guess is the good part. It was actually Sophia’s brothers, the very infamous, very horrible, Madano brothers. It doesn’t matter how much looking I do, I’m searching every fucking thing that was ever put on the web, but all I know is that there was once a Sophia and Camden McQueen and they lived a very happy life until they got divorced. Dad then went to live in Palm Valley and opened a fucking tattoo shop. Three fucking guesses what the name was. I lived with my mom in LA and took the name Madano. Then something happened. Sophia, my fucking real mom, disappeared, but I didn’t, and then suddenly I guess Dad moves on, marries Mom, and you were born and one big happy perfect family. Right? Right!?”

He’s near tears. My brother isn’t emotional in the slightest, not on the surface anyway, so it breaks me in pieces to see him like this. I can deal with my feelings about it later—after all, this doesn’t affect who he is to me—but I don’t know what to say. I wouldn’t know how to feel if I were him.

“Ben,” I say softly, sitting on the bed next to him. I put my hand on his back. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to make excuses for them…”

“And you never have,” he says bitterly. “You know that, Vi. You never have. You always said there was something off, something wrong. You knew. I was the fool. After this, I’m starting to think they might not be our parents at all.”

I give him a look. It’s very clear that there’s a lot of my mother in me and a lot of my father in him. “They’re our parents, Ben.”

“They’re both yours,” he says. Then he takes another gulp from the bottle. I’m tempted to take it away from him. “They’re not both mine.”

Ugh. My heart sinks. “Ben,” I say to him softly. “Let’s go down and talk to them. Tell them everything. Get it all out in the open and deal with it together.”

He shakes his head, staring at nothing. “No. No, I don’t want to do that.”

“But you have to.”

“Why?”

“Because neither you or me can live with this burden of keeping it to ourselves. And we’re both probably making it out to be worse than it is. We need the truth.”

He hangs his head, making him look like a little boy. “They’ll lie again.”

“No they won’t. They can’t. And you know they want what’s best for us. I’m sure whatever the explanation is, it’s something worthwhile. You were so young.”

“I was three. I wondered why I have no memories younger than five. Something so traumatic must have happened to me that I blocked it out.”

Well, kidnapping would do that.

I get up. “Come on. Let’s go downstairs.”