Black Hearts (Sins Duet #1)

Since the festival posters promised lots of alcohol along with the free music, I have one of the hotel’s private cars take me to Violet’s door.

She and her brother are already waiting on the steps, sitting on the stoop like the poster for an old sitcom I used to watch on Telemundo. Except instead of cheesy grins, they look like they’re going off to war.

“Hey,” I say to them, shoving my hands in the pockets of my jacket. “Ben, you look like shit.”

He does. Too much tequila and something else.

Whatever it is I’m supposed to find out.

He just dismisses me with a pained wave, getting up off the step with a pathetic whimper before staggering down the street.

I turn to Violet and hold out my hand, helping her to her feet.

“How are you, mirlo?” I ask her, running my hand over her silky head.

“I’ve been better,” she says, standing on her tiptoes for a kiss.

I want to ask. But I keep it to myself. She’ll tell me in time.

With my arm around her waist we head off down the street until we catch up with Ben who seems to be in his own tortured world.

Violet controls the conversation, putting on a brave face and leading us through the bands who are playing, the ones who are worth checking out, the history of the festival, and the philanthropist who started it. Her voice is high, speaking fast. She’s nervous and even gives me the occasional pained look that tells me she notices it, too.

Things change as we enter the festival grounds, however. Tens of thousands of people, all drunk, stoned, or something else, are joining the pilgrimage with us into the tall, fog-shrouded trees of the park. Somehow, two of Ben’s friends appear from the crowd and manage to find us.

I don’t pay them much attention and don’t even recall their names. They look like college boys, young and naively self-assured. They think the world is their oyster, but they’ll find out pretty quickly just where they stand.

The guys want to check out this classic folk band that used to be the pioneers of indie rock, but Violet’s stomach is growling and I’ve seen her get hangry before. We tell them we’ll catch up and head to the nearest food trucks instead.

I have to admit, it takes me a moment to let everything sink in. In fact, it’s all catching me off guard. The festival, all these people here, young and old, all races, all religions, filling up the space, here to listen to music and live and be.

I’ve never been to anything like this before. My childhood was strangely sheltered, in the sense that I was never allowed to have a normal one. Though I went to school, it was a security risk to have me hang out there and make friends, so Juan would shuttle me there and back, and that was the extent of my social life.

I used to have friends when I was younger, but I was about ten when that stopped. Gone were the sleepovers or the camps or the parties. I understand now that there was only an illusion of freedom, that wherever I went there were guards, that I was only allowed to be friends with the boys and girls of the people who worked for my father (which, at one point, seemed to be everyone).

As I got older, my friends were taught to respect me, maybe fear me. They realized I was different from them, that I stood above them and apart.

Vicente was the son of el jefe. You couldn’t be friends with him. You could only keep your distance and watch your mouth. I learned how to use their fear to my advantage, even if it made me feel hollow inside.

High school followed a similar pattern until I was fifteen.

I got in a fight with a former friend, the son of one of my father’s henchmen (for lack of a better word).

I’d slept with his girlfriend.

I was completely in the wrong and I knew it.

Didn’t care.

I was young, ready to fuck anything that walked.

She was there.

She wanted me.

The power.

It was the first time I really understood the cards I’d been dealt. I had a royal flush. Everyone else had nothing. I knew then that for the rest of my life, I could have everything I wanted.

Almost, anyway.

So the next day at school, the boy punched me.

Nearly broke my nose.

The funny thing is, it didn’t piss me off. Everyone was sure he would be dead, that I would kill him right there with my bare hands and no one could or would do a single thing about it. The Bernals owned everyone.

But I let it go.

Maybe because I knew I deserved that punch.

The next day, his father was found in a ditch with a bullet in his head.

A henchman no more.

And my parents kept me away from school. I was to be homeschooled from now on by a matronly teacher—Marta—who would teach Marisol as well.

It was safer that way.

But it meant that both my sister and I were cut off from the rest of society. We only knew the world within the compound. Isolation was control. But Marisol was the luckier one. She often went to be with our aunt Alana in the Caribbean, or with Marguerite in Manhattan. She was able to escape. My mother made sure of that.

I, on the other hand, was stuck. When I left, it was always on business, always for the business. The more control you have, the more you are controlled, and I was a wheel that had to keep spinning for the sake of the cartel.

I had always thought that having power meant having freedom, but I’m not sure if that’s true.

No, I don’t think it’s fucking true at all.

“Are you okay?” Violet asks.

I blink, steadying my gaze at her. I think I’ve been staring at the chalkboard menu for this chicken and waffle food truck for a good five minutes.

“Would you believe it if I told you I’m a bit overwhelmed?”

Her forehead crinkles in surprise. “You?”

“I guess it happens to the best of us.” I pretend to study the board.

I feel her lingering attention on the side of my face, wanting me to elaborate.

Sighing, I say, “I’ve never been to a music festival before. Or even a concert.”