Black Hearts (Sins Duet #1)

by Karina Halle

  As I slide her leggings down, she says, “In three weeks. I want to finish the semester first. I’ll feel horrible if I quit right now.”

  “The last thing I want is you to feel guilty when you shouldn’t,” I tell her, running my hand between her legs. She’s so fucking wet it makes my mouth water. It’s going to be hard to take this slow, all the violence and fear and nerves are running wild inside me, dying to come out.

  “Is your name really Vicente Cortez?” she asks, her voice breathless, throaty.

  I pause, my fingers aching to dip inside her. “No.”

  “What is it?”

  I take my chances. “Vicente Bernal.”

  She sucks in her breath.

  An eternity seems to stretch between us.

  Finally she exhales. “Your father. Was he Javier Bernal? That’s his name right? I’ve heard of him.”

  My fingers slide up and over her clit, then back down again. “Yes.”

  “H-he…he…” Her breath hitches as I move. “He used to have control over the whole country. He was just as bad as El Chapo, he just never got caught.” She writhes back and forth.

  “Bad. Or good. Depending who you talk to I say.” I hesitate. “Where did you hear that from?”

  “The news I guess. I never really paid much attention.”

  I slowly push my fingers inside her, making her back arch. A gasp escapes her lips.

  “Just don’t tell your parents,” I say, before plunging them into to the hilt. “I don’t think they’d understand.”

  She can’t even answer in words, just lets out an achingly beautiful moan.

  It undoes me.

  I unzip my jeans and bring out my cock, hot and throbbing in my palm, remembering to take an extra second to get the condom out of my pocket and roll it on.

  She’s below me, waiting patiently, her hair a storm of birds around her, her perky tits with those perfect pink nipples begging to be sucked. My guns lie to the side of her strong, beautiful body; cold, hard steel next to soft white curves.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful sight in my life.

  And I don’t think I’ve ever been so turned on.

  I will not last long.

  The urgency hits me like a hammer and I quickly position my cock before grabbing her wrists and holding them above her head.

  I push inside her, a sharp, hard thrust that makes me shudder all over, a hoarse grunt crawling up my throat. She cries out and I bury her mouth with mine as she starts rocking her hips up into me, wanting more.

  “Harder, god, fuck me harder,” she says in hot little gasps.

  I growl and start rutting into her, enough to make the bed shake and the sheets to pop off the mattress. Violet is wet down to her thighs, so wet that I keep slipping out. Every time I push back in, all the way to the thick base, I feel like I’m seeing heaven.

  “You’re getting my cock so wet,” I murmur roughly, dipping my head down to bite at her nipple. “Such a desperate little bird.”

  Her nails scratch and claw down my back like the frantic, wild animal she is and I fuck her harder and harder until my arms are shaking, my neck corded and tense as I try to hold everything back.

  I don’t have to hold on for long.

  She comes fast and violent, just like our fucking. Her eyes roll in her head and she shatters beneath me. My own release spirals out of control and I let go, nearly breaking her in half as I pound into her relentlessly, over and over and over until every last ounce of cum has pumped out of me.

  Fucking hell.

  I collapse onto my elbows, sweat slick between our chests, our hearts clashing against each other like warring drums. I look down at her face, damp and glowing, marred by bruised skin and danger.

  She’s so beautiful. So precious.

  So inherently destructive to everything that I am.

  I know my feelings can’t be trusted at all. Maybe they never could be.

  But I still have that terrifying feeling inside me, like a pill I just can’t swallow.

  …I think I’m in love with her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Javier

  Javier hates lying to his wife.

  He thought after twenty-something years of marriage that he’d be pretty good at it by now. After all, you can’t survive more than a day in this business without lying through your teeth about something. You become so skilled at it that you actually believe the lies yourself.

  Javier believes nearly every lie he’s ever told. He almost believes the one he tells Luisa.

  That Vicente will be back soon and all will be well.

  It’s not that he won’t be back…Javier is making sure that he’ll be brought back one way or another. And Luisa knows this, that Vicente will kick up a fuss. But she wants him home, safe, and thinks once that happens, everything will go back to normal.

  Javier finds this amusing, her need for routine and normalcy. I mean, what the fuck did she expect when she married him? But for all her partnership and influence in the business and his affairs – their affairs – Luisa has a soft heart that craves the simple life. A soft heart that he prays his son didn’t inherit.

  And because of that, Javier has to lie to her.

  She doesn’t know that it was because of Javier that Vicente set out to California in the first place. She doesn’t know she had her own hand in it. She doesn’t know it was all part of a plan.

  Vicente didn’t know either.

  Still doesn’t.

  Oh, to be young and naïve, full of unearned confidence.

  Javier feels remorse snake through his body but then it’s gone. It never stays for long. It knows it’s not welcome.

  He’s sitting in his office, drinking tequila, and staring into space. He’s waiting for news and when he’s waiting, he has too much time alone with his thoughts.

  Thinking can be dangerous.

  He laughs to himself, the sound reaching around the room.

  It’s true. Too many thoughts mean too much introspection and that’s never been Javier’s strong suit. If he looks too closely, he doesn’t always like what he sees.

  Like now.

  Sure, he’s thinking about his wife and how she thinks Vicente will return when he’s good and ready and if he doesn’t, her husband will get him back and when he returns he’ll be grateful and fresh-faced from new adventures and a sore dick from all the American cunts he’s fucking (at least he assumes that’s what Vicente is doing since he would do the same).

  But as he sits in his office alone and the booze is seeping into his veins like an IV, maybe now he’s also eying the cabinet in the room that has a locked box inside.

  At least, it was locked, until Vicente broke it off.

  Small price to pay. It was proof that it worked.

  Javier had told Luisa just before he went out of town that he was looking for old information on the Tijuana cartel. Said there were some people involved and he was curious to remember who they were.

  Lies.

  He told Luisa that Vicente should look for it. Keep him busy. Keep him involved. He told her it was important he do it.

  Truth.

  So Luisa told Vicente that morning to go look for the files.

  And Vicente, the good son, did as he was told.

  He nearly tore apart the office looking for them, determined not to give up.

  He found the locked box.

  He didn’t ask for the key, he just broke the lock off with a hammer because that’s what he’s been trained to do. Micro-manage. Come up with his own solutions. Get the job done.

  In that box, Javier had printed out some information on the Tijuana cartel from back in the day, boring bullshit that no one cares about. There were some files on Evaristo, the federale who turned sides, became a priest and went rogue. There were files on old shipments, a few dossiers on a sicario.

  The rest of the files were devoted to Ellie.

  That was the hardest part for Javier. To spend all that time di
gging around and reliving the past like that. He has to admit, it hurt. He’s never taken failure very well, always had trouble with humiliation.

  He hates to lose.

  And that’s exactly what happened with Ellie Watt. It didn’t matter that Javier didn’t truly love her, not in the way he loves Luisa. It didn’t matter that he would be able to get over it with time.

  What mattered was that he lost.

  He lost like he’d never lost before.

  That shit has stayed with him.

  It’s never gone away.

  It probably never will.

  Unless…

  Well, that’s for later.

  For now, the plan is working. Javier knew that his son was eager for any hint of his father, at who he truly is on the inside. Javier knows this because Javier was once a son himself and the patterns do follow.

  History and her bad habit of repeating herself.

  He laid his heart out bare in those letters to Ellie. Those real letters that he kept all this time (but, he swears to himself, I never loved her). He had hoped that those, along with all the information he could currently find on Ellie (now McQueen, fucking puta), and the information he hung onto from the past, that it would plant a seed in Vicente’s head.

  If it didn’t? Well, what the fuck ever. He would try something new down the line. No skin off his back if nothing came of this.

  But the seed took root. Javier knew it would.

  Vicente took the papers and withdrew. Javier knew that he would never approach him and ask about it, ask who she was, why he still had information on her. He would never ask his father about something so glaringly intimate.

  Later, when Vicente asked about going to America, Javier could barely hide his smile. He knew the reason why.

  Curiosity.

  And he knows what curiosity leads to.

  It was a gamble, for sure.

  It still is.

  The loss of Tio and Nacho happened a little quicker than he anticipated, giving Vicente the upper hand for a few days there.

  But that’s all changed now.

  Parada is there in San Francisco watching him, close and from afar.

  As in, Vicente’s hotel room is bugged.

  So is his car.

  Parada and Javier know everything he’s doing.

  Or, more like who he’s doing.

  And doing a lot.

  Javier isn’t sure how he feels about that one. I mean, in his mind this thing could have gone one of two ways and he would have found out a way to make both work. But from the start, what he really hoped for was another way – the longshot.

  One way, and this was probably Vicente’s original plan, was to go and kidnap Ellie and bring her back to Mexico as a trophy of sorts. This plan depended more on Vicente’s need to win Javier’s respect and approval, to officially be seen as the head of the cartel, to pave the way for his future here.

  The other way was that Vicente would become intrigued with Violet and decide to take her instead. Violet would be a lot easier to handle than Ellie and Vicente would probably look for the easiest way out of this mess.

  Because it would end up a mess.

  Vicente is bold but he’s young and overconfident. He’ll bite off more than he can chew and mistakes will be made in the process.

  Of course, there’s the third way and that’s the way it seems to be working for now. That Vicente would seduce Violet before bringing her back.

  The seduction is important.

  Very important.

  Because Javier knows firsthand (fuck, he knows that firsthand more than a few times now, huh) that even when you have a horrible task at hand, it’s sometimes impossible not to let your guard down. To not become entangled. To not lose a bit of yourself in the person you’re supposed to harm.

  There will be conflict and turmoil in Vicente’s heart when he hands Violet over to his father. And in that conflict and turmoil, Javier will destroy her and destroy him.

  He can’t pretend it’s all for his son’s good. Yes, it will make Vicente stronger. It will teach him that you can’t be a cartel leader and love like normal people do. It will teach Vicente that if this is the life he wants, people like Violet have no place in it.

  Love gets you killed.

  But at the same time, it would feel unbelievably good to finally get revenge for what Ellie did. Petty thoughts, horribly petty, but Javier is okay with that. He’s more than okay with that.

  If revenge is a dish best served cold, then this will be the fucking feast of the century.

  No matter what happens at this point, Javier will win.

  It will be fucking glorious.

  Javier’s phone rings and he punches the talk button like a striking snake.

  “Parada,” Javier says, bringing the phone to his ear.

  “I think they’re leaving,” Parada says from somewhere in San Francisco.

  “For here?”

  “I don’t know. It was brought up like they had discussed it before, elsewhere, so I don’t know the details.”

  Javier sighs, closing his eyes, controlling the rising flames in his chest. “Well tell me what details you do fucking know.”

  “The girl, Violet, is being followed. She was attacked.”

  Javier raises his glass to his lips and pauses. “By who?”

  “I don’t know. Not by one of ours.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. I’ve talked to our men. One had been stationed outside her house. He never saw her leave but she must have at some point. The attack happened on her way back from a nightclub.”

  “Fucking amateurs.” Javier’s fingers curl around the glass so hard he thinks he could just shatter it. “That’s who I have working for me, nothing but idiots.”

  “She escaped. Fought him off. She doesn’t know who he was either and they brought up that she was followed a few weeks ago by some, I don’t know, albino guy? Some white guy. Really white.”

  “The fuck? How white can these Americans get?”

  Parada continues. “She went straight to Vicente after this happened. Didn’t go to the police, didn’t go home.”

  Javier manages a cold smile. “So she really does trust him.”

  He clears his throat. “Yes and no. He told her a bit of the truth.”

  “And that is?”

  “That his father runs a drug cartel.”

  “Oh fucking hell.” He rests his head on the desk.

  Vicente, Vicente you stupid, stupid boy.

  “Don’t worry,” Parada says. “It only helped. The honesty. She doesn’t care about the cartel, or that he lied, or that he is Vicente Bernal. It means nothing to her. And now they both trust each other. I think they might leave within three weeks.”

  “Did they say that?”

  “She said she wanted to get through a few weeks of school, finish the semester.”

  “And we don’t know where they would be going?”

  “I’ll find out soon enough. She mentioned Vegas and he laughed. So as it stands, I don’t think she knows they’re going to Mexico.”

  Javier rubs at the line between his eyes. It’s impossible to smooth out. “And they might not go at all. I obviously can’t predict Vicente as well as I thought I could. For once, he’s taking his sweet fucking time.”

  “That’s because of all the sweet fucking,” Parada jokes.

  Javier grows scarily silent for a moment, then says with utmost sincerity, “You know that’s my flesh and blood you’re referring to.”

  “Si, patron.”

  “Right. Well it doesn’t matter. Wherever they go, we will follow. If he wants to fall in love while getting his dick sucked, it will only make his own life harder, not mine.”

  “I’ll report back tomorrow,” Parada says before hanging up.

  Javier sighs and leans back in his chair, downing the remainder of tequila in his glass.

  He starts planning what he’s going to do with pretty little Violet McQueen
.

  It won’t be easy, especially if Vicente has no plans to bring her to him in the end.

  But it will be worth it.

  It always is.

  Chapter Twenty

  Violet

  Two weeks.

  I just have to make it two more weeks before I can even think about leaving with Vicente.

  After the attack, it’s all I can think about.

  Despite what Vicente told me about him.

  His terrible truth.

  That he’s the son of an infamous drug lord.

  He’s still the only person I feel safe with.

  Maybe because even though I saw his guns and I know his secrets, I know that he has the means to protect me so much more than anyone else has. Not only that, but he has the means to teach me how to protect myself. I got lucky in my fighting. Next time, I want to put a bullet in the man’s head.

  The only thing that scares me is how good that might feel.

  I had to tell my parents that the bruise on my face was because I got too drunk and hit my head on the side of the table. I made it into a funny story, roping Ginny into it without her knowledge.

  I know they don’t believe me, though.

  Even worse, I know they think it’s Vicente.

  Despite how much concealer I piled on the bruise, you should have seen my father’s face when he saw it the next morning. I swear he was going to start tearing the house apart. It was the same wild, nearly demonic look that Vicente had when I showed up at his hotel. I guess I should feel relieved that two of the most important men in my life feel that protective over me but relief is hard to come by these days.

  I worry that I should have come clean with my parents. But they would have made me go to the police. And now that I know that Vicente has ties to a drug cartel, I can’t risk it. I don’t want to put him in any danger and there are a lot of cops and law enforcement out there that are just dying for this sort of thing. Any excuse to deport someone, regardless of what citizen they are.

  I also know that if I had told my parents that I was attacked, they would never ever let me out of their sight again. Which would make leaving here a lot harder.