Black Hearts

  Just like tonight.

  Poke, poke, poke the beast.

  Ben is the first to offer his hand and a genuine smile. “Hey, man,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”

  “I’ve heard many things about you,” I tell him. “All good.”

  Ben gives Violet a quick smile, even though there’s still something strained about his actions. Something is on his mind.

  But it’s none of my business.

  Camden, however…

  I stick out my hand toward him and am so fucking tempted to give him a little wink, but I manage to control myself.

  “Hi,” he says in a deep voice, his eyes narrowing slightly as he shakes my hand. At least he gives a good shake. Holding a tattoo gun must be good for something. “You must be the guy who came into the store asking about getting a tattoo.”

  “What?” Violet asks.

  He’s a suspicious one, isn’t he? I give her a smile and shrug, covering up fast. “After I found out what your father did, I had to go check it out for myself.” Thankfully her father doesn’t realize I came in there before I even met Violet. “Your father wasn’t there, of course.”

  “It was Lloyd,” he says to Violet before looking back at me. “What were you thinking of getting?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “I thought a mirlo. A blackbird.” Violet starts to grin. “Mixed with Santa Muerte, the Saint of Death.” Her grin falters.

  “Charming,” Camden muses.

  “Sounds fucking rad,” Ben says. “Dad, you would do a hella good version of that. You should do it for free.”

  Camden gives him a dirty look.

  I try to look appeasing. “I’m still thinking about it, don’t worry. Perhaps we’ll talk more after dinner.”

  “Camden.” Ellie’s hushed yet urgent voice comes from the living room. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Camden nods at us and then tells Ben to get me a drink before walking down the hall, disappearing into the living room to be with his wife.

  I can’t hear anything beyond their hushed murmurs, but I know exactly what she’s saying to him.

  Doesn’t he look just like Javier?

  I smirk to myself.

  “Do you want a beer or should we perhaps crack open that bottle of tequila?”

  My attention goes back to Ben who is nodding at my hands, eyes looking brighter than they have so far.

  I give him the bottle. “Here. It’s for you. Go nuts and I’ll have a glass too.”

  Ben happily takes it and sets about getting glasses. “How about you, Vi?”

  “Sure,” she says, letting out a light sigh. “Getting drunk should help this awkward bullshit.”

  Ben laughs, setting the glasses out. “Oh, come on.” He nods at me. “Vicente seems to be handling it fine. Sorry, man. We should probably have warned you ahead of time that our parents can be fucking weird.”

  “Weird is good,” I tell him, noting that his hands shake slightly as he pours the drinks.

  “He’s already met Mom,” Violet says. “And that didn’t go well.”

  “Fuck,” says Ben, handing us our drinks. “Well, bottoms up, then. The only way out of this night is through.”

  I gulp the tequila down. It burns beautifully. It reminds me of drinking with my father in his office, the only times he’s ever shown me his humanity.

  I push those memories away into the dark.

  “I should probably tell you now,” I say, wiping my mouth and holding out my glass for more. “That it’s supposed to be sipping tequila. It’s no Jose Cuervo. Add a bit of ice and go slow.”

  “Whoops,” Ben says, opening the freezer. “Sorry, man.”

  “Not a problem. I think we all needed that.”

  “Fucking right,” Ben mutters to himself, placing a few cubes in the glasses.

  The three of us end up drinking and talking in the kitchen for a good thirty minutes or so, Ben taking care of the cooking, before Camden comes back to the room, this time with Ellie beside him.

  I shoot them a quick glance over my shoulder. They’ve both got determined looks on their faces, as if they had a long chat and decided to be grown-ups about the whole thing.

  Ellie, he only looks like him. And not even that much. He’s not Javier’s son. He’s long gone out of our lives.

  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 mothe
r 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?”

  He seems to weigh that question. He walks down the steps until he’s right beside me and takes it from my fingers. “Sometimes,” he says, inhaling deep. Too deep. He coughs and hands it back to me. “I remember now why I don’t.”

  I watch him carefully as I take another drag. Though there’s something very genial about him, when you look past the build and the tattoos, I think it would be wrong of me to underestimate him. There’s a flash of something in his eyes, a way that he moves that makes me think he’s a man with a lot of demons, and those kind of men are nothing if not unpredictable.

  “You play any music, Vicente?” he asks me, eyes searching the street as if there’s something out there other than fog and darkness.

  “No,” I tell him.

  “Don’t have a musical family?”

  “Not even the slightest. You?”

  He nods and then grimaces. “Yes. No. I did. Used to have a band. But who didn’t? Growing up in California, especially in the Coachella Valley, it was practically a rite of passage.”

  “That must have been a long time ago.”

  His gaze focuses on me sharply. “It was,” he says, then relaxes. “Anyway, I jam now with some buddies that live in Twin Peaks. You know the area?”

  “Just the TV show.” I notice him staring at the cigarette and hand it back to him, wondering where he’s going with all this. He doesn’t strike me as an idle chit-chat kind of man. “I’m still getting my bearings in this city.”

  “And how long do you plan on staying here?” He takes another drag, the look in his eyes hardening.

  Now I see.

  “I don’t know,” I admit.

  “Vicente, may I ask you a question?” He exhales slowly while waiting for my answer, the smoke blowing in my face. It’s hard to read if it’s intentional or not. From the way my hackles are rising, I’m going to assume it was.

  “Sure.”

  “What are your intentions with my daughter?”

  I crack a smile. “Intentions? What is this, the 1950s?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  His voice isn’t so jovial anymore. I want to remind him that Violet isn’t a teenager and can make her own decisions, and their input into our relationship is nonexistent. But those demons of his are winking at me, daring me to slip up.

  And he’s holding on to my cigarette like a hostage.

  “My intentions for Violet are pretty much what you would expect. I like her a great deal and wish to keep seeing her.”

  “And then what? Why are you here?”

  “Why am I here?”

  “I’ve seen your type before, you know.”

  I squint at him, my voice growing rough. “My type? Do you mean Mexican?”

  He wants to say yes, because of my father. I want him to, just so I can call him racist.

  “I mean the type who use sweet, trusting girls like Violet.”

  “No offense, Mr. McQueen, but it’s up to your sweet, trusting daughter to make those choices for herself. Also, if I were you, I’d get to know her a little better. She might be sweet but she’s no broken bird. Her wings are mending and soon she’ll fly the fuck away from here.”

  He flinches slightly. I’ve got him where it hurts. He knows this, deep down, that she’s lost and looking for any excuse to leave and spread her wings. He knows she’ll leave one day and never look back.

  And I’ll be the one to give her the push.

  “What are you guys doing?” We both look up to see Violet poking her head out the door. “The tequila is getting cold,” she jokes uneasily.

  Camden looks at me and pastes a fake smile on his broad face. “We’ll have to discuss that tattoo later.” Then he flicks the half-smoked cigarette onto the middle of the street and turns and jogs up the stairs and into the house, squeezing Violet’s shoulder as he goes in.

  Violet watches him and then comes down the stairs to stand beside me. “I need to ask you a favor,” she says, looking up at me with a pleading look in her eyes.

  “What?” I ask, grabbing her hand and kissing the back of it. “Anything for you.”

  “Can I take a rain check on tonight?” she asks. “I’m just going to stay here.”

  She was supposed to come back to the hotel with me after dinner for a night of long-overdue fucking.

  I immediately feel a punch to my gut, a sour arrow digging deep. “Why?” I ask slowly, unable to keep the edge out of my voice. Have her parents turned her against me already?

  “Ben just told me something. I need time to process it.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “I can’t say…well, I don’t want to. It’s complicated and I need to talk to him more. He’s pretty upset.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Me too. I just didn’t expect…anyway, I won’t keep you in the dark. I just want to make sure we know what we’re dealing with first before I tell you.”

  I have to admit, this stings. More than I thought it would.

  Perhaps she doesn’t trust me after all.

  Perhaps she sees through everything.

  Maybe she knows.

  I stare at her for a few fervent seconds before I cup her small, beautiful face in my hands and search her dark eyes for something, anything, still left for me.

  “I’m not leaving you that easily,” I tell her, my voice growing hoarse.

  “Vicente,” she says softly, “I’m not leaving you either. It’s just for tonight. Family stuff. Please don’t take it personally. I have to respect Ben. He told me not to tell you anything.”

  That eases my heart a bit.

  But just a bit.

  I kiss her hard, taking her breath away, sliding my tongue over hers and hoping to leave a mark in the deepest parts of her. My need for her seems to gro
w by the second.

  “You’re mine, Violet,” I murmur roughly against her mouth, my fingers pressing into her cheekbones. “I don’t care how that sounds, but it’s the truth. You belong to me.”

  Her fingers wrap around my shirt, holding on tight. I can feel her heart beating against mine and I’m struck by how strong it sounds and how fragile it is.

  It frightens me.

  The danger she could be in just by being with me.

  The danger of loss.

  I take in a deep breath and step back. I need to find my footing in all of this.

  “Okay,” I whisper to her. “I’ll go.”

  Her eyes widen. “You don’t have to go now!”

  I nod. “I should. Go, be with your brother tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  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.