Black Hearts

  Past my house.

  Because even though I should go there after what happened, I don’t.

  I’m afraid.

  I’m afraid that whoever that was, they have something to do with my parents. Or Sophia. Or whoever sent my father that envelope.

  I don’t feel safe.

  I get in a cab instead, breathless and fidgeting in the backseat. The music the cabbie is playing it too loud and jarring yet I can’t find the words to tell him to turn it off. I feel like I’m in a video game, except the pain on my cheek reminds me that it’s very real.

  I should go to the cops. Should file a report.

  Should do this, should do that.

  But I can’t. Because I feel there’s only one person who can help me, one person who is unbiased and impartial.

  The outsider looking in.

  Vicente.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Vicente

  I think everyone has a little thing they like to do when they get nervous.

  With Violet, she likes to pick off her nail polish. Or play with her hair. Or scratch her arms until they’re red.

  With me, I like to clean my guns.

  It’s as soothing and banal as I’m sure doing the dishes is. If I ever feel the itch of worry, if I’m unable to ignore the anxiety building in my chest, I just take out my guns. Admire them. Then take them apart. It shows that something can become a total mess, rendered powerless, but all you have to do is clean them, make them more efficient, and put them back together again. It’s a puzzle with the same results every time.

  I have them laid out on the bed, my .45, my 9MM, and .38, when there’s a knock at the door. I freeze and stare at the .38 in pieces. I don’t have time to put it back together, so I grab the 9MM and keep it at my side as I quickly exit the bedroom, shut the door, and creep down the hall to the main one.

  I half expect to see my father on the other side, smiling at me through the keyhole. It would be about time he showed up, actually.

  I’m shocked to see Violet. We didn’t have plans to see each other tonight – she wanted a break to be with her friend and I needed the time to think.

  I quickly shove the gun into my waistband, pulling my shirt out over it, and swing open the door.

  “Violet?” I say as she pushes past me into the room, tears streaming down her face.

  Her face.

  Is she hurt?

  Cold swells in my stomach.

  I quickly lock the door and follow her into the living room, pulling her to me.

  She’s in near hysterics, breathing fast and hard, sobs that rip through her body. Her hair hangs in her face so while I grab her arm to steady her, I tip up her chin to look her over.

  Terror seizes my throat.

  The side of her cheek is red and blue, reaching from the corner of her eye across her cheekbone to her ear and up into the temple.

  “What the fuck happened?” I cry out, my fingers reaching for her.

  She flinches, turns away. She tries to speak but can’t.

  I don’t know what to do. Part of me is stunned by the horror I feel. Part of me is angry at myself for not being there to prevent this.

  Another part, the darkest part, wants to tear the world to pieces and find the person who did this to her. Because someone did.

  Someone did.

  God help me if it had anything to do with my father.

  “Violet.” I hold onto her tight. “Please. Tell me what happened.”

  She can only shake her head.

  Fuck.

  I leave her and go to the kitchen, wrapping up ice cubes in a dish cloth. I take her over to the couch and sit her down, placing the cloth in her hand. “Here. Hold this to your cheek. Gently.” I then grab tequila off of the counter and a glass and pour her some. “Here, straight back.”

  Her hands shake so much that she has to use both of them to cup the glass and do the shot.

  My fucking heart is breaking.

  Tiny shattered pieces.

  And that’s when I realize I am not my father at all.

  Not even close.

  Because even though I planned to take Violet to Mexico, even though I was fully aware of what would happen to her, seeing her like this, I know I can’t do it.

  She’s been hit in the face and it feels like I’m the one who’s bleeding on the inside. What my father would do to her is far, far worse. I’ve heard what he did to a man called Esteban Mendoza, and I never wanted to hear it again.

  I feel vomit rising in my throat and try to keep it together.

  She needs me to keep it together.

  I sit on the coffee table across from her and grasp her hands in mine, holding them tight, ignoring the jab of the gun into my hip. “When you’re ready,” I say gently. “Just breathe. In and out. I’ve got you now. You’re going to be okay.”

  That brings a bitter laugh out of her. “Okay?” she peers at me through sorrowful eyes. “How is this going to be okay? I was fucking attacked walking home and he wasn’t your run-of-the-mill random mugger.”

  “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  She shakes her head, a whimper escaping her lips. “Okay. Okay I was walking back from the Castro.”

  “You walked? For fuck’s sake, Violet!” I explode, nearly getting up. “You knew there was someone following you a few weeks back and you walked?”

  She lifts up her head. Her eyes are blades. “I was an idiot! All right? I walked. And then when I was tired I decided to call a car but my phone died.”

  I don’t care that she’s looking at me like she wants to murder me. I can’t believe she would put herself at risk like that.

  She goes on, looking down at her hands, picking off the olive green nail polish until it rains down on the floor in flakes. “So I was walking and I was just a few blocks from home and suddenly I was grabbed, a gun was held to my head.” She pauses, drawing in a deep breath. “I didn’t know what to do, I was so shocked. He dragged me over to his van.”

  “He had a van?”

  “Black. No windows. I didn’t see the make or the license plate or anything. I barely saw him.”

  “Was it the same guy as before, the albino one?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t…I wish I could say I saw him but my brain was just figuring out how to live. And I figured he was alone so once he reached for the door to shove me inside I decided to hit him.”

  Pride knocks into me. “You hit him?”

  “I had to. Do or die. We fought. I broke his nose. I was able to get a kick to his face before I ran away.”

  Good god. I don’t think I’ve ever had a sexier sight in my head, my dear blackbird fighting off an abductor and living to tell the tale. My cock throbs mercilessly and I have to stifle a groan that wants to escape through my lips.

  Now is not the time.

  Still, I can’t help myself. “Tell me more about how you fought him off.”

  She smiles which in turn makes her wince. “Please don’t tell me this is turning you on. I know the signs.”

  I attempt to look innocent. I don’t do a very good job.

  “While he reached for the door, I bit into his hand and then managed to get my elbow in his face, which obviously caught him off-guard. Then I got him on the nose. Upward strike. Broke it. I felt it break.”

  I lick my lips. “And how did it feel? To hurt him?”

  She takes a moment before she speaks, looking at me, troubled. “Honestly? It felt good. Really good.”

  A smile slowly slides across my face.

  There’s a hunger burning in her eyes that wasn’t there before.

  I would do anything to fan those flames, give her strength to burn the world to the ground and rise from it.

  “Then I kicked him the face. I mean, I almost missed. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in good shape, it’s just by luck that I was able to get my leg up that high.”

  “He must have not been that tall.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” she mus
es, brow furrowed. “Maybe two inches taller.”

  I think to Parada’s height. Like most Mexicans, he’s not especially tall. He didn’t luck out like I did. But grabbing her on the street and into a black van? Working alone? That doesn’t sound like Parada at all. Once again I’m at a loss as to who this person could be.

  I do know I’ll kill him once I find him.

  Drive a gun so far up his ass he’ll be spitting bullets.

  Then I’ll pull the trigger.

  “After that, I ran,” she goes on, her breathing now returning to normal. “I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t want to go home, I thought…maybe they were waiting for me there. Maybe it wasn’t safe. This has to do with my parents, Vicente, this can’t be random.”

  “It’s not random. Nothing that has happened to you is random.”

  She nods slowly, eyes focused on nothing.

  “So these men are after me because of my parents,” she says flatly. She brings her gaze up to mine, pain in her eyes. “Or are they after me because of you?”

  I stare back at her blankly.

  What does she know, what does she know?

  Maybe she knows more than she’s saying.

  Maybe those were my father’s men after all.

  Changing tactics to throw me off.

  “I don’t understand,” I finally say.

  She straightens up, her eyes still searching mine, trying to read me. For once I fear how intuitive she is.

  “The moment you showed up in my life, trying to join my class…one minute everything was fine, then you appeared.”

  I can’t let her run away with this.

  “Violet, you’re scared and looking into things that aren’t there. You’re overreacting.”

  “Fuck you!” she suddenly yells, popping up to her feet. “Fuck you, I am not overreacting, I was nearly fucking abducted, this guy hit me with his god damn gun! I’m looking into everything that I can!”

  “Calm down.”

  “I will not fucking calm down!” she throws her arms out and starts storming off.

  I jump to my feet and go after her.

  By the time I grab both her biceps, twirling her around, I feel the gun dislodge from my waistband. It’s too late to stop it.

  It clatters to the floor.

  Violet looks down.

  Recoils.

  But my grip on her is too tight.

  “Why do you have a gun?” she cries out, trying to get away.

  I won’t let her. I bring her closer to me.

  She struggles.

  I’m stronger.

  “Violet,” I say, my voice soft but firm. “Violet, listen to me.”

  “Let fucking go of me.”

  “I will when you calm down.”

  “Why do you have a gun?” she repeats. Her eyes are awash with fear as she stares at me, like she’s never seen me before.

  I close my eyes for a second, breathing in sharply through my nose, letting my breath bring me clarity.

  “I have a gun for protection. As do most people in this country.”

  “Protection from what?” She sounds nearly broken from fear. I realize under normal circumstances this might not be a big deal to her. But since she was just held at gunpoint and had that same gun driven into the beautiful bones of her cheek, she’s going to overreact.

  “Protection from people, people like the ones who did this to you.” I loosen my grip on her, put one hand to her face to brush her hair behind her ear, but she turns it sharply away from me.

  “Is that your only gun?” she asks.

  I hesitate. It tells her enough.

  She rips backward out of my grasp and I instinctively reach down to pick up the gun.

  “I’ll scream,” she warns me, backing up into the wall.

  I raise the gun in the air, letting it dangle from my finger, a sign of peace. “This gun isn’t for you, Violet.” But I don’t let go of it as I approach her.

  She’s eyeing it now. She wants to grab it from me. She thinks I’ll use it on her.

  She’s losing her mind.

  Our eyes meet.

  She opens her mouth to scream.

  I quickly place my hand over it, muffling a yelp back into her mouth while I press her into the wall. The gun wants to jab into her side, maybe below her chin. It wants to do its thing. It takes everything in me to fight it and leave it at my side.

  “Violet,” I whisper to her, my lips at her ear. I can practically hear the blood pounding in her skull. “Don’t scream. Don’t do anything you’ll regret. Just listen to me.” I pull back a few inches, staring into her eyes, counting the flecks of gold and grey in the teak. “I have guns for protection, si? They aren’t to be used against you. They’re to protect you.”

  She doesn’t believe me. Her nostrils flare above my hand as she struggles to catch her breath.

  “Do you want to see? Do you want to know the truth?”

  She nods once, hardly blinking, not daring to take her eyes off mine.

  “I’m going to take my hand away. Can you promise not to scream?”

  She shakes her head.

  For fuck’s sake.

  I sigh. “Screaming won’t help you, I hope you know that. Not because I’ll do anything to stop you. I won’t. I’ll let you leave if you want. But if you scream, people will come for me. And that’s very, very bad news indeed. If they come for me, I won’t be able to protect you.” I lean in closer, my forehead pressing against hers. “Do you understand, mirlo?”

  She grunts something that sounds like a yes.

  I step back and carefully remove my palm from her mouth.

  She immediately gulps for air.

  “Remember when I said I wasn’t a nice guy?” I say. I grab her hand and lead her over to the bedroom, opening the door.

  We step inside and she gasps at the sight of the two guns on the bed.

  “I have more at home, this is just a little travel kit,” I tell her, raising the one in my hand in front of her face, making sure she can see me eject the clip, which rattles across the floor. I toss it on the bed and then raise both my hands. “I’m not going to hurt you and you’re not going to hurt me. Deal?”

  She walks to the bed, her fingers tracing over the parts I haven’t put back together. “Who are you, Vicente?” she whispers, more to the guns than to me.

  “You want the truth? Even if the truth will scare you? Even if the truth will make you think differently of me?”

  “Yes,” she says but she’s bracing herself.

  “Fine.”

  I walk over to her and sit on the bed and finish putting my guns back together, as if she hadn’t interrupted me at all. “As I am sure you have figured out, my father has nothing to do with avocados. He’s the leader of a drug cartel.”

  I glance up at her. To her credit she doesn’t seem all that shocked.

  “Oh.”

  “And I’m the second in command.”

  She licks her lips. “I see.”

  “Do you now?”

  She shakes her head. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

  I let out a dry laugh. “Are you serious? Tell me you wouldn’t have run away or called the police.”

  She shrugs and sits down next to me, picking up a bullet and examining it. “I don’t know what I would have done.” I have to admit, it’s kind of impressive how she’s taking it all in stride. I don’t know if it’s because of her bloodline, that she’s so accepting of my way of life. Or if what’s been happening over the last few weeks has been opening her eyes to a new side of things, but whatever it is I’m grateful for it.

  “Well I can tell you that it’s the kind of thing we keep under wraps. I would be a wanted man if people knew who I was. I hate to sound cocky, but I’m very valuable.”

  She offers me a faint smile. “You love to sound cocky.”

  “True. There are a lot of people who want me dead or want me as a bargaining chip.”

  “People like the ones who have b
een following me?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. But you can see why I need to protect myself.”

  She glances over her shoulder at the wardrobe. “Those ropes weren’t really for sex, were they?”

  “Not always, no.”

  “And let me guess, you really do have duct tape.”

  “In my toiletry bag.”

  “And even though you use a tie on me, I assume you have an actual blindfold somewhere.”

  I shake my head. “No. But back home, we would use a black bag, like a potato sack.”

  She shakes a bit at that, as if it’s all just starting to sink in. “Were you sent here to kidnap me?” the words sound so soft coming out her mouth, I nearly crumble.

  “No, Violet. No one sent me here. To do anything. I came here because I wanted to, I needed to…” I’m not even sure if I’m lying anymore. “I wanted to escape, to be a better man. And then I met you…and I realized I could be.”

  “Am I supposed to believe you?”

  “Yes,” I say thickly. “You’re supposed to believe me.”

  She exhales and leans back until she’s lying on the bed beside the guns. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” Her head rolls to the side and she stares at me for a few beats. “I want you to teach me how to shoot a gun. I want you to give me one of them.”

  My heart swells, fast and warm in my chest. My beautiful blackbird, coming into her own. “That can be arranged.”

  “I want you to make me stronger.”

  “I won’t have to do much work,” I tell her, pushing the guns aside and crawling over to her.

  “I want to be able to protect myself,” she says.

  I climb on top of her, grinning as I run my fingers over her lips. “You’ll more than protect yourself. You’ll find the guy who did this to you and you’ll blow his brains out yourself.”

  She blinks hard at that, struck by the fear. Maybe the fear of how easily she can imagine it.

  I bury my mouth below her ear, licking, sucking, tasting her adrenaline.

  “I want us to go far away from here,” she murmurs.

  “I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

  “Vegas might be fun.”

  I laugh as my hands slide up under her shirt, exposing her bra. “Vegas would be fun. I’ve never been.” I pull down the cup and slowly suck her nipple into my mouth in one long draw. She squirms beneath me, her hands running through my hair and tugging.