Forbidden Hearts (Hearts of Sinners #1)

Chapter 1

Alonzo

TWO YEARS AGO

Terror spreads through his face as blood and sweat pool in the valleys of his forehead.

“I had nothing to do with it, man,” he says, looking up at me. His voice quivers under his trembling lips.

“You’re in the game. In this life, we are all bound by blood,” I say, glancing at my two younger brothers, Santiago and Gustavo, before looking at the man kneeling before us. His arms are tied behind his back. “The sins of my brothers are mine to bear, just as the sins of your brothers are yours to bear, Hugo.”

“You don’t believe that, man,” Hugo says. He lifts a knee to get up, but Gustavo puts a hand on his shoulder and forces him down on both knees again. A plum of dust lifts when Hugo’s knee slams on the ground. He grunts and tugs at the ropes around his wrists. “Please, you don’t believe that. It’s insane! I’m me, my own person! I had nothing to do with what my brothers did!”

“All you Romeros have tainted blood,” I say. “Everything you touch turns to shit. But that ends tonight. You are the last of your lineage. After tonight, the world will finally be free of Romeros.”

I nod in Gustavo’s direction. He pulls out a revolver and tosses it on the ground in front of Hugo Romero.

“These are the rules,” Gustavo says. “When we untie you, you’ll grab the gun and run to those bushes over there.” He points at the bushes up the isolated trail.

We are in the middle of Nowhere, Texas, about to dispose of Hugo, the last member of the Romero Family. The sun is dipping over the horizon, but it’s still hotter than the devil’s pit.

“I don’t understand,” Hugo says. His terrified eyes jump between my brothers and me.

“There is a small box of ammo on the other side of that bush,” Gustavo continues. “It’s got three bullets. You have three shots, one for each of us, so make them count.”

Hugo drops his eyes to the gun in front of him. He still can’t believe this is happening.

“Please,” he says, looking up at me again. “I had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t even in the country when it happened! Please, man, just let me go. We’ll pretend this never happened.”

Pretend this never happened? Am I supposed to pretend the anger that’s been eating me alive for the past year doesn’t exist? That Esmeralda wasn’t…

Fuck that.

I kick the gun closer to him. He looks away to avoid the uplift of dust.

“Please,” he says again, this time in a calmer voice.

My brothers and I decided Hugo’s fate long before we brought him out to the desert. There is no room for negotiation.

“I hope we don’t have to state the obvious,” Santiago chimes in. “But in case we do, that gun isn’t loaded right now. Those three bullets Gustavo mentioned are your ticket to freedom.”

Hugo’s eyes return to the gun again. His lips are still trembling.

Unlike his brothers, Hugo isn’t a killer. He hasn’t murdered people in cold blood to expand the Romero cartel, but there is as much blood on his hands as on his brother’s.

Hugo is the youngest of the three Romero brothers. He cleaned their dirty money and their many crime scenes. Even though he wasn’t hacking off heads, he was paying off police departments on both sides of the border to turn a blind eye to his brothers’ violence.

“Untie him,” I tell Santiago.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Hugo’s eyes widen. “I’m not going to fight you. If you want our money, I can tell you where it is. There is a shit-ton of money that hasn’t been laundered yet, piles and piles for you and your brothers. If you let me go, I can tell you exactly where it is!”

Santiago looks at me as if I’m actually going to consider the pathetic offer.

I’m not.

“Untie him,” I say again. “I want to get home soon.”

The sun is now under the horizon. The orange sky surrendered to the stars, and the wilderness around us slowly faded into the dark.

Gustavo’s car’s headlights point at the bush with the ammo box and illuminate our immediate surroundings. Around us, everything else is in complete darkness.

“Jesus, man, please! You can have millions! Please, don’t do this!” Hugo rocks back and forth. His body is probably releasing adrenaline now that he knows there is no way out. His desperate eyes bore holes into mine.

“Do it,” I tell Santiago. He pulls out a knife, leans behind Hugo, and cuts him loose.

Hugo falls forward. His hands land on either side of the gun, and his face hovers inches above the revolver.

“I don’t want to do it,” Hugo says. “Please, have mercy.”

Mercy?

My brothers and I are known for a lot of things, but mercy isn’t one of them.

“I’m going to count to five,” I say, pulling out my gun. “Then I’m going to start shooting, so you better grab that gun and start running.”

Hugo looks at me again. The stress bulges his eyes. He looks pathetic.

“One,” I start.

He grabs the gun and runs straight for the bush with the ammo box.

“He’s faster than he looks,” Santiago chuckles. “Should we take him out now?”

“No,” I say. “Let him get to the bullets. Let him think he has a chance.”

???

About an hour later, I toss the last patch of dirt over Hugo’s grave. We are hours away from the nearest town. His body will never be found, just like his brother’s graves will never be found, either.

We load our shovels into the back of Gustavo’s car and drive home.

“What now?” Santiago asks after about fifteen minutes of driving in silence through the desert. He’s been shuffling in the backseat since we got in the car, no doubt working to get something off his chest. “You took out the last of the Romeros. Are you ready to get back to work for Nuestra Casa ?”

Gustavo glances at me before quickly returning his eyes to the road.

I took a year’s break from my job as an enforcer to hunt down the Romero brothers. In my absence, Gustavo had taken over my duties as an enforcer. While the job keeps him busy, I think Gustavo enjoys it more than being head of security and being shut in an office all day.

No.

I’m not ready to return to work for Nuestra Casa , the most powerful crime family in Texas. After all, working for them angered the Romeros in the first place and drove them to do what they did.

What they did…

I can’t even bring myself to think about it. For the past year, I’ve been in a dark mental place, even by my own standards. Revenge was the only thing I looked forward to when I went to bed each night. But now that my quest to rid the Earth of Romeros is complete…what now?

Looking out the car window, an idea crept into my head. Maybe it’s the stillness of the dark desert that finally allows me to hear the thoughts rattling behind my brain more clearly. They are dangerous thoughts, thoughts that threaten my entire identity.

“I’m not going back,” I say in a moment of clarity. “I think I’m ready to retire.”

Santiago chuckles. When he sees I’m not laughing, he says, “But you’re only thirty. You have a whole career ahead of you! Are you serious?”

“I am.”

“Is this because of…”

“Don’t say her name!” I growl.

Taking a deep breath, I remind myself that what the Romeros did was entirely my fault. My fault. Nobody else’s.

With a calmer voice, I say, “Just don’t say her name.”

Gustavo doesn’t enter the conversation. His eyes are steady on the dark road ahead.

“ Perdóname, hermano, ” Santiago says. “I didn’t mean… It’s just that I can’t imagine you ever retiring. You love your job too much. It’s who you are. It’s in your nature.”

I do enjoy it, and it is in my nature. But maybe it’s time for a change.

“So what are you going to do now?” he asks after I don’t respond.

What am I going to do now? When I joined Nuestra Casa , I started as a low-level drug dealer to pay for college. I worked on my art degree and dreamed of becoming a world-renowned artist.

I was young and naive back then. I thought I could become a millionaire by selling art to snobs with deep pockets. Still, beyond those shallow dreams, I always enjoyed art. It was relaxing.

Even after climbing the ranks of Nuestra Casa and becoming the person I am today, I continued to paint as a form of relaxation. I never told anybody in Nuestra Casa about my pastime passion, not even my own brothers. It was a secret I only shared with Esmeralda.

Every so often, especially on nights when I returned home with a bloody face or bruised limbs, Esmeralda would beg me to stop working for Nuestra Casa . She would tell me we already had enough money to spend in several lifetimes and that I should focus on my art.

I should’ve listened to her.

Sometimes, I wonder what she would say if she knew I hadn’t touched a paintbrush in the past year.

She would probably tell me that’s why I’ve been so stressed that I struggle to sleep at night. She was always right about these things.

So what am I going to do now in retirement? What Esmeralda always wanted me to do.