Page 1 of Born Sinner
Chapter One
Sam
Obsession is a loaded gun.
The bullets started firing the moment she stepped into my party uninvited in a backless dress and heels, wearing confidence as a color and her smile as a taunt. Now, she’s piling into my Arabescato marble kitchen with her girlfriends and tossing interested glances my way.
She wouldn’t be this reckless if she knew who I was.
Danger has a scent, Lola Carrera, and I’m fucking wearing it.
She tries biting her lower lip and flashing those baby blues at me, like every other chick in this place. When I don't react, her smile slips and she turns back to her friends.
Not me.
I never turn away.
For the next thirty minutes or so, I watch the rise and fall of her cigarette as shitty conversation and bad music sucks everything else around us into a whirlpool of mediocrity. I see it all—even from halfway across the crowded room of a five-thousand-square-foot apartment that a trust fund puked up for some over-privileged offspring.
Namely me.
When she sparks up her fifth Marlboro—chain-smoking tonight, Lola?—I track the silver trails to her mouth again, noting the shallow inhale and the subtle wrinkling of her nose. She doesn’t like the taste, but she’s playing a role at this college that demands an addiction.Too bad it’s not the one her daddy sells.
I note every head tilt, every flick of her hair, every curve of those luscious ruby lips. I do it all with the same sick fascination I’ve been fighting since the day she arrived on New Jersey’s Rutgers campus at the start of the semester. We’ve never spoken, we’ve never even touched, but you could say she fucks my mind on the regular.
I hate her.
I want her.
Taking another swig of beer, I focus on what she really is to throw cold water on my obsession. She’s a two-faced innocent—a name I’ve been taught to hate all my life. A name I had every intention of exposing when she and her cunt brother, Santi Carrera, least expected it.
That was before I laid eyes on her.
“You want in on this, Sam?”
Lucas hands me a lit stub, and I accept it without thanks—declaring my dangerous mood to the world with a couple of savage tokes. Unlike Lola, I prefer to savor the burn of weed and nicotine instead of exhaling it fast like it’s a bad word on a priest’s tongue. I like the way it fills up every space in my lungs, because nothing else in my life will ever feel this whole.
“María! Hey, María!”
A loud voice rises above the music, making Dua Lipa marginally more bearable. We turn to find some prick named Troy Davis pushing through the party with a clear destination.
Her.
Yes, her. Because “Lola” isn’t the name she trades under on American soil. “Lola” gets left behind the minute she crosses the border to disguise the fact that her daddy heads up one of the biggest drug cartels in Mexico.I'm betting her clique of virgin suicides would be kissing a new ass pretty damn fast if they knew she was a bona fide cartel princess.
But I know…
Let’s just say I have connections, no matter how hard my senator stepfather tries to keep them from me.
“Aww, she’s sofuckable.” Lucas follows my gaze as my palm curls into a fist. “Word on the street is that her V-card is as good as her credit rating. You should totally hit it, bro. You’ve crushed more cherries on this campus than the juice bar.”
“Are you still here?” I flick the dying stub at his chest, and he jumps back with a yelp, brushing imaginary ash from his designer shirt.
“What thehell?”
“Relax,” I murmur lazily. “I’m sure Daddy will buy you a new one if you ask him nicely.”
Lucas’s stepfather is a big-shot politician in Washington too. We both have bank accounts that reflect the need for us to stay the fuck out of the headlines.
