Hexed

Venesa goes back to her apartment to pack. She asks Fisher to take care of her poisonous stonefish pets in the basement. He also promised to run the Lair for her. As she packs, she finds a birthday gift from Enzo that she forgot to open. It is a seashell necklace like the one he offered to buy her during their first visit to the boardwalk. Accompanying it is a note that reads, “To making memories” (319).

She decides to go to New York to tell Enzo all the secrets she’s been hiding, but she also plans to return and exact revenge: “I am coming back. And I’m going to take everything from my uncle the same way he’s taken everything from me. (319).

After the disastrous engagement party, Enzo spends the night at the B&B where Scotty is staying. The following day, he returns to the mansion, intending to call off the wedding. Outside Trent’s office door, he hears Trent talking to Aria. It becomes obvious that Aria was supposed to control Enzo. She insists that she wants to marry him even though she wasn’t the one who saved him.

Enzo is shocked at the news but also liberated, thinking, “I feel betrayal for sure, but more than that, I feel…relieved. I can finally let go of the tether tying me to her. The debt I owed her is fake. It doesn’t exist” (323). He immediately decides to return to New York.

Shortly after coming back to the city, Enzo goes to his father’s home. Carlos has already received the news of the broken engagement and is displeased with his son. Enzo apologizes, but Carlos points a gun at him. Enzo reminds him that no one will be there to watch Carlos’s back if he kills his only remaining son. Finally relenting, Carlos dismisses him.

Venesa rents a room in a cheap hotel in New York and tracks down Enzo’s whereabouts. She winds up in a bar that he owns, where she runs into Scotty. Following Scotty downstairs, she finds herself in a fight club and sees Enzo standing across the room from her.

Enzo senses Venesa’s presence even before he sees her and immediately rushes to her side. Venesa says that she has something important to tell Enzo. The two go to Enzo’s office for some privacy and begin kissing. This shortly leads to another sexual encounter. Afterward, Enzo notices that Venesa is wearing the seashell necklace he bought her.

Enzo loses no time installing Venesa in a suite at the Marino Hotel. While he’s away at work, she receives a visit from Bastien. He says that he’s a double agent, nominally working for Trent but worried about Venesa’s welfare. He admits that he knew Trent orchestrated the murder of Venesa’s mother. Trent also destroyed all evidence that the estate was to be left to her, but Venesa is the rightful heir to the Trent family holdings. Bastien says that he found some evidence hidden in the backing of the trident painting.

That same morning, Gio calls on Enzo at his office. The two men speculate that Carlos might have put contracts out on both his sons. So far, Gio can’t find any trace of Aria’s Uncle Frankie from New Jersey. Enzo orders him to keep looking.

A few minutes later, Carlos arrives, and Gio leaves. Enzo questions whether his father knew that Frankie was Aria’s uncle or that she tapped his phone while he was in South Carolina. Carlos feigns innocence, but Enzo isn’t fooled: “I don’t know much about my father’s state of mind, but I know when he’s lying. And he’s been lying straight to my face this entire time” (367).

Enzo spends a few minutes pondering his father’s duplicity before his assistant, Jessica, interrupts. She’s trying to keep someone from disturbing him: Scotty and Bastien have arrived with Venesa. Jessica treats Venesa rudely, and Enzo fires her on the spot. Jessica insists that she takes orders only from Carlos, but Enzo orders Scotty and Bastien to escort her out of the building. 

Venesa says that she needs to tell Enzo something important, but they both grow distracted and have sex instead. Afterward, Venesa says that Trent threw her out. She also explains that he had her mother killed. She asks Enzo to help her reclaim her inheritance, saying, “I want to burn him to the ground and take his kingdom for myself” (382). Enzo happily agrees to back her up.

Later that day, Scotty, Bastien, Enzo, and Venesa travel to Brooklyn, where Enzo grew up. He’s supposed to meet Gio there, but he wants Venesa to see his childhood neighborhood. Enzo stops to chat with an elderly woman, who thanks him for helping the community. Enzo wants Venesa to move into his apartment, but she dislikes the idea of sleeping in a bed that Aria occupied. Enzo cryptically says that he’ll take care of the problem.

Gio drives up to meet them, having found Frankie Bianchi. Venesa is surprised because Bianchi is her dead aunt’s maiden name, so Frankie must be Aria’s uncle. He’s been tied up in the basement of the local butcher shop.

At the butcher shop, Venesa reflects on her uncle: “I never knew Frankie Bianchi existed, but I know I want him dead the moment I see him. He looks just like my aunt Antonella, and I’ve always hated her. She was the Wicked Witch to my Dorothy, the evil stepmother to my Cinderella” (391).

Frankie is strung up by his wrists in a meat locker. He’s already been tortured, but Venesa injects amphetamines to make him talkative. He admits that he’s been working with Trent for two decades. He introduced Trent to Carlos because Carlos wanted to contract out some killings that couldn’t be traced to him. He then reveals that Carlos, via Trent, was behind Enzo’s attempted murder.

Enzo is shocked: “Knowing my father was the one behind my attempted murder? That I threatened him so much he tried to take me out and lied about it for the past year? That’s something I can’t forgive” (400). Frankie demands that Enzo let him die with honor, and the latter complies by shooting him in the head, execution-style.

The following morning, in Venesa’s hotel room, Enzo awakens from a dream about the night he was almost murdered. He saw brown eyes hovering over him, not blue ones, and he realizes that Venesa must have been there along with Aria. His suspicions roused, he wonders if she was his attempted assassin.

When he confronts her, Venesa admits that she saved his life but says she didn’t know anything about the intended hit. Enzo is relieved: “I let out a disbelieving chuckle. ‘So this whole time I felt chained to a life with a woman who saved me, and it was…you? I should have been chaining myself to you’” (404).

Enzo leaves shortly afterward. Gio set up a meeting with the De Luca crime family, which operates in New Jersey. He and Gio go to a warehouse in Brooklyn where Matteo De Luca and his consigliere are waiting for them. Enzo explains that he wants to restore the old arrangement where all the families have a say in how the business is run. He’s willing to eliminate his father since he is paranoid, violent, and power-hungry. De Luca agrees to back up Enzo’s play.