Enzo, the novel’s other narrator, is the younger son of New York crime boss Carlos Marino. He is 29 years old when the story opens. With dark hair, blue eyes, and an athletic build, Enzo resembles his Disney counterpart (Prince Eric) and is physically attractive. Until he meets and falls in love with Venesa, he is content to follow his father’s orders and help run the family syndicate. His sense of duty extends to Aria since Enzo mistakenly thinks she saved his life and since marrying her would please his father. Despite playing the role of dutiful son, however, Enzo has desired to find true love ever since he saw the happy early years of his parents’ marriage. Enzo thus undergoes a dramatic change of heart once Venesa enters his life. Although he fights his desire for her, his priorities shift, and love becomes more important than duty. 

While also a protagonist, Enzo is just as dark a character as Venesa. He also has a liking for violence and nearly beats Venesa’s father to death. He also kills Venesa’s friend Fisher and later delivers two enemies into Venesa’s hands as engagement gifts. In the moral universe of Hexed, Enzo gets to live happily ever after, but his definition of happiness subverts fairytale convention by including sex and violence, contributing to the theme of The Unrealistic Nature of Fairy Tales.

Aria is one of several antagonists in the novel. She is Venesa’s cousin, and the two are the same age. Her (dyed) red hair, blue eyes, and attractive singing voice suit her for the role of a fairy tale princess, and her name is a close match to Disney’s Ariel. Also like Ariel, she is the apple of her father’s eye, and he will do anything to protect her. 

Despite these superficial similarities to a conventional heroine, Aria is anything but sweet and kind. She is vain and cruel, tormenting and humiliating Venesa at every turn. She is also selfish, as evidenced by the fact that Venesa succeeds in manipulating her on multiple occasions by appealing to her self-interest. For instance, she convinces Aria to save Enzo because of the publicity it will generate. 

Like Ariel, Aria loses her voice; Venesa injects poison into her vocal cords. Unlike Ariel, Aria seeks revenge, which costs her life. Aria’s vindictiveness and cruelty thus become her undoing, implying that the novel does uphold certain moral conventions.

Trent is Venesa’s uncle and Aria’s father. He is a distinguished-looking older man who runs the town of Atlantic Cove like his private kingdom (his Disney counterpart is King Triton). While Trent has many legitimate businesses, he also runs illegal operations. He employs Venesa to execute his enemies or torture valuable information out of them. Like his daughter, he is one of the novel’s main antagonists.

Trent is motivated by a thirst for power, and he will do anything to get it, including murdering his sister for her inheritance and arranging a contract on Enzo’s life. He also covets the trident painting that was passed on to his sister, Adrena, and steals it after her death. Trent underestimates Venesa and overestimates his ability to control everyone and everything in his world, as Venesa observes: “It’s adorable you think you have the power here, Uncle T. But I guess that’s always been your problem, hasn’t it? Thinking everything is about you” (492). This contributes to his downfall, as Aria betrays him, and Venesa kills him.

Carlos is the head of the New York mob. In his sixties, he is bitter and paranoid because he believes everyone wants to rob him of his power. As the novel’s third major antagonist, he is also a parallel to Trent. While Venesa’s uncle dominates and controls her in South Carolina, Carlos does the same to Enzo and his brother in New York.

The novel’s climax reveals that Carlos arranged to have both his sons murdered because he feared that they might usurp his role as head of a criminal empire. He fails to see that Enzo would have remained loyal to the end if Carlos had trusted him. Instead, he turns his son into the enemy who ends his life. Enzo says, “My pops has always been someone who loves to hear himself speak. His overconfidence has made him deluded enough to think that he’s unbreakable, impenetrable” (445-46). Like Trent, Carlos ultimately succumbs to this overconfidence.

Fisher has been Venesa’s best friend since middle school. He’s tall and gangly and wears his hair in a blue mohawk (a nod to the blue and yellow coloring of his Disney counterpart, Flounder). He dealt drugs in high school and later became an employee in a few of Trent’s shady operations. 

Fisher’s temperament is easy-going, which makes him easy to influence. Enzo pegs him as a coward, but he generally remains loyal to protecting Venesa’s interests. He even takes over management of the Lair when she flees to New York. However, Fisher’s malleability allows Aria to manipulate him into betraying Venesa, as Fisher has always been attracted to Aria and had a sexual relationship with her in high school. This betrayal nearly gets Venesa killed, but she is able to convince him that Aria lied to him about having his child.

Even though Fisher tries to do the right thing at the end of the novel, this gesture proves to be too little, too late, and Enzo shoots him. Nevertheless, Venesa holds a memorial service for her wishy-washy best friend to commemorate the good years they shared.

Bastien is Trent’s second-in-command and a Kingston family member described as Venesa’s cousin. Dark-skinned and quiet, Bastien is older than Venesa, and his defining characteristic is his skill at torture. This complements Venesa’s facility with poisons. The pair can usually force uncooperative captives to tell them whatever they want to know.

Bastien’s inspiration is the Disney character Sebastian, a crab who works for King Triton but reluctantly supports many of Ariel’s actions. Similarly, Bastien nominally supports Trent, but his sympathies lie with Venesa. At several points, he advises her to be cautious in her dealings with her uncle and not to trust him. Bastien is the person who discovers the paperwork that leaves the entire Kingston estate to Adrena and Venesa. He double-crosses Trent and supports Venesa in her plan to overthrow the kingpin. As a reward, Venesa appoints him to run the day-to-day operations of her enterprise in South Carolina when she returns to New York with Enzo.