Hexed

The story opens with a man tied to a chair in a penthouse suite in the Marino Hotel in Manhattan. A woman, who he assumes is the sex worker he hired, leans over him. Instead of the bondage sex that he expected, he’s about to be murdered by the top hit woman of the Kingston crime family—Venesa Andersen. Venesa has laced his drink with strychnine because she dabbles in witchcraft and prefers to kill using poisons. As he convulses, she stabs him in the throat for good measure.

Two years after the murder, Venesa arrives at a seedy section of the Hudson River while tracking her cousin, Aria Kingston. Both women are now 23, but Aria is the spoiled only child of South Carolina tycoon-gangster, Trent Kingston. Venesa works for her uncle and has been ordered to find Aria. The latter came to New York to pursue a singing career six years earlier, and she isn’t pleased to see Venesa. As the two argue, they realize that a man is lying on the rocks next to the water. He has been stabbed in the side and is unconscious.

Venesa feels an urge to help him even though Aria wants to leave him to die.