Chapter 4

After dealing with Bella, I lay down and tried to sleep.

But sleep would not come.

Even though I had been reborn, the nightmares remained relentless.

I found myself pulled back into the memories of our youth.

Back then, we lived in Red Hook, Brooklyn—a neighborhood teeming with dockworkers and Italian immigrants. My family lived on Third Avenue, and Vince lived right across the street.

His father was the former patriarch of the Costello family, a man notorious for his iron-fisted brutality. Because Vince was solitary and quiet as a child, he was subjected to a regime of savage discipline.

In the dead of night, I often heard the sounds drifting from the training yard across the way—the sharp crack of a leather whip, the punctuating pop of gunfire, and low, guttural reprimands. Every time he failed a hand-to-hand combat drill or missed a mark during target practice, he was beaten.

I felt nothing but pity for him back then.

Whenever I got my hands on candy, I would sneak over and slip a piece into the pocket of the jacket he left hanging outside his door. I always attached a small sticky note: Eat one. It helps.

The first time he caught me, the tips of his ears turned a deep, embarrassed red.

"I... I don't like sweets," he muttered.

I simply smiled and waved him off. "Then don't eat it. But Vince, you should talk more. You have a beautiful voice."

Eventually, it became our ritual.

That solitary boy began to wait for me. We would walk together through the cobblestone alleys of Red Hook and sit by the edge of the abandoned piers to watch the sunset.

The routine lasted until he turned eighteen. As the heir to the family empire, he was set to be sent away to a private college in Switzerland. Before he left, he sought me out.

He handed me a brochure for the Rhode Island School of Design.

"I looked into it. The security is good, and it's close to where I'll be stationed later," he said, pausing. "Your grades might not get you into the undergraduate program immediately, but they have a pre-college foundation program. A summer session. I can cover the tuition."

I didn't tell him that my parents had already planned to send me to Florence to study art. They were successful gallery owners; they could easily afford it.

Instead, I secretly changed my applications and chose Rhode Island.

My father yelled at me for an hour when he found out, but I never regretted it for a second.

Later, we ended up in neighboring states. He was in New Haven, Connecticut, "learning the family business," while I was in Providence, Rhode Island, studying art.

Away from his father's suffocating shadow, Vince became a different person.

He ditched his heavy glasses for contact lenses and cropped his hair short. He started wearing Tom Ford suits and even learned to play Chopin and Rachmaninoff on the piano.

I didn't understand the reason behind his transformation.

The answer came one evening at my RISD studio. I was cheering and celebrating the upcoming opening of my solo exhibition when he suddenly appeared in the doorway. His eyes were bloodshot.

"I changed everything for you," he said, his hand suddenly gripping my wrist. "Can't you just... look at me?"

He leaned closer, his voice trembling. "I love you, Ava. I've loved you since we were children."

In that moment, it felt as if a bullet had pierced my heart.

I had heard the rumors, of course—that he had eliminated family traitors at sixteen, taken over half the East Coast arms trade at eighteen, and was already solidified as the next Godfather by twenty.

I had seen the posts on anonymous Gossip Girl-style forums where women documented his "glow-up," accompanied by blurry, stolen photos.

I had assumed there was a blood-soaked world standing between us.

But he told me he loved me.

Without a single thought for the future, I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him.