Fading Snow, Long Island

Enzo Vitale hated my mother with a passion.

It started when he was sixteen.

He and the school’s golden girl, Valentina Ross, were accused of bullying and drug use. The scandal ripped through every private high school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

My mother was the academic dean.

She ran the school with an iron fist, especially when it came to student conduct.

So she gave them a public reprimand. She even posted the written notice on the main bulletin board at the school entrance, where every parent, tourist, and Upper East Side socialite could see it.

She wrote: “Enzo Vitale and Valentina Ross have displayed extremely improper behavior—not only bullying classmates but also skipping school to do drugs in a hotel room.”

Except they hadn’t.

They never bullied anyone. They never did drugs.

Classmates could have testified: they’d just cut class to go watch Roman Holiday at the AMC theater.

But my mother stood by her decision.

She’d always treated problem students like dangerous pests—better to kill a hundred innocent than let one guilty go, better to overcorrect than give them any breathing room.

Poor Valentina was whispered about endlessly. Some called her a slut. Someone even wrote worse things on her locker with a marker.

She was a good student with a clean record. Her reputation was destroyed.

Valentina’s mother was furious. One day she stormed into the school and yanked Valentina by the hair, demanding she withdraw.

I remember that day clearly.

The sun was blinding. My mother stood at the front of the classroom, her face stern, teaching.

Enzo burst out of the classroom and ran downstairs to save Valentina.

As he passed the classroom door, he shot my mother a vicious glare.

And then he glared at me, too.

The boy’s once-beautiful blue eyes were dark as a stormy sea, like a blade slicing into my heart.

Years later, he still looked at me that way in bed.

“Lucia Moretti,” he’d murmur, like a curse. “If your mother knew her sweet daughter was lying under me, my mistress… do you think she’d drop dead?”

I’d curl up in pain, tears blurring my vision.

He’d lean close and answer his own question: “No. Because she’s the one who put you here—to save her precious son.”

After I became Enzo’s mistress, he paid me thirty thousand dollars a month.

That was enough to keep my brother Marco’s dialysis going—ten times a month.

Marco had been diagnosed with uremia right after his college entrance exams. The treatment cost a fortune.

For my family, it was a thunderbolt.

My mother had already been fired from her dean job for bullying students. My father worked a blue‑collar job. There was no way we could afford it.

I’d just graduated from Hunter College with a degree in English literature. No high‑paying job in sight.

One day, my father texted me: “Lucia, you’re pretty and young. You should be able to attract a rich man. Your brother only has one life. Please save him.”

When I read that, my heart broke.

Because I was the older sister, I had to sacrifice myself?

I couldn’t believe a father could be like that.

No way.

But when I got home, all I heard was crying.

My mother sobbing, my father wailing.

Their silence screamed: We raised you for over twenty years. What’s a little sacrifice?

Marco was my own blood.

Could I really let him die?

So when Enzo texted me, “Thirty thousand a month. Plaza Hotel, suite 6908,” I replied with one word:

“Okay.”