I stumbled across something I wasn’t supposed to discover. I saw something I wasn’t meant to see, and now I’m an alibi for a killer.

He’s the most feared and powerful man in the New York underworld. I don’t have a choice but to do as he says.

But he commands so much more than just my testimony.

On my sixteenth birthday, a stranger from Corsica shows up at my party. Angelo Russo looks like an angel, but more the kind who decapitates dragons than the kind with soft white wings. He’s dark like the ocean and breathless like water. He says he wants all my firsts as if he already owns them, but my father orders me to stay away from this man.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t escape him. No one can keep me safe. Every year on my birthday, he brings me a gift, each one having a detrimental effect on my life with unimaginable consequences. With every gift he offers, he claims another one of my firsts. Before I know it, he’s taken control of my existence, turning me into a nervous wreck, because when I turn eighteen, I know what first he’ll come for next.