Inherited Violence and Mafia Patriarchy in Hexed

Thematic Claim: Bloodlines Poisoned by Power

In Emily McIntire’s Hexed, the mafia family is not merely a criminal enterprise—it is a closed system designed by patriarchs to reproduce dominance, enforce loyalty through fear, and crush any challenge to their rule. The novel argues that organised crime families are incubators of inherited violence: the patriarchal code demands sons obey fathers who might order their execution, uncles eliminate sisters to preserve “honour,” and daughters and nieces become bargaining chips in marriage alliances. Violence, both physical and emotional, flows downward from a single male authority figure, contaminating every relationship and often boomeranging back to destroy the very lineage it claims to protect.

Uncle Trent Kingston: The King of a Poisonous Castle

The Kingston family of Atlantic Cove embodies this pattern from the first chapters. As Venesa Andersen’s uncle and guardian, Trent “Uncle T” Kingston positions himself as a benevolent provider, but his benevolence is a licence to control. In an early conversation (Chapter 7), he reminds Venesa that “all I ask is that you show your loyalty in return and keep your mouth shut unless I tell you to speak.” When she questions the wisdom of marrying his daughter Aria to a Marino, he cuts her off with a threat: “I don’t keep you around to question me.” Every “gift”—including the bar she manages—is a leash, and her role as the family’s fixer and occasional executioner (Chapter 4) is presented as an honour she cannot refuse.

The full horror of Kingston patriarchy surfaces when Venesa interrogates her estranged father Harald in Chapter 30. Using stonefish venom potions, she extracts a confession that Uncle T was the one who owed money and likely killed her mother. The revelation shatters Venesa’s world: “Your uncle. Trent Kingston,” Harald gasps. The final confrontation in Chapter 37 strips away any remaining pretence. Uncle T admits he “saw an opportunity” after his sister cut the family off. He backhands Venesa, his gold ring drawing blood, and sneers that her mother was “a useless slut when she was younger, and she was a useless slut when she died.” Here the patriarch’s violence is simultaneously misogynistic and instrumental: a woman’s life is worthless except as a tool to hurt a rival (his own father) and to discipline a rebellious niece.

Thus the Kingston “kingdom” operates on the principle that male authority is absolute and any challenge—whether from a daughter who flees or a sister who loves the wrong man—is punished by erasure. Venesa has been shaped into a weapon, learning to use poison just as her uncle uses money and violence. The Kingston family painting hangs as a symbol of this myth of unity, a glossy surface that conceals murder and dispossession.

Carlos Marino: The Boss of All Bosses and His “Beloved” Son

If Uncle T rules by gaslighting and conditional affection, Carlos Marino rules by naked terror. As the self-appointed capo di tutti capi, he has centralised mafia power and eliminated any perceived threat, even executing his own consigliere on a hunch. His relationship with his son Enzo is a chilling study in filial fear. From the start, Enzo knows his engagement to Aria Kingston is not a romance but a business deal to extend his father’s influence (Chapter 6). He owes his father obedience, a debt reinforced by guilt over his brother Peppino’s death.

Chapter 40 demonstrates the lethal texture of that obedience. When Enzo confesses the wedding is off, Carlos responds by putting a gun to his son’s temple: “Maybe I should kill you,” he whispers. “Are you trying to fuck with me on purpose?” The father mocks his son as a “bitch with your tail tucked between your legs” and compares him unfavourably to Peppino. Enzo survives only by redirecting his father’s paranoia toward an external enemy.

Yet the novel’s most devastating illustration of inherited violence arrives in Chapter 47, when Frankie reveals that “Your dad is the one who tried to kill you, and he used Trent Kingston to do it.” A patriarch so suspicious of betrayal that he suborns a rival family to murder his own blood: this is the logical endpoint of a code that values control above all. The fact that both families—the Kingstons and the Marinos—collaborated in the hit against Enzo underscores how patriarchal networks use violence to regulate even their own potential successors. Sons are disposable the moment they appear to threaten their father’s power.

The Marriage Deal: Merging Two Toxic Dynasties

Aria Kingston is the pivot around which the two patriarchal systems turn. Uncle T arranges her engagement to Enzo without her knowledge that it is an arrangement; Enzo’s father demands the marriage to absorb the Kingstons’ southern operations. Aria believes she is in love, but Enzo regards the union as a transaction (Chapter 6). This false marriage plot is the vehicle through which patriarchal power seeks to consolidate itself across state lines.

Yet the deal is grotesquely unstable because it rests on layers of lies and exploitation. Aria’s own father treats her as a princess only so long as she delivers strategic value; the moment she runs off the script, he threatens to disown her. Meanwhile, Enzo’s growing feelings for Venesa—the cousin who is supposed to be a ghost in the family machine—expose the brittleness of the patriarchal contract. When Enzo chooses to walk away from Aria, he is not simply following his heart; he is defying a system that has already tried to kill him. That defiance, however, requires an alternative community of trust, which the novel tentatively sketches through the bond between Venesa and Enzo and through Venesa’s own break with Uncle T.

Symbols of Cyclical Violence: Venom and the Wheel

Two symbols in Hexed reinforce the theme of inherited violence. The stonefish venom potions that Venesa concocts are described in Chapter 4 as “a lost art” and “the beauty of poison.” Her knowledge is both a gift and a curse, passed down perhaps from her mother’s folk wisdom or refined through her uncle’s demands, and it marks her as the family’s instrument of quiet death. The venom mirrors the slow, invisible way patriarchal violence seeps through generations: it is lethal, hard to trace, and leaves a placid surface behind.

The sea wheel Ferris wheel glimpsed on the Atlantic Cove boardwalk (Chapter 6) suggests the mechanical, repetitive nature of the family cycle. Just as the wheel turns endlessly, carrying its passengers up only to bring them down again, the children of mob families are raised expecting to inherit power, but are just as likely to be crushed by it. Enzo’s near-death at his father’s orders and Venesa’s scarring by her uncle illustrate how the wheel of violence crushes those who try to ride it.

Complexity: Complicity and the Hope of Breaking Free

Hexed avoids a simple victim narrative. Venesa is not merely a tragic figure; for years she has willingly performed Uncle T’s dirty work, killing Joey in Chapter 4 with detached flair, because it gave her a sense of purpose and a twisted form of family belonging. Her complicity shows how patriarchy seduces the oppressed into becoming perpetrators. Similarly, Enzo built his reputation by being his father’s enforcer and never questioning orders—a loyalty he now recognises as suicidal. The novel suggests that cycles persist not just because of external force but because individuals internalise the values that harm them, seeking approval from the very figures who abuse them.

The turn toward agency comes only when both protagonists confront the truth and take enormous personal risks. Venesa demands the truth from Uncle T and receives a backhand rather than a confession—but she no longer shrinks. Enzo refuses to be his father’s puppet, gambling that his value as an underboss will outweigh the shame of a broken engagement. The climax is not a fairy-tale revolution; the system remains standing. But two people have crawled out from under its weight, an act the novel presents as both courageous and fragile.

Study Questions

1. How does Hexed illustrate that patriarchal violence damages men and women differently within the mafia?
   The novel shows women being silenced and physically struck (Uncle T hitting Venesa, the murder of Venesa’s mother), while men are targeted for execution when they are perceived as threats (Enzo’s father ordering his hit). However, both genders suffer: Enzo’s emotional trauma and his constant need to perform cold masculinity are also products of the system.

2. Why is Venesa’s use of poison significant to the theme of inherited violence?
   Poison is a “quiet” weapon that mirrors the covert way patriarchal abuse is passed down—through manipulation, fear, and unspoken expectations. Venesa learns the art because her uncle sanctions it, making her both a victim of the cycle and its transmitter. The stonefish venom potions symbolise how violence becomes a family trade.

3. How does the arranged marriage between Enzo and Aria serve as a plot mechanism for patriarchal control?
   The marriage is never about love; it’s a business merger designed by Trent Kingston and Carlos Marino to consolidate territory. Aria is kept ignorant, and Enzo resents it but complies because of his duty to his father. The engagement exposes how young people become currency in mafia patriarchy.

4. In what way does the revelation that Carlos ordered Enzo’s death transform our understanding of the Marino family?
   It shows that fatherhood in the mafia is not a bond of affection but a hierarchy of utility. Carlos would rather have a dead son than a disobedient one. This revelation forces Enzo to recognise that his loyalty has been a shield for his father’s paranoia, and it mirrors the betrayal Venesa discovers in her own family.

5. Does the novel suggest that the cycle of inherited violence can be broken, and if so, how?
   The ending remains morally complex, but Venesa and Enzo’s choice to reject their family roles—he by ending the engagement, she by confronting Uncle T and refusing to be his tool—indicates that breaking the cycle requires painful truth-telling and the willingness to lose one’s place in the patriarchal structure. Their fragile alliance hints that chosen family might one day replace the bloodlines that poisoned them.