Chapter Three Niccolò

I took a deep breath and boarded the plane, where my heart was beating in my chest. I was leaving it all behind-the lies, the betrayal, the pain that had been always there. Thick disinfectant filled the air; I grasped firmly onto my boarding pass and headed to the back of the plane. *Seat 38C, right by the bathroom*. I bit my lip, stifling a groan. It wasn't the great seat, either, but I didn't mind. Not today. It was the start of my new life; a life I would sculpt myself-no one else was going to rule over it from that day on.

The aisle was barely wide enough for people to pass; even then, passengers squeezed by me as I shoved my small bag into the overhead bin. Already, flight attendants were up and down the aisle, readying everything for takeoff. The instant my bottom hit the seat, I turned and took in the scene. The cabin was filled with the steady hum of conversation coupled with the faint groan of the engines. For a moment, I let myself breathe-to take it all in. For the very first time, I was finally alone, finally free. There wasn't a person from my old life who knew where I was now.

No sooner had I sat down than a voice snapped me out of my thoughts. "Hey, you, move your stuff!" came the loud irritated voice behind me. I turned and found a probably fifties-something man, his greasy hair clinging to his scalp, a belly barely fitted into his seat-glaring at me with his chubby hand gesturing angrily to my carry-on bag.

"What?" I asked, for a moment perplexed.

"Your bag! It's in the way, girl. Move it or I'll have a stewardess throw it out."

I blinked hard, his tone not computing. Some random dude, barking orders at me after everything I'd been through? The fire built in my chest. Old me-­Lily-­might've have apologized, but I wasn't that girl anymore.

"Wow, I didn't know they were letting trolls on planes now," I said with a smirk. "Shouldn't you be hiding under a bridge somewhere?"

His face turned an alarming shade of red, and his mouth opened, then closed like a fish gasping for air. He muttered something under his breath, but it was clear I'd shut him down. I smiled to myself, a wave of triumph washing over me. **I would never again let any person trample over me.** For the very first time, I realized that I had the power-a power which I had either always ignored or been too afraid to use.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, but I couldn't help thinking that my seat-sandwiched in between a bathroom and a family with a screaming baby-was just a metaphor for where I came from: the bottom. But soon, I would rise from it. *One year*, I reminded myself, clenching my fists in determination. In one year's time, I would be the wealthiest man on earth. Improbable, most likely impossible. And after what I'd been through so far, it didn't sound nuts. I had made it through all that; I could do anything.

---

And when I finally reached Italy, this new life really struck me hard. I was really all alone, with nobody in a country I didn't know really well. In that respect, there was a kind of freedom. No person here knew anything about Elizabeth Brown and her past, or the scandal that pursued her back in the hometown. Here, I could be whoever I wanted.

I rented an utterly disastrous apartment with yellowed walls showing age spots, creaky floors-one might think that every step performed on them could cause the end of the world, and the ceiling with a crack so big, that actually, one could see a thin line of sky. No hot water; heating hardly worked. Can you imagine how cold it would feel seeping deep within my bones?. But standing there, peering into that dingy, rundown place, I smiled.

*This is where it begins.

I took out my phone and immediately began browsing the internet for furniture. Hundreds of listings of second-hand furniture were available-most of them old and weathered but serviceable. I didn't have to search very long until I found what I was looking for: nice but used furniture that I could restore. I spent hours scrolling through the pages, buying chairs, tables, and even a bed frame dirt cheap.

By the end of the afternoon, I had spent less than $300, but I had all that I would need to turn this place around. I remembered my woodshop classes from high school, back when I was Lily. I knew how to fix things, how to take old wood and make something beautiful of it. That's what I was doing here. *That's exactly what I'm doing here. From rags to riches, one step at a time.*

I had worked through the night sanding an old table I had bought secondhand, gluing legs back onto broken chairs, and repainting chipped surfaces. Bit by bit, an apartment that came along slowly turned into an entirely different place. What had been a pretty shabby space now looked almost luxurious, a place some important person would stay in. It was only the beginning, and yet somehow, it felt like a triumph.

The alarm in my room was blaring across the room, pulling me from a deep sleep. I groaned-my muscles were sore from the day before-but today was important. **It was the first day of school.**

I instantly got dressed, my hands shaking all over, partly out of excitement, partly out of nervousness. I had just one goal at this school: finding Niccolò and making him fall in love with me; he was my only survival key, and I knew if I played my cards right, I might just manage to change the sad fate awaiting both him and Elizabeth.

As I stepped onto campus, the sun had just begun to rise and send its golden rays across the buildings. The students bustled around me-talking and laughing-in ignorance of the weight resting upon my shoulders. I took a deep breath and walked forward. I scanned the crowd for any sign of him.

And then I saw him.

He stood near the fountain, just as the book had described him: tall, striking, dark of hair, piercing of eye. As I went toward him my heart raced, my mind racing for something to say, something brilliant and unforgettable.

Pick-up line, I thought, remembering the really cheesy lines that my friends and I used to make fun of. It worked once; perhaps it would again.

"Are you French?" I asked, confidently striding up to him and smiling bright. "Because Eiffel for you."

He raised an eyebrow highly amused. "Are you a magician? Because whenever I look at you, everyone else disappears.

My heart did skips with jolts upwards. He was flirting back! This was it; this was my chance. We bantered on for a few minutes, the conversation flowing easily, and I couldn't help but feel proud of myself. This was going perfectly.

Then the bell rang, signaling class in, and I realized it was time to go. Smiling, giving him a small wave-feeling triumphant-I walked away from this. **I had made an impression**.

I came into the classroom, looked for a free place and my eyes focused on the back row, where Niccolò should have sat. In that direction, ready to keep talking, my stomach fell - as if everything inside of it had just hurled down to the floor. The guy in the back was not Niccolò.

It was his twin brother who sat at his place.

I blanched right there and there. I had flirted with the wrong guy in the last ten minutes! My heart literally sank, and the real Niccolò sat some seats away, looking nothing like anything that I had envisioned. Tattoos were on his arms, his hair colored, a big earring, and some aura of danger flowing from him that simply chilled me to the marrow. He was everything different from what I had really expected.

How could I have done that?

I sat down abruptly, my face hot with mortification. I flirted with his **brother**. I wanted to scream. Why hadn't the author said anything about Niccolò having a twin brother? Now I felt like a perfect idiot and worse, Niccolò hadn't even noticed me .

---

No sooner had the teacher started the lesson than my mind whisked me back to my old life-to the last time I had attempted to use a pick-up line on a boy.

I was seventeen, and Liam was that boy I thought I had loved. He had been everything that I wanted: handsome, charming, and totally out of my league. One day, having psyched myself up for weeks, I finally got the courage to ask him out.

"Do you have a map?" I asked, my voice trembling. "Because I keep getting lost in your eyes."

He had smiled that perfect, heart-stopping smile, and he had said yes. For the very first time in my life, I was happy, but it didn't last.

Within a week or so, jealous girls at school started to turn on me. They would spread rumors, calling me ugly and saying I did not deserve someone like Liam. They trashed my locker, took to the bathroom walls with ill messages about me, and made a point of making sure I knew that I wasn't welcome. But worse than that was Liam failing to stand up for me. Never once did he defend me or tell the others to back off. Always, he was joining in to laugh at each frivolity that came his way, always rationalizing it was not a big deal. He gaslighted me, made me feel as if the problem was me.

I cried myself to sleep so many nights, wondering why he didn't love me the way I loved him. But as weeks wore on, it finally began to sink into my head that Liam never did care for me; he was just using me. I couldn't see that because I had feelings. He isn't a charming prince like I imagined but selfish, shallow, and cruel.

How much damage that relationship did to me took several years to realize. Continuing to search for love, I knew all of the time it was my fault-that if only I could be pretty enough, smart enough, witty enough, then at last someone would love me. And the pursuits they led to were nothing other than a broken heart. I finally found out Liam was no different from Liam in that book: an egotistical psycho, obsessed with his image.

*And now, here I am chasing after another guy.* I turned to Niccolò, who sat hunched with his back to me, completely oblivious to my existence. My stomach twisted at just how colossally wrong everything had gone so far.

But this was different. This wasn't some exercise in finding love for its own sake-this was survival. Niccolò represented my only way out of Elizabeth's tragic fate, and I couldn't afford to let my embarrassment or my past failures stand in the way.

The teacher asked everybody to introduce themselves, and the moment she did so, my heart stopped, as it finally dawned on me that my turn had come. I got up slowly and tried, just as slowly, to project some confidence. Channelize your inner Jan Di, my brain commanded, calling to mind the feisty heroine from Boys Over Flowers. She'd never take any crap from anyone, much less the omnipotent and cocky male lead, Tsukasa. That's all I need right now.

My name is Elizabeth Brown," I said, my voice clear and sure. "I'm new here, but I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you." And I glanced over at Niccolò, hoping he'd catch my eye. But he didn't even look up.

*Okay, that's fine. This is just the first day. It's not like you're going to win him over immediately.*

I sat down and tried to focus on the lesson, but my mind kept drifting away. Every few minutes, I'd catch my eyes darting towards Niccolò, drinking in every detail: tattoos peeked out from under his sleeves, his hair was messy and unruly, and the glint of an earring in his left ear shone bright under the fluorescent lights. He was not the clean cut type that perhaps I may have hoped for, but there was just something undeniable about him, exuding this air of confidence, kinds that knew they did not have to give a damn about what people thought of them.

But how did I win him over? The Niccolò in the book had fallen for Daisy, sweet and gentle, beautiful in an innocent kind of way. I was none of those things. And after I'd been involved in such a disaster with his twin brother, Giovanni, I wasn't off to a great start either.

Class finally over, I quickly went through the motions of gathering my things, hoping I wasn't anything Niccolò wanted to see. As I jammed my notebook in the bottom of my bag, a voice from behind me addressed me.

"Hey, new girl.

I spun around and froze. Niccolò stood there, hands in his pockets, a lazy smirk playing on his lips. Up close, he was even more striking-sharp dark eyes, casual in posture, yet somehow commanding. I could hardly believe he was talking to me.

"You're Elizabeth, right?" he asked, voice low and smooth. "You're the one who was flirting with my brother."

I blushed bright red and opened my mouth to explain-but nothing came out. *This is it*, I thought. *I'm about to become the laughingstock of the whole school.* 

But then Niccolò did something unexpected. He burst out laughing. 

"Don't worry, I'm not angry," he said, still grinning. "Giovanni's used to it. All the time, he gets confused for me.".

I blinked, so taken aback. I really did think that he was going to tease me, or at least snark a little, but he was charmed.

"Anyway, I've got to run," he said, turning to go. "But I'll see you around, Elizabeth."

And with that, he vanished, leaving me standing in wonder.

*What just happened?* I thought, still feeling my heart rac-ing.

I sat down, trying to wrap my brain around it all. Niccolò had spoken to me—*he'd noticed me*. And he didn't act like he hated me for flirting with his brother. Maybe this wasn't such a disaster after all. Maybe I could still turn this around.

I had gathered my things and exited the classroom, and now a new sense of determination began to settle in. I wasn't going to let one mistake define me. I wasn't going to let my past hold me back.

This was my new life: no taking any crap from anyone, taking control of my own destiny.

*Just like Jan Di*, I thought with a smile. She had stood up to the most powerful boy in school and hadn't backed down, and neither would I.

Niccolò might have been the bad boy of this story, but I was no longer that weak girl, and if the author of this book thought I was just going to sit back and let fate play itself out, well, he had another thing coming.

This was my story now.

---

Much later that night, I lay in my small creaky bed, in that crappy apartment of mine, my thoughts drifting back in time to my old life, back to those days when I allowed people like Liam to treat me as nothing. And I remembered those nights I cried sleep, convinced that I would never be enough. Not anymore.

I just wasn't that girl anymore. I was Elizabeth Brown now, and I was going to make sure no one-NO ONE-had the power to make me feel small again.

I stared up at the cracked ceiling, my head buzzing with schemes. Tomorrow was another day, another chance to right the wrongs. Niccolò didn't know it, but I wasn't going to let this story end the way it was supposed to.

*I was going to rewrite my fate.*

And I would start with Niccolò.

Niccolò Pov:

I leaned my back against the cold brick wall of the school and watched Elizabeth Brown; there was just something *off*. She wasn't supposed to be here. Elizabeth Brown was supposed to be in America suffering through the hell I had carefully designed for her. Not here. Not in Italy. Not casually flirting with my brother.

I blinked hard, trying to make what I was seeing mesh with what I had written. *This* wasn't the Elizabeth I'd created. My Elizabeth-the villainess of my story-was broken, bitter, driven to cruelty by a world that had wronged her. She was most definitely not this confident girl I was looking at now, walking up to Giovanni like she was supposed to be the most loved character in the novel.

But there she was, wrong time, wrong place, doing something so utterly out of character. The Elizabeth Brown I knew wouldn't even *dare* smile, let alone flirt. And yet there she stood, smirk­ing at Giovanni, my *twin brother*.

That was another thing I hadn't seen coming: the twin brother. In my novel, Niccolò didn't have a twin. Still, when I woke up as Niccolò, the world wasn't quite like I had written. There was some weird mixture between my book and elements of fanfiction-some I read, some I didn't. That realization hit me like a brick as I woke in the form of Niccolò-the main villain of my story.

---

I was Leonard Steward, an author who died when I was just twenty-five. It still feels surreal to remember that life. My heart had gone into my début novel, *Daisy Lover's Quest*, and though the world had loved it, I'd been devoured by pressure for something even better. Every fan had wanted more of me, more love, more drama, more conflict.

But then there was this one weird fan, whose name was Lily. She'd write to me fairly frequently with these lengthy letters full of her theories and ideas about the story. Whereas most readers would fawn over Daisy, the heroine, or Liam, the hero, Lily was intrigued by Elizabeth Brown, the villainess.

But her letters showed me Elizabeth in a light I had not considered: to Lily, she was not just the villain but a tragic figure-a woman formed from cruelty and injustice. And it was her words that made me doubt my knowledge of my character, and soon enough, I found myself writing for Elizabeth as much as I did for Daisy and Liam.

I never said it to anyone, but I await with impatience Lily's letters. Her theories went deeper than what I had planned, while the passion she shows for my work is an understanding from another person that nobody has ever shown. She saw in my characters a potential for complexity that even I hadn't. Her letters were always the highlight of my day, and I vividly remember how her suggestions influenced the line my sequel was to take.

That ceased on a rainy evening.

---

I'd lain awake, reading her latest letter, which had once again made me revisit the course I had mapped out for Elizabeth. I was stuck on a plot point, and Lily's suggestions had lodged in my brain-the catch being I now couldn't concentrate. I needed to get some fresh air.

It poured, coming down in sheets of rain, but I didn't care. I snatched up my jacket and hit the road. I could not get Elizabeth's image out of my mind-the villainess slowly breaking under the weight of her pain, her only solace being revenge. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether I had written her right. Was she worth more than to be a villain?

I was so deep in thought that I barely recognized a car coming down the slick road. The next thing I knew, the screeching of tires startled me back into reality just in time to see a woman's car sliding out of control; it slammed into a tree, and before I could fathom what exactly was going on, the front end was engulfed in flames.

Instinctively, I ran towards the wreck. Fire was sweeping through it fast, and I could hear the screams of the woman. My heart was racing as I tugged at the door handle, trying to pull her out, but it would not budge. The heat was intense; the flames licked my skin, and all that ran in my mind was how I had to save her.

And then. nothing.

Something woke, and it wasn't me, not really, and it wasn't Leonard Steward anymore. It was Niccolò-inside, the one I have created.

At first, I'd thought I was in control. After all, I'd written the book, right? The illusion had shattered in record time. There were things that shouldn't have existed, like Niccolò having a twin brother, Giovanni-a character that didn't exist within the pages of my novel. That's when it dawned on me: the world I awoke into wasn't *exactly* one I'd created.

It was partly my book, partly some of the fanfiction that I read. *Somehow, the fanfics too had come alive.* Chaotic and unpredictable, it was, in a way I hadn't expected. But I had a plan-avoid the plot, avoid the characters, and most importantly, avoid going to America, where the main events took place. Only by staying away from the core of the story, could I redo my fate and hence outrun Niccolò's tragic death.

Of course, everything changed the very moment I saw her*.

---

Italy?. Elizabeth Brown in Italy? That didn't make any sense whatsoever. She was meant to be in America, getting bullied by Daisy and Liam, breaking down just the way I had written her to. Instead, there she was flirting with Giovanni so confidently.

I stared at her, my head reeling. This wasn't how it went. Was this some kind of freaking alternate universe fanfiction scenario I hadn't read? No-I'd read *every* fanfic version of my book, and none of them included Elizabeth running off to Italy. None of them included her here, looking so. different.

I just couldn't take it anymore. I needed to know what was going on.

I walked right up to her, casual expression on my face. "Hey, new girl."

She whipped around, startled, wide eyes slamming into mine. The spark of recognition was there, though not quite the one I was counting on.

"You're Elizabeth, right?" I said casual as can be. "You're the one who was flirting with my brother."

Her face went beet red, and I almost laughed. She was clearly embarrassed. Good. That was what I needed her to be: off guard.

"Don't worry," I said, softening my voice, "Giovanni's used to it. People confuse us all the time."

The tension in her eased but not the expression on her face; there was just something in it tugged at me-something off, something *wrong*. I looked away before I said too much, but my head was already spinning.

Elizabeth wasn't supposed to be here. She wasn't supposed to be confident. And she *definitely* wasn't supposed to be flirting with Giovanni.

Only one explanation made any kind of sense: she was like me. She wasn't just the character I'd written-she was someone else, someone who knew the story. But who?

Could it be Lily? Could this Elizabeth be the fan whose letters had shaped my view of the story in the first place? I couldn't be sure. But if it was her. I had to find out.

If that was the case, and this world was not going to follow the story I had written, then perhaps I could rewrite it. Perhaps I could prevent Niccolò's death.

And perhaps-just perhaps-Elizabeth Brown, whoever she really was, would be able to help me do just that.

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