Only second to you/coming soon 18+

Ellie Baker and Elijah Forrest Riorson have been academic rivals for as long as they can remember.

At their school, there is one scholarship that matters more than all the others-an elite, full-ride award that guarantees freedom.
Ellie Baker has built her entire life around earning it.

Everything Ellie has, she earns. She studies until two in the morning, ignores exhaustion, and tells herself it's fine-that she can take it. She does it for her mom, who had her young and for a future she has to secure on her own. Control.

Elijah does not need the scholarship. But if Baker wants something, Elijah will always be in the way.

He's strong, nonchalant, and perpetually bored. He's sharp without trying and effortlessly successful in school. Grades come as easily to him as breathing. But what actually matters to Elijah isn't the classroom-it's the shop, where he works alongside his grandpa, fixing broken things with his hands and finding a sense of purpose school has never given him.

Ellie isn't jealous of Elijah.

She envies him.

He succeeds, while she has to fight for every achievement.

Her resentment began in fifth grade, at the spelling bee. Ellie and Elijah stood side by side on the podium, the final two contestants. When it was her turn, she froze-stuttered, forgot how to spell the word. Elijah spelled his correctly on the first try, effortless.

She's hated him ever since.

Or at least, she thinks she has.

Now, family life and school start to mix.

"Your staring"

"i'm calculating how your brain manages to produce that much cockiness"

"wouldn't you like to know."

"Do you have to be so disgusting?"

"you like me like that baker"

But remember, a riorson is never just a riorson. Because a riorson was once a Moretti.
Moretti mean guns.
Moretti means danger.
Moretti means war.

Not your average teen romance.
Not your average mafia romance.

But maybe something in between.