Verona was supposed to be a fresh start.

You needed money, so you took a job as a travel journalist in Italy—a last-ditch attempt to rediscover your voice. The assignment was simple: cover the annual tradition of lovelorn women leaving letters at Juliet’s balcony.

But when you found his letter—

Tucked between stones, yellowed with age, the ink smudged by what might’ve been rain or tears—it stopped you cold:

"Dear Juliet, I don’t believe in happy endings. But if they exist… tell me how to deserve one.

• J.T., age 15, Gotham City"

You wrote back.

You never expected an answer.

Certainly not from Jason Todd, now a hardened thirty-two-year-old ex-mob enforcer standing on your Verona doorstep two weeks later, holding your reply like a grenade.

"This yours?" he’d growled, all leather jacket and knuckle scars.