Matteo Vitiello POV:
The Chicago blizzard locked the city in a cage of ice. Outside our broken basement window, the wind screamed, driving the temperature well below zero.
I took the only torn, moth-eaten blanket we possessed and wrapped it tightly around Luca’s shivering body as he slept on the mattress. I wore nothing but a thin, threadbare sweater. The cold chewed through my skin, accelerating the decay of my failing organs.
I had spent my last ten dollars on a stack of cheap, yellowed drafting paper and a leaky blue ballpoint pen.
I sat at the broken wooden table. The faint, orange glow of a distant streetlamp bled through the shattered window, providing just enough light to see the paper.
I pressed the pen to the page. My hand shook violently. The liver cancer sent waves of agonizing, stabbing pain through my abdomen, making my muscles spasm. The first line I wrote was horribly crooked.
I bit down hard on my lower lip. My teeth broke the skin, and hot blood ran down my chin. I used the sharp sting of pain to force my brain to stay awake.
I didn't use her first name. I didn't dare. I had forfeited the right to speak her name the day I let Sofia burn her.
I wrote, *Respected Mrs. Moretti.*
The metal tip of the pen scratched harshly against the rough paper. Thick blue ink leaked from the casing, staining my missing fingers.
I wrote down everything. I dissected my own soul on the paper. I detailed how my pathetic jealousy had blinded me, how I had eagerly swallowed Sofia’s venomous lies because my ego couldn't handle Elena's strength.
When I reached the part about the fireworks, my vision blurred. Heavy tears dropped from my hollow eyes, splashing onto the paper and bleeding the blue ink into messy puddles.
I didn't write a single word of defense. Every sentence was a brutal, self-inflicted execution of my own character.
Suddenly, a massive cramp seized my stomach. I doubled over the table. I opened my mouth and violently vomited a thick puddle of black, coagulated blood onto the edge of the wood.
I gasped for air, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I didn't care about the mess on myself. I just carefully shifted my body to shield the stack of paper, terrified of staining the letter.
By the tenth page, I began to write about Luca. Every word was a bleeding, desperate beg.
*I know I do not deserve forgiveness,* I wrote, my hand cramping. *I will burn in hell and suffer every day for eternity.*
I paused, pressing my forehead against the cold table to catch my breath.
*But I beg you. For the sake of the time Luca called you sister, give him a way out.*
I didn't ask her to adopt him. I didn't ask her to forgive him. I only asked her to use her power to place him in the lowest-level public mental asylum in New York—just a place with four walls and a hot meal so he wouldn't freeze to death in an alley.
Twenty pages. I poured the last drops of my life force into twenty pages of the most humiliating, pathetic begging a man could produce.
Dawn broke. The grey light filtered into the basement.
My fingers were completely stiff from the cold. I slowly folded the thick stack of papers and shoved them into a cheap, flimsy envelope.
I took the pen and wrote the address of the Moretti Group headquarters in New York. Writing each individual letter felt like dragging boulders up a mountain.
I grabbed my coat and crawled out of the basement. I dragged my broken body into the raging blizzard, heading toward the corner of the street.
The wind hit me like a physical punch. I couldn't walk. I crawled on my hands and my one good knee, my broken prosthetic dragging behind me, leaving a twisted trench in the deep snow.
I finally reached the red USPS mailbox. I pulled myself up, leaning heavily against the freezing metal.
My trembling, ink-stained fingers gripped the edge of the envelope.
I knew what this meant. Dropping this letter meant taking the absolute last piece of my pride, throwing it on the ground, and offering it for her to step on.
I didn't hesitate. I opened my fingers.
The envelope slipped into the dark slot and vanished.
I collapsed against the side of the mailbox, my chest heaving violently. I felt entirely empty, as if I had just completed a grand, sacrificial ritual.
I turned my head and looked east, toward New York. A faint, delusional spark of hope flickered in my dead eyes. She used to love me. Maybe, just maybe, she would read it.
A sudden, blinding spike of pain erupted in my liver. My vision went entirely black. I pitched forward and crashed face-first into a snowbank.
Minutes later, a postal truck pulled up to the curb. The driver unlocked the box and tossed all the mail into a canvas bag.
"Please, save him."
