Goodbye, Mr. Marchetti Chapter 02

Goodbye, Mr. Marchetti Chapter 02

Vittorio and my brother Enzo had once been best friends.

The three of us grew up together, kids from the same broken corner of the city.

Elementary school through high school, we were inseparable.

Even then, Vittorio was different from the rest of us. Sharper. Colder.

It took me years to understand that kind of intelligence doesn’t come from nowhere.

His mother had been brought here against her will.

Three years after he was born, she walked into the river and never came back.

When they found her, she was naked, and the bruises covered most of her body.

I was a year behind them in school.

When Vittorio and Enzo both got into college, it should have been a cause for celebration.

For my parents, it was just another burden they couldn’t carry.

The day I went to find Vittorio, I found his acceptance letter torn to pieces on the floor.

“A kid from the gutter doesn’t get to be a king,” someone was shouting at him. “Not while I’m breathing.”

Vittorio knelt on the ground, absorbing each blow without a sound.

When the moon rose, the breathing stopped.

He was still kneeling.

In the moonlight, he looked like something out of a painting.

He was too good for the world we’d come from.

I asked him: “Do you still want to go to college?”

He said yes.

So I went home and told my parents.

“I’m not going.”

I was never the smart one.

Better to leave the chances for the people who could actually use them.

My parents screamed at me, hit me, then cried and blamed themselves.

There was chaos for weeks.

In the end, I dropped out.

I moved to the city with Enzo and Vittorio.

They went to class. I went to work.

I didn’t have many skills, so I took the lowest jobs I could find.

I lived in a basement apartment, ate bread, drank water, and worked three jobs at once.

Every cent went toward their tuition.

But I didn’t mind. I still had hope.

The first time Vittorio won a scholarship, he took me to a real restaurant for steak.

On the walk home, it started to snow.

He held my hand. Snowflakes fell into both our hair.

“I’m going to give you everything,” he said. “Everything beautiful this world has to offer.”

It wasn’t a romantic thing to say. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.

Vittorio was brilliant, the kind of sharp that made people uneasy.

Before long, I didn’t have to work so hard anymore.

We moved into a new apartment. He left the dorms.

He was studying law. His internship was brutal; the senior attorneys went out of their way to break him.

One of them pulled him aside once and said: “In this business, it’s about who you know, not what you know.”

Vittorio didn’t listen. He kept walking forward.

Then an heir to a mob family found himself in serious trouble. Criminal charges, airtight evidence.

Somehow, Vittorio got him out.

After that, people started remembering his name.

Outside the courthouse, the victim’s family came at him with a knife.

He never saw it coming.

But I did.

Before I’d figured out what I was doing, I had stepped in front of him.

When he realized what had happened, when he saw me on the ground, bleeding,

I had never seen Vittorio Marchetti afraid before.

He broke down completely.

“Please,” he kept saying. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”

They gave me last rites. Twice.

Later, Enzo told me what had happened while I was unconscious.

Vittorio had knelt in the hospital corridor, begging the surgeon to save me.

He asked my brother: “What do I do? What do I do without her?”

He stayed on his knees all night.

When I woke up, he was crying.

After that, he had nightmares every night. He’d jolt awake, shaking, pulling me close like I might disappear.

“You’re here,” he’d murmur. “Thank God, you’re still here.”

His love for me was real.

But so was his cruelty, when it came.