The Betrayed Princess's New Reign

Elena Moretti POV: A thousand miles away from the warm, healing breeze of the Caribbean, the city of Chicago was dying under the worst winter storm in a decade. The temperature had plummeted to twenty degrees below zero. The wind howled through the concrete canyons, piling the snow knee-deep in the gutters. On the bleak outskirts of the city stood a nameless, rotting winter shelter. The municipal heating pipes in the basement had burst three days ago. The city hadn't sent anyone to fix it. Inside the massive, pitch-black dormitory, the air smelled of unwashed bodies, gangrene, and urine. The room was packed with homeless men huddled together on filthy cots. The sound of wet, hacking coughs and low groans of pain echoed constantly. Luca lay curled in a tight ball in the darkest corner of the room, right beneath a window with a shattered pane. The freezing wind blew directly over his body. He was covered by a single, paper-thin blanket full of moth holes. His legs, improperly healed from the brutal beating Dante's guards had given him years ago, were bent at grotesque angles. The skin around the fractures had turned black. The infection had spread deep into his blood, smelling of sweet rot. He was starving. He was freezing. His shattered brain was finally shutting down. As his core temperature dropped to fatal levels, the delirium set in. His cloudy eye stared blankly at the frost creeping up the concrete wall. A hallucination flashed behind his eye. He saw a bright, sunny afternoon ten years ago. He saw me, standing in the courtyard of the estate, smiling softly as I handed him a brand-new teddy bear. Then the hallucination violently shifted. The sun vanished. He saw the dark, rainy night he had shoved me into the line of fire. He saw my eyes looking back at him—cold, dead, and utterly devoid of love. Luca's emaciated body spasmed violently. A pathetic, broken whimper tore from his raw throat. Muddy tears leaked from his eye, instantly freezing into ice crystals on his sunken cheeks. A vicious gust of wind ripped through the broken window. It sliced through his thin coat like a barrage of invisible knives. He whined again. He curled his knees tighter to his chest. His frostbitten, black fingers dug desperately into his coat, clutching the object hidden against his ribs. He pulled it out slightly. It was the teddy bear. It was caked in dried mud, missing an eye, its stuffing trailing out like spilled guts. It was the only thing he owned in the entire world. It was his pathetic, useless anchor to the girl he had destroyed. The clock struck three in the morning. The temperature hit absolute rock bottom. Luca's chest stopped rising. His breathing became a shallow, rattling wheeze. He slowly opened his remaining eye. He stared out the broken window at the falling snow. His blue, cracked lips parted. He mouthed my name into the dark, making no sound. The last puff of white breath escaped his mouth and vanished into the freezing air. His eye glossed over completely. His body locked into place, freezing solid into a block of ice. The next morning, the storm broke. A heavy-set nurse in a stained uniform walked into the dormitory, carrying a metal bucket of watery gruel. He walked past the cots, kicking the men to wake them up. He reached the corner and kicked Luca's frozen boot. Luca didn't move. The nurse cursed, bending down to check the pulse at Luca's neck. The skin was hard as a rock. "Got another piece of trash dead in the corner!" the nurse yelled over his shoulder, wiping his hand on his pants in disgust. Two city cleaners wearing thick masks trudged into the room. They didn't bring a stretcher. They simply grabbed Luca by his frozen ankles and dragged him across the concrete floor like a dead dog. As they dragged his body over the threshold of the door, his stiff arms jerked. The ruined teddy bear fell from his chest and tumbled into a puddle of brown slush by the door. The nurse walked out behind them. He didn't even look down. He kicked the dirty bear out of his way, sending it tumbling into the raw sewage of the street gutter. Hours later, a rusty city truck backed up to a barren mass grave miles outside the city limits. An excavator clawed a shallow trench into the frozen dirt. Luca's body was tossed over the edge. There was no coffin. There was no tombstone. There was no prayer. A pile of frozen dirt and ice chunks was dumped over him, burying him forever. His death was so insignificant, so completely pathetic, that it didn't even trigger a blip on the Moretti intelligence network. A speck of dust falling into the ocean. Back in New York, the Long Island estate was bathed in golden afternoon light. I sat in a plush armchair in front of the massive stone fireplace. The flames crackled and hissed, throwing a beautiful, warm glow across my face. I held Leo's kindergarten report card in my hands, smiling at the perfect marks my son had earned. I didn't know Luca was dead. If someone had told me, I wouldn't have blinked. I placed the report card on the table, taking a sip of my hot tea: "The winter this year feels exceptionally warm, doesn't it?"