Dear Franky,
I have always believed that control was the independent variable. You possess it, you manipulate it, you measure it. You coldly calculate every input and meticulously document the outcome. Science, in its truest form, is built exclusively upon hypotheses grounded in previous knowledge; thus, surprises should be rare and statistically insignificant.
I have spent my entire life looking through those lenses. The powerful possess control, and by proxy, control is power. If you do not possess it, you are merely a victim of the chaotic, uncurated noise of existence. You are no different from a street dog or a rock. I was entirely convinced of this absolute truth until this morning, when the architecture of my mind suffered a violent, terrifying system failure.
It turns out I have a vulnerability, Frankie. I took the independent variable for granted and overlooked the measuring process. A single, organic point of failure. And her name is Aunt Vittoria.
I was in the middle of producing art when my private phone buzzed. It was a long, persistent vibration. I picked it up, profoundly annoyed, wondering who dared disturb the genius at work. Someone, I reasoned, who clearly wanted to become my next exhibition project.
Instead, I heard Hannah's voice—unusually high-pitched and frantic for her normally cold-blooded nature. She used to perform complex thoracic surgeries every single day before giving birth to those two little monsters next door, so I knew instantly that something catastrophic must have occurred.
She told me she had an appointment to meet my aunt for an early breakfast before her hospital shift started, but Vittoria had never appeared through the hotel's tinted glass doors. Hannah had also called the art gallery, knowing my aunt was supposed to be there that morning organising a new display. The staff reported that she was running late without notice—a complete anomaly for a woman of her rigid discipline.
I didn't know it was biologically possible, Frankie, but I went into a state of absolute panic. I was so paralysed by the mere concept of something happening to her that I couldn't even move to go home and check on her. I was, quite literally, an ice sculpture.
After forcing myself through the breathing exercises and the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method my sister used to babble about ages ago, I managed to steady my frantic lungs. With my heart still hammering violently against my ribs, I dialled Max—Hannah's husband. I knew he was home, so I asked him to check on my aunt while I was en route. He didn't have a key, but he could look through the windows to see if anything was out of the ordinary. When he called back to say the ground floor was deserted and spotlessly tidy, cold dread flooded my veins. How could she disappear without leaving a visible trace?
I told Max to call me the split second anything changed, hung up, and proceeded to practically teleport my car back towards Westchester. On the way, I called and texted my aunt repeatedly, but the radio silence remained absolute.
During the drive, my hands were shaking so violently that I could barely steady the steering wheel. Combined with my mind being entirely detached from reality, I narrowly avoided at least two major accidents. Too lucky... Why was I reacting this way? I have never been the type to let emotions get the best of me. Quite the opposite, Franky; I have struggled my entire life to feel any semblance of human emotion at all. Is this what normal people experience? Is this the chaotic internal climate in which the commoners live?
It was the most terrifying car ride of my existence, and the near-misses accidents had nothing to do with it.
When I arrived, Max came sprinting out of his house the moment he spotted my car. He had been monitoring the perimeter as requested. He mentioned he was home alone with the children, but since he still had half an hour until their Barbie cartoon finished, he offered to help me look. While I appreciated the unprompted kindness, I preferred to enter my house alone. I told him to keep an eye on the front door from his porch so I didn't appear entirely impolite, promising an immediate update.
I suppose you can see the depth of my desperation, Franky, because I actually relied on someone else for the first time in my life. I am only just processing that fact now that evening has fallen. To be completely honest with you, my paper friend, I do not know how to feel about it.
Let me take a deep breath before I write the rest.
When I stepped through the front door, the house was dead silent, which only added fuel to the internal fire. I walked through the entire ground floor. Nothing. I kept calling her name, but the walls offered no response. I forced myself up the stairs towards the bedrooms just to verify if she had even left her bed that morning.
And that is where I found her. I screamed so loudly that Max heard me from inside his own house and came lunging through the stairs to find us.
My dear aunt was lying on the floor, caught halfway through her morning routine. She was wearing a white, oversized shirt and a black midi skirt—an unusually simple ensemble compared to her typical outfit curation. You could tell she had felt the sickness hitting her while getting ready; she had clearly tried to sit on the plush chair in front of her vanity, but she had missed it entirely.
On the hardwood floor lay a single golden earring with a pearl, its butterfly backing nowhere to be seen. She was lying in a spilled puddle of her favourite French perfume mixed with blood. It didn't look like a classic film crime scene, thank goodness—just a banal domestic accident, which calmed my racing mind slightly. The blood was minimal, immediately recognizable as a shallow cut from the sharp edges of a crystal perfume bottle she had dropped as she fell. Still, something was profoundly wrong.
I stood over her, a living sculpture once more, unable to move, speak, or even cry. Max bypassed my frozen form, kneeling to check her breathing and pulse. Luckily, both were there, though she was entirely unconscious. If she hadn't awakened to my gut-wrenching scream, she wasn't going to respond to our worried voices. Max immediately dialled the emergency number.
I never thought we would get to this point, Franky, and I am terrified. I do not possess the psychological tools to process these foreign emotions. I genuinely do not know what to do, and I despise the feeling because it has never happened to me before. I do not deserve this disruption. Science, it seems, does not apply to emotional variables.
I don't remember what happened next. I have no idea how I physically arrived at the hospital; my memory of those twenty-five minutes is a complete blank, a terrifying erasure of time.
When I finally pushed through the sliding glass doors of the emergency room, the environment instantly repulsed me. It was the absolute antithesis of my laboratory: loud, chaotic, smelling of antiseptic, sweat, and panic. The fluorescent lights were flickering, casting an uninspired, sickly clinical white glow over dozens of bleeding, weeping, mediocre people waiting for their turn to be stitched up.
And there I stood, Frankie. Like a useless lamppost among them. Vulnerable. Powerless. Panicking like the very commoners I hold in contempt. I felt as though my entire world was falling apart—and it still does at this exact moment.
An aggressive, choking sensation filled my throat. It wasn't sadness—sadness is a cliché emotion reserved for sentimental fools. It was a profound, suffocating rage at my own impotence. I can engineer the perfect, silent shutdown of a human nervous system; I can turn a narcissistic chemist into a flawless, rigid statue without leaving a single detectable trace. Yet, I could do absolutely nothing to understand the biology of this attack, or provide my aunt with the immediate help she deserved.
After five agonising minutes, a rude, overworked nurse told me to sit down and wait, treating me like just another anonymous face in the crowd. I wanted to rip her apart, piece by piece, simply to show her exactly who she was dismissing.
I waited there, forced into a state of artificial patience, until a doctor finally emerged with an update. A massive myocardial infarction. He added that she was a fighter; her body had been in cardiogenic shock for hours before we found her, yet she was still breathing. She remains in life-threatening conditions, but they have managed to stabilise her parameters sufficiently for an imminent surgery.
I thanked him and returned to my seat. I didn't know what to do or say, and I hated myself intensely for that paralysis. I was entirely powerless to stop the erratic, failing rhythm of the heart that had given me everything I possess. It took a crisis for me to realise it, but here we are: I am not as powerful as I thought I was. I am not God. And that's quite a disgusting reality I didn't want to find out.
Vittoria is the sole reason I exist in this space, Frankie. She was the one who looked at my dark, cold nature back in Europe and didn't recoil from me, she actually saw who I truly was. She packed our bags, bought the tickets, and brought me to New York. She handed me this city. She provided the canvas, the resources, and the absolute freedom to prove my genius to a world too stupid to comprehend it. Without her, I am merely an academic exile.
After hours of uncurated panic, I finally pulled out my phone and dialled Victor. My voice was trembling, Frankie. It was the most humiliating sensation of my life. I despise weakness, yet there I was, leaking distress directly into the receiver.
Victor didn't ask questions. He didn't lecture me.
Within twelve minutes, the entire atmosphere of the hospital shifted. Dr. Victor Choclaire walked into the emergency room like a dark, elegant deity commanding the space. He wasn't wearing his coroner's apron; he arrived in a tailored charcoal cashmere coat, his mere presence clearing a path through the chaotic medical staff.
He spoke to the Chief of Cardiology—a brief, quiet conversation filled with precise medical jargon and the heavy weight of professional authority. Within seconds, Vittoria was moved out of the crowded public ward and into a private, state-of-the-art intensive care suite on the top floor.
"She is stable, Vera," Victor told me softly, placing a warm, heavy hand on my rigid shoulder. His dark eyes were entirely devoid of judgment, carrying only that smooth, clinical empathy I have come to rely upon. "The blockage was surgically cleared. She is resting now. She is going to survive this, my dear. I have personally vetted her surgical team."
I looked through the glass partition at Vittoria's pale face, framed by the rhythmic, green blinking of the monitors. That electronic hum was the only acceptable noise in the room.
Chloe arrived an hour later. She didn't bring flowers—she knows I despise useless, dying organic matter. Instead, she brought a heavy silk blanket from my aunt's favourite boutique and a flask of hot, premium espresso. She didn't offer a hollow "I'm sorry," because she knew pity would only insult my ego and make my blood boil. She simply sat next to me on the leather sofa of the private lounge, her quiet presence acting as a protective barrier against the rest of the world.
As I sat there between the two of them, watching the stable, monitored lines of my aunt's heartbeat, a cold, intoxicating clarity washed over me.
Our Trinity is not just an instrument for our exhibitions, Frankie. It is a sanctuary. Mirov provides the gallery, but Victor and Chloe... they are the ones who protect my world when the canvas begins to crack.
Aunt Vittoria is going to recover. The doctors assure me she will be fine in a few months. But I will never forget the taste of that helplessness. I am going to double my efforts, Frankie. I will refine my work until the line between art and biology is entirely under my command.
The amateur felt fear this morning. But I will bring the curator back soon, I promise.
See you later, Franky,
Vera