Magdalene,

I know you don't know me, I don't know you either but I would like to remedy that. I am Giuseppe Fortune your biological father. After you read this letter I know you'll be upset. You'll ask yourself why I never came to see you, why I never tried to contact you in some way, and why I let you think I was dead all these years. Well the simple answer is, I was afraid. Afraid of the lies that your mother and grandmother have told you about me.

See she has a problem, your mother. She has had this problem since she was a little girl and doesn't like telling people about it. They look at her differently, is what she would always say. I thought she was doing fine, she was seeing a therapist twice a week and she was on meds. Not until after, did I find out that she was just saying she was seeing a therapist but what she was actually doing was begging on the side of road to get money for her next fix.

I'm ashamed to say that I never noticed any of this going on with her. I was too focused on my own self. She was the love of my life and I didn't notice something as natural as her behavior. When I woke up cuffed, hands and feet to the wall in the basement, I knew life as I knew it was going to be over. She had finally lost it. She had been hanging onto the cliff with her fingernails and now she was tumbling down into the dark abyss.

Waking up in the basement seeing her so out of her mind, I knew that I had been a part of the reason why she was on this downward spiral. I contributed to a majority of it and then her illnesses was the other contributing factors. Why do bad things happen to good people? No one deserves good things more than your mother did and yet she got dealt the worst hand, first dealing with a personality disorder and schizophrenia and then on top of that she fell in love with someone like me.

I took advantage of her inability to help herself, only wanting her to depend on me. See I never had anyone growing up. I was an orphan by the age of three and I bounced from foster home to foster home, later on I found out that I wasn't actually an orphan my parents just didn't want me but they kept my sister. That's when things really started to downhill for me, I threatened every foster parent I had and every week I was in a different home, then when I was eighteen I met Juniper. She was walking by my latest foster home which I was leaving with my social worker, we were going to court so I could fill out the paper work to be on my own and would no longer be in the foster system.

When I laid eyes on her for the first time I felt like someone had given me a swift kick to the gut, I was knocked off my feet and slid down the four steps leading from the two story house in desperate need of a paint job. I landed right at her feet and couldn't do anything but lay there and gaze up at this angel, because what else could she be? Her beauty was out of this world, it was breath-taking, she was breath-taking and I knew in that moment I had to have her; I had to know her, I had to become her everything, I wouldn't be okay with just being another person in her life, I had to be the only person in her life. I was possessive of her right from the start. What does an eighteen year old boy who's been alone his whole life know about love? All I knew were things, possessions. I had a lot to learn and when Juniper bent down to see if I was okay I pulled her head down to me and kissed her branding her as mine.

"You Neanderthal!" I remember her yelling and pushing at my chest to get away from me. She stood up and I followed.

"I'm so sorry about his behavior miss. He was never taught proper manners." My social worker shot me a look but I ignored her too focused on the way that the sun kissed Juniper's skin. It was a nice caramel color and it glistened where the light touched her. I put out my hand to see if it was as soft as it looked but my hand didn't make it to it's destination as I was pulled swiftly in a one-eighty degree turn and marched down the sidewalk.

"See you soon my love!" I called back over my shoulder, having no idea why I had let those stupid idiot words escape my mouth. Who was I now Romeo, about to confess his deep undying love for his Juliet? No that wasn't me. I just had to focus on signing the papers in front of the judge and the witnesses and I would finally be on my own ready to start my life in this big exciting world.

I didn't see Juniper again for the next three months and I effectively forgot about her. Out of sight out of mind. Some true love huh?

Then one day I ran into her again leaving the residence of an acquaintance I was going to meet. I stopped in my tracks and her beauty hit me all over again but this time there were no stairs for me to throw myself down only a glass door to embarrass myself by running through. From those two chance encounters we should've known. Known that our life together would be full of pain and sorrow. Hurting each other just to see how far we could go. Granted I hurt her first and continuously hurt her far worse than she hurt me, but the last straw was when she secured me to the wall using the same torture methods I would constantly use on her.

In the moments when my mind cleared and I looked around finally realized this would be the end of the line for me, I had never been more furious and proud of her at the same time. Proud because she finally learned to stand up for herself but furious because she had learned to stand up for herself and I had given her the upper hand to do so. I had given her the strength after all these years by giving her you, the light at the end of the tunnel. I had let my guard down and it came back to bite me in the butt.

When she was tourturing me I could tell she wasn't there in the room with me and then when she passed out after seeing the amount of blood rushing from my wounds I thought I was going to die there. I thought we all were. I could feel my body losing the fight to preserve my energy, trying to battle with the wounds on my body to keep me alive. I looked at your mother on last time curled in a fetal position, holding you, loving you, our unborn child. After all these months of wondering why she was getting so big I finally had my answer, our little angel was on the way and I wouldn't get to meet you. In those moments for the first time in as long as I could remember I cried. Cried for the terrible man I had become, for the person I made your mom become and for you who wouldn't get to know either of us.

I prayed that when you were born you looked like your mom and that you had a big heart like her too. Just because this was where she ended up with me didn't mean that she wasn't a good person, just a person with really bad luck.

I woke up five weeks later in a hospital bed with lights that sounded so loud with that incessant buzzing sound. I blinked and took in the world around me, moving only my eyes to encompass what I could see of the room. Then I started to move the smallest part of my body, first my little toe and made my way up to my fingers. My appendages worked but what if I was somehow paralyzed? Juniper had done a lot of things to me. How would my face look? Would I be able to recognize myself? Would she recognize me if she saw me? What had happened to her, to you?

The door opened and the nurse walked in. "Ah Mr. Fortune, you're awake. I was wondering when you would decide to rejoin the land of the living."

"Water," I croaked in a voice I no longer recognized. Was that me? Was that what I would sound like for the rest of my life now that I didn't have a tongue?

"Yes of course," the nurse walked over to the table by the window and pour water from a pitcher that had enough condensation on it that I could tell it would be refreshing. She brought the water over to me and lifted my head enough that I could take a few sips then she pulled it away and set my head back down gently on the pillow. "We managed to get to you in time and reattach your tongue, it was an extensive procedure but it should be in working order now that you've had time to heal. Your wounds are about finished getting better, now that you're awake we just want to monitor you for a few more days before we release you. You're one lucky man Mr. Fortune."

The nurse smiled at me and then turned to leave, "wait. What happened to my wife and our baby?"

I struggled to talk and get all the words out, it hurt so bad. Every muscle in my body was screaming but i needed to know where my family was.

"Your wife was sent to a mental institution a few weeks ago after she delivered a beautiful healthy baby girl. She's with her grandma, your wife gave her custody. But if you want to change that you can petition the court about that when you're up to full health."

The nurse left the room after that closing the door behind her gently. She also must have told the doctor and the cops outside that I was awake because after she left they entered the room, throwing badges and titles around like I hadn't just suffered the most traumatic experience of my life and almost didn't make it through alive.

They asked question after question until my head hurt and they started swimming in front of me. "Okay I think it's time for you boys to go, my patient still needs his rest. He's not up to par yet."

They nodded and the doctor and me and shook his hand. "Thank you for your cooperation, we'll be in touch if we have anything else we need to clarify."

"Thanks Doc," the doctor gave me an upturn of his lips and told me to get some rest before making an exit himself.

When I was finally able to leave it was three weeks later. The cops never came back to see me I guess having everything that they needed instead I went to see them, I needed answers. I walked into the main precinct and asked for the Sheriff who brought me back to his office.

"What can I do for you son?" He asked taking a seat behind his desk and motioning for me to take one of the two seats facing his.

"I would like to know what happened to my wife and daughter down to the minute detail. If you don't think it's important to tell me I want to know about it anyway."

The Sheriff rubbed his chin and looked at me, then he swiveled his chair and looked out the window to his right. He cleared his through, "we found you handcuffed to the basement walls, and your wife nine months pregnant laying on the floor unconscious. Your neighbor called us, Ms. Jenkins. She told us that she hadn't seen any movement from your house and that your wife had been acting strange asking, her about things that she usually had no interest in – I guess to keep any suspicion off of her, but that's what made it suspicious. I sent a few of my guys down there to take a look not really putting any stock into what Ms. Jenkins said, she's always calling to file a complaint about someone so I thought she was just being her normal busybody self. When my men arrived the house was quiet like you had gone to bed but what was suspicious was that it was one in the afternoon and last time I checked people had to work for a living. So I told my men to scout the place but not to move in until I could come down with a few other guys."

The Sheriff took a deep breath and shook his head. "The blood bath that we found when we made our way downstairs was surreal. I thought that you were dead by the hue and temperature of your skin. You looked so peaceful I thought there's no way he's still alive, we're too late. The EMT arrived a few minutes later after I called them, we assisted them with removing you off the wall. Your wife road in one truck and you were in another. It turns out that we weren't too late and you were alive but just barely hanging on. Your wife gave birth at the hospital after the doctors induced labor. She woke up saying all kinds of demented things. That lady was so far gone off her rocker, the doctors thought that the stuff she was doing to her body before she found out she was pregnant had hurt the baby but she came out healthy and full of life. The doctor didn't even have to spank her bottom came out the womb a trouble maker," the Sheriff said chuckling.

"When Juniper woke up she started yelling that she wanted to see her baby but she had already signed custody over to her mom who had taken the baby back to her house in Albuquerque. She started crying and then confessed to her side of the story. With the things that she was saying I knew things upstairs couldn't be kosher. She told us that she had murdered you in cold blood, that she saw you take your last breath and had enjoyed every minute of it. She said that she had gone upstairs after mutilating your body, showered and then went to bed until she called 9-1-1 when her water broke in the middle of the night. I just reasurred her that everything would be okay and would work itself out. There was no point in telling her that she hadn't succeeded in offing you, she might have tried to again and this time actually kill you. We sent her to get evaluated and realized that she was a danger to herself as well as others, so we had her checked in full time. There's no way she's getting out of there. Her lawyer pleaded insanity and the judge agreed so that's her reality now."

After the Sheriff was done with his story and I left. He had told me that I could get full custody of you if I wished Maggie since you are my daughter but I thought you would be better off living with your Gran. What did I know about raising a kid? I had never wanted kids and now that I was blessed with one I didn't want to screw yo up like life and my circumstances screwed me up. I wanted you to have a full and prosperous life away from all the poisons of your mother and I, and seeing what a lovely young lady you have become brings joy to my heart.

I know you don't know me but I would like to get to know you. You don't have to call me dad or anything, I know I haven't earned that title but I hope that one day you'll give me the chance to try.

Fortune has always smiled on you Maggie and I know it always will.

Yours,

G.F.