Maxwell Marvelo didn't come from greatness. He came from rot.
From a collapsing tenement on the south side of Chicago, where every floor creaked like it was mourning, and the wallpaper peeled like burnt skin.
He was born in 1920 to an immigrant mother with fading eyes and a father who stank of gin and cheap sweat. A man who worked the docks when he could, stole when he couldn't, and took out his frustrations on anything softer than his fists—most often, Max.
By age five, Max knew what the belt felt like. Not just the sting—he knew the sound. The flick of the buckle, the hiss of leather through belt loops. His father didn't yell. He didn't grunt. He just struck, methodical and practiced, until Max stopped crying.
His mother, Rosa, whispered prayers in Italian when she thought no one was listening. She'd hold Max's face in trembling hands and promise, "Sei speciale, Maxie. Dio ti guarda." You're special. God is watching you. But Max didn't believe in God. Not when He let this happen every night.
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The Great Depression
The streets were full of broken men and wide-eyed boys. Men with newspaper shoes and hollow cheeks, their dreams blown out like candles. Max would walk past breadlines stretching around corners, past men in suits begging on corners, past mothers holding infants wrapped in newspaper.
Construction cranes clawed at the sky while people starved beneath them. New York's skyline rose like a monument to someone else's future. Max stared at those steel skeletons and thought, "If I were born up there, maybe I'd have mattered."
Once, he snuck up to a job site on 42nd Street. Watched the ironworkers hang off beams hundreds of feet high like they didn't care about death. One of them saw him gawking and called out, "Hey, kid! You hungry?"
Max nodded.
The man tossed him a half-eaten apple. "Don't end up like me. Learn numbers or punch hard. Ain't no room in between."
Max bit into the apple like it was gold. It was the first thing he'd eaten in two days.
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The Change
The strange thing was: the pain didn't last.
By the time Max turned eight, his bruises faded faster. His skin hardened. His bones didn't snap the way his father's fists expected. The beatings grew worse—but they stopped hurting.
Then came the hunger. An unbearable, burning need to move, to strain, to lift. He couldn't sit still. He'd sneak out to the alley at night to do push-ups in the frost, punching the brick wall behind the apartment until his knuckles bled. The next morning, the wall would have hairline fractures. And his hands? Not a scratch.
At nine, he lifted a cast-iron stove to save his mother's leg when the floor gave out. At ten, he crushed a doorknob in frustration. And one day, at eleven, he grabbed his father's wrist mid-swing and stopped it cold.
The old man looked into his eyes and saw something new: not fear. Not even defiance.
He saw restraint.
That night, his father hit harder than ever before—drunken, screaming, kicking his ribs until the floorboards rattled. He beat Max until Rosa screamed and tried to push him off. He slapped her. Hard. Too hard. She collapsed with a sound like wet paper hitting the ground.
"Ma?" Max whispered, crawling to her.
Blood on her lip. Not moving.
"You little bastard," his father growled. "You think you can protect her now?"
Max's fists clenched. His breath slowed. Something inside him—something old, heavy, and buried—broke loose.
"I'm not afraid of you anymore."
He lunged. One punch.
The man flew back, struck the fridge, and collapsed in a heap. His neck bent wrong. His eyes didn't blink.
Max stared at his trembling hands.
"...I didn't mean to."
Then at his mother.
Then out the window.
Then he ran.