Page 108 of Orion Ruined

“Yeah. You?” Orion asks.

Logan nods. “One. Bobby Saunders. We knew about him, though.” He catches my eye.

“Did you kill him?”

“I couldn’t. He’s like my older brother. I knew he was a snitch for a while, and even then I wasn’t sure what to do with him.”

“Don’t leave it open,” Kai warns. “You gotta make the cut.”

“I cut his balls off. Sent him to Milan. That’s me being generous.”

Orion turns to Kai. “And you?”

“Out of the four that jumped me a few weeks ago, who I killed, three were snitches,” Kai reports. “I killed those bastards before I even knew how much they deserved it. What worries me most is the personal stuff Milan has on us. Our everyday conversations, every single thing I’ve taken part in, from a motorbike sale to a racket I took from the Gianini restaurant. That’s bad, man.”

They all nod and exchange glances. Nobody says a word. Everyone’s in their own head.

“You know, I know what’s in those boxes, too,” I remind them. “Orion, did you read your mother’s letter?”

I can tell he’s prepared himself for this, as if he knew it would come up. He pulls a letter out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket and throws it onto the coffee table.

“I couldn’t. Fuck knows what’s inside, or who wrote it.”

Kai leans forward. “What’s this now?”

“In short, Wendy isn’t my real mother. Nobody knew. Nobody except my father, who never said anything about it.”

Kai’s shocked. “The fuck?”

“Yeah. So now I have this letter from my ‘mother’ that was at Milan’s for God knows how long, and I don’t think I want to open it,” Orion concludes gruffly.

“Logan, did you find the teddy bear in the box? Was that yours?” I ask.

“The bear was there, and I found my original birth certificate stuffed inside it,” Logan says. “Although, the name of my mother had been crossed out. I could only read a few letters of her first name–Ebe.”

Orion looks sympathetic. “Sorry, man. I know finding your mother means a lot to you.”

“Yeah. But hey, there’s more. I got a middle name now. You know what it is? Moros.”

“Huh. Moros. It suits you,” Orion grins.

“Does it? It means ‘the hateful personified spirit of impending doom, who drives mortals to their deadly fate.’”

“Fuck!” Orion laughs. “What’s yours, Kai?”

“…Typhon,” he mutters.

“What?” Orion and Logan gape at him before breaking out into laughter. “Typhon. That’s weird. Crazy.”

“It means destruction! So keep laughing, assholes. I could destroy you like that,” Kai quips.

“What about you, Orion?” I ask. “What’s your middle name?”

“Luckily, I don’t have one. Although I haven’t seen my birth certificate yet so I can’t be sure.”

I nod toward the table. “Maybe it’s in the letter.”

He shakes his head and reaches forward to pick up the letter again. He tears it open and I watch him pull out an actual birth certificate, as well as a note. He reads the note and flips it back onto the table. It lands with the words facing up.

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