Sister sends her regard

Sister sends her regard
The Mandala estate was alive with energy when Orion and Viper returned.

Everything looked like victory. Everything felt like success.

Orion stepped out of the car first. His face was bright with the kind of satisfaction that came from winning a war. Viper followed behind him. His eyes scanned the estate with the look of a man who owned the world. 

This was what victory caused.

To them, the exchange had gone exactly as planned. Better than planned, even. They had Carlos and Eliza back safe and sound. Julia had been shot in the chaos and was probably bleeding out somewhere. The Sinclair family was finally broken.

Victory, at last, seemed to be sitting right in their hands.

In the center of the main room, two figures stood in the middle of the room. Black hoods covered their heads completely. Their hands were tied behind their backs with thick rope. They hadn’t moved or made a sound since being brought inside.

“Remove the covers,” Orion ordered. His voice was loud and commanding.

The guards moved quickly. They grabbed the black hoods and ripped them away in one smooth motion.

What was revealed made Orion and Viper stop dead in their tracks.

The faces staring back at them were wrong. Not wrong in an obvious way. Wrong in a way that made your brain hurt to look at them. 

The skin looked smooth but artificial. Like it had been stretched too tight over the bone underneath. Like someone had taken a photograph and wrapped it around a skull.

But despite being fake, the faces looked a lot like Carlos and Eliza. Every tiny detail was perfect.

For a brief moment that felt like forever, it looked completely real. 

But then Viper’s eyes started to narrow. Something was bothering him. Something his brain was trying to tell him but couldn’t quite put into words.

He stepped closer. Leaned down. Studied the faces more carefully.

“This,” he said slowly, “this is a mask.”

“What?” Orion’s voice cracked slightly.

“Take it off,” Orion snapped at the guards. “Take it off right now.”

The guards hesitated. They looked at each other with confused expressions. Then they reached out with careful fingers and started to peel away what they thought was skin.

The masks came off like rubber. L

Beneath them were two faces that neither Orion nor Viper had ever seen before. A man and a woman. Both young. Both terrified out of their minds.

“Who are you?” Orion’s voice cut through the room like a blade.

The strangers shook their heads frantically. Tears were streaming down their faces. Their whole bodies were trembling with fear.

“We don’t know!” the woman cried. “We don’t know what’s happening! We were just walking home from work and then someone grabbed us!”

“They put something over our faces,” the man added. His voice was shaking so hard he could barely get the words out. “Some kind of drug. We couldn’t see anything. We couldn’t move. We don’t understand what’s going on!”

Viper’s hands slowly curled into fists. His knuckles went white. The sound of his teeth grinding together was loud in the sudden silence.

Orion’s chest started heaving up and down. His blood felt like it was boiling in his veins.

“Dante,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “That bastard outsmarted us. Again.”

Viper’s control finally snapped. He spun around and slammed his fist down on the table behind him. The sound resounded through the walls of the house, startling everyone that heard it. 

“Enough of this,” Viper said. His voice was deadly quiet now. The kind of quiet that came right before explosions. “Send men to the warehouse district. Find every container that Dante uses for his shipments. Burn them all to the ground.”

He turned to face one of the guards directly. “I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care how many people you have to kill. I want every single one of his properties turned into ash. Do you understand me?”

The guard nodded quickly and walked away briskly.

Orion was pacing now. Back and forth across the marble floor like a caged animal. 

That’s when another guard appeared. He was carrying a wooden box in both hands. 

“Bosses, this just came in.” The guard announced.

Orion stopped pacing. His eyes locked onto the box like it was a bomb ready to explode.

“What’s that?” he asked. “We weren’t expecting any deliveries.”

The guard looked uncomfortable. Scared even. “It was just delivered, sir. A man in a motorcycle helmet brought it to the front gate. He didn’t say anything. Just handed it over and drove away.”

Orion’s jaw got tight. “Open it.”

“Sir?”

“I said open it. Now.”

The guard’s hands were shaking as he lifted the wooden lid. 

Blood. Fresh blood. The metallic scent filled the room and made everyone’s stomach turn.

Inside the box was a finger. Human finger. Severed jaggedly at the joint. It was like it had been cut by a knife that was not sharp.

The skin was pale and waxy. The edges where it had been cut were raw and red and looked like they had been bleeding recently.

Next to the finger was a photograph.

Viper leaned in to look and immediately felt sick. The picture showed their father, Carlos. His face was covered in sweat and tears. His eyes were bloodshot and wild with pain. But the worst part was his mouth. Someone had forced it into a smile. A grotesque, unnatural smile that didn’t belong on a human face.

It was obvious that before the picture was taken, Dante had requested that he smiled after his finger had been chopped off.

And one of his fingers, the very one sitting in the box, was clearly missing from his hand.

A letter rested beneath the photograph. 

“Dear Orion and Viper,

I hope this package finds you well. Inside you will find the first installment of what you have earned through your actions.

One by one, you will receive your father piece by piece. Slowly. Painfully. Each package will arrive exactly when I want it to. Each piece will remind you of what happens when you dare to cross paths with me.

Your father is very much alive, by the way. For now. His screams sound so beautiful when I remove parts of him. I think you would enjoy the sound.

This is only the beginning. By the time I am finished with him, there will be nothing left to bury.

Consider this my formal declaration of war.

Sincerely,
Dante Sinclair

P.S. - Your sister sends her regards. She is quite comfortable in my care. For now.”

Both Orion and Viper were consumed by a kind of anger that burnt through them like fire.