I know the story isn't moving along as fast as some might like, but everything happening is pertinent to the story. I promise if you guys stick by me that the confrontation you're waiting for is coming soon. Read and Review please!
Chapter 14-Questions
Letty gave a big stretch after stirring awake; she was over sleeping in a car for hours at a time. As hard, uncomfortable and squeaky as the motel bed was, she would almost beg to be back in it. It was well into the early hours of the morning when Letty spotted the sign that welcomed them into Boaca, a city in Central Nicaragua and she couldn't have been happier. That meant they were close to meeting Leon and getting out of harm's way.
Her nerves had her on edge. She wasn't sure why but she was getting a bad vibe about reuniting with Leon. Sure, she was ecstatic to see her long-time friend again, but she couldn't help thinking that it would come at a price. Once she became alive again, it would be hard to keep the news from spreading. Who would be after her then? Braga … the FBI … or even worse, Dominic?
Every day she thought about the moment that she would see Dominic again, if ever. Her heart rate excelled at just the thought of being in the same room with him. Part of her wanted to rip his guts out and feed them to him, the other half just wanted to see his smile. That smile - The one that won her heart in the first place. He could wreck her car, and with one flash of that grin, she'd be mush in his hands. Sometimes she thought he used it purposely for his advantage.
But now when she thought about his bright smile, she could only see the lies behind that smile. He wanted to split to save her from prosecution, but she pleaded with him. They were a team, everyone knew they belonged together. He agreed to stick it out until they had enough money to stop the heists, therefore, no more cops. She thought she had convinced him; they made love to celebrate his change of heart. He held her close to him, like every other night. Letty had no doubt that when she awoke in the morning he would be there. But boy was she wrong.
Letty was tired of being wrong. She was tired of defending others when she had no one to have her back. Vince left and never tried to contact her again. Leon was gone, Jesse dead. Mia closed herself off after Dom ran. She blamed Letty for Dom's running, saying that her constant need for a chase forced Dom to flee. Letty knew Mia didn't mean it; she was only speaking out of anger. Letty was dead wrong – for hooking up with the Feds to help Dom, for believing that he would stay with her. Mostly for having hope that he'd come back. After the mishap at the hotel, she felt herself retreating back into her shell. When she let her guard down, things began to fall apart around her. She let her guard down in the DR and ended up alone. She needed to keep her emotions in check and her eyes wide open if she wanted to stay alive. Especially for Julian's sake.
"We're running low on gas. I'm gonna give Leon a call and find out where we are meeting. It should be another day of driving left. Are you okay?"
"Yeah," she ran a shaky hand through her hair, "I'll go get some snacks."
She reached into the back seat and released Julian from the car seat, carrying him into the gas station. She let him pick out a lollipop and grabbed a few snacks of her own before loading up the counter at the register.
"Ju-Ju, don't," she begged as he tried repeatedly to reach for nearby PEZ dispensers. She made eye contact with the cashier, who looked nervous and frightened. He rang her items up slowly, which irritated the hell out of her. "Julian, please!" she yelled again, snatching the toy that he managed to snag and pushing it out of reach.
Looking over her shoulder, she could see Luke standing next to the car, pump in hand as he spoke animatedly on the phone. He turned and caught her eye, giving her a small smile and a thumbs up. She huffed in annoyance as her total rang up and she pulled some bills out of her wallet. Watching the cashier bag her things, his eyes kept moving to his left, almost as if he was trying to warn her of something. She looked out the corner of her eye and saw a tall man pretending to read a magazine a few feet away. She knew he was pretending because the magazine was upside down. He kept glancing up at her and she held the stare until something caught her eye – the same black spider tattooed on his hand.
"Mama, toy!" he whined, reaching again for the toy again.
"Julian, please leave the damn toy alone!" she snapped, startling the toddler to tears. Letty grabbed her bag and hurried out the door.
What happened next was so fast; Letty could only stand frozen, almost as if she was in a time warp. Luke never saw the black car pulling up behind him, or the men who jumped out and surrounded the car. She tried to scream, to warn him, but she couldn't get any sound to come out. She could only feel; the coldness of the tears running down her face, the hand that clutched her mouth shut from behind, and the gun pressed to her back. The sound of the gunshot snapped her back to reality, and Luke's fallen body sent her into a fury, thrashing around angrily in her capturer's hold.
"You three are sure hard to find," another accented man said as he slowly exited the back of one of the cars, fastening the buttons on an eggshell-colored suit.
Letty didn't care about him, but she needed to get to Luke. She could see his body … and the blood … and the fact that he wasn't moving. She chomped down hard on the hand covering her mouth and when she was free, she ran like hell as fast as she could before being grabbed by her hair by another man. She had a better view of Luke and he seemed to be coming to, coughing and screaming for help.
"Luke!" she dropped to her knees, cradling her screaming child in her arms.
"Leticia, I need you to listen to me," the white suit said as he kneeled down next to her. "I know you've had a rough life and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but things are about to get a lot worse. I need the boy."
"Fuck you!" she screamed, never taking her eyes off Luke and her arms off Julian.
"That's not nice, Leticia. I'm not the one to blame here, Leon is. I need to teach him a lesson, so I need the boy," he turned his sights on the crying toddler. He placed his hand on his head, pushing his curls out of his face. "Julian, is it? Buddy, I need you to come with me."
"Get away from them!" Luke howled as he pulled himself to lean up against the Jetta.
"Shut up Lucas! Before I change my mind on continuing to let you breath for another four weeks," he shouted before looking back to Letty. "I'm sorry, where are my manners. My name is Alvaro Koenig. Leon has come into possession of something of mine, and it's very critical that he returns it to me. Now, I'm sure Leon is an outstanding guy, but he's given me reason to believe that I can't exactly trust him. What, with that little drug problem of his. So I have to take something of his to hold as collateral."
"Why me? Why us? I shouldn't have to pay for Leon's fuck-ups!"
"You are correct, but you two mean more to Leon than anything. So hand him over," when Alvaro grabbed for Julian, she snatched her pistol from her waistband and fired at the foot of the man with his fingers tangled in her hair. Alvaro motioned for his own pistol, but Letty was quick enough to press the barrel to his forehead, stopping him cold in his tracks. Each of the henchmen retrieved their weapons, but Koenig put up his hands.
"Put 'em down, boys. This little lady is too vital to our mission."
"You back the fuck off!" Letty roared as she tightened her grip, never lowering the gun from between his eyes. Several of his men reacted, all drawing their weapons and pointing them at her, but that didn't scare her. "Now, I don't know what beef you have with Leon, but you take that up with him. I have been punished for other people's mistakes for far too long. I will not stand here and hand over my child to some German cocksucker in a cheap suit. Now, you said a month. What happens then?"
Alvaro was surprised how well she held the gun and knew she was probably responsible for the death of his men. He never could get a good look at her through the photos, but seeing her then and now in the flesh, he realized just how gorgeous she was. "Luke, I see why you clung to this one. She's beautiful."
Letty moved the gun away from his face long enough to cock the chamber back, "A month for what?"
"I told Leon he had to return to me what's mine, or the three of you will be dead."
"Then go through on your fucking word and give him the month. If he doesn't come through, you can have me. Not my child. I'm sure you'd like me more. Me. Deal?" she stared at him with cold, fiery black eyes.
"How do I know you won't just disappear again? Maybe fake your death twice."
"Because I'm going to shove my boot so far up Leon's ass that he'll taste rubber for a week. You'll get what belongs to you. But if you so much as breathe near my child again, I'll slice you open. Just like I did your boy," she nodded to a man she recognized as the room service from the hotel, only now he was in all black with an AK-47 hanging from his shoulder, pointing directly at her.
Alvaro gave a small smile; he liked her blazing attitude. It turned him on. "Okay, Leticia-"
"Please, call me Letty," she replied mockingly.
"Letty, if I don't see my possession in one month I'll be paying you a visit. And don't even think about skipping out. I know everything about you. I know you're very infamous in the United States. And I know you're not so liked in Mexico. I'll see you around, gorgeous," he gave a smile that made Letty's skin crawl. His eyes were so empty, soul-less even. She held the gun to his head and walked him backwards back to his car.
"Go get in the car baby," she sat Julian down and lowered the gun to Alvaro's jewels, her eyes daring him to look at her son. Julian opened the door and crawled into the front seat, looking out the window at Luke, who gave him the best smile he could.
"I'll be seeing you two real soon. Don't count on me being so generous next time," Koenig spat as he slid into the back seat of his car. She didn't lower her weapon until each car was well out of sight.
"Letty," Luke's gurgling had her running to his side.
"Oh fuck man, this is bad," she said as she assessed his wound. He was hit on his lower right side and bleeding profusely. "We gotta get you some help."
"No way; we go to a hospital, they ID you, back to the US you go," he managed to get to his feet and used the car to help keep his balance. "You know how to sew?"
"Do I look like I can sew?"
He laughed, which helped lower her fear a little. "Point taken. Run back in there and get some thread, a roll of paper towels," he looked down at his blood-soaked black t-shirt, "Better make that two rolls, a shit ton of aspirin and a bottle of liquor."
Letty ran back into the store, where the cashier was screaming at her in Portuguese but she ignored him as she frantically collected each of the items that he asked for. She added a case of Corona and tossed a couple bills on the table before hurrying out the store. She helped Luke into the passenger seat and hopped behind the wheel, peeling off quickly. After another half-hour of driving, they spotted another rundown motel in a remote area and decided to take one last stop. Letty took Julian and the items inside the room first, before going back out to assist Luke inside. After getting Julian settled with some cartoons, she prepared to take on the task of stitching Luke's bullet hole. Letty cracked open a beer first and took a long swig before helping Luke with his shirt off.
"That's pretty gnarley, babe," she grimaced as she got a better look of the wound. "Luckily, it only grazed you."
"There should be a first-aid kit somewhere. Look for a needle and some gauze wrap," he said as he guzzled the harsh whiskey down. He yelped at the sting of the alcohol as he poured it on his wound, but he knew it would help numb it and slow down the bleeding. Letty searched all over the room before finding the makeshift kid under the kitchen sink. She snatched the bottle from him and tipped it back quickly, before again dousing the bloody area with liquor. She shoved a towel in his mouth and winced as she began weaving the thread into his flesh. After a few tugs and pulls, and shouts of misery from Lucas, she was surprised to see the wound actually closing.
"So what does the tattoo mean? I've been meaning to ask," she said, pointing to the ink that lined his waist.
"After fights with my Pops, my ma would pray with her rosary and it was almost like a chant to her. Love Conquers All. She lives by it; I'm trying to do the same thing. If I believe in love and its power, I can have and do anything I want."
Letty thought hard about his words. Love Conquers All. Was it true? Did love over power all of the evils in the world? Greed? Dishonesty? Murder? Family, friendship … it was all held together by compassion and unconditional love. If Dominic really loved her, wouldn't he have stayed by her side, even with the cops closing in? Wouldn't have he wanted to be with her, where he was safest?
"I'm sure he had his reasons … why he left."
"I swear, I think you can read my mind. But fuck his reasoning."
"Well it's either that, or he's just fucking insane. I don't know anyone who wouldn't want to be around you, all the time."
She blushed slightly, giving him a soft punch in the gut.
"All right, all done," she sighed thankfully, wiping away the excess blood. "Mia would be proud."
"Why's that?"
"She was on her way to being a doctor. Damn good too. She would always use me as her dummy, always poking and prodding. But it just wasn't my scene."
"And what was? The garage?"
"Oh hell yeah. Ever since I was ten years old. My dad taught me everything I knew about cars; how they ran, what made them stop running. But it was Mr. Toretto, Dino as he made us call him, Dino taught me the true beauty of a car. What goes into building one, how to make it go faster. He even bought me my first car."
"What was it?"
"'97 Nissan 240SX. It was a piece of junk when I got it, but Dom and I turned her into a beast. My first race in it I won by two car lengths, 2,000 dollars. Nobody could beat me. I was unstoppable," she smiled as she remembered her glory days.
"What happened to it? The car?"
"I have no idea. When I called for the Jetta, I was originally looking for the Nissan, but it seemed to have vanished. I figured the police got a hold of it, or some bum stripped it down for parts. What I would give to see that car one more time."