I - Race Wars
The next day, we just didn't bring up what we saw last night and just keep working on the cars until Race Wars comes around. I was handling the wheels when Brian walked up to me.
"Hey, David. What's your story?" He asked me. I stopped instantly and looked at him with seriousness.
"Why do you ask?" I asked him.
"No reason, I just want to understand you more." He said. Well, since he's just curious, I might as well.
"Well, growing up I only had my father. My mother died some time after I was born. Now my father wasn't a good person at all. He would treat me horribly. The worst thing he'd do was to make me think that family wasn't important and that it just holds you back. At some point, we moved from England to the US. And that's when things got worse. He'd use all his money up on alcohol and prostitutes. He was the worst. In fact, when I was 14, I just left him and never looked back. Eventually, I made it to LA and shortly after, I met Dom and Mia at the store because I was hungry. They were curious about me and I told them my life. At that moment, they took me in and gave me the family I always wanted. And of course we bonded over cars." I told him my whole story. He looked at me with some sense of respect and understanding.
Shortly after, we both helped Dom with the front of the car.
"You got big plans tonight?" Dom asked Brian.
"Yeah, we're going out to dinner." He said, meaning him and Mia. Because me and Dom care for her, we looked at Brian with seriousness.
"You break her heart, we'll break your neck." Dom warned him.
"That's not gonna happen." He assured him. He better make sure he doesn't.
"I want to show you something. David, you wanna come with?" Dom said. I knew what he wanted to show him. The Dodge Charger. I had to be there.
"Sure." I said. Dom and Brian drove in Dom's car and I drove my own car to the house and we entered the garage where the Charger is resting.
"Wow." Brian murmured.
"Me and my dad built her. Nine hundred horses of Detroit muscle. It's a beast." Dom said. He was right, it is in every way a beast.
"You know what she ran in Palmdale?" Dom asked Brian.
"No, what did she run?" Brian asked.
"Nine seconds flat." Dom told him. I remember when he told me that, I was floored because it's not every day you hear a fact like that.
"My dad was driving. So much torque, the chassis twisted coming off the line. Barely kept her on the track." Dom further explained this creation.
"So, what's your best time?" Brian asked him, thinking he had driven this car before.
"I've never driven her." Dom stated.
"Why not?" Brian wondered.
"Because it actually scares him." I answered for Dom. And there's actually a good reason for why he's scared of driving her.
"That's my dad." He pointed to a photo hanging on the wall. He's going to retell his dad's death and maybe even tell of when he beat that guy up with a socket wrench.
"He was coming up in the stock car circuit. Last race of the season. A guy named Kenny Linder came up from inside, in the final turn. He clipped his bumper and put him into the wall at 120. I watched my dad burn to death. I remembered hearing him scream. But the people that were there said he had died before the tanks blew. They said it was me who was screaming." Dom told his father's death. It always made me disturbed to hear this because of the idea of seeing your father burn and maybe scream is traumatizing to a child.
"I saw Linder about a week later. I had a wrench, and I hit him. And I didn't intend to keep hitting him, but when I was finished, I couldn't lift my arm. He's a janitor at a high school. He has to take the bus to work every day. And they banned me from the tracks for life." Dom then explained his rage moment and the consequences of it.
"I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters. Not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those 10 seconds or less, I'm free." Dom then finished. There's something special about the idea of feeling free, even if it's for a short amount of time.
We then left and headed back to the garage with the others.
Later when it was nighttime, Brian took Mia and went out for their dinner. I had to calm Dom down and tell him that it will be alright.
And then he asked me if I wanted to participate with the next heist and I told him no because I didn't want to keep doing it again and that there were already enough of them to do it. So he agreed and left me to watch the house for him.
Following Day
We managed to finish up the junker and it is now all pristine and sexy. It was an orange 1994 Toyota Supra MK IV. Dom and Brian decided to go for a test drive to see how it functions and just based on the sounds, it sounds primed and ready.
When they got back, they said it worked perfectly. They even raced against a Ferrari and beat it with ease. HOLY SMOKES! Now we just had to wait for Race Wars.
Later
Race Wars came by rather fast and we all made it to the location of where it is out in the desert. I was just hanging around and then I saw Brian driving the Supra in my direction and Brian came out. He saw me and walked towards me.
"Hey, glad to see you made it here." I greeted him.
"Yeah." He said and then we walked to the trailer for our team and then suddenly, the door slammed open and Jesse popped out.
"Hey, what's up?" He asked us.
"Hey, what's up, Jesse?" Brian asked back and we walked with him.
"What do you have in your hand?" Brian asked him.
"Throwing down the pink slip just like you." He told him, wait, what?
"The pink slip to what? The Jetta?" Brian asked for clarification.
"Yeah." He said. Why the hell would he bet on his dad's car?!
You can't bet your dad's car." Brian told him.
"It's alright. I ain't losing. This fool is running a Honda 2000. I'll win. That way, me and my dad can roll when he gets out of prison. It's all good." Jesse explained. Hold on, a Honda 2000? There's only one person I know that has that car. And not a good person.
"But they're gonna throw him right back into prison after he kills you." I told him. He then ran to the cars that were about to race. One of which is of course, the very Honda 2000 I was thinking of. I ran as fast as I could to find Dom and the others.
I saw Dom by what looks like a bar of some kind and I bolted.
"DOM!" I yelled and he turned and saw my look of worry as I managed to reach him and the others.
"What's wrong?" Dom asked me.
"It's Jesse. He raced against Johnny for slips and lost!" I told him as the car Jesse was driving in was heading off somewhere.
"Oh, shit." Dom cursed.
Then Johnny drove right to us and got out then walked to us with a frown on his face.
"Where's he going?" He asked Dom.
"Went to the car wash." Dom lied.
"Whatever. Go fetch my car." Johnny snarled at him.
"Go fetch your car? We're not on your block anymore. You better watch who you talk to like that." Dom warned him and walked away.
"Toretto! Toretto!" Johnny yelled at him and Dom turned to him.
"SWAT came into my house, disrespected my whole family, because somebody narked me out. And you know what? It was you!" He then spat at him and that last bit made Dom punch him hard in the face and proceeded to punch him over and over. The crowd around us went crazy and the guys had to hold them back. Security went in to try and pull Dom off of Johnny and then I spotted Lance and he was walking to stop the beat up but I stopped him by punching him and kicking him in the balls for good measure.
And then I helped Vince pull Dom off of Johnny, and it was hard because Dom was resisting and he's a tough sumbitch.
"Calm down, man! Calm down!" I barked at him to stop.
"I never narked on nobody! I never narked on nobody!" Dom shouted at Johnny and we pushed him aside and we walked away.
"Look man, you need to calm down, right now!" I told him.
At night
It was now much later during the day. The races died down and everyone was drinking and dancing. Right now, Dom and the others were getting ready to do the next heist. And since they were one man short….
"David, I know you said you don't want to do it anymore but I'm asking you to help. Please, it's just one more and we're done. We can go down to Mexico, something you always wanted, right?" Dom said to me, hoping I'd help.
I leaned on my car, thinking about this. At least Dom is honest. And since this is the last one and that we'd hopefully go to Mexico, which as Dom said is something I always wanted to do, I might as well get this over with.
"Alright." I nodded and then I got in my car to drive but then Mia came up and argued with Dom over the fact that she believes that Dom is only doing this for himself and not for them both. Dom realised this ain't going anywhere so he and the others got in their cars and we all drove off into the night.
