Dominique woke from a deep sleep very slowly. Her head hurt and her eyes were swollen from all the crying she did the night before. Looking at the clock she realized it was ten o'clock, school had started three hours ago. Groaning she decided it'd do no good to go in late just to get chewed out by the principal. Turning over in bed she saw a note on her bedside table. Snatching it she read it.

Dominique-

Called Your principal at school, you've got the day off from school today, but your back on it tomorrow.

-Dad

She sighed in relief that detention would not be following her arrival at school tomorrow. Suddenly a thought hit Dominique like a brick. Alexandro was supposed to walk me to school! She could only imagine the greeting he got when he walked in this morning. Most likely Carolina and Michael on their way to school. She couldn't help the groan that escaped her lips. They had probably given Alexandro hell. Climbing out of bed she dressed slowly, shorts and a dark blue tank top today. Sliding some blue flip flops on she went downstairs.

The sight that greeted her was interesting to say the least. Leon was sitting on the couch with a black eye and a split lip next to Jesse who had bruises developing on his cheek. Dominique's mouth dropped open as she surveyed the mess that was the living room. The coffee table was broken in pieces and a lamp was smashed on the floor, along with a flower vase. Her Aunt Mia was picking up the pieces of the lamp while her mother calmed her father who was in the corner brooding. Vince saw her standing at the bottom of the stairs watching the scene unfolding before her and he came storming over. He grabbed a handful of her unbound, black hair and yanked her closer to the living, making her yelp from the pain.

"See this mess!" Dominique cringed as Vince yelled at her. "This mess is all your boyfriend's fault!" Disbelief flooded through her as her father came storming over and punched Vince as hard as he could in the jaw. Falling to the floor she looked at the room as if she was somebody else. That the girl sitting on the floor on her knees was not her but some other girl. That the people recovering from the fight were not her family. Standing from the floor she turned away from where her father was verbally and physically teaching Vince his lesson for yanking her around by her hair.

Dominique went over to Leon and snatched the cloth he was presently wiping the blood off his mouth with and wet it in the sink, coming back over to him she pressed it to his black eye. He flinched from the sudden cold of the cloth but held it there as she went to the kitchen again. Grabbing another cloth she wet it and went to Jesse. She wiped at the blood he had on his face and pressed it to his bruising cheek. Looking into his blue eyes with her brown ones she saw the sadness residing within him.

"What happened Jesse?" Dominique's voice was stronger than she thought she could manage amidst the destruction in her house.

"Your boyfriend, at least that's what Vince seems to think he is, came to walk you to school this morning." He paused for a moment as he flinched from the pain again as Dominique wiped at his cut. "He was told by Dominic that you wouldn't be going to school, he said okay and all that stuff, and then Carolina and Michael-Xavier came out." Jesse sighed as he recalled this morning's activities while Dominique had been sleeping soundly. "He was about to go when Carolina made a nasty comment in spanish about you being a whore and him being a freak. I don't think anybody could not respond to what she said so he turned to her and said, 'well at least I don't betray my friends.' And then it happened..."

"Michael attacked Alexandro with no provocation. Michael ensuciado seriamente para arriba, su castigo va a ser severo." Dominique's mother interupted from where she was cleaning Dominic's fresh cuts and bruises.

"Letty you can't punish my son." Leon said while pulling the now warm and bloody cloth away from his face. "I'm his father not you!"

"Well maybe if you taught your son correctly he wouldn't be such an ass like his father now would he?" She snapped back, anger flashing in her eyes.

"It's not my fault that he got attacked by a monster for a child." Letty's next sentence was cut short when he said that. Her mouth dropped open for a moment before she punched him square in the jaw.

"Nobody talks about my daughter that way!" Her mother's words became a mix of Spanish and English explicitives making Dominique's father get up and try to pull Letty away from Leon. The fight became more brutal as Leon started punching and hitting at Dominic as well. Vince joined in and tried to seperate them but got pulled into the fray as well. Soon enough everybody but Dominique was fighting eachother either verbally or physically. Having had enough Dominique saw red.

"Could everybody just SHUT UP?" Dominique had never raised her voice at her family before, she had always been a strong believer that if one person yelled everybody else would start yelling too. Luckily for her Dominic Toretto had a booming voice, and he had passed on that particular ability to make everybody listen to you on to her. The room suddenly stopped moving, people stopped speaking mid sentence and people stopped fighting mid punch. Everything was still as Dominique stood in the center of it all with rage written in her eyes. "I don't care who started this, but I am finishing this right now." Her words had never held such strength or determination. Her father stood from his spot where he was punching the daylights out of Leon and went over to her.

"I have never been so ashamed of my family before." Dominique's words cut through their hearts as they realized the foolishness of it all. "You are all full grown adults, and yet here I am, a sixteen year old girl breaking up her family's fight." She looked from each person to the next, glaring into their eyes, daring them to deny her. "When you are ready to act like adults, I will be outside." Her point made she turned and walked out of the house without looking back. She stormed down the street, she walked the whole way to the garage where her father and family worked. It was currently empty but she knew where her father hid the key when he forgot his at home.

Grabbing the key she unlocked the front door and walked in. The smell of oil and freshly driven cars greeted Dominique pleasantly. She had practically grown up in the garage, she had helped her father many times with fixing cars and giving them the right stuff to make them go fast. It had been her greatest joy to help her father fix up cars, but the one thing he never let her do until yesterday was actually be in the car when he's going racing speeds. She had known for a long time that her father raced now even though he had a family. Everybody knew that when he was younger that he raced but hardly anybody knew that he still raced today. The races had been more scarce after the big deal over the truck robberies.

Walking up to her favorite car that was still getting fixed up she ran her hand over it reverently. The owner was an uptight person, he would never even go faster than thirty miles in it she guessed. It would forever sit in his garage, getting dusted and waxed everyday so it stayed just as shiny as the day he bought it. The car was plain black, no extra detailing or anything to adorn the car's sides. It was plain but Dominique could picture the beauty it could be with a little extra help. She imagined herself racing in this car, she could see the people gathered around the sides of the streets as she won the race. People would cheer and scream as she proved to them she could do anything she wanted to.

A hand on her shoulder brought her out of her dreams quickly. Turning to look over her shoulder she saw Jesse standing behind her. He alone knew that she came here when she felt the need for silence. It was her second home, her sanctuary amongst pain and anger. The garage was her home. Dominique closed her eyes and she felt a single tear drip down her cheek. She loved speed, she loved going fast. Ever since she was a little girl her dream was to have her own car and race like her father used to. Her one experience in a really fast car brought her to the stunning reality that this was what she wanted.

"Are you okay." Dominique brought her eyes open when Jesse asked his question. She nodded and pushed his hand off her shoulder gently. She placed both of her hands on the side of the car and closed her eyes again, leaning close to the car she laid her head against it. Jesse knew what she was expressing through her movements, she was addicted to speed just like everybody else on the team. She wanted to be there with everybody else, this is what she wanted. Dominique was very clearly addicted to speed.

"I want to race Jesse, I want to race so badly." Her words were shakey, she longed for the race just as badly as they all did at first after experiencing it for the first time. Jesse had weaned himself away from the addiction when he had almost been killed because he lost. He didn't want to risk his life ever again, but he knew that until she experienced it herself, Dominique would always love the speed. "What do I have to do to feel it Jesse? What do I have to do to race?" He turned away, he didn't want to cause her demise. It was the last thing he wanted. But how could he deny the hunger for speed when he knew how strong it was, how it could call to you in your sleep. How even when you dream it's all that existed, it called to you, it drawed your body to fast cars or motor cycles, anything that could go fast. Dominic was going to kill him for this.

"Let's get you a car."

OoOoOoOoOoOo

The car flipped over and over again, she could only scream and beg that it would all be over soon. That this was all a nightmare, she would wake soon surely. The car flipped through mid air but she was too busy begging for her life from God to notice. The car hit the ground and rolled some more before coming to a sharp stop in the dust. Everything in her and on her ached, she was so bruised and banged up she couldn't see straight. She vaguely heard a voice calling out to her, asking her if she was okay, if she was still alive. She could only whimper and hope she was okay. Oh God the pain.

Leticia Toretto shot up into a sitting position in bed as the nightmare of her life woke her again. She had dreamed this particular nightmare many times lately. She recalled the accident that nearly killed her with a stunning acuteness. Beside her in bed Dominic grabbed at her waist with one of his huge arms. He pulled her closer so she laid down again. Curling into his body she whimpered as she remembered the flipping car, how she wished she could just forget. She saw Vince hanging on the truck with the cord wrapped around his arm again, the blood dripping down him as if tell them that he was going to die, that there was no way out of it now.

So many times she had prayed that she could've helped him before he had a need to be sent to the hospital. After he had recovered he'd been sent to prison and served his time while she and Dom and raised their daughter. When Vince had come home he had told Mia finally just how much he loved her, just how much he needed her, and how much he wished he could've been the one to hold her afterwards. It had hurt him so much when Brian had walked into the room and told Vince in a calm voice that he and Mia were married. Vince had been hurt beyond the point of caring anymore. Ever since then he'd been hard to get along with, his heart broken to many times to bear.

Letty sighed as she remembered the day Jesse had recovered from his wound. It had taken so long, a shot to the wound was hard to handle and his weak body had almost given up but he hadn't, he hung in there until he was fully recovered. The police had no mercy on him, he'd been sent to prison along with Vince but he'd gotten out early on good behavior. He'd spent five years in prison, five years of torture pain and missing his family. Letty had visited him as often as she could to keep him updated on everything, from her and Dom's marriage to the birth of their daughter. Mia and Brian had even visited him to tell him about their upcoming marriage, he'd been ecstatic that Brian wouldn't depart her and had encouraged their marriage on. When he got out it was as if he had never even left.

Letty and Dominic had been so happy when Dominique was born, she was the perfect little baby. She was hardly any trouble at all, she never fussed except for when she was hungry or had done a dirty in her pants. When she got older they started seeing more of Dom's attitude in her every day. Even though she looked alot like Letty she was very much her daddy's daughter. What scared Letty was the fact that Dominique had started showing interest in cars when she was only a toddler. Dom had only helped her love for fast cars by taking her to the garage when he worked and showing her how to fix the engines so that they went up to racing speeds. The girl loved those times with her father but Letty was more scared than when her daughter had picked up a car and attached a rubber band to it so that when she pulled back on the rubber band then let go the car would fly across the floor of the house faster than she could run.

But all in all Dominique was a good baby. Carolina was a different story, she was spoiled at birth. When she was a baby she only wore the best because that's all her family gave her, and she only ate the best baby food because she would spit out everything else. When she was older she only accepted the best brands of clothing, the most expensive of everything. Once Brian had bought her a pair of jeans at Wal-Mart and she had thrown a fit for weeks and refused to wear them. In fact when her parents were away she got out sizors and cut them to pieces because she didn't want to wear them. The girl was downright spoiled and stubborn.

Letty closed her eyes finally and leaned into Dominic's calming embrace. He had been there the whole time, when she had been recovering from the crash outside of the hospital in their safe house he had sat by her bedside and cared for her. When she was awake he'd talk to her and tell her what happened while she was sleeping, keeping her updated on life while she couldn't explore it for herself. Even when she was moody he'd stayed with her and just let her yell. He was her God sent miracle, she could feel it. Dominic loved her and she loved him, she wouldn't be away from him ever. Finally exhausting her mind she fell into a deep sleep.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

translations

Michael ensuciado seriamente para arriba, su castigo va a ser severo, Michael seriously messed up, his punishment is going to be severe

(A/N) Just wanted you guys to know how Jesse, Letty, and Vince survived their own little accidents. Also wanted to show you what a pain Carolina was when she was a baby. lol. -Sabeybaby