Chapter 2

Rebecca was already awake when Leon opened his eyes, she'd realised part way through the night that the man she was curled up with wasn't Vince. The body didn't feel right and his breathing was all wrong but what had really given the game away was when she'd realised he hadn't said "I love you" back. Vince always said that, no matter how tired he was or how angry he was with the world. He'd not had much affection growing up and he was determined that Rebecca and his baby would always know how he felt about them.

When she'd seen it was Leon in her bed she'd known instantly that Vince was dead. She knew that just after they told Leon she was pregnant that V'd asked him to look after her if anything went wrong and he wasn't able to be there for her and the baby. Every night there was a heist she'd expected Leon to wake her up and tell her that V had been hurt or arrested, she even left her kitchen window open so he could get in the house without anyone seeing. Seeing Leon lying in her bed could only mean one thing – V was dead. If he'd only been injured or arrested Leon would have woken her up, the fact that he'd let her sleep could only mean that there was nothing she could do.

Leon hadn't slept at all well that night, every time he'd closed his eyes he'd been haunted with images of his friend trapped on the side of the truck, screaming at Dom to help him. He'd been nearly level with the front of the truck when Letty had rolled her car and Dom had sent him back to get her out of the wreckage. He was still trying to get her out when he'd seen Brian's orange supra go flying past headed towards Vince and the truck. By the time he'd caught up with them Brian and Mia had already gotten Vince free and had him laying on the grass. Even though he was 50 feet away he could still see the blood and hear Vince's screams.

He'd seen the look on Mia's face when the helicopter had taken off and he knew that he had to get to Rebecca but he was torn between his loyalty to Vince and his loyalty to the team. It was only when Dom had confided in him that he didn't think V would make it and that they had to get to Mexico as soon as possible that he'd decided the team could manage without him. He was all Rebecca had now and she needed him. The team could be alright without him but without V, she had no one.

When Rebecca felt Leon's arms tighten around her she knew that he was awake. For nearly half an hour she'd been wanting him to wake up, to tell her what had happened to Vince but now that he was awake she didn't want to know. She wasn't ready to hear that the man she loved more than anyone else wasn't coming home to her. She didn't want to know but she knew that she couldn't put it off any longer.

"How did he die?"

"He got shot, I'm so sorry Becca, there was nothing I could do." Leon desperately wanted to tell her the truth but he'd no idea how much she knew about the teams' illegal activities and he didn't want to be the one to tell her that the man she loved was a violent criminal. She knew that V liked to fight, she'd been the one to patch him up after his fight with Brian outside the diner but there was a world of difference between a fist fight and Vince's role in the truck heists.

"Was it the cops or the truck driver?" Leon had to struggle to make out Rebecca's words, her face was buried in his neck and heartbreaking sobs racked her body.

Once he'd worked out what she said Leon realised that V must have told Rebecca everything about the truck heists. He wasn't surprised that she knew the truth, Vince hated liars more than anything and he would have had to lie to her a lot to explain away his absences and extra money.

"It was the truck driver, he had a shotgun – V didn't stand a chance. I'm sorry, Becca – I'm so fuckin sorry."

Leon was in tears by the time he'd finished telling Becca everything that had happened to Vince, she deserved to know the truth about how Vince had died but he hated making her cry. He'd never been able to deal with women crying and having a pregnant woman sob in his arms was pretty much his worst nightmare.

It was mid afternoon before Rebecca fell into an exhausted sleep, over the previous 7 hours she'd cried, screamed at Leon, even hit him a few times and all he'd been able to do was hold her. He'd have done anything to have been able to take her pain away, if he could have taken swapped places with Vince he would have – Vince had had so much to live for and it wasn't right that he'd been the one to die. Out of everyone on the team Vince was the only one with an actual future and it had all been torn away from him, if only Dominic had listened when they said it hadn't felt right

The next few days all seemed to blur into one, what with identifying Vince's body and arranging his funeral it seemed that all they were doing was crying and trying to sleep. Leon was doing his best to make sure that Rebecca was eating properly but she really wasn't interested in anything he made for her. It was only when he threatened to have her admitted to hospital that she'd finally started to eat. She'd already lost Vince and he wasn't going to let her put his baby at risk.

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The build up to the funeral was every bit as horrific as Leon had thought it would be. It was incredibly tense and emotional and several times Leon had found himself grabbing his keys wanting to leave LA and head to Mexico to join the rest of the team. It was only V's words echoing in his head and the photo of the pair of them on the mantelpiece that stopped him – "If anything goes wrong Leon, I need you to look after Bex for me. She's not strong enough to deal with it all by herself, she'll need you." He barely knew Becca yet V had trusted him enough to look after her and the baby. He could have asked Dom, they'd grown up together yet he'd chosen to ask Leon. Knowing V had so much faith in him only made Leon more determined not to let Becca down. If he had to give up everything to make sure that she and the baby were ok then he'd do it – he'd given V his word and he wasn't going to back out now.

The funeral was going to be a quiet affair – just Leon, Becca and Hector saying a final goodbye to a man who'd touched all of their lives. Becca already knew that the team didn't know anything about her and as Le had thrown away his cell phone in temper after he'd spoken to the hospital they had no way of getting hold of him. What she hadn't understood, until Le had sat her down the previous night and explained, was why none of V's family would be there. They'd had a huge falling out years before and he hadn't spoken to his parents for nearly 7 years. When Le had told Becca a lot of V's comments began to make sense – he'd always said that a family wasn't dictated by blood, it was people that made a family not shared DNA.