"Are you out of your fucking mind? There is no way in hell that I am helping you get your little gang of hoodlums out of trouble," Mark yelled, pouring himself another scotch on the rocks. "I have been nothing but nice to you. I have put up with all of your condescending bullshit. You owe me this!" He scoffed, as she lit a cigarette and walked over to the window. "I owe you? The last couple of weeks you have completely let me down. You don't cook or clean. All you do is drink and smoke. You stink of car grease and look at you! You belong on a fucking street corner. Tattoos everywhere," he rambled.
"I don't care what you think of me. What I do care about is that you have no other choice but to help them or I'll help the police put you behind the same bars they are heading for." Matty walked over to a crystal lamp and picked it up, letting it drop and break into a thousand pieces. "If you don't want me to sing like a canary about all the bribes you've taken and all the criminals you've helped to get off, I suggest you start making appeals or whatever the hell it is that you do. One fuck up on your part and I'm sure the government will start to wonder how you afford all the nice little things you seem to have bought over the last year," she said, motioning to the rest of the room.
Mark looked at all the expensive things he had furnished his life with. She was right, there was no way in hell he could hide his expenses. He was spending a shit load more than what he was making. The IRS would have a field day with him. He would lose his job. Be disbarred. He would go to jail. The cases that he had won would be brought into question. Criminals he had helped set free would go to jail. He would die either in prison or at the hands of one of his unhappy clients.
He sighed, knowing that he had no way out other than to try and fix this. "I can't defend a client that isn't here. They need to come and turn themselves in and face a jury of their peers. That's the only way that I can physically go to court and fight this. Plus, it's gonna take a shit load of money to pay a judge or jury off to make all or most of the charges to go away," he said.
Matty threw her cigarette butt on the floor and stepped on it. "I suggest you start moving some money around and sell some of these pretty little things of yours. I'll try to grease the wheels for whatever motions you are trying to set to help them out," she said, exiting the room and heading for the front door of the house. "I want you out of this house by tomorrow," he yelled after he. She scoffed.
"Like as if I was planning on staying any longer."
---
She grasped the folder and waited for the foot steps that were approaching the door to get closer. Matty cleared her throat and smirked as he opened the door and was shocked to see her standing there. "Well, well, well. What do I owe this visit to?" Her father asked, crossing his arms over his chest. Matty smiled and handed him the folder. Copies, of course. She wasn't dumb enough to hand over her leverage without having the upper hand.
"Let me be brief. You have an upcoming election for judge. I need you to help Dominic Toretto and his friends. I need all the charges to go away. You need me to keep this tell all memoir of every little thing you ever did to me in the dark. I have medical records. I have proof. I have my journal entries. I will run up and down this entire town, yelling at the top of my lungs. I will tell them the truth. Show them the scars. And if anything happens to me or my friends, all of that will be released to the press. And your worse nightmare will come true. Because after a beating like that, there's no way in hell you'll be judge. So if I were you, I would get to greasing the wheels because there's more from where that came from," she said, a sweet smile still on her face, motioning to the folder she handed him.
Manuel flipped through the folder and shook his head. "I never want to see you on my doorstep again. Have the Toretto's lawyer start the proceedings," he said, stepping back into the house and shutting the door in her face. Matty smiled to herself. Things were looking up. Now all she had to do was find the team and tell them she had fixed everything. All she had to do was get her family back. Get her man back. Get herself back.
---
Matty exited the bank with all the cash she had in her savings account in tow. She lit a cigarette and slipped into her car. After careful planning and preparation, she had found the mom and pop shop. She had plotted her route. Grabbed all her shit from Mark's place. Loaded up her car and filled her tank. She was ready to hit the road. She plugged her Ipod in and took off, the breeze slapping her on the face. It felt good. She lived for the open road. She had missed it. She yearned for it.
With a couple of rest stops here and there, Matty pulled up to the mom and pop shop the next day, her body tired and achy from all the driving. Her spanish was decent, allowing her to communicate with the owners and getting enough information about the whereabouts of the team. Something about a house down the road. Behind the post office. At the beach's shore.
By the time she exited the shop, it was pouring outside. The sky had gone dark and she was drenched from head to toe when she managed to make it into her car. She followed the directions she was given, and 15 minutes later, she had hit the end of the road. She had arrived at the beige two story house the owners had described. She parked on the street, the driveway full with their cars. She had found them. They were home. She was home now too.
She got out of the car and saw bodies moving behind the house. As she looked out towards the horizon, she realized that the beach was their backyard this time around. Matty walked around the side of the house and spotted them down at the edge of the shore. She found them. She found herself too.
---
Vince scowled at something Leon said and looked around him. Taking in the surroundings. The water. The sand. The rain that was threatening to drown them. And that's when he saw her. He stood up from his position in the sand and faced her. She was completely different to him and yet she was everything he knew. Her hair was short. Ridiculously short. What used to be long, dark and wavy was now cropped into some hair cut he was sure he saw in some rock video. It was straight and had random blonde highlights running through it.
She was skinny. Skinnier then what he remembered. Her eyes were dark and this worried him. Her white wife beater clung to her body and her jeans sagged underneath the wet material's weight. Her mascara and eyeliner were all over the place, making her sad eyes and skinny body look worse. She walked over to him, shivering as the wind slapped them all as it picked up speed. Matty clinged to him, as he wrapped his good arm around her and placed kisses on her forehead.
Vince took her scent in. He melted as he inhaled that faint smell of cherry blossoms she always seemed to smell like, mixed in with the sea's salty taste. Matty collapsed in his arms and slid towards the sand, crying quietly. She was relieved. She was alive. She finally was whole.