Mia's Worry
People always say that the kind of fierce, unrestrained passion depicted on the silver screen is nothing more than a Hollywood illusion. In his previous, mundane life, Arthur Sterling had been entirely crushed beneath the suffocating weight of a thirty-year mortgage, endless car payments, and the crushing societal pressure of a loveless, practical marriage. He had never once truly tasted the kind of raw, blazing fire that made a man feel truly alive.
Who could have ever predicted that, less than a single month after miraculously transmigrating into this dangerous cinematic universe, he would savor the intoxicating, unrestrained passion of a girl like Mia Toretto?
"Mm...?"
A soft, languid murmur gently yanked Arthur—who had already been awake for a long while, quietly admiring the stunning beauty resting in his arms—back from his drifting, philosophical thoughts.
Noticing Mia's long, dark lashes fluttering against the morning sunlight that filtered through the cracked blinds, he knew the mixed-race girl who had enthusiastically kept him up for half the night was finally waking.
He leaned down and dropped a light, affectionate kiss on her bare forehead.
She slowly opened her captivating amber eyes, blinking away the heavy sleep, and the very first thing reflected in her gaze was his own rugged, handsome face smiling down at her.
"Morning, Mia," Arthur greeted her softly, his voice a low, raspy rumble in the quiet bedroom.
"Morning, Arthur."
Mia answered entirely naturally, a soft smile curving her lips as she reached up and brushed a warm kiss across his jawline. She clearly had absolutely no regrets about the wild, uninhibited storm of the night before.
But when she pressed her hands against the mattress and tried to sit up, her body felt incredibly limp and entirely drained of its usual athletic strength. They had certainly overdone it; two teenagers flush with surging hormones and zealous curiosity were always bound to push the physical limits of the unknown.
Blushing furiously when she saw Arthur's knowing, victorious grin, she weakly balled her hand into a fist and punched his solid chest playfully.
"You're in so much trouble," she murmured, her voice languid and thick with a sudden, dawning realization of the reality outside this bedroom. "Dom is absolutely going to kill you."
She paused, a dark shadow crossing her beautiful features. "No... it'll be Vince who comes after you first."
Mia herself wasn't entirely sure what had completely come over her last night. Her rational mind had felt entirely sucked away the moment he kissed her in the living room, leaving her not only recklessly sleeping out but also giving her very first, deeply intimate experience to a young mechanic she had barely known for a month.
Still, looking at him now, she didn't dislike the impulsive choice at all. He was undeniably handsome, an incredibly good cook, and, judging heavily by last night and this morning, impressively capable and dominant in ways she hadn't expected. In her mind, she compared him to the rough, crude men she usually overheard her big brother and Letty Ortiz discussing.
Thinking about that stark contrast, she firmly decided that Arthur Sterling might actually make an incredibly decent, reliable boyfriend.
Arthur's dark gaze burned hot as he took in the graceful, sweeping curves revealed when the tangled white sheets slipped from her shoulders. He didn't share her rising, frantic worries in the slightest.
"Let them come," Arthur replied, his tone chillingly calm and utterly unbothered. "Relax, Mia. I'll be perfectly fine."
At first, when he had just arrived in this world, he had indeed genuinely feared Dom's towering physical presence and Vince's unpredictable, violent jealousy. But that was no longer the case.
Over the past twenty-odd grueling days, he had successfully awakened more than a dozen complex system skills, and his overall physical attributes had improved dramatically, completely rewriting his DNA. Even if he found himself standing toe-to-toe against the undisputed underground racing kings of the West Coast, he felt absolutely no fear.
And what if the immense pressure from the Toretto family cost him his day job at the dusty garage?
Yesterday afternoon, while casually heading to the beach with Mia, he had stopped at a seaside ATM to check his balance. He had found a massive, unexpected extra twenty thousand dollars sitting securely in his account—Old Parker's generous, quiet payment for his recent, highly illegal modification work on those three armored cars.
Arthur had strategically tested Old Parker's attitude several times during those late-night sessions. Coupled with his own sharp [Information Gathering] investigations, he was absolutely certain that while Old Parker and Dom were close, trusted partners, Parker still selfishly took private, highly lucrative jobs modifying black market cars and fencing stolen vehicles strictly for his own profit.
So even if Arthur was publicly, violently kicked out of the neighborhood garage to appease Dom's wrath, highly profitable arrangements for his mechanical skills would still be made quietly behind the scenes.
Besides, the mathematical levels of his key survival life skills had already been drastically raised. Finding a decent, high-paying job to support himself would be entirely effortless for a master mechanic like Arthur.
Dom's aggressive arrogance and suffocating street swagger wouldn't be able to hold him down for much longer. The absolute only real downside Arthur calculated was that if things got entirely too ugly and bloody between them, he would have serious trouble naturally joining the incredibly lucrative, high-stakes Fast & Furious storyline later on.
Sitting beside him, Mia was frantically recalling exactly how wild and out of control things had gotten last night.
Endlessly annoyed by her big brother's incessant, demanding phone calls echoing from her purse, she had completely lost her temper in the heat of their passion. She had violently grabbed the ringing device and flung her cell phone across the room, smashing it into pieces against the drywall.
That was exactly when she had heard Arthur's confident, fearless declaration just now.
She had absolutely no idea where her rugged, almost-boyfriend found such unshakable certainty. Mia figured Arthur simply didn't understand how truly terrifying and ruthless her big brother could be when crossed.
Even she wasn't entirely sure exactly how far her brother would go to protect what he considered his.
After all, Dom had always aggressively shielded her, doing his absolute best to keep her completely in the dark and prevent her from learning that he was the infamous, highly organized California highway bandit tearing up the interstates.
Yet living under the exact same roof, plus constantly watching the local news reports featuring deeply familiar, modified cars and blurry silhouettes matching his crew, had slowly but surely revealed everything to her.
Over the years, Mia had intelligently pieced the entire criminal puzzle together herself.
Her big brother not only ruled the underground street racing scene with an iron fist but was also the undisputed mastermind behind more than a dozen massive California highway heists.
Though she had never once taken part in the adrenaline-fueled robberies, Mia had accidentally seen her brother's hidden, heavy weapons cache in the garage.
They never actually used loaded guns during the high-speed truck robberies, but besides illegally racing and tuning heavy muscle cars, their biggest, most consistent hobby was heading out to the desert shooting club to ruthlessly practice their marksmanship.
So even Mia couldn't accurately predict what her heavily armed brother might do in a blind, protective rage.
"Arthur!"
Mia decided she absolutely had to douse his swelling, misplaced confidence with a harsh bucket of cold water before someone got hurt.
"I'll go home right now and talk to Dom. I'll smooth this over, but please, make sure you protect yourself," she pleaded, her amber eyes wide with genuine concern. "As for Vince, I'll think of something to handle him."
She felt incredibly helpless and exhausted whenever she thought about Vince: her brother's violent right-hand man and the childhood friend who had grown up running the streets with them.
Mia didn't really understand why Vince, who had barely even acknowledged her existence when they were little kids, had suddenly, obsessively fixated on her the absolute moment she started high school.
The hulking guy had a notoriously nasty, explosive temper and a fragile ego to match.
Yet while her older brother had never said it outright to her face, letting Vince continuously pester her and chase off other boys amounted to Dom's tacit, unspoken approval of a future match.
It all drove Mia entirely crazy.
She had once complained bitterly to Letty Ortiz about the harassment, but Letty—her brother's fierce girlfriend—had also grown up on the exact same streets with Vince. Because of that shared history, Letty usually just brushed it off, leaving Mia feeling like she faced the suffocating pressure entirely alone.
Vince clung to her life like chewed gum stuck to a shoe: utterly disgusting and nearly impossible to scrape off.
Looking through the cracked blinds, Mia could tell from the angle of the harsh sunlight that it was getting incredibly late into the morning.
She had stayed out all night without permission and had literally smashed her only line of communication; Dom would be absolutely, terrifyingly furious. She knew she had to hurry home before he sent a search party to tear the city apart looking for her.
She struggled to her feet, but her trembling legs instantly went soft beneath her weight—an odd, overwhelming mix of deep physical exhaustion and profound, lingering satisfaction washed over her entire nervous system.
She stumbled forward, nearly collapsing onto the carpet, and had to frantically hunt around the room for her scattered clothes that had been passionately flung in every direction during last night's frenzy.
Arthur leaned back against the headboard, watching her frantic scramble in deep amusement. But, knowing she really did have to leave to face the music, he didn't reach out to stop her or pull her back into bed.
Mia heard his soft, stifled laugh. She shot him a fiery, indignant glare as she pulled her shirt over her head, steadied herself heavily against the doorframe, and finally left the warm apartment.
She groped her way unsteadily down the echoing concrete stairs, her muscles aching with every step, and finally slid into the driver's seat of her Acura. Only then did she grip the leather steering wheel and mutter aloud to the empty car, "How on earth am I going to explain this to Dom?"
She rested her forehead against the steering wheel, her mind racing. "Maybe I'll just hide at Letty's place for a few days to let him cool off."
As the lingering, electric tingles spread through her exhausted body, vivid, flashing memories of last night and this morning flooded back into her mind, instantly flushing her cheeks a vibrant crimson all over again.
She twisted the key, started the roaring engine, and quickly sped away from the apartment complex, heading straight toward Letty's house to figure out her survival strategy.