Siblings' Confrontation
Inside the quiet confines of Letty Ortiz's home, the atmosphere was incredibly thick and suffocating. Dominic Toretto sat like a massive statue in the armchair, staring expressionlessly at his younger sister.
Mia Toretto sat opposite him on the sofa, looking deeply restless and shifting uncomfortably under his heavy, judgmental gaze.
Mia did not dare to directly meet her older brother's eyes. Instead, her amber eyes kept darting toward Letty, carrying a subtle, unspoken hint of blame for calling him over.
However, Letty just offered a completely helpless shrug in return. She could not lie; she had to tell her fiercely protective boyfriend that Mia was staying safely with her.
After finally finishing his clandestine work in the late afternoon, Dom had immediately driven over to Letty's place to confront the situation.
Standing by the kitchen counter, Letty saw that neither of the stubborn siblings had spoken a single word for several agonizing minutes.
But having known her boyfriend inside and out for many years, she could clearly read his simmering, explosive anger. The thick veins bulging on his forehead and neck absolutely had not receded since he walked through the front door.
"Dom!" Letty sighed heavily, realizing she had absolutely no choice but to take the initiative and violently break the suffocating tension between the siblings.
"Mia is not a child anymore. She is a grown woman, and she has her own thoughts."
Dom's cold, hardened gaze slowly swept over Letty, carrying a heavy weight.
Then, he turned back to his sister and asked irritably, "And then? There are so many good, incredibly tough men around me. Even if you absolutely don't choose Vince, why pick that quiet white kid?"
"Aside from having a face that looks somewhat decent, can a mechanic with such a frail, skinny body actually protect you on these streets?" Dom demanded, his deep voice vibrating with genuine disdain.
Hearing her brother blatantly insult the man who had just shown her such unbelievable passion, Mia immediately became completely indignant.
"Dom, your blind prejudice is entirely too much," Mia shot back, her chin raised in defiance. "Arthur is much, much stronger than you. He kept me incredibly busy all night yesterday, and he lasted much longer than you and Letty usually do!"
Letty's tough face instantly turned a vibrant, burning red, and she looked at Mia with deep, flustered irritation.
Mia quickly bit her lower lip, realizing with absolute horror that she had spoken entirely without thinking. After all, she was still just a young girl who had only recently reached adulthood and was fiercely defending her very first real boyfriend.
But despite her face being completely flushed with burning shame, she stubbornly held her ground and continued to glare directly at her massive older brother.
"You also know perfectly well that I do not like Vince, so why have you always let him aggressively harass me for years?" Mia demanded, her voice shaking with raw emotion.
"If I had not grown up under the exact same roof with you, I would really think you and Vince were the actual biological brothers and I was just some other family's unwanted child."
Dom was genuinely surprised to suddenly learn that Mia seemed to have actively eavesdropped on his and Letty's most intimate, private moments in the house.
However, his massive ego ensured he was not truly angry about the bizarre comparison.
He knew his own towering physical fitness and explosive, athletic abilities better than absolutely anyone else on the asphalt.
He simply did not believe for a single second that a young mechanic who had just reached adulthood and possessed such a scrawny, unremarkable build could ever be more physically powerful than him.
Thinking Mia was just desperately bragging to protect her new, fragile boyfriend's pride, a rare, faint trace of an amused smile actually appeared on Dom's hardened face.
He looked at his deeply angry sister, his deep voice no longer quite as icy as before.
"Mia, I never explicitly supported or allowed Vince to aggressively harass you. It is just that he genuinely likes you, and since you never clearly, formally expressed your absolute opposition to my face, I simply did not stop him."
"Since you do not like him at all, why didn't you just tell him clearly?" Dom asked, completely missing the crushing reality of her daily life.
Mia was instantly infuriated by his dense, dismissive logic and stood up abruptly from the cushions.
However, last night had been entirely too crazy and unrestrained. With the sudden, violent exertion of standing up, she immediately felt a massive wave of deep, aching soreness radiate throughout her entire lower body.
She suddenly lost all of her structural strength and fell heavily back onto the soft sofa, wincing slightly.
Although she was actively cursing Arthur in her heart for being such a relentless, unstoppable beast last night, Mia absolutely did not intend to pass up this rare, vital opportunity to completely bare her wounded heart to her overbearing older brother.
"You honestly think I haven't told him?" Mia screamed, her voice cracking with years of suppressed frustration.
"From the very first time he started aggressively pursuing me two years ago until right now, I have directly rejected Vince at least fifty times!"
Mia was so incredibly angry her chest was heaving violently, and her beautiful face grew even redder. But right now, it was a dark, burning flush of pure, unfiltered anger.
She looked right at the slightly frowning Dom, her voice rising several desperate notches. "He always uses your terrifying name, loudly telling everyone that you strictly support him in pursuing me."
"And more than once, he has crudely harassed me right in front of you."
"But what exactly were you doing when I tried to ignore him and push him away, Dom? You were just standing on the side, laughing with your crew!" Mia yelled, tears of absolute frustration stinging her amber eyes.
"Maybe you didn't explicitly support him, but you completely failed to stop him either. So the violent idiot took your casual attitude as absolute tacit permission and started harassing me even more aggressively."
"Counting Arthur this time, Vince has violently beaten people up at least seventy times simply because of me," Mia cried out. "And the vast, overwhelming majority of those guys were just innocent people who came to the family coffee shop to politely buy a sandwich from me!"
Letty had been standing by the counter, smiling awkwardly on the side, but after hearing this raw, undeniable truth, she also frowned deeply.
She suddenly realized with a heavy, sinking heart that everything Mia just screamed was likely the absolute truth.
Her fiercely loyal boyfriend had indeed never openly supported Vince's toxic pursuit of Mia, but he truly had never lifted a single finger to stop it either.
Just as Mia tearfully said, Vince had aggressively harassed her in front of the entire crew more than once. He even violently picked brutal fights with random customers who dared to hit on Mia right in front of their eyes.
And at the time, Dom, Letty, and the rest of the crew had all just treated the terrifying harassment as a funny, harmless joke.
When Dom was in his late teens, his beloved father had tragically gotten himself killed while participating in a highly dangerous, illegal modified car race. After serving his time and coming out of prison two years later, Dom had aggressively driven away his younger brother and raised the young Mia entirely alone.
Relying entirely on his own calloused hands and brutal driving skills, he had carved out a terrifying, legendary name for himself in the Los Angeles underworld.
Therefore, after Mia angrily and tearfully recounted her suffocating experiences from the past few years, the highly intelligent Dom quickly realized the terrible truth.
His beloved sister was indeed completely, utterly traumatized by being constantly harassed by the unstable Vince.
While he, Letty, and the rest of the tight knit crew always proudly claimed to care for his sister, in brutal reality, they had completely indulged and subtly encouraged Vince to constantly terrorize her.
Once he fully understood this dark failure, even though Dom usually maintained an absolutely expressionless, hardened poker face, at this exact moment, he could not help but feel deeply, profoundly embarrassed.
His thick throat bobbed up and down heavily as he swallowed repeatedly.
Clearly, he had heavy words completely stuck in his throat, and they were genuine words of apology to his traumatized sister.
But entirely because of his towering, stubborn pride and his absolute authority as the tough big brother, Dom simply could not bring himself to actually say the vulnerable words of apology out loud.
Letty keenly glanced at her suddenly silent, conflicted boyfriend.
The two of them knew each other inside and out and had long since developed a deep, unspoken understanding of each other's emotional limits.
Seeing his stubborn struggle, Letty immediately stepped forward and reached out to tightly hug the crying, angry Mia.
While using her own body to completely block Mia's line of sight, Letty silently mouthed a desperate hint to her proud boyfriend.
Dom understood her unspoken cue immediately and quickly said in his usual, flat, authoritative tone, "Vince absolutely won't harass you anymore, Mia. I will personally have him come over right now to clear things up once and for all."
"And Arthur!" Mia gasped, her head being firmly held by Letty, but she was still incredibly, desperately concerned about her new boyfriend's physical safety.
Dom nodded slowly, his jaw set hard. "Vince should have already gone to find him. Do not worry, Mia. I will call and tell Vince to go easy on him."
They always say an elder brother is exactly like a protective father. Clearly, although he did not say it out loud, Dom was still incredibly, violently unhappy with that young mechanic who had dared to boldly take away his little sister's precious first experience.
"Dom!" Mia fully understood the dark, violent meaning hidden behind his casual words and was just about to speak up and fight again.
She suddenly found that Letty's strong arms around her abruptly tightened quite a bit.
Then, Mia found her head being forcefully pulled deep into Letty's warm embrace, firmly sandwiched against her chest to silence her.
As Mia was just about to struggle against the hold, she clearly heard Letty whisper directly into her ear, "If you absolutely do not want that poor kid to have a much harder, bloodier time later, it is far better to just let Dom vent this tiny bit of brotherly anger right now."
Hearing this grim, logical warning, Mia immediately stopped struggling.
However, her racing heart was still incredibly worried about Arthur.
After all, Mia had tragically experienced Vince's unhinged savagery and sheer brutality in the past.
A major, entirely unspoken reason why she had dropped out of high school was that back when Mia was still attending classes, a decent male classmate of the exact same age had genuinely liked her and took the brave initiative to pursue her.
Vince had somehow found out about the innocent crush later. As a direct, violent result, he had cornered and brutally beaten the teenage kid in an alley one day after school.
Not only did the hulking brute mercilessly break several of the boy's ribs, but he also deliberately used his heavy truck to violently ram the terrified boy's family car, nearly causing a fatal, massive traffic accident.
In the bitter end, the terrified family had angrily complained to the school board and officially reported the violent assault to the police.
On Vince's side, although Dom had stepped in and successfully used his underworld connections to violently settle everything and keep Vince out of jail, Mia had suffered a massive amount of cold treatment and cruel exclusion at school because of the bloody incident.
Ultimately, she had been forced to drop out entirely, leaving the campus in shame without ever graduating high school.
So, realizing that the violent, unhinged Vince might have already gone to find Arthur, Mia's racing heart immediately leapt right into her throat.
Although Arthur had confidently vowed to her this very morning that he absolutely did not fear the hulking Vince at all, now Mia could only desperately pray to God. She prayed that his fists were exactly as capable and strong as his performance last night.
Dom clearly did not know about Mia's terrifying, racing thoughts. He calmly took out his heavy cell phone and dialed Vince's number.
After a long, agonizing period of waiting, the ringing call ultimately went completely unanswered.
So the frowning Dom dialed the number again, and it wasn't until the absolute third time that the call finally connected.
He was just about to speak his strict orders when he surprisingly heard an unfamiliar, clinical woman's voice on the other end.
"This is Maxwell Private Hospital. Hello, are you a direct relative of this phone number's registered owner?"
Dom was completely stunned for a long moment before his deep voice answered, "I am his close friend. Has something happened to Vince?"
The calm female voice on the other end immediately came through the speaker again. "Yes, sir."
"Your friend seems to have been brutally attacked by an unknown person."
"When our paramedics finally arrived after receiving the anonymous emergency call, he was already completely unconscious on the pavement."
"According to the hospital's preliminary X-ray diagnosis, he currently has seventeen severe fractures or complete breaks in his ribs, arm bones, and shoulder blades."
"At the exact same time, his face has also suffered incredibly severe blunt force trauma."
"If it is convenient, please immediately help notify his family and arrange for someone to come to the hospital to visit him."
"The patient is thankfully not in any immediate, life threatening danger, but the surgical situation is nonetheless absolutely not optimistic."
"It is best to urgently notify his medical insurance company and prepare for a very long, extensive inpatient treatment."