Leon sat comfortably in the driver's seat, looking completely at ease.
Meanwhile, Pasha was so terrified her legs had gone weak. Her screams were already hoarse, and her bloodshot eyes radiated pure panic.
Leon had just pulled off a drift to overtake a supercar, and his mood was still light. From the looks of it, that car had been a Bugatti Chiron.
Not bad at all for this so-called "van" — it could even beat a hypercar. The handling felt pretty solid.
"Relax, nothing will happen while I'm here," Leon said with a suppressed grin, trying to comfort Pasha.
But the speed didn't drop. Pasha kept trembling, too scared to even reply.
From behind came a furious engine roar.
Leon glanced back — it was the Bugatti Chiron he had just passed. Clearly, its driver wasn't willing to accept being overtaken by a van and was pushing hard to catch up.
"Heh, let's see what you've really got," Leon smirked. He downshifted, floored the throttle, and forced the van's engine to dig even deeper. The van leapt forward, speed climbing fast — past 200 km/h. The engine trembled at its absolute limit, but Leon pulled ahead again.
The Bugatti tried to accelerate too, but this was a winding section of road. The car's sheer weight became a liability — it had to slow down for the corners or risk losing control. Within seconds, it nearly clipped the guardrail.
Drifting? Forget it — a Chiron wasn't built for that.
And even though the road wasn't crowded, there were still some vehicles around. At such extreme speeds, each car became a dangerous obstacle. One wrong move could mean disaster.
In the end, the Bugatti driver — O'Neal — could only watch the van disappear into the distance. Slamming the steering wheel in frustration, he fumed:
"Damn it! I lost before I even had the chance to race Dom. Beaten by a van?"
For O'Neal, it was humiliation beyond words.
"Who the hell was that guy?" he growled through clenched teeth.
Beside him, Shaw sat in stunned silence. Both men were shaken — they had expected a rookie, but instead ran into a king-level driver.
Meanwhile, Leon smoothly drifted through another curve. Checking his mirror, he saw no sign of the Bugatti anymore. Just as he predicted: with its bulk, the Chiron had no choice but to brake into corners. Without advanced drifting skills, nobody could clear those turns perfectly. And with traffic still on the road, O'Neal dared not push it recklessly.
On a winding course like this, the van held the upper hand.
Leon laughed heartily and kept his foot heavy on the gas, heading toward Los Angeles.
Two hours later, the van finally rolled into the city. Leon followed Pasha's directions to their destination.
At the roadside stood a stunning young woman.
Her figure was flawless, curves accentuated in all the right places. Unlike Pasha's blonde hair, hers was jet-black, styled in sexy waves that framed her face with a mature allure.
She wore a fitted V-neck tee under a navy suspender dress — a stylish, campus-goddess vibe with just a hint of playful sensuality from the bare-shoulder cut. Paired with an orange high-waist skirt, her look was both elegant and feminine.
Her S-shaped silhouette was the kind of beauty that could be called criminal.
And unfortunately, crime was exactly what was about to happen.
Just as Leon's van approached, several thugs suddenly rushed out of nowhere.
The girl — Letty — froze in shock. Before she could even scream, she was dragged into a Ford muscle car.
Muscle cars, hugely popular in America, were born for drag racing — brute-force straight-line acceleration. But outside the strip, their weaknesses were glaring. On city streets, their poor cornering turned them into lumbering beasts.
"Who are those guys?" Leon asked, frowning.
"I—I don't know," Pasha stammered, face pale. She was already terrified.
"Please, chase them! You have to save her!" Pasha pleaded desperately. Her anxiety was palpable.
Whoever those men were, they weren't inviting Letty out for tea. Forcing her into a car like that could only mean something sinister. Pasha grew more panicked the more she thought about it.
"Muscle cars don't handle well in the city — this is our chance," Leon analyzed calmly.
"Hold on tight," he warned, before stomping on the accelerator.
The van unleashed a bestial roar, slamming Pasha back into her seat with violent g-force. Her face went pale, but for Letty's sake she pushed her fear aside, eyes locked on the fleeing Ford, urging Leon to go faster.
Her loyalty to Letty was clear.
Leon's driving skills were no joke — within moments he had closed the gap.
"A car that can't even break 200 km/h dares to show off? Trash," he sneered.
The Ford's driver gawked in disbelief. He stared at the speedometer, then at the van in the mirror. His worldview was crumbling.
Inside the Ford, several thugs pinned down the struggling Letty. She looked out the window in terror, eyes pleading with Pasha for help. But with her mouth gagged, only her desperate gaze got through.
"Brace yourself," Leon warned again.
He wrenched the wheel, slamming the van into the Ford.
BANG!
The two vehicles collided hard. Both doors were crumpled and scraped, but because Leon had initiated the ramming, the Ford suffered the worse damage.