Chapter 250: Dom, Vin Diesel! The Real Family Man
"Yeah, no kidding — my landlord's been getting kind of famous lately, and Hell's Kitchen's been riding his coattails," said the Asian man named Han, crunching on a chip.
Privately, he was more than a little curious himself. Back when he'd first met Ethan, he'd pegged him for just some soft-spoken college kid scraping by in Hell's Kitchen purely on Fisk's goodwill. Clearly, he'd underestimated the guy.
Han really was an old-timer around here — he'd put down roots the moment Ethan first started renting out rooms. The apartments weren't exactly luxury, but compared to the rest of Hell's Kitchen, they were about as clean and comfortable as it got.
For people like him, there wasn't a better place to disappear into anywhere in America than Hell's Kitchen.
About a year back, though, circumstances had pulled him away — off to the land of the rising sun for a while. It was only recently, summoned by the bald man now walking beside him, that he'd finally made his way back to familiar ground.
"You have no idea, Dominic," Han said. "My landlord, Ethan — the guy's not just some nobody anymore. He runs eighty percent of the entire American underworld. Get on his good side, and he can get you any gear you want. Not even the FBI dares poke around here. Seriously, I don't even know what you did to get yourself locked out of every arms deal on the map."
He said it with a faint, knowing smirk.
Listening to Han's pitch, Dominic couldn't shake a rising sense of doubt. Staring at the run-down Chinese restaurant in front of him, it was hard to picture any real crime boss holed up in a place like this. He was starting to wonder if he'd been played.
The truth was, Dominic and his sister's crew had pulled off one last big score together and gone dark on some private island somewhere. But recently, he'd learned his wife was being hunted by an old enemy — a bounty on her head and everything.
If not for his driving, he'd probably already be dead.
What really burned him was that this same enemy had somehow locked him out of every legitimate channel there was, leaving him with nowhere to turn.
"Don't screw me on this, man," Dominic said, giving Han a wary look. "We're family."
"Relax, relax. Just watch yourself in there — the guy who runs this place isn't someone to mess with," Han said, giving him a friendly warning before pushing the door open and walking in.
Dominic didn't put much stock in the warning, though. He'd been around — crossed paths with every flavor of crime boss the world had to offer. FBI, kingpins, none of it fazed him anymore. Half his fortune had come from shaking down guys exactly like that.
This "Ethan" character better hand over the gear nice and easy, Dominic thought, a sly grin creeping across his face, or I've got ways of making sure he regrets it.
He was absolutely certain of one thing: with family behind him, he was untouchable.
Family came before everything.
The two of them walked into the Lucky Dragon.
"Welcome to the Lucky Dragon!" Aunt May called out warmly the moment she spotted new customers, her face lighting up with a bright, easy smile.
Han glanced around the place with easy familiarity, clearly no stranger to it — though when he didn't spot Pietro, Wanda, or a certain motor-mouth anywhere in sight, his face fell a little.
Dominic, meanwhile, was entirely preoccupied with Aunt May, whose looks had aged remarkably well. He stepped forward, flashing what he clearly believed to be a charming look and speaking in his signature low rasp.
"Hello there. Name's Dominic. And might I say — you are a beautiful woman."
He seemed to have completely forgotten the actual reason he was here — saving his wife — utterly absorbed in Aunt May's appearance instead.
He gave her his best sly grin, thinking to himself, That's it, sweetheart, works every time. This face has gotten a cop to fall for me and give me a kid.
Aunt May, for her part, felt an immediate wave of discomfort looking at this bald, muscular stranger. His oily smile and self-satisfied stare made her frown without meaning to. Absolute grease trap of a man, she thought privately.
She eyed the two of them warily. One claimed to be a tenant, but had the unmistakable air of a con artist — and Aunt May knew every single tenant in this building by face, without exception, and had never once laid eyes on this man. The other looked like straight-up trouble, no question about it.
She quietly started backing away, already reaching for her phone to call in the Vongola family to have these two removed.
Around here, the Vongola were more useful than the actual police. Call the cops about something in Hell's Kitchen, and you might not get a straight answer for days. Call the Vongola, and you'd have the truth in twenty-four hours, guaranteed.
Just as Aunt May was about to make the call, Ethan's voice came from behind her.
"It's fine, Aunt May. One of these two actually is a tenant of mine — he's just been away for a while."
Aunt May turned and saw Ethan standing there. The tension drained out of her instantly. With Ethan around, she always felt completely safe.
Ethan walked over, gave her shoulder a reassuring pat, and smiled. "Don't worry about it, Aunt May. I know these two. I'll handle it. Go ahead and get them a couple glasses of water."
Then he turned to Han. "I was starting to think you weren't coming back."
"Come on, Ethan, you know me better than that — I've never once missed a rent payment," Han said, bumping fists with him.
He'd been gone for a long stretch, sure, but he'd never let a single month's rent lapse — just in case the day ever came where he needed a place to disappear back into.
Ethan then turned his attention to the bald man, studying him. Something about him tugged at memory.
Then he caught the man's sly grin, the exaggerated eyebrow waggle that went with it —
Holy shit, Ethan thought, that's Dom. Vin Diesel. Mr. "Real Family Man" himself.
Ethan had actually already worked out, over a year ago when he'd first met Han, exactly which franchise this particular corner of the world belonged to. Which meant, logically, there had to be a Dom somewhere out there too. He just hadn't expected to actually run into the man in the flesh — not today, of all days.
Guess his own knockoff "Family Man" title had finally run into the genuine article.
Not that Ethan actually liked the guy. Quite the opposite — Ethan couldn't stand Dominic Toretto, honestly. Whether on screen or off it, this so-called "family man" was, in Ethan's frank assessment, a walking bundle of hypocrisy — running his mouth about family nonstop while never once passing up an opportunity to screw someone over, benefit to himself or not.
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