Chapter 259: Dom Loses His Cool
"What do you mean do something?! I don't know what to do! You are a walking DISASTER, man! I don't know why I ever let you in this car!" Dominic snarled, eyes locked on the road ahead, half his attention split trying to dodge the constant hail of bullets from behind.
His knuckles were white on the wheel, veins standing out, cold sweat beading on his forehead. Frustration and fury churned together in his chest. Roman — of course it was Roman. The man was a walking catastrophe, always dragging him into disasters like this one.
If the situation weren't quite this dire, Dominic would've been genuinely tempted to kick the man straight out of a moving car. But logic won out — that would only make things worse.
"Come on, don't be like that, Dom. We're family, man. And it's not like I asked to be in this race either," Roman said, throwing his hands up, doing his best wounded-innocent face.
"Then SHOOT BACK! You want them to just keep hitting us?! DO something!" Dominic roared, voice bouncing off the car's interior.
Roman flinched at the outburst, blinked, then snapped into motion.
"Right, right! You're right! These Hell's Kitchen clowns are about to find out who they're messing with!" He fumbled with his seatbelt, yanking it off, and started tearing through the car looking for a weapon.
His hands moved frantically, cursing internally the whole time. Why is there no gun in this car?! Man, this whole trip was cursed from the start. Barely any pay for this, and I'm out here risking my LIFE? Once this is over, I am treating myself. Finding some pretty girls and just relaxing for once.
While Roman dug around, the car itself was taking a beating — bullets tearing into the bodywork, sparks flying, the metallic screech of impact after impact.
"FOUND IT!" Roman shouted, triumphant, holding up a single handgun.
He pointed it at Dominic and asked, hopeful, "This is all we've got? No other weapons stashed anywhere?"
Dominic shot him a flat, unimpressed look. "That's it. That's all there is."
Roman's face fell into pure despair.
He stared at Dominic, stunned. Bro. You're kidding, right? You want me to go up against guys with rifles — RPGs, even — with THIS little pea-shooter? Might as well just shoot myself and save them the trouble.
Furious as he was, Roman leaned out the window anyway and started firing blind. Deep down, he knew — they were on their own out here.
Just as he stuck his head out to aim, a bullet whistled past, missing him by inches. He yanked his head back in, screaming, "DRIVE, DRIVE, DRIVE!"
Dominic caught the panic in Roman's voice and immediately understood how bad things had gotten. He floored the gas, the engine roaring as it dumped every last bit of power into the wheels.
At the same time, his eyes were darting everywhere, scanning for the next threat.
"WHAT THE HELL, are these Hell's Kitchen psychos treating this like a TOY BOX?!" Dominic bellowed, fear and rage tangling together in his chest as he spotted an enormous mounted machine gun bolted onto a rival's car, close enough to make his scalp crawl.
That was the last straw. Dominic decided it was time to pull his trump card.
His hand shot to the lever beside him and yanked it hard.
The car's undercarriage erupted with a deafening roar as rocket boosters kicked in, a wall of blue flame blasting out the back, transforming his car in an instant into a screaming, high-speed missile.
Propelled by that raw thrust, Dominic's car shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, tearing distance between him and the Hell's Kitchen shooters. The machine gun fire howled past behind him, harmless now — he'd cleared the danger zone.
The whole thing had taken maybe two or three seconds, but to Dominic, it felt like he'd just lived and died and come back.
Not only had he escaped the ambush — the burst of speed had carried him straight past a whole cluster of cars, right up into the front pack.
Which put him, moments later, right alongside Deckard Shaw's Aston Martin. The two bald men locked eyes through their windows, the air between them thick with sudden, inexplicable tension.
This guy looks like he knows what he's doing, Dominic thought. ...Wait. Why does he look so familiar? I feel like I've seen this guy somewhere before.
Deckard, meanwhile, was thinking something very different. Why does this bald bastard look exactly like the man in the last video my brother ever sent me? ...Could this be the man who killed Owen? His expression twisted into something dark and vicious.
At this point, Deckard had completely stopped caring about the rules of the race. All that mattered now was vengeance for his brother. His right hand locked hard on the wheel, and his left rolled the window down, a pistol already in his grip.
Dominic clocked the window dropping and felt a flicker of confusion. Does this guy actually know me? Guess my reputation's bigger than I thought. He flashed Deckard his signature sly grin, trying to defuse whatever this was.
The grin didn't last long. Because the man across from him was, in fact, raising that pistol straight at his head.
Dominic slammed the brakes hard, the car lurching violently as he barely dodged the shot.
"WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE IN THIS PLACE?!" Dominic bellowed, fury boiling over completely.
Nothing about this race had gone the way he'd expected. This wasn't a real competition at all — this was Ethan, punishing him, plain and simple.
He'd barely dodged Hell's Kitchen's gunfire, and now some random bald psycho was gunning for him out of nowhere.
This has gotta be that son of a bitch Ethan, getting back at me, Dominic decided.
That thought was the final straw. The race, the prize, even his wife's rescue — none of it mattered anymore, not in this moment. All he wanted was payback.
He wrenched the wheel hard and drove straight at Deckard's Aston Martin, ramming it head-on!
The two cars collided violently on the track, the impact echoing like a thunderclap.
Deckard gave as good as he got, matching Dominic blow for blow, ramming back again and again.
The two cars tore across the track in a furious, relentless chase, crashing into each other over and over — an absolutely brutal, chaotic spectacle.
The only real casualty in all of this chaos was Roman, still in the passenger seat.
He hadn't buckled his seatbelt, and every collision sent him slamming from one side of the car to the other.
"CALM DOWN! CALM DOWN! LET ME PUT MY SEATBELT ON FIRST!" he screamed, but his voice was utterly swallowed by the chaos of the crash.
"SOMEBODY — ANYBODY — SAVE ME!"
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