Chapter 1: Barbecue and Bloodlines
The backyard smelled of charred carne asada and citronella. Neon tubing, leftovers from last summer’s Fourth, snaked through the branches of the mesquite tree, casting a sickly green glow over the picnic table. Laughter erupted from a cluster of cousins by the cooler—too loud, too sharp—a sound meant to paper over the cracks in the family foundation.
Dominic Toretto’s world had narrowed to two points: the cold sweat of the beer bottle in his hand, and his sister, Catalina, ten feet away.
She was wiping engine grease from her fingers with a red shop rag, her back to him, leaning over the open hood of Dad’s old Charger. Her tank top had ridden up an inch, just enough. The faint, silvery lines across the small of her back caught the tiki torch light. Stretch marks. Mina’s first lasting signature.
His beer bottle groaned under the pressure of his grip.
Five years. Five years since that night in the garage, the air thick with the smell of high-octane fuel and desperation. A secret carved into their bones, a ghost that toddled around the corner of the house right on cue.
“Tío Dom! Look!”
Mina, a whirlwind of grass-stained knees and dark, wild curls, brandished a plastic ladybug. Her smile was pure Catalina, but the intensity in her brown eyes was all his. His throat closed.
“Cool bug, mija,” he managed, his voice gravel.
“Can we put it in the garden?”
“Later. Go show your abuela.”
She skipped off, and the world snapped back into its painful, detailed focus. Catalina had straightened, tossing the rag onto the fender. She didn’t look at him. She never looked at him for too long at these things. It was their unspoken rule, the only thing keeping the dam from breaking.
A cold bottle nudged his elbow.
“You look like you’re guarding the president, not the potato salad.”
Mia, bright and unbearably young, smiled up at him. Her presence was a relief and a knife twist all at once. She saw a brother who worked too hard. She didn’t see the fault lines.
“Just thinking,” Dom said, taking the fresh beer.
“About the race Friday? Rey said you finally got the fuel injection tuned.”
“Something like that.”
His eyes drifted back against his will. Catalina was now talking to Tia Lucia, but her posture was rigid, a conscious effort to keep her back, their secret, turned away from the crowd. From him. Every line of her body was a sentence he’d memorized and wished he could forget.
Mia followed his gaze. “She’s still pissed at you, huh?”
Dom stiffened. “What?”
“Cat. She’s been all sharp edges with you for weeks. What’d you do, forget her birthday? Again?” Mia teased.
“It’s not that,” he said, too quickly.
“Well, fix it. It’s weird.” She squeezed his arm and wandered off toward the music.
Fix it. The joke of it almost made him laugh. How do you fix a sin that built your entire world? You couldn’t put the fire back in the match.
The memory was a physical punch: the cool concrete of the garage floor, her hands in his hair, her whispered confession that wasn’t a confession at all but a surrender. They’d torn each other apart that night, trying to fuse two broken pieces into something whole. And nine months later, Mina. Their miracle. Their damnation.
Catalina moved then, walking toward the side gate, away from the crowd, away from him. It was a silent command he had no choice but to obey. He waited a beat, then two, before setting his beer down and following.
The side yard was dark, choked with the scent of jasmine and old engine blocks. She was leaning against the chain-link fence, staring at the silhouettes of the city lights in the distance.
“You’re staring, Dom.” She didn’t turn around.
“Can’t help it.”
“You have to.” Finally, she looked at him, and in the dim light, her eyes were black pools of the same torment that lived in his gut. “We have to.”
“Mia thinks you’re mad at me.”
A harsh, quiet laugh escaped her. “Good. Let her think that.”
“She asked me to fix it.”
Catalina pushed off the fence, taking a step toward him. The space between them crackled. “There is no fix. There’s just… this. Mina in there, laughing. And us out here, lying to everyone who loves her.”
“We’re protecting her.”
“From what? From having a father?” She hissed the word. “You’re her favorite person in the world, Dom. And you have to act like you’re just her cool uncle. How long can we do that? When she gets older and asks why her tío is the one who teaches her to drive, who threatens her dates… what do we say?”
He had no answer. There was only the ache, a hollowed-out place behind his ribs that only she and Mina could fill, and only one of them was allowed to.
A shout of laughter from the backyard made them both flinch. The real world, barging in.
Catalina’s defiance crumpled. She looked down, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I dream about it sometimes. Just telling everyone. Letting the whole damn house collapse on us. At least then… we could breathe.”
The raw want in her words was a mirror of his own. To claim his daughter. To hold her sister in the light. It was a selfish, monstrous fantasy, and it was the only thing he truly wanted.
He reached out, his thumb brushing the inside of her wrist where her pulse hammered. A touch so small it would be nothing to anyone else. To them, it was a confession. She shuddered.
“We can’t,” she breathed, but she didn’t pull away.
“I know.”
The back door slammed. “Dom! Cat! Cake!” Mia’s voice, bright and oblivious.
Catalina slipped her wrist from his touch as if burned. The moment shattered, leaving them in the familiar, agonizing silence. She turned to go back, to blow out candles and smile.
“Catalina,” he said, stopping her.
She paused, her profile etched against the neon glow from the yard.
“She has your smile,” he said, the words feeling ripped from him.
Catalina closed her eyes for a long second. When she opened them, they were glassy. “No, Dom,” she whispered. “She has yours.”
She walked away, back toward the noise and the light and their daughter. Dominic stayed in the dark, leaning his head against the cool metal of the fence. He could still feel the ghost of her pulse against his skin. From inside, the chorus of “Happy Birthday” started, Mina’s giggle soaring above it all. He pushed off the fence. He had to go back in. He had to play his part.
But for the first time, the weight of the lie didn’t feel like a shield. It felt like a noose, tightening with every beat of the silent, forbidden heart they shared. He took a deep breath, the scents of jasmine and grilled meat suddenly cloying, and followed her back into the light.
He took a deep breath, the scents of jasmine and grilled meat suddenly cloying, and followed her back into the light.
The backyard noise hit him like a wall. Music blared from tinny speakers. Someone was arguing about torque ratios. The cake, a lopsided dinosaur Mia had insisted on, sat in the center of the picnic table, its candles already lit. Mina was perched on Catalina’s hip, her small hands clapping.
“Blow them out, mija!” Mia encouraged.
Mina took a dramatic breath, her cheeks puffing out, and blew. Half the candles stubbornly stayed lit. Laughter rippled through the family.
“Let your tío help,” Catalina said, her voice carefully neutral.
Dominic stepped forward. He leaned in close, the warmth of the candle flame brushing his face. Mina’s curly hair tickled his chin. He caught the familiar scent of her shampoo, mixed with Catalina’s perfume. For a second, the three of them existed in a tiny, flickering bubble.
“Together, on three,” he murmured to his daughter.
“One… two…”
They blew. The flames died in a spiral of smoke. The family cheered. Mina twisted in Catalina’s arms, reaching for Dominic.
“Tío! Did you see?”
He took her, her small, solid weight settling against his chest. It was the most right and most wrong feeling in the world. Over her shoulder, his eyes locked with Catalina’s. Her expression was unreadable, a mask worn thin.
“I saw,” he said, his voice thick.
The cake was cut, plates passed around. Dominic stood slightly apart, Mina now happily demolishing a frosting-heavy slice on a picnic bench. He watched Catalina move through the crowd, laughing at a cousin’s joke, helping Abuela with her plate. She was so good at this. Better than him.
Mia sidled up next to him, bumping his shoulder with hers. “See? Told you she’d get over it.”
Dominic just nodded, swallowing a piece of cake that tasted like ash.
“She’s a good mom,” Mia said, watching Catalina smooth Mina’s hair. “It’s crazy, you know? Doing it all alone. That guy must have been a real piece of work.”
A cold knot tightened in Dominic’s stomach. “Yeah.”
“She ever talk about him?”
“No.”
“Not even to you?” Mia pressed, her tone light but curious. “You two tell each other everything.”
“Not that,” Dominic said, the lie corrosive on his tongue.
Mia shrugged, accepting another beer from a passing cousin. “Probably for the best. Some things are better left in the rearview.”
The party wound down. Relatives began to leave with claps on the back and promises to call. The backyard emptied, leaving a battlefield of empty bottles and smeared paper plates. Dominic mechanically started cleaning, stacking chairs, bagging trash. Busywork to avoid the silence, to avoid her.
He was heaving a bag into the overflowing can when he felt her presence behind him.
“She’s almost asleep,” Catalina said quietly. “I’m going to put her to bed.”
He nodded, not turning around. “I’ll finish here.”
“Dom.”
He stopped, his back still to her. The hum of the distant freeway filled the space between them.
“Thank you,” she said, the words barely audible. “For tonight.”
“For what?”
“For being here. For her.”
He finally turned. She looked exhausted, shadows under her eyes the neon couldn’t erase. The wall between them felt porous, fragile. One wrong word and it would crumble.
“She’s my responsibility, too,” he said, the statement layered with meanings only she would hear.
Catalina’s eyes flashed with a pained understanding. Before she could reply, a small, sleepy voice called from the back door.
“Mami?”
“Coming, baby!” Catalina called, her voice shifting seamlessly into gentle warmth. She held Dominic’s gaze for one more second, a silent conversation of anguish and complicity, then turned and walked toward the house.
Dominic finished cleaning in a fierce, solitary rush. By the time he dragged the trash cans to the curb, the house was dark except for the porch light. He stood alone on the cracked driveway, the city’s glow staining the low clouds orange. The Charger sat there, a hulking silhouette. Their sanctuary and their crime scene.
He heard the soft click of the side door. Catalina stepped out, wrapped in a thin cardigan over her tank top. She walked toward him, not the car, her bare feet silent on the concrete.
“Out cold,” she said, leaning against the garage wall a few feet from him.
“Good.”
They stood in the suburban silence. A dog barked two streets over.
“Mia asked about him,” he said.
Catalina let out a short, quiet breath. “She asks me sometimes, too. I just say he wasn’t worth the memory.”
“She thinks we tell each other everything.”
“We do,” Catalina whispered. “That’s the problem.”
The air between them charged again, that old, terrible magnetism pulling taut. He could see the pulse in her throat.
“I keep thinking about what you said,” he ventured, his own voice low. “About the house collapsing.”
“Don’t.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “It was a weak moment.”
“It’s the only honest moment we get.”
She pushed off the wall, turning to face him fully. The porch light carved sharp planes into her face. “And then what, Dom? We blow up our lives, our family, for what? So we can… what? Live in some cheap apartment, hiding from everyone who ever loved us? So Mina can grow up knowing her parents are… are…”
She couldn’t say it. The word was unspeakable.
“I don’t have the answers, Cat,” he said, the frustration boiling over. “I just know I’m dying a little every time I have to pretend she’s not mine.”
The raw confession hung in the air. Catalina’s mask finally fractured. A single tear tracked through the dust on her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away.
“I’m dying too,” she choked out. “But we made a choice. For her. We live with it.”
He took a step toward her, closing the distance. He didn’t touch her, but he could feel the heat from her skin. “What if it’s killing her, too, and we just don’t know it yet?”
From inside the house, a faint cry. Mina. Catalina flinched as if struck, her eyes wide with a primal fear. The spell shattered.
“I have to go,” she said, already moving backward.
“Catalina.”
She paused at the door, her hand on the frame. She didn’t look back. “Goodnight, Dominic.”
The door closed softly behind her, a final, gentle click that echoed in his bones louder than any slam. He was alone again with the Charger and the ticking of the cooling engine.
He walked to the driver’s side, running a hand along its familiar flank. He unlocked the door, slid inside, and just sat in the dark. The vinyl seats held the ghost of a thousand memories, none of them innocent. He leaned his head back.
In the quiet, he could almost hear it: the fragile structure of their lies, groaning under the weight of a love that had no right name. It wasn’t sustainable. Something was going to break. He closed his eyes, and in the darkness behind his lids, he saw only two things: Catalina’s tear-streaked face, and Mina’s trusting smile.
One of them he would destroy. The choice of which one was a torture he carried every day. He turned the key, not to start the engine, but to roll the window down. He needed the air. From the open window of the house above, he could just hear the soft, lullaby murmur of Catalina’s voice, soothing their daughter back to sleep.
The murmur was a lifeline and a leash. He sat in the dark Charger, paralyzed by it, until the house fell silent again. Only the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen window broke the night.
He should go home. To his empty apartment over the garage. It was the right thing, the safe thing. His hand was on the key.
Instead, he found himself standing on the back porch, the wooden step creaking under his weight. The door was unlocked. The Toretto house always was. He slipped inside, moving through the familiar darkness of the kitchen, past the silent living room, and down the hall.
Mina’s door was ajar. A nightlight cast a soft, blue glow over unicorn stickers and stuffed cars piled in a corner. She was a small lump under the covers, one arm flung out, curls stuck to her damp forehead. Catalina sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him, slowly running a hand over Mina’s back. Her shoulders were slumped, all the day’s defiant energy spent.
He leaned against the doorframe, watching. This stolen sight was the fuel for his whole damned life.
Catalina’s voice was barely a whisper. “I know you’re there.”
“She okay?”
“Nightmare. A monster in the engine block.” Catalina kept stroking Mina’s back. “She said it was growling at her. I told her it was just a loose belt.”
Dominic almost smiled. That was their language, taught young. Problems were mechanical. Fixable.
“I’ll check the tension tomorrow.”
“She asked if you would.” Catalina finally turned her head. Her face in the blue light was ancient and young all at once. “You should go, Dom.”
“I am.”
He didn’t move. She didn’t tell him to again.
“She asked me something else tonight,” Catalina said, her eyes fixed on their sleeping daughter. “After you walked away from the cake. She asked why Tío Dom looked so sad at her party.”
The words landed like a kick to the ribs. He pushed off the doorframe, a restless energy jolting through him. He ended up at the window, staring out at his own shadow in the yard. “What did you say?”
“I said you were just thinking about work. That you had a tough engine to build.” She stood up slowly, careful not to jostle the bed. “She said ‘Oh,’ and then asked for more frosting. But she knew I was lying. Kids know.”
“Then maybe we should stop lying.”
The air in the little room went stiff. Catalina crossed the space, stopping an arm’s length away. Her scent—oil soap and jasmine—filled the space between them. “Don’t. Not here. Not now.”
“Where, Cat? When?” He kept his voice low, but it vibrated with a tension that had been building for years. “In the garage? Between shifts at the shop? In another five years, when she starts to look at me and wonders why her eyes are the exact same damn shape?”
“Stop it.”
“Why? Because it’s hard to hear? You think I don’t lie awake thinking the same things? That every time someone calls me ‘Uncle’ I don’t feel like a fraud?” He raked a hand over his shaved head. “We made a choice to protect her. Fine. But who’s protecting her from this… this shadow that’s where her father should be?”
Catalina’s eyes glistened. “We are. By being here. By being her family.”
“It’s not enough. Not for me.” He took a half-step closer. The magnetic pull was a physical ache. “Not for you either.
“Not for you either.” His hand shot out, not to grab her, but to brace against the wall by her head, caging her in. “You think I don’t see it? The way you look at me when you think no one’s watching. It’s the same way I look at you. Like we’re starving.”
Catalina didn’t pull away. She tilted her chin up, a defiance that was pure her. “Seeing it and doing something about it are two different things. One keeps the lights on. The other burns the whole house down.”
“Maybe the house needs to burn.”
The words hung between them, dangerous and thrilling. For a second, he saw the same wild spark in her eyes, the one that had always matched his own. The one that had started this.
Then Mina stirred, letting out a soft, sleeping sigh. The spell shattered.
Catalina’s eyes flicked toward the bed, then back to him, all the fire doused by a cold, hard reality. “Get out, Dom.”
He held her gaze, the fight draining out of him as quickly as it had flared. He dropped his arm and took a step back, the space between them suddenly a canyon.
He left without another word. The hall was dark, the house silent except for the hum of the refrigerator. He moved through it like a ghost, out the back door, into the night that felt no cooler than the heat inside him.
The drive to his apartment above the garage was a blur of streetlights and engine growl. He parked the Charger roughly, killing the engine so the silence felt like a physical presence. He didn’t go upstairs. He just sat in the car in the dark, his forehead resting against the steering wheel, breathing in the scent of gasoline and regret.
---
Letty Ortiz found her on the back porch steps an hour later. The party was a graveyard of good times behind them—empty bottles, dying tiki torches, the faint smell of burnt meat.
Catalina was just sitting there, elbows on her knees, staring into the shadowed yard. Her shoulders were slumped, the usual defiant posture gone. In the half-light from the kitchen window, she looked hollowed out.
“Hey,” Letty said softly, lowering herself onto the step beside her. She held out a fresh beer.
Catalina took it with a murmured thanks, her fingers brushing Letty’s. They were ice cold.
They sat in a silence that was easy between them. Letty had known the Torettos since she was a kid scrambling under cars with Dom and Cat. She knew their rhythms, their silences. This one was different. It was heavy.
“Mina finally down?” Letty asked.
“Out cold.” Catalina took a long pull from the bottle. “Nightmare. Something about the car.”
“Kid’s got Toretto in her blood. Worrying about engines in her sleep.” Letty tried for a smile, but it felt wrong.
Catalina didn’t answer. She just stared ahead, her gaze fixed on the dark shape of the Charger. Her face, usually so expressive and sharp, was a mask of utter exhaustion. It wasn't just the tiredness from a long day. It was a deep, soul-level weariness, the kind that settles in after years of carrying a weight alone.
Letty knew. She’d known since the beginning, maybe before Catalina had even admitted it to herself. She remembered Catalina’s panicked eyes five years ago, the denial that didn’t quite stick, the way Dom had simultaneously pulled away and hovered closer than any brother should. She’d seen the way Dom looked at Mina when he thought no one was watching—a look of such raw, terrified love it hurt to witness.
She saw it all now, etched into the lines of Catalina’s face in the dim light. The heroic, lonely work of being both mother and father. The invisible shield she held up every single day to protect her daughter from the truth and from the world. The fierce, desperate love for her brother that was both the foundation of her ruin and the only thing holding her together.
She was doing it all, and she was doing it completely alone, even when Dom was in the room.
Letty’s throat tightened. She couldn’t stand to see her best friend like this. Not Cat, who was all fire and grit and loyalty. This was a woman running on fumes, the last of her spirit clinging on by sheer force of will for the sake of a little girl asleep inside.
“Cat,” Letty started, her voice low.
“Don’t,” Catalina whispered, the word ragged. “Just… don’t, Letty. Okay?”
Letty nodded, swallowing back the words of comfort that were useless here. There was no fixing this. There was only bearing witness. She draped an arm around Catalina’s stiff shoulders. For a moment, Catalina resisted, a pillar of stubborn pride. Then, all at once, she crumpled. She leaned into Letty, her head dropping onto her friend’s shoulder, her body trembling with the effort of holding back a sob that wanted to tear her in two.
She didn’t cry. Catalina Toretto rarely did. But the ragged breath she let out into the quiet night was worse. It was the sound of someone who was just… done. Done with the pretending. Done with the fear. Done with loving a secret in the dark.
Letty just held her, looking out at the empty backyard where the ghost of the party lingered. She held her friend and she hated the secret a little more, and she feared for the day the weight of it finally, inevitably, broke them all.