Chapter 3: The Shattering
The buzzing phone on the passenger seat was a live wire. Dominic shifted Mina’s sleeping weight, his eyes locked on Catalina’s shattered expression in the gloom of the car. He reached for the phone.
“Don’t,” Catalina whispered, the word scraping her throat raw.
He picked it up. Letty’s name flashed across the screen. He swiped to answer, putting it to his ear. “Letty?”
Letty’s voice was a burst of static panic, stripped of all its usual cool. “Dom! Is she alive? Is she right there?”
His blood went cold, a sudden, icy slush in his veins. “What? Why wouldn’t she be?” He stared at Catalina, who had closed her eyes, more tears squeezing out from under her lashes.
“She texted me, Dom.” Letty’s voice broke. “She said she was thinking about killing herself.”
The words didn’t compute at first. They were sounds, foreign and terrifying, crashing against the familiar hum of the garage. Killing herself. The phrase connected to the woman in the driver’s seat of the Charger, to Cat, to his sister, to the mother of his child, and his world tipped violently on its axis.
He dropped the phone. It clattered on the concrete. Mina stirred with a soft whimper against his neck.
In three long strides he was at the car door. He yanked it open. The overhead light clicked on, painting Catalina’s misery in cruel, clinical detail. Grime-streaked tears, hollow eyes, a tremor in her hands still clutching the steering wheel.
“Look at me,” he demanded, his voice low and gravelly with a fear he’d never felt before.
She turned her head slowly. The blue of her eyes was utterly vacant.
He didn’t know what to do. His instinct was to shake her, to shout, to demand an explanation. But Mina was in his arms, a warm, sleeping barrier to his rage. He leaned into the car, his face inches from hers. The smell of her shampoo, of her sweat, of pure desperation filled the space between them.
“Tell me you didn’t mean it,” he said, each word a punch. “Tell me.”
Catalina’s gaze focused, landing on Mina’s peaceful face. A fresh wave of agony twisted her features. “I can’t,” she breathed. “I can’t do this anymore, Dom. I’m suffocating.”
“So you quit? You just check out? What about her?” He hefted Mina slightly, a gesture that was both accusation and plea. “What about me?”
“You!” A harsh, broken laugh escaped her. “You’re the reason, Dominic! You’re the goddamn sun and I’ve been orbiting you my whole life, burning up. I can’t… I can’t breathe in your atmosphere anymore.” She was unraveling right in front of him, the tough exterior she showed the world crumbling into dust. “I love you so much it’s a sickness. And you love me back the same way. And it’s a prison.”
The confession, spoken aloud in the harsh light, hung between them. It was the truth they’d spent a lifetime tap-dancing around, the elephant in every room, the foundation of their daughter’s life. Hearing it now, in this context of utter despair, stripped it of any twisted beauty. It was just a fact. A deadly one.
Dominic’s jaw worked. He had no words. Every argument, every logical boundary, evaporated. All that was left was the terrified animal need to keep her alive.
“I can’t lose you,” he said, the rawness in his voice surprising them both. “You hear me? Not like that. Never like that.”
“You already have,” she whispered. “We lost each other the minute Mina was born. We just didn’t have the guts to admit it.”
From his shoulder, Mina let out a small, sleepy sigh. Her little hand patted his back. “Daddy?”
The sound of her voice, drowsy and trusting, was a physical blow to both of them. Catalina flinched as if struck. Dominic pressed his forehead against the cool roof of the car, closing his eyes.
The garage door creaked open. Letty stood there, breathing hard like she’d run the whole way. She took in the scene: Dom bowed over the car, Cat inside looking like a ghost, Mina stirring awake. Her sharp eyes missed nothing.
“Give her to me,” Letty said, her voice calm but leaving no room for argument. She walked over and carefully extracted Mina from Dominic’s rigid arms. Mina nestled into Letty’s shoulder without a fuss, used to her aunt’s presence.
With the child’s weight gone, Dominic seemed to deflate. He stepped back from the car, giving Letty room. Letty leaned in, her face close to Catalina’s.
“Look at me, mija,” Letty said softly. “You’re not alone in this, you hear me? This shit is too big for you to carry by yourself.”
“I told you not to come,” Catalina mumbled, but she was leaning into Letty’s presence, a drowning person toward a rock.
“Tough.” Letty shot a look at Dominic over her shoulder. “We need to talk. All of us. No more running. No more secret texts in the middle of the night.”
Dominic finally found his voice. “The run tomorrow—”
“Fuck the run!” Letty snapped, immediately softening her tone for Mina. “The run is a distraction. This,” she gestured between the two of them, “is the real problem. And it’s gonna get one of you killed. Maybe not by your own hand, but by being stupid and distracted on the road.” She looked at Catalina. “You think checking out is the answer? You leave, and he’ll spiral. You know he will. And then who’s here for her?” She adjusted Mina on her hip. “You think your pain disappears if you’re gone? It just gets handed to her. And to him. And to me.”
The logic was brutal and inescapable. Catalina looked at her hands, stained with oil and now tears. She had no retort.
Dominic kicked a loose wrench. It skittered across the concrete with a loud, grating shriek. “So what’s the solution, Letty? Huh? You’re the one who knows everything. What’s the fix for this?” He waved a hand between him and Catalina. “For us?”
Letty was silent for a long moment, holding Mina, who was now awake and quietly playing with her necklace. “I don’t know,” she admitted finally. “But I know the three of you—you, Cat, Mina—you’re a unit. A messed up, complicated, against-all-odds unit. You can’t just dismantle it. You gotta… find a new shape. One that doesn’t destroy you all.”
“A new shape,” Dominic repeated, the words tasting like ash. He looked at Catalina, really looked at her. He saw the girl he’d shared a womb with, the teenager he’d shared stolen beers with, the woman he’d shared a bed with in a moment of catastrophic, world-altering weakness. He saw his other half, broken and blaming him for the break.
An idea, desperate and clear, cut through the chaos in his mind. It was born of pure, unadulterated panic. The same panic that made him plan intricate heists, that calculated escape routes at 120 miles per hour.
“We go,” he said, the words quiet but definitive.
Catalina looked up, confused. “What?”
“We go. Tonight. Now. We load up the Charger. We take Mina. We disappear.” The plan unfolded as he spoke, gaining conviction. “Not you alone, Cat. All of us. We leave L.A. We leave the crew, the business, all of it behind.”
Letty stared at him, her mouth slightly open. “Dom, you can’t be serious. The buyer tomorrow. Vince. Leon. The money—”
“The money’s for her future,” Dominic said, his eyes never leaving Catalina’s. “But she doesn’t have a future if her mother’s gone. Or if her parents are dead inside.” He took a step toward the car. “You said it yourself. We’re in a prison. So we break out.”
Catalina shook her head, a fragile movement. “To where? With what? We’d be hunted.”
“We’re already hunted,” he shot back. “By this. By what we feel. I’d rather be running from the cops with you than sitting still in this garage watching you fade away.” He meant it. Every word. The street was the only language he truly understood. Motion. Escape. The next mile marker.
He saw a flicker in her eyes, a tiny spark cutting through the void. It wasn’t hope. It was shock. The sheer, audacious recklessness of his proposal was a slap, shocking her system.
“You’d do that?” she whispered. “Leave everything?”
“Everything is right here,” he said, his voice dropping. He meant her. He meant Mina. He meant the three of them, however wrong it was.
Letty let out a long, slow breath. “You two are gonna give me a heart attack.” She bounced Mina gently. “You can’t just ghost, Dom. You got responsibilities.”
“My responsibility,” he growled, “is to them. To keeping them safe. Alive. Together.” He turned to Letty, his decision hardening into concrete. “You cover for us. Say we had to roll out early to scout. Buy us twelve hours.”
“And after twelve hours?” Letty challenged.
“Then you tell them whatever you want. That we’re gone. That we’re not coming back.”
The garage was silent except for the low hum of the freezer in the corner. The weight of the decision pressed down on them all. It was insane. It was the most insane thing he’d ever suggested. And it was the only thing left.
Catalina unbuckled her seatbelt. The click echoed. She slid out of the Charger, her legs shaky. She stood facing him, inches away in the oily, familiar air of their sanctuary.
“You’re sure?” she asked, searching his face for any hint of doubt.
He saw no way out. Only a way forward. A dark, uncertain road, but one they’d drive together. He cupped her face, his thumb wiping a tear track through the grime. It was the most intimate touch they’d allowed themselves in years.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” he lied, because the truth was he was terrified. But he was more terrified of the alternative. “Go pack for Mina. Light. Just the essentials.”
She held his gaze for a second longer, then nodded, a quick, sharp movement. She turned and walked toward the house, her steps gaining strength.
Letty looked at Dominic, her expression unreadable. “You know this changes everything. Forever.”
“Yeah,” he said, watching Catalina go. “That’s the point.”
He moved then, a man possessed. He started grabbing things: the black duffel of emergency cash from the locked toolbox, the clean license plates from the shelf, the burner phones still in their packaging. His mind was a checklist, a map unfolding. East. Through the desert. New identities. A new life.
He tossed the duffel into the Charger’s trunk. The heavy thud was a full stop, a period at the end of their old life. He stood for a moment, his hands on the cool metal of the car, listening to the sounds of his world being packed away inside the house.
Mina, now fully awake in Letty’s arms, pointed a chubby finger at him. “Daddy go bye-bye?”
He walked over and took her from Letty, holding her tight, inhaling the scent of her baby shampoo. “Yeah, baby girl,” he murmured into her hair. “We’re all going bye-bye.”
He held Mina close for another second, then handed her back to Letty with a finality that made his throat tighten. “Keep her inside while we load up.”
Letty took Mina, her eyes glistening. “You call me. The second you stop. You hear me?”
Dom just nodded, already turning back to the Charger. The engine roared to life with a metallic growl, shaking the steel tool cabinets. He backed it out onto the driveway, the headlights cutting yellow swaths through the cold Los Angeles night. Catalina emerged from the house carrying a single duffel bag, small and depressingly light.
She threw it into the open trunk beside his emergency duffel. She didn’t look at him. “That’s it,” she said, her voice flat. “Everything else is just stuff.”
They worked in a silence punctuated by practicalities. He checked the oil and tire pressure. She filled a small cooler with bottles of water and the leftover sandwiches from the fridge. Each movement was precise, rehearsed from a hundred late-night race prep sessions, but now performed with a funereal slowness. Letty watched from the doorway, a silent sentinel with Mina on her hip.
Finally, Dominic slammed the trunk shut. The sound was too loud in the quiet street. He walked over to Letty and get mina out if her arma ti bring her in the car
The sound was too loud in the quiet street. He walked over to Letty and gently took Mina from her arms. The little girl was awake now, her eyes wide and curious in the dark.
“We goin’ in the car, Daddy?” Mina whispered, her small hands patting his cheeks.
“Yeah, baby,” he said, his voice thick. “We’re gonna go for a long drive.”
He carried her to the Charger, its engine a low, impatient rumble. Catalina was already in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead through the windshield. He settled Mina into her car seat in the back, his large fingers fumbling with the clasps. He kissed her forehead. “You be good for Mommy, okay?”
Letty approached his open door. She shoved a paper bag into his hand. “Tacos,” she said simply. Then her hand closed around his wrist, her grip fierce. “You look after them. You hear me? You look after each other.”
“I will.”
“No,” she insisted, her eyes glittering. “You will. Or I will find you and kill you myself.” She released him and stepped back, crossing her arms over her chest like a shield.
Dominic slid behind the wheel. The leather seat groaned under his weight. He glanced at Catalina. Her profile was a cutout against the dark window. “Ready?” he asked.
She didn’t look at him. She just gave a single, sharp nod.
He put the car in gear. The headlights washed over Letty, standing solitary in the driveway, growing smaller in the rearview mirror. Then he turned the corner, and she was gone. The familiar streets of his neighborhood, every crack and shadow known, began to stream past.
Mina babbled softly to a stuffed dinosaur in the back. Catalina finally spoke, her voice hollow. “Where are we going?”
“East,” he said. “Through the desert. For now.”
“And then?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
They drove in silence for twenty minutes, the city’s glow fading behind them. The only sounds were the Charger’s deep-throated purr and the tires humming on the asphalt. He could feel the tension radiating from Catalina, a brittle energy that made the air in the car feel thin.
He reached over and turned on the radio. Static fizzed, then resolved into a slow, sad country song. He left it on. It was better than the silence.
“I meant what I said to Letty,” Catalina whispered, staring at her hands in her lap. “I wasn’t lying. I was at the edge. I saw it. A way out.”
Dominic’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. He focused on the yellow lines dividing the endless road ahead. “Don’t.”
“You have to know. You have to understand how bad it was.”
“I understand,” he interrupted, his tone rough. “I saw your face in the garage.”
She fell quiet again. He glanced at her. A tear tracked down her cheek, catching the green light from the dashboard. She didn’t wipe it away.
“I’m scared,” she admitted, so quietly he almost didn’t hear it over the engine.
“Me too,” he said. It was the most honest thing he’d said all night.
He exited the freeway at a sign for a dusty, two-pump gas station on the edge of the desert. The place was empty, illuminated by a single buzzing fluorescent light. “I need to switch the plates,” he said, cutting the engine. The sudden quiet was immense.
He got out into the chill night air. Crickets chirped in the darkness beyond the station’s halo of light. He popped the trunk, retrieved the stolen plates, and got to work with a wrench. The metallic clinks were shockingly loud.
Catalina got out too, leaning against the side of the car, hugging herself. She watched him work. “We’re really doing this,” she said, not a question.
“We’re really doing it.” He finished tightening the last screw and stood, tossing the old plates into a trash bin. “There’s no going back now.”
He walked to her. They stood facing each other in the poor light, the vast, empty desert at their backs. The distance between them felt both infinite and nonexistent.
“You saved my life tonight,” she said. “Even if I didn’t want you to.”
“I didn’t save it,” he corrected, his voice low. “I just refused to let you go. There’s a difference.”
Mina let out a soft cry from the back seat. Catalina moved instantly, opening the door and leaning in. “Shhh, sweetheart, it’s okay,” she murmured. “Mommy’s here.”
Dominic watched her soothe their daughter, her movements gentle and sure. This was the woman who could rebuild a transmission from scrap and calm a scared child with equal competence. This was the woman he was bound to, in every possible way.
He went to the passenger side, opened the glove box, and pulled out a folded, worn map. He spread it on the hood under the sickly light. Catalina joined him, leaning over the paper.
“Here,” he said, pointing to a thin, snaking line. “This road. Goes through the Mojave. Leads to nowhere, leads to anywhere. We drive until dawn. Find a motel. Sleep.”
“And then?” she asked again, tracing the road with her finger.
“Then we keep driving.” He looked at her. “One mile at a time. That’s all we have to figure out right now.”
She met his gaze. The absolute vacancy from earlier was gone, replaced by a weary, fractured determination. She gave that same sharp nod. “Okay.”
They got back in the car. He started the engine, the powerful vibration a familiar comfort. He pulled back onto the empty two-lane highway, pointing the nose of the Charger east, toward the invisible state line and the deepening dark.
The desert opened up around them, a black expanse punctuated by the silhouettes of Joshua trees, standing like sentinels. The world had been reduced to this capsule of light and sound, moving through an ocean of nothing.
In the back, Mina drifted back to sleep. Catalina leaned her head against the window, her eyes open, watching the void.
“You should try to sleep,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“Try.”
After a few miles, she slid down in her seat, turning her body towards him. She pulled her knees up, a defensive curl. Her breathing gradually evened out, but her brow remained furrowed, even in rest.
Dominic drove. He watched the road, he watched the gas gauge, he watched the sleeping forms of his daughter and the woman who was both his sister and his heart. The weight of what they’d done settled onto his shoulders, heavy and absolute.
He pressed the accelerator. The Charger responded, surging forward, eager to eat the miles. The headlights carved a tunnel through the limitless night, revealing nothing but more road ahead. He had no destination. He had only a direction: away.
And for now, away was enough.
The Charger ate the empty miles, a black shark gliding through a sea of deeper black. Dominic’s hands were locked on the wheel, his eyes gritty and fixed on the retreating yellow line. Dawn arrived not with color but as a gradual graying of the world, the silhouettes of cacti and rock formations emerging like sleeping giants.
He saw the sign first: a flickering neon vacancy indicator casting a sickly pink glow on the dust. The motel was a single-story, L-shaped relic, its paint bleached by countless suns. He slowed, the tires crunching over gravel. Catalina stirred in the passenger seat, blinking against the pale light.
“We’re stopping?” Her voice was thick with sleep and disorientation.
“We need sleep. Real sleep.” He pulled into a spot near the office, the engine ticking as it cooled.
The air outside was already warm, carrying the scent of creosote and dry earth. He left the car running for the AC, for Mina still asleep in the back. The office smelled of stale cigarette smoke and industrial cleaner. A man with tired eyes watched a small TV behind bulletproof glass.
“Two rooms. Adjacent,” Dominic said, sliding cash through the metal tray.
The man’s glance drifted to the Charger outside, then back to Dominic’s face. He didn’t ask questions. He took the money, slid back two keys with heavy plastic fobs. “End of the row. Four and five.”
Back at the car, Catalina was awake, staring at the cracked, taupe wall of the motel. “Two rooms,” she stated flatly.
“Yeah.” He couldn’t meet her eyes. The logic was simple, necessary, and felt like another wall. “You and Mina need one. I’ll take the other.” He handed her key number four.
She took it without a word, her fingers brushing his. A static shock jumped between them, tiny and sharp. She flinched.
They unpacked in silence, moving like ghosts. He carried Mina, still asleep, into room four. The space was dim, cool from the struggling air conditioner, and smelled faintly of mildew. Catalina unfolded the stiff bedspread, he laid Mina down, and they both stood back, two sentinels watching their daughter dream.
“I’ll get the bags,” he murmured, and left her there.
He brought in the duffels, the cooler, the stuffed dinosaur. The domesticity of it all was a hollow parody. This was their life now: a series of anonymous rooms, a fugitive’s itinerary. He set her bag down by the cheap wooden dresser.
“Try to sleep,” he said, already backing toward the door, toward the imagined safety of his own separate space.
She just nodded, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looked small in the ugly room, dwarfed by the bad art and the weight of everything unsaid.
Room five was a mirror image, minus the saving grace of Mina’s soft breathing. The silence was absolute and oppressive. He stood in the center of the worn carpet, the fluorescent bathroom light humming. He’d run from cops, from rivals, from explosions. He’d never felt hunted like this, by the quiet and his own mind.
He didn’t bother with the bed. He sat in the hard chair by the window, cracked the vinyl blinds, and watched the parking lot. The sun was fully up now, bleaching the color from everything. He watched a lizard dart across the hot gravel. He counted the cars. He thought about nothing and everything.
Sleep was a distant country. His body was exhausted wire, his mind a storm of taillights and Catalina’s face in the garage light, streaked with tears. The text to Letty played behind his eyes on a loop. I am thinking about killing myself. Each word was a nail.
He must have dozed off in the chair, because the knock startled him into alertness. The angle of the light through the blinds had changed. He’d been out for an hour, maybe two.
He stood, his stiff joints protesting. He didn’t ask who it was. He already knew. He opened the door.
Catalina stood there, backlit by the harsh desert sun. She’d changed into a thin tank top and shorts. Her hair was mussed from a restless attempt to sleep. Her eyes were clear now, sharp and blue and resolved. She looked at him, past him, into the dim room he hadn’t even tried to make his own.
She didn’t speak. She stepped forward, over the threshold. He moved back automatically, giving her space that she immediately filled.
She closed the door behind her with a soft, definitive click. The room was plunged back into its humming, artificial twilight.
He started to say something, her name perhaps, a question. She didn’t let him. She moved into him, her hands coming up to frame his face, her body pressing against his all at once. And then she kissed him.
It wasn’t tender. It wasn’t questioning. It was aclaim, a desperate possession, a silent scream given form. Her mouth was fierce on his, all the trapped words and years of forced distance pouring into this single, catastrophic action. He froze for a half-second, the world tilting on a new, impossible axis. Then his hands were in her hair, his arms locking around her, pulling her tighter, deeper. He kissed her back with equal fury, a dam breaking inside him, a flood of shame and want and irrevocable love washing away every last pretense of separation. The taste of her was familiarity and rebellion, salt and heat, the only answer to every question the night had asked.