Morning came soft inside Cooper's Auto's comfort-room—gray light leaking through blinds, dust motes drifting like slow snow.
Jacob woke to the low whisper of Childish Gambino coming from the speaker set, turned down so far it felt more like a pulse than a song. The sheets were half tangled around him, warm and heavy, and Mia was curled beside him, close enough that her breathing matched his for a few seconds before he fully remembered where he was.
A shirt lay discarded on the floor near the bed. Someone's jeans were slung over the arm of the chair. Mia's jacket was draped over the edge of the couch like she'd dropped it without thinking. Nothing explicit—just enough evidence to make it clear last night had been a rare pocket of softness in a week that didn't offer many.
Jacob stared at the ceiling for a moment, feeling an unfamiliar quiet in his chest.
Then the world did what it always did now.
A clean ping slid into his vision.
DAY 3 — KING'S RACE COUNTDOWN
Daily profiles updated.
Starttime unchanged.
Reminder: police may attempt to cut off the start.
Roster confirmations remain locked.
His phone buzzed too, as if the system didn't trust one channel. The vibration seemed too loud in the quiet room.
Mia's phone chimed a second later on the bedside table.
Mia made a small sound—half groan, half laugh—and buried her face into the pillow as if she could smother the countdown with cotton.
Jacob exhaled slowly, the calm already thinning at the edges.
Mia rolled toward him, eyes still sleepy, and hooked an arm lightly across his chest—warm weight, steadying him. Her shoulder pressed against his, the sheet pulled up just enough to keep the room modest but not enough to hide how close they were.
"No," she murmured.
Jacob blinked. "No what?"
Mia lifted her head slightly, hair mussed, voice soft but firm. "No letting it take the morning. Not yet."
Jacob's throat tightened.
He nodded once, small, and let himself sink back into the pillow. Mia tugged him closer by the simplest pull—an arm, a breath, a quiet insistence—and for one more minute the only things that existed were the music, the warmth, and the fragile decision to stay still.
Across town, Dom's garage was already awake in a harsher way.
Johnny Tran arrived like a challenge wrapped in a person—clean posture, hard eyes, confidence that looked welded into his bones. He didn't come with jokes or small talk. He came to make sure everyone remembered his name belonged in the same sentence as king.
Dom stood near the Charger with Letty, both of them calm, both of them watchful. Brian was there too, half in shadow, trying to look like he was just around—while his eyes tracked everything like a man who couldn't afford to miss a detail.
Tran's gaze landed on Dom and held.
"You're running that King's Race," Tran said, like it was an accusation.
Dom didn't flinch. "Everybody's running it."
Tran's mouth twitched. "Not everybody's winning it."
Letty's eyes narrowed. "You drove over here to say that?"
Tran smiled without warmth. "I drove over here to remind you who you're up against."
Dom's expression stayed even. "You got something to prove, Tran. Prove it on the road."
Tran leaned a fraction closer, voice dropping into something sharper. "I'm not proving anything," he said. "I'm taking it. Crown. Money. City. Undisputed."
Brian watched the exchange with his jaw tight. He could feel the temperature rise. Tran's presence turned a "race" into a territorial act, a pressure test on everyone's pride.
Dom held Tran's stare. "Then show up."
Tran's grin widened a hair. "Oh, I will."
He turned and left as abruptly as he'd arrived, his crew trailing behind him like shadows.
When the garage settled back into its usual clink-and-hum, Brian let out a slow breath like he'd been holding it.
Letty muttered, "He's hungry."
Dom's gaze stayed forward, steady. "Let him be."
Sunny spent the day doing what a man with something to prove always did when he couldn't sleep.
He practiced.
He drove through the estimated startline zone again and again—different lanes, different approach angles, different timings. He didn't have the exact pin yet, but he had the "dead center" box, and he treated it like a firing range.
He measured sight lines. Counted where roads widened and where they pinched. Noted where patrol units could hide, where a cut-off could form, where a rolling start could be broken into chaos.
Each loop sharpened his focus. Each loop fed the same quiet chant in his head:
Win. Don't get replaced. Win.
He wasn't smiling.
The friendly mask stayed in a drawer now.
This wasn't about fitting in.
This was about control.
And back in the small warmth of Cooper's Auto, Mia shifted closer and pressed her cheek briefly to Jacob's shoulder, eyes closed again like she was stealing a few more minutes from the countdown.
"Just five more," she murmured.
Jacob's breath eased out of him, and he let the music whisper lowly, letting himself pretend—just for a moment longer—that the world outside didn't have kings to crown and traps to set.
Then, inevitably, the day waited.
...
Johnny Tran didn't prep for King's Race like it was a sport.
He prepped like it was a takeover.
In a rented warehouse space that smelled of fresh cardboard and solvent, a shipping container sat open under harsh work lights. Crates were stacked in neat lines—import labels, customs stamps, parts wrapped in oil paper and foam like they were sacred.
Tran walked the row with his hands behind his back, jaw tight, eyes sharp. He'd been embarrassed once—boxed, cuffed, handled like a normal criminal in front of people who used to fear his name.
He wasn't going to be handled again.
His crew worked without chatter. A wrench clinked. A jack creaked. Someone cut zip ties with a blade that flashed briefly.
Tran watched a turbo housing come out of a foam cradle, the metal clean and cold. Another box held suspension components—stiffer, lighter, built for precision. Another held a set of tires that looked too soft to survive an ordinary night and too grippy to be ordinary.
"Get it on," Tran said.
The car—his car—sat stripped down enough to look surgical, hood up, body panels removed like skin peeled back to reveal intent. Tran leaned in, traced a finger along a line, then stepped back.
"Not sloppy," he warned.
His lead guy nodded. "Not sloppy."
Tran's eyes narrowed. "I'm not losing to a myth. I'm not losing to Dom. I'm not losing to some fed clown who thinks he can buy a crown."
His voice stayed quiet, but it cut through the warehouse anyway. "This race decides who owns the underground," he said. "And I'm done letting anybody forget my name."
Outside, the city breathed like it didn't know it was being sharpened into a blade.
Dom came by Cooper's Auto late afternoon with a cooler in the back seat and that steady calm that always made things feel inevitable.
He didn't knock like a cop.
He knocked like a man checking on another man.
Jacob opened the door with grease on his hands, the Hoonicorn half-covered in the bay behind him. Mia wasn't there—she'd gone back to Dom's place earlier—but her presence still lingered in the shop like warmth in fabric.
Dom nodded once. "You eating tonight?"
Jacob blinked. "Tonight?"
Dom leaned slightly on the doorframe, voice calm. "Mia wants you there."
Jacob's chest tightened. He could've said he was busy. He could've said he needed to work. He could've said a lot of things that were true.
Instead he heard Mia's voice from the night before—Don't disappear on us.
He swallowed. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I'll come."
Dom's mouth twitched into the faintest almost-smile. "Good."
Jacob hesitated, then asked softly, "Everything okay?"
Dom's eyes stayed steady. "Nothing's okay," he said bluntly. Then, more controlled: "But we're eating anyway."
Jacob nodded once. "Alright."
Dom pushed off the frame. "Sun's down," he said. "Backyard."
Jacob watched him leave and felt that strange, dangerous thing again—belonging tugging at him like gravity.
..
The barbecue at Dom's place almost felt like a stubborn act of defiance.
String lights hung over the backyard. Smoke from the grill curled up into the night, sweet and warm. Plates moved around the table. Letty stole food off Dom's plate just to get a reaction. Jesse argued about tires like it mattered more than sirens. Leon laughed, and for a minute it sounded like the city wasn't tightening its grip around all of them.
Jacob showed up when the sun was down, and Mia's face softened the moment she saw him—small smile, quick warmth, the kind of look that made the whole yard feel steadier. She saved him a seat like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Vince noticed the closeness between them immediately. He didn't like it. It pinched somewhere deep. But the old Vince didn't show up with claws tonight. He swallowed it down, hurt living behind his eyes, and stayed quiet—grudging respect in the way he kept watching the gate and the street like a guard who'd decided protecting mattered more than pride.
Brian arrived late again, shoulders tight, eyes scanning like his body didn't know how to stop being ready. He smiled when Mia greeted him, but it looked thin. He sat like a man trying to act normal in a place that made him feel exposed.
Dinner rolled on anyway.
They ate. They joked. For a little while, the countdown didn't exist.
Then Vince did what Vince always did when tension got too loud in his head: he pushed it out into the open.
He leaned back in his chair, looked around the table like he was asking permission he didn't need, and said, "We gotta talk about Sunny."
Mia frowned. "Sunny?"
Letty's eyes narrowed immediately. Dom didn't look up from the grill, but the shift in the air caught his attention like a change in engine tone.
Jacob's fork paused mid-bite.
He and Vince had talked about this in low voices, away from everyone else, exactly because saying it out loud would change the room's shape.
But Vince's fear wasn't quiet anymore.
Dom finally turned from the grill, voice even. "What about him."
Vince hesitated—just a fraction—then his jaw tightened. "He's not just some new racer."
Mia blinked. "Vince—"
Jacob set his fork down gently, like he didn't want metal to clink. His pulse hammered, but his voice came out controlled.
"He's federal," Jacob said.
The words hit the table like a dropped plate.
Silence.
Then Jesse breathed, "No way."
Leon's expression tightened. Letty went still, eyes hard. Dom's face didn't change much, but something in his gaze sharpened—cold and focused.
Mia stared at Jacob like she couldn't make her brain accept it. "What?"
Vince nodded quickly, hungry to prove he wasn't crazy. "He's a fed. Jacob called it. I saw it."
Mia's voice trembled with disbelief. "How do you know?"
Jacob swallowed. He couldn't give them the whole truth—couldn't talk about system warnings or bait chases or patterns he'd learned by being hunted.
So he gave them something human and damning.
"He moves wrong," Jacob said quietly. "He's too clean. Too practiced. He asks questions like he's collecting. And the cops…" Jacob's jaw flexed. "The cops move different when he's around."
Letty's voice was low. "You saying he's bait."
Vince leaned forward, angry now. "I'm saying he's a problem."
Dom's eyes stayed on Jacob. "You sure?"
Jacob nodded once. "Yeah."
Mia looked from Jacob to Vince, hurt and furious blooming together. "And you didn't tell me?"
Jacob's throat tightened. "Mia—"
"No," Mia snapped, pushing back from the table. "You let him around us. You let him around Dom. You—"
Dom's voice cut in, calm but heavy. "Mia."
Mia's chest rose and fell fast. She looked like she wanted to throw something. "How long?" she demanded.
Vince answered first, rough. "Since the meet. I didn't believe it at first."
Mia's eyes swung to Jacob. "And you?"
Jacob held her gaze, voice quiet. "I was trying to be sure."
The yard felt colder. Even the grill smoke seemed harsher.
And then Brian spoke—because Brian had to.
"What?" he said, too quick, too loud, pitching surprise like it might keep his own secrets safe. "Sunny's a fed?"
Everyone turned toward Brian, and for a split second Brian felt the full spotlight of their attention. He forced his face into disbelief—eyes wide, jaw slack, the performance of shock.
Inside his chest, something else twisted: panic at being in the middle of a reveal, relief that the spotlight wasn't on him, and a sick sense of how fragile his own cover really was.
Dom watched Brian carefully, expression unreadable. Letty's gaze cut sharper, as if she were reassessing Brian and Sunny in the same mental file.
Mia looked at Brian, still shaking. "You knew?"
Brian's heart slammed. He shook his head fast. "No," he lied smoothly. "I didn't know that."
Vince snorted. "Of course you didn't."
Jacob didn't look at Brian long. He didn't want to. He could feel Brian's tension like static.
Dom's voice was steady, quiet. "Alright," Dom said. "If Sunny's federal, then the play changes."
Letty nodded once, already thinking in edges. "He doesn't get close. Not to the house. Not to the shop. Not to our people."
Leon muttered, "How the hell did he get invited to anything."
Jesse looked pale. "King's Race…"
Mia's face tightened at the name. "So what do we do?"
Vince's anger flared. "We cut him out."
Dom's gaze stayed hard. "We don't make noise," Dom said. "We don't give him a scene. We don't let him turn us into a report."
Letty added, colder, "We starve him of information."
Mia looked at Jacob again, hurt still in her eyes but something else there too—trust fighting with fear. "You should've told me," she said, softer now.
Jacob's throat tightened. "I know," he whispered.
The backyard stayed quiet for a long moment—string lights humming, food cooling on plates, the warm normalcy of dinner cracked open by one ugly truth.
And Brian sat among them acting shocked like everyone else, swallowing hard, because he'd just watched Jacob Cooper say the word federal out loud without flinching…
…and Brian couldn't stop thinking: If they ever say my truth out loud like that, I'm done.
...
The word federal didn't leave the backyard when Jacob said it.
It stayed.
It sat on the table between plates and half-finished drinks like a piece of cold metal you couldn't pretend wasn't there. Even the string lights seemed dimmer afterward, the warmth of the barbecue suddenly thin.
Mia's anger had cooled into something worse—hurt.
She didn't shout anymore. She just looked at Jacob like she was trying to understand how someone could care about her enough to hold her hand one night… and still keep something like this from her.
Jacob felt it in his chest like a bruise blooming fast.
He wanted to explain.
He wanted to say I was trying to protect you without it sounding like a coward's excuse.
But the truth underneath that was uglier: he hadn't told her because telling her would make it real, and making it real would mean he'd have to carry her fear too.
He'd been selfish in the way scared people were selfish.
And now he could see it on her face.
Jacob swallowed hard and forced himself to keep speaking, because if he stopped, the room would fill the silence with panic.
"I should've told you," he said quietly, eyes on Mia. "I'm sorry."
Mia didn't answer right away. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed emotion. She looked away, blinking hard.
Letty's gaze stayed sharp, but even she didn't cut in. She let the apology hang, because it mattered.
Dom's voice was low. "We deal with it," he said. Not unkind. Just final.
Jacob nodded, then added the piece that had been gnawing at him since the moment Vince said Sunny's name too loud:
"This isn't just about Sunny being a fed," Jacob said. "It's about why he's here."
Vince leaned forward, tense. "To trap us."
Jacob shook his head slowly. "To trap him," he said, and the way he said it made the air tighten.
Mia's eyes flicked back to Jacob. "Who?"
Jacob's mouth went dry. He forced the words out anyway.
"King's Race," he said. "Sunny's invited."
A ripple ran through the table.
Leon muttered, "Of course he is."
Letty's eyes narrowed to slits. "That's not an invite. That's placement."
Dom didn't move, but Jacob saw the muscle in his jaw flex once.
Jacob continued, voice soft but steady. "If Sunny's federal and he's invited, then the race isn't just a race. It's bait with a million dollars on it."
Mia's hand tightened around her fork. "So they're using the race to—"
"To pull someone out," Jacob finished quietly.
He didn't say Wanted.
He couldn't.
But everyone felt the shape of it anyway: the city's myth, the task force, the pressure, the way the streets had become a hunt.
Jacob's gaze swept the table, then—almost without meaning to—his eyes caught Brian.
Just a quick look.
A small, loaded flicker.
Not accusation.
Not confirmation.
Just Jacob checking Brian's reaction, because Brian had been too tense for too long and Jacob couldn't stop noticing patterns.
Brian's face stayed still, but Jacob saw it: the smallest tightening at the corners of his eyes, the way Brian swallowed like the topic had a hook in his throat.
Jacob looked away immediately, guilt twisting sharper.
Because Brian was sitting there "surprised" with the rest of them, and Jacob didn't know how much Brian was hiding.
And Jacob didn't trust himself not to say the wrong thing if he stayed.
His half-eaten plate suddenly looked obscene—food and warmth and laughter—when the air had turned into strategy and fear.
Jacob pushed his chair back slowly.
The scrape of legs against concrete sounded too loud.
Mia turned toward him immediately. "Where are you going?"
Jacob's throat tightened.
Everyone looked at him now—Dom's calm attention, Letty's sharp read, Vince's tense watchfulness, Jesse's anxious curiosity.
Jacob couldn't stand the weight of it.
"I—" he started, then swallowed. "I have to work."
Mia frowned. "Now?"
Jacob nodded once, too stiff. "Yeah."
Vince scoffed, but it was weaker than usual, almost protective. "C'mon, man."
Dom's voice was steady. "Sit down."
Jacob's chest tightened at the command—not because Dom was harsh, but because Dom cared enough to try to keep him here. Because Dom treated him like family-adjacent now, and family didn't just drift away.
Jacob shook his head slowly.
"I can't," he whispered.
Mia's expression softened into something that hurt worse than anger. "Jacob…"
Jacob looked at her, and the words he couldn't say pressed against his teeth.
He wanted to tell her the real reason he was leaving: because he was scared of what he'd become, scared of how close she was getting, scared that his secrets would poison her life if he stayed too near.
But all he could manage was the smallest, raw truth:
"I don't want you hurt," he said quietly.
Mia blinked, tears finally threatening. "Then don't shut me out."
The plea hit him like a fist.
Jacob's hands curled into fists at his sides, trembling. He nodded once, like he was agreeing, even as his feet kept moving.
"I'm sorry," he whispered again, and this time it wasn't just about Sunny. It was about everything he couldn't give her.
He left the backyard with half a plate of food still on the table, the smell of barbecue clinging to him like a memory of warmth he didn't feel worthy of.
Behind him, the string lights kept glowing.
The family kept breathing.
But the space he left felt colder instantly—because everyone could feel it:
Jacob Cooper was carrying something heavy enough that dinner couldn't hold him.
And the way Mia watched him go—hurt, worried, still caring—made the leaving feel like tearing skin instead of simply walking away.
...
Dom didn't like unanswered doors.
He liked engines he could read, people he could measure, problems he could put his hands on. A locked shop with no sign of the man inside it—that was the kind of unknown that turned into tragedy in this city.
So when Mia said, "I'm going," Dom didn't argue.
They went as a group—Dom in the Charger, Letty beside him, Vince and Leon behind, Jesse too restless to stay home. Mia rode quiet, eyes fixed on the road, worry tightening her face more with every block.
Cooper's Auto sat exactly where it always sat.
Except it didn't feel like it existed.
The roll-up door was down. No light behind the office window. No engine sound. No movement in the alley. The place looked like a mouth closed tight.
Dom knocked once—firm, controlled.
Nothing.
Letty tried the handle. Locked.
Vince muttered, "He's probably just asleep."
Jesse shook his head too fast. "Nah… Jacob's always in there."
Mia stepped closer to the door, as if standing nearer could make him appear. "Jacob?" she called, voice tight.
No answer.
Mia's throat bobbed as she swallowed. "He wouldn't do this," she whispered, more to herself than to them.
Dom scanned the alley—up and down, checking corners like an instinct. "His car?"
Leon looked. "Supra's not here."
Letty's eyes narrowed. "And that black thing?"
Vince's jaw tightened. "Gone."
The absence hit them all at once. Not just "he's out." Not just "he's busy."
Vanished.
Mia's face crumpled for a second before she forced it back into control. "We have to look for him."
Dom's voice stayed low. "Mia—"
"No," she snapped, anger and fear braided together. "He doesn't disappear like that. Not after—" her voice broke, then steadied. "Not after everything."
Letty watched Mia carefully, then nodded once. "We look."
Vince didn't argue. He just stared at the closed door with a guilty tightness in his eyes, like Jacob's disappearance felt like a punishment he didn't understand.
Dom exhaled slowly. "Alright," he said. "We find him."
Mia looked at the dark window one more time, eyes shining. "Where would he go," she whispered.
No one answered.
Because none of them knew the places a man went when he wasn't running from cops or chasing speed—when he was running from himself.
Jacob wasn't in Los Angeles.
He wasn't even close.
He'd driven out of the city with the sun still low, the Hoonicorn's engine held to a quiet rumble as the highways turned into long, empty stretches. The farther he went, the less the air felt like surveillance. The billboards thinned. The streets stopped carrying that constant background hum of sirens and pressure.
He didn't know exactly why he was going until he saw the sign for the town.
A place he hadn't visited in years.
A place he'd tried to forget because remembering it meant remembering who he'd been before the system, before Wanted, before the city started calling him a myth.
The cemetery sat on the edge of town, quiet and sun-bleached, with rows of stones that looked like teeth in the earth. Jacob parked at the gravel shoulder and sat in the driver's seat for a long time with his hands on the wheel, breathing slow, feeling the weight in his chest press up against his ribs.
When he finally got out, he didn't bring the helmet.
He didn't bring the gun.
He only brought himself.
His footsteps sounded too loud on the gravel path. The air smelled like dry grass and distant eucalyptus. Somewhere, a bird called once, sharp and lonely.
Jacob walked past rows of names and dates until he reached the corner he'd come for—not a headstone, not a marker, just a plot of ground set aside, still empty, still waiting.
A place that hadn't been used yet.
A place that should've belonged to someone and didn't, because Jacob's best friend had died behind a steering wheel long before any tombstone ever got carved.
Jacob stopped at the edge of the blank plot and stared down at the grass.
His throat tightened.
He spoke anyway, voice quiet, shaky around the edges.
"Hey," he said, as if the ground could hear him. "It's me."
The words felt ridiculous and necessary at the same time.
He swallowed hard and crouched, fingertips brushing the grass like it was hair, like it was fabric, like it was anything but dirt.
"I still see it," he whispered. "That night."
The memory punched through him without permission: two teenagers in a stolen car, laughing too loud because fear was a drug. The road coming too fast. A corner taken wrong. Metal screaming. His friend's hands on the wheel, eyes wide, then gone—gone in the kind of instant that never stopped repeating in Jacob's dreams.
Jacob's breath hitched.
"I couldn't stop it," he said, voice cracking. "I couldn't—" He swallowed, jaw trembling. "I've been trying to outrun it ever since."
He stared down at the empty plot like he could summon a stone with enough regret.
"You'd hate this," he whispered. "You'd hate what I turned into."
His hands curled into fists, nails biting skin. "There's… something in my head now," he admitted to the air, to the dirt, to the memory of a friend who would never laugh again. "A system. Like a damn game."
He let out a small, broken laugh that collapsed immediately.
"It gives me cars," he said, voice rough. "Power. Skills. It makes everything… possible."
His eyes burned.
"And it makes everything worse," he whispered.
He leaned forward, forehead almost to the grass, shoulders shaking.
"I tried to stop people getting hurt," he said. "I tried to scare them into staying home, and it still—" His voice broke. "It still happened. People still got hurt."
He thought of Marisol on a ventilator—news clip, name scrolled, a person crushed by a hunt that didn't care. He thought of the officer in a coma. He thought of Mia's hurt face when he left the table.
Jacob's throat tightened until he couldn't speak for a moment.
Then the dam finally gave.
He cried—not pretty, not quiet in a dignified way. Raw, shaking sobs that made him fold in on himself like something inside him had finally stopped pretending it was made of steel. Tears dropped into the grass and disappeared immediately, swallowed by earth that didn't care.
He covered his face with his hands and let it happen anyway, because this was the only place he could fall apart without someone watching and turning it into a story.
"I'm tired," he whispered through the tears. "I'm so tired."
He breathed in, ragged, and spoke like the empty plot was the only thing in the world that wouldn't judge him.
"I don't know who I am anymore," Jacob confessed. "I don't know if I'm fixing things or breaking them. I don't know if I'm saving anyone or just… making the fall bigger."
He stayed there a long time, kneeling in the grass, letting grief make him human again in a way speed never could.
Eventually, the crying softened into quiet breaths. His shoulders still trembled, but the worst of it had passed.
Jacob wiped his face with his sleeve, eyes red, throat raw.
He looked down at the empty plot and forced the words out one last time.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm sorry I'm still running."
He stood on legs that felt heavy and walked back toward the car, leaving the cemetery behind him in silence.
The Hoonicorn waited, matte-black and indifferent.
Jacob slid into the driver's seat and sat there with his hands resting on the wheel, face still damp, eyes hollow.
He'd left the city behind to talk to a ghost of his own making.
Now he had to decide whether he was going to return to the living people who were looking for him—people like Mia, who would knock on a locked door and refuse to accept that he'd vanished.
And for the first time in a long time, Jacob didn't want to run from that.
..
The day of King's Race arrived like a bruise you couldn't hide.
By late afternoon, news choppers were already circling the city's center, their rotors chopping the air into a constant, nervous thump. The cameras didn't know exactly what they were filming yet—only that something big was coming, and the city had learned to lean toward spectacle even when it hurt.
Down on the ground, LAPD had done the impossible: they'd blocked access to the starting corridor. Concrete barriers. Floodlights. Patrol cars angled like teeth. Officers standing at intersections with hands on hips and radios pressed to their shoulders, telling civilians to turn around before they got close enough to become part of the story.
The official narrative on TV was calm, rehearsed:
"Routine traffic control."
"Public safety measures."
"No immediate threat."
But nobody who'd lived through the last weeks believed the calm anymore.
At the Toretto house, Letty and the crew lingered in the living room like the TV was a window they couldn't stop staring through.
Leon stood with his arms crossed, jaw clenched. Jesse sat forward on the edge of the couch with one knee bouncing so hard it shook the coffee table. Vince paced in the doorway, restless, stopping only to glance at the screen and then resume circling like the house wasn't big enough to hold his nerves.
Letty didn't pace.
She stayed still, eyes sharp, watching the aerial feed with the same attention she used on a driver at the line. The camera panned across blocked streets, flashing lights, the heavy geometry of a perimeter.
"No way this stays clean," she muttered.
Mia sat curled on the far end of the couch like she'd folded in on herself. Her eyes looked tired—too tired—and the sadness in her face had been there since they couldn't find Jacob.
They'd searched his shop. Called. Drove past the alley more than once, hoping to see his Supra parked like a sign that he existed.
Nothing.
Mia kept staring at the screen as if she could find him in the grainy helicopter image by force of will.
Vince hovered near her, awkward in a way he rarely allowed himself to be.
"Hey," he said softly, trying to keep his voice steady, "he'll show. Jacob's… he's not the type to—"
Mia didn't look at him. "Don't," she whispered.
Vince swallowed. "I'm just saying—"
"I know what you're saying," Mia replied, voice flat with exhaustion. "And I can't… I can't hear it right now."
Vince's shoulders sagged a fraction. He sat on the arm of the couch like a guard who didn't know how to protect anything except with his body.
He didn't talk anymore.
He just stayed close, hoping proximity counted as comfort.
Dom wasn't at the house.
Dom was parked in the shadowed edge of the start zone, far enough from the police line to avoid immediate attention, close enough to feel the city's pulse through the pavement.
The Charger idled low, a deep rumble that sounded calmer than Dom felt.
Brian's Mitsubishi sat beside him, engine off, Brian's hands resting on the wheel like he was holding himself together by force. They didn't look like rivals right now.
They looked like two men waiting for a storm to pick a direction.
Dom glanced sideways. "You sure about the route?"
Brian nodded once. "As sure as anyone can be," he said.
Dom's jaw flexed. "Rolling start means they'll try to cut us off before we build speed."
Brian's mouth tightened. "Yeah."
Dom looked past Brian's windshield at the police barricades, the floodlights, the silhouettes of officers and the occasional black Corvette lurking farther back like a patient predator.
"They're ready," Dom said.
Brian exhaled slowly. "They've been ready. The question is what they do when it starts."
Dom didn't answer immediately, because Dom was scanning for something else.
He kept looking for Jacob.
Not the BMW. Not the myth.
Jacob.
The guy who'd been in his backyard, who'd worked on his car, who'd made Mia smile again.
The spot where Jacob should've been stayed empty.
Dom's gaze slid across the shadows and found Sunny's Integra tucked into a darker pocket, headlights off, posture too neat. Tran's presence was there too—harder to spot, but Dom felt it in the way the air changed, in the way certain cars held themselves like they were ready to bite.
Kings hiding in the dark like they were waiting to be called.
Dom's phone buzzed.
Mia.
He answered without taking his eyes off the street.
"Dom," Mia said, voice low, brittle. "They're blocking everything."
"I know," Dom replied.
A pause. Then, smaller: "Jacob's not here."
Dom's throat tightened. "I know."
Mia swallowed hard. "I can't— I can't do this without knowing if he's—"
Dom's voice stayed steady, gentler than usual. "Stay home. Stay safe."
Mia's laugh was thin. "Safe," she repeated like it was a foreign word.
Dom didn't have a better one. "I'll call you."
He ended the call and stared forward again.
The start zone began to shift.
A countdown had started somewhere—on burner screens, on whispered radios, on the system's invisible calendar—and you could feel it in the way engines turned over in the shadows, one after another, like heartbeats syncing up.
Drivers climbed into seats. Doors shut. Seatbelts clicked.
The city held its breath.
The rolling start began with a slow crawl.
Cars moved out of hiding, one by one, slipping toward the blocked corridor as if they were obeying a ritual. Dom eased the Charger forward. Brian rolled beside him. Other racers fell into line at distances that felt deliberate—spacing like discipline, not bravado.
Police units tensed. Floodlights swept. A megaphone barked something indistinct. The Corvettes repositioned, trying to anticipate.
And still—no Jacob.
Dom's eyes kept cutting left and right, scanning, searching, refusing to accept the absence.
Then the announcement hit the airwaves—the start declared, officially, like someone had dropped a hammer:
KING'S RACE — START.
The moment the start was announced, the night ripped open.
A matte-black blur appeared from nowhere behind the formation—low, wide, and wrong in a way the city's older cars weren't. No underglow. No livery. Just a black shape with a savage stance and an engine note that sounded like contained violence.
The Hoonicorn.
It blew past the lineup like they were parked, whipping up winds that blew anything loose to the side.
Not weaving politely—just committing, slipping through the available lane like it had been waiting for permission to stop pretending. The air behind it cracked with speed.
Dom's breath caught. "What the—"
Brian's head snapped, eyes wide.
On the helicopter feed, the camera jolted as the operator scrambled to reacquire the sudden missile that had just entered frame and instantly become the center of gravity.
At the Toretto house, Mia shot upright, hope and shock slamming through her at the same time.
"That's—" Jesse choked out.
Letty went still. "That's him."
Mia's voice broke, half relief, half fear. "Jacob—"
The Hoonicorn hit the start corridor and the police line reacted like a single organism.
Two black Corvettes surged immediately, engines rising, angling to bracket the intruder. Patrol units tried to close lanes, swinging into positions that would have pinned any normal racer.
But the Hoonicorn didn't slow.
It blasted into the corridor at the exact moment the police were trying to clamp down, forcing them into split-second decisions: commit and risk a pileup, or hesitate and lose the only chance to box him at the start.
They hesitated—just enough.
The Hoonicorn ripped through the gap and the Corvettes lunged after it, lights snapping on, sirens screaming, the whole task force pivoting as if the race itself had ceased to matter.
Because the real prize had just appeared.
Dom watched the Corvettes abandon clean containment patterns and go straight for the black car's tail, and he felt something cold in his gut.
They weren't here to let the race run.
They were here for a capture.
And Jacob—who had been missing for days—had just announced his existence in the loudest possible way, at the worst possible place: the starting line.
Brian's hands tightened on the wheel.
Dom's jaw clenched.
Sunny's Integra moved like it was finally getting what it wanted.
Tran's car surged like a blade released.
And the city watched, breath held, as the "race" fractured instantly into what it had always threatened to become:
Not a contest for kings.
A chase for a ghost—whether anyone wanted it or not.
...