The whole situation was actually pretty straightforward. Brian and the others were having the time of their lives racing when the cops suddenly showed up, cracking down on an illegal underground racing ring run by a racer crew. On their way back, Brian and Dom Toretto accidentally drifted straight into Triad Crew territory. Those guys and Toretto's crew already had bad blood, so the moment Dom rolled in, they took it as a straight-up provocation.
Brian was practically yelling into the phone, cursing non-stop before switching straight into full-on complaint mode. "Dove! They turned my car into Swiss cheese! Those idiots! I dumped hundreds of thousands into that build! I'm done, man—my car's gone!"
He sounded like a kid calling home after getting bullied at school, voice cracking, half-sniffling, half-raging. That little green car wasn't some cheap FBI-issued junk anymore. Over the years, Brian had poured serious time, money, and soul into it, and Luca had even backed him financially during upgrades. At this point, you could practically call it a family heirloom. Now it was gone—reduced to scrap and smoke.
Of course, in Luca's eyes, it wasn't exactly a tragedy. Those Triad Crew? Just a bunch of low-tier punks with money to burn and a weird obsession with spraying bullets like they were typing on machine guns.
"Everyone okay?" Luca asked calmly.
"We're fine. Oh—and uh… Dove… Dom took your GTR out for a spin tonight."
"..."
"Didn't explode or anything. Just… uh… full of bullet holes now."
"..."
Luca took a slow breath. "Where are you?"
The Triads in Los Angeles weren't exactly top-tier. The real heavyweights were in Hong Kong, and in the U.S., the strongest presence was actually in San Francisco, where they practically ran entire underground industries. L.A.'s Triads? Decent, but nothing special—mostly clustered around Chinatown, roughly on par with Koreatown's Korean gangs.
Dom's garage wasn't far from Chinatown, and clashes with those bikers weren't new—territory disputes, racing pride, the usual "who's king of the street" nonsense. Luca vaguely remembered how, in the original storyline, the Triad leader killed one of Dom's guys and got himself run down during a chase.
Of all people to provoke… they picked the wrong crew. And now they'd managed to piss off Luca too.
When Luca arrived near the China Town, the scene was… not pretty. A Mitsubishi sat there smoking, basically unrecognizable, and his black GTR looked like it had lost a gunfight. Police and firefighters had already locked the area down.
"Dove, those guys went way too far! We were just passing through—they pulled guns and forced us to stop!" Brian stood under the Confucius statue, ranting like a broken record.
Luca glanced up at the statue, then said calmly, "You know that latin phrase? 'Mane auditus, nocte mortuus'"
Brian and Dom both stared blankly. Luca had said it in Latin first, and even with translation, it wasn't exactly clicking.
Luca shrugged. "It means… if they hear I'm coming in the morning, they're dead by night."
Brian: "..."
Dom: "..."
Both of them instinctively looked up at Luca, suddenly wondering if latin phrase back in the day had a very different meaning—like… violently persuasive virtue.
Luca turned to Dom. "You know where they are, right? I need their address."
Dom felt a chill crawl up his spine. "Hey—who exactly are you? You're not seriously planning to just walk up to their doorstep, are you?"
He felt guilty—his mess had wrecked Luca's car—but dragging Luca into a full-blown war with the Triads? That wasn't something he wanted.
"Luca, those guys aren't just random racers—they're Triads," Dom said quickly. "They're powerful, and they hold grudges. This isn't smart."
Luca pointed at the GTR. "You covering the cost? I've got over a million in that car. Now it's scrap metal. What am I supposed to race next time—my patience? If I don't settle this, every random nobody's gonna think they can take a shot at me."
Brian jumped in, trying to smooth things over. "Dom, just give us the address. Dove and I will handle it."
Dom's friends all called him "Dom," but right now he was seriously questioning what kind of monster Brian had dragged into his life. Luca could casually drop a million on a car and talk about retaliation like it was scheduling dinner.
Still, Dom was a responsible guy. This mess started with his feud, so he stepped forward. "I'm coming with you."
Luca smiled faintly. "Just give me the address."
The Russians and the Draña family weren't exactly known for taking losses quietly. First the tanker trucks, now this—someone was begging to get made an example of.
"This GTR's worth a million. Any objections?"
Right then, a familiar voice cut in from behind. "Greco?"
Luca turned and saw Vincent. Of course he was here. The man practically lived at crime scenes.
"Detective Vincent, what a coincidence."
Vincent stepped closer, clearly unconvinced. "Funny. You keep showing up at every scene. Don't tell me this is another 'union-related incident.'"
The word "union" made Dom stiffen slightly. He'd hit more than a few trucks lately—this was starting to feel a little too relevant.
Luca pointed at the GTR. "That's my car."
Vincent: "..."
He turned to one of the officers and got a quick rundown. "We tried to intercept the biker gang, but they were too fast. These two cars were involved—the GTR and that Mitsubishi Eclipse. Both totaled when we found them."
Vincent's eyes narrowed slightly. Something wasn't adding up.
He went back to Luca. "Do you know who did this?"
Luca shook his head casually. "No idea. Group of racer, tinted window, modified car. My guy couldn't identify them."
A blatant lie.
Dom, standing off to the side, felt the situation slipping out of his hands. Luca was clearly going to handle this his own way. And there was no stopping him.
After a bit more probing, Vincent got nothing useful. Whether Luca was playing dumb or genuinely didn't know, he couldn't tell. Watching them leave, Vincent muttered under his breath, "Could be business rivals… but this guy knows more than he's saying."
He had a gut feeling—Luca was the key to cracking this entire string of truck robberies.
On the way back, Dom finally spoke up. "You really going after the Triads now? They've got numbers, guns… I can call more people. We should plan this out."
Luca waved it off. "How many could they have?"
He leaned back, a cold smile playing on his lips as he twisted a classic line into something lethal. "In Latin, we say Ad triginta, resistunt; ad quadraginta, non dubitant. Ergo, triginta prosternam, quadraginta usque ad dementiam caedam"
He caught their confused looks and chuckled. "It means at thirty, they might stand firm. At forty, they're supposed to have no doubts. But in my book? Thirty isn't enough to stop me, and by the time I'm done with forty, they'll be questioning if they ever existed at all."
Brian and Dom both went quiet again.
This… was not how they expected Confucius to sound.
Brian scratched his head. "Dove… have you actually studied the Latin or something? How do you know all this?"
Luca smiled. "Think of it as a rulebook. Guidelines for people walking their path."
A gangster rulebook?
"Rules are rules," Luca said evenly. "Doesn't matter if you're legit or not. Ideas control people. The Mos Maiorum built the greatest Empire on Earth before a single stone was laid."
Then he turned back to Dom. "Name and address."
After a brief hesitation, Dom gave it up. "Johnny Chen. Leader of the Triad crew. His father's a heavyweight in Chinatown."
Luca immediately made a couple of calls—to the Russians and the L.A. family—calmly informing them it was time to settle accounts with the Triads.
After hanging up, he said casually, "Give it a day. By tomorrow, they'll be at your garage—on their knees, asking for forgiveness."
Dom stared at him, stunned. "Man… who exactly did you just call?"
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TN: Bruh, The Chinese nationalism in this chapter is laid on way too thick. Confucius this, China that—it's honestly getting tiring to translate.
TN: We hit the milestones last week, so here are 2 bonus chapters for today! Also, the original story ends at Chapter 242, plus one final announcement from the author.
Thanks to Wilnet Duverne for becoming my P Knight, my cats eat a lovely fish tonight
If you guys like this story, Support me on P Site/OrbisTranslate, for three bucks you got 15 advance chapters