I had already took out the two grand that I had placed for the race out of the rest of money. When Dom got in the car I handed him the money. “What’s this for? You won the race fair and square.”

“I know that.” I said and then took a minute to pull my courage together before surprising Dom with the words that came out next. “I want to hire you as my bodyguard.”

“What?” he asked slamming on the breaks in the middle of the road.

“I want to hire you as my bodyguard.” I repeated

“I heard you the first time, I guess the question should have been why.” He said and started driving again.

“Because my ex-boyfriend is in town, and he’s looking for me.”

“Is that why Vince drove off in your car?”

“Yeah. He’s also the reason I have the panic attacks. I’m sorry I didn’t stick around to talk to you about it earlier. I just needed to get away for a while, and think.”

“So what did you decided?” he asked glancing at me before placing his hand on mine.

“Figured I’d see how I like living a quarter mile at a time.” I said smiling up at him.

“So you ready to talk about it?” Dom asked squeezing my hand.

“I guess so I just don’t know where to start.”

“How about the beginning?”

“I guess it starts with when my parents were murdered. I was six at the time and I heard my dad yell. I was upstairs at the time. I went to peak out the door when my mom came running in. She pulled me out of my room and into hers. I heard a gunshot downstairs and my mom let out this funny sound. When I looked up at her she was crying. She pulled the grate off of the side of the fireplace, and told me to crawl in. She said that no matter what happened I couldn’t make a sound. They tortured and rapped her for five hours trying to get her to tell them where I was before they shot her. As she lay bleeding out on the bed I heard them tearing the house apart. I sat in that small space for two days before the police showed up. One of the neighbors called the cops when they hadn’t seen me playing outside like I normally would. It took them another six hours and the crime scene investigation team before they found me. They questioned me for days before they decided I wouldn’t be able to help them.

I couldn’t even find my voice to tell them what had happened. After that I was put in foster care where I kept getting bounced around because no one knew how to handle a six year old girl who wouldn’t talk. One of the social workers ended up taking me into her house when I turned seven, because no one would keep me. She worked with me until I started talking again, but I still wouldn’t tell them what I saw, I couldn’t.

I got bounced around a bit more until one family took a liking to me, but that didn’t last long either. I was ten years old when this family adopted me, and two years later I was pulled from the house when the social worker found out that the family liked to play with little girls. One of the other girls in the house had told her worker, when they came to me to ask if they were doing the same things to me I told them the truth. They pulled me from the house and put those people into the prison system. I was put back up for adoption and that’s when Richard and Susan found me, but by then I was so fucked up in the head that I started to lash out. I ran away from that home and went to the grocery store, when I saw the Camaro sitting there I couldn’t help myself, the idiot had left his keys in the car. He was practically asking for his car to be stolen.

Things pretty much continued that way until I turned seventeen. I moved out of my foster parents’ house and moved in with Jared. Worst move I ever made. It was fine for the first few months. I had told him about what my previous family had done and he said he’d wait until I was ready, but he got tired of waiting. We had been living together for four months and he decided that if I could live with him for that long then I had to be ready, even when I told him I wasn’t he still made me. I tried to stop him, but he hit me and then tied me to his bed. After that he tied me to his bed and did what he wanted with my body. It eventually got to the point where he would beat me until I was unconscious and I would wake up with him on top of me.

When I turned twenty he said he had someplace he wanted to take me. I went to get in the passenger seat of the car but he stopped me and told me I would be driving. I had been to a couple of other races and was pretty good, but when we got to this one something felt off. He paid for my entrance fee and when he got back in the car I knew what was wrong. If I didn’t win this race I went to whoever the winner was for him and his friends to use.

When I came in first this seemed to piss him off and he took me over into one of the alleys, and beat me until I could barely stand. When I got back into the car I heard someone yell cops and then they were everywhere. They had pictures of everyone who had been racing, and who was with them because the person in charge of taking out the cameras missed one. I was the only one to have a passenger in the car so I was the only one to do hard time. The extra six years got tacked on after I beat a guard half to death for trying to rape me. One of my friends on the inside had been teaching me to fight.

When I got released no one was there, one of the cops I got to know well when I was on the inside gave me a truck. I drove to a bar on the edge of town where I threw a dart at a map. Took a small detour to get a new car after I realized that the truck had a tracker in it. Then I went straight to where the dart had landed, here.” When I was finished everything was quiet for a while. I looked around and noticed we were at the house. When I looked at Dom I could see that he was trying to keep his anger under control. I watched as Dom opened his door and got out of the car before coming over to open my door. He pulled me out of my seat and into a hug. We stood like that just enjoying being in each other’s arms for a few more minutes, until he pulled back.

“Come on. The team will start to worry.” He said intertwining his fingers with mine, and leading me into the house. “And you don’t need to hire me, all you had to do was ask.”