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squeezed her tightly. “And you come back to work tomorrow. This your family.”
                  “Really? But what about Mr. Phan? He’s not too happy with me right now.”
                  “I handle Mr. Phan. You protect my son in the middle of the night. You are my family now. You come to work tomorrow.” She patted Michelle brusquely on the arm and switched the vacuum cleaner back on. Michelle laughed to herself when Mrs. Phan thrust the handle into her hand and swung her arm wildly around the dining room, telling Michelle to finish before she herself headed back into the kitchen to work on preparing lunch.
                 

CHAPTER SIX
     
                  Lars slammed the back of his head into the hood of the car he was working on when his boss yelled his name across the loud garage. He wiped the grease off his hands and looked up, catching Dante’s pissed off expression and crossed arms, which was no small feat considering his boss could barely reach around his huge frame to clap his hands together, let alone cross his arms. The older man jerked his head, letting Lars know to join him in the office.
                  Uh-oh , he thought. He’d known Dante all of four years and no one had ever been called into the office because there was a cake waiting for him. A couple of the other mechanics looked up and met Lars’ eye as he passed, but he could only shrug.
                  “Get in here and close the door,” Dante said gruffly around the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. “You wanna tell me what kinda sneaky hijinks you been up to in one of my vehicles?”
                  “I don’t know what you mean, boss,” Lars said plainly, lowering himself into an armchair whose upholstery had cracked three Presidents ago. “What kinda sneaky hijinks are we talking about, specifically?”
                  “Don’t get cute with me, the only thing I wanna hear outta you is a good explanation about why I shouldn’t send you walkin’ right now. I’ve fired better mechanics than you for less shit than this.” Dante reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a small, rectangular tan purse.
                  “I don’t think that one matches your shoes, boss,” Lars said, smiling.
                  “You think this is some kinda joke?” Dante snarled, slamming the metal desk drawer with a loud bang.
                  “Well, I did. But then you asked me that, and now I’m kinda thinking you’re seriously pissed.” Lars looked worried, trying to figure out what his place was in all the boss’ anger.
                  “I go to check the mileage on the tow truck this morning for the insurance report, and there’s a girlie purse in the floorboard. So unless it happens to go with your shoes, you took my truck out on some kinda date last night. I tell ya, I fired Mack after I found a condom in the truck cab. He swore it had just fallen outta his pocket since it was still in the wrapper and all, but too bad. I don’t take chances on this kinda stuff. I can’t afford the hit on my insurance. So you get two seconds to tell me somethin’ I wanna hear, or you’re out the door.”
                  Lars looked down at his hands for a minute, seeing the permanent grease stains for what they really were: a tattoo that told the rest of the world he was just an underling, one who could be replaced at that. “I gotta level with you, Dante. I took a girl home when I went out on the 35 th Street job last night.”
                  “What the hell were you thinkin’? We got a rule about passengers in the truck! It’s an insurance thing! You coulda gotten me shut down if you so much as scratched a door while you got some slut in the cab!” Dante’s face turned five different shades of red before settling on purple as its final