Chapter 29: The Parking Lot

Six months after he moved in with them, Lucia and Julián were fully involved in a new venture. He had long since left the charity he was working for, but he leveraged his connections and references from that career to launch a new martial arts studio. He had a mixture of students from wealthy, middle-class, and low-income backgrounds in the area, and he charged fees on a sliding scale.

Almost immediately, he had more business than he could handle. The adjoining storefront was unoccupied, so he expanded into that space and hired one, then two associate instructors. Lucia became skilled at various back-office parts of the business and was an enormous help to him.

A core principle for his business (besides making money, of course) was to provide a service to the community that carried over from his original work with the non-profit. For a less than break-even price, any girl in the community could enroll in their self-defense program, two nights per week for four weeks. Along with the public safety benefit, the referrals coming out of that program were highly effective advertising for the business, so it ended up being a net profit instead of a financial burden.

And when Lucia watched him at their graduation ceremonies full of confident, powerful kids and their thrilled, grateful parents, she would take him home, show him this month’s financial statements (never better!), and cheerfully fuck his brains out.

For their part, Mia and Gabe were also doing well. Gabe was unable to resist his employer’s pressure any longer and finally accepted a much more responsible (and higher-paying) job in management. Without being out on job sites every day, his physique started to slacken. Mia looked at him and (kindly) pointed out the beginnings of a pot belly just above her favorite toy.

They approached Julián about it, and he promptly put Gabe into his training program. Soon he was getting back to his original muscular form and picking up some fighting skills as well.

Mia was still a manager, and she had been given generous salary increases and was on a clear upward trajectory. There was no doubt that when her superior retired in a matter of months, she would be further promoted into his position, and with this would come another significant bump in her salary.

All-in-all, happiness and contentment were the hallmarks of these four people’s home lives. Julián was still looking at the three other (flushed) faces around him in the spa, thinking he had stumbled into a perfect life.

“Can it go on like this?” he wondered.

It’s turns out, it couldn’t.

Belinda and Roberta, two of Julián’s older students, were attending their regular Tuesday after-school session, but after changing into their uniforms, they went over to the office and knocked on the door jamb.

“Mrs. Perez?”

“Belinda, Roberta, what can I do for you?”

“We hate to bother you, but there’s some creepy guys outside in the parking lot that are making us uncomfortable.”

“Really? I have an exterior camera. Let me pull up the feed, and maybe you can point them out to me.”

Finding the two men outside was not difficult, even with the distorted image from the camera they had installed over their front door. Two guys were in a parked German luxury car (a Mercedes?, a BMW?). They clearly had surveillance of their front door as their assignment. Lucia got on the intercom.

“Julián, to the office, please, yellow code.” The code indicated an urgent (but not emergency) situation. He left a senior student in charge and arrived quickly. She showed him the video, and the girls explained what had happened from their perspective.

He didn’t like the looks of this. Not at all. Julián decided he needed to take action. Fortunately, his two associate instructors were on the premises. Both were experts in diverse martial arts: Stan was extremely well trained in Wushu (Chinese, known in the west as “Kung Fu”), and Chung Il-kwon was a master of (Korean) Taekwondo. Rounding out the posse, Gabe happened to be on the premises for some exercise, so he joined Julián and Lucia as they all walked out the front door.

Despite the fancy car and their high-quality suits, Julián judged the two men in the car as hired goons. They were likely the kind of expensive security types he had seen around his wife’s family back before he left their compound and ended up with Lucia.

He asked the group to stand back while he spoke to Goon 1 in the driver’s seat.

“Hey, guys, I’m running that business back there, training young people. Whatever reason you might have for being here, it’s not enough to justify making those kids uncomfortable. So, I’m going to ask you to leave now. Please.”

In a bored voice, he said, “Fuck off, ass-wipe.”

“Oh, now, that was impolite. I guess I’m going to have to insist.”

The goons ignored him. Jul walked to the front of their BMW and took out his keys. He bent down, unscrewed the valve cap, and began releasing air from the tire by depressing the center pin of the valve stem. Meanwhile, the other men from his business casually strolled up closer.

It took a minute for the goons to realize what was happening, and then the two front doors of their BMW flew open, and they rounded on him.

“Get away from the car, shithead.”

“What for?” He was buying time; the tire was fairly soft but still drivable. His next step was to name-drop a young relative of his ex-wife. He reasoned that only her family would have the money and the pettiness to harass him. God knows why.