I fought down the urge to throw the ticket in his face.
"Today I drove two streets over on purpose."
"I parked in a public space, inside the white lines the city marked out."
"That's not your turf, and it's not illegal parking. So what gives you the right to ticket me?"
Lucius let out a sneer and handed the seafood he was carrying to the two lackeys behind him.
Slow and deliberate, he fished a piece of paper out of his pocket.
"On account of that space being mine too."
He unfolded the paper and held it right up in front of me.
"Take a good look. See what this is."
I frowned and looked.
It was a document stamped with a red seal.
Right there in plain print it said that every public parking space within ten miles outside the complex
was now contracted and managed exclusively by Haven Property Management.
And the name signed below as the responsible party was Lucius Armstrong.
"Get it now?"
He tucked the document away, smug.
"Every public space for ten miles around is contracted to me now."
"You parked on my turf and didn't pay rent. Fining you five hundred is me going easy on you."
I stared at him, and the whole thing struck me as beyond absurd.
"Public parking is a government resource. How could it possibly be contracted out to you personally?"
"That document of yours has to be forged!"
Lucius's face darkened, his eyes turning cold and vicious.
"Watch what you eat, but watch your mouth even more."
"Black ink on white paper, red official seal. You dare call that fake?"
He leaned in close and warned me.
"If I catch your car on my turf again tomorrow, five hundred dollars won't be enough to make it go away."
The anger inside me had piled all the way to the top.
Back home, I sat on the couch and pulled out the calculator.
Parking outside the complex, five hundred a day in tickets, came to fifteen thousand a month.
Renting one of his spaces was five thousand a month.
It was extortion, plain and simple, an operation to fleece every resident in the complex.
Even if I could afford the five thousand, I refused to be bullied into swallowing that kind of injustice.
Alison messaged me on WhatsApp.
"Caroline, did you get ticketed again today?"
"I just saw Lucius prowling around out there, tagging a bunch more cars."
I tapped out a reply on the screen.
"I did. He says every space for ten miles around is contracted to him."
Alison sent an angry sticker.
"There's no living like this. There's nowhere left to park a car."
I looked at the screen, disappointment and anger tangled together inside me.
I'd thought moving into a new complex would mean a stable, settled place to live.
I never imagined I'd run into a local strongman like this, someone who wouldn't listen to reason.
The next day, I went to the complex's property management to file a complaint.
"You sold every parking space in the complex to one person. Do you people really think that's reasonable?"
I stood at the desk in the management office, staring coldly at the property manager in front of me, Clark Perry.
Clark brushed me off. "Miss Swanson, you can't put it like that."
"The parking spaces are the developer's assets. If they want to sell them off as a package, that's not something property management can control."
I slapped my hand down on the desk.
"Can't control it?"
"Then why didn't you give any advance notice in the residents' group chat?"
"Why not even a grace period to buy in? Why transfer them all over at once?"
A mocking smile crept across Clark's face.
"Miss Swanson, Mr. Armstrong has deep pockets and quick hands. He grabbed them first. That's his skill."
"You were slow, you didn't grab any, and now you come here to make a scene. Is that reasonable?"
