King of the Ring

3 | Sharpie Tattoos

Chapter 3

It was almost 11am and I had spent the morning greeting clients, signing people up for memberships and classes and basically just sitting behind the front counter. I had forgotten how busy the gym could get. With only family members working there the entire morning had consisted of my mother and father bustling around and me trying to read my magazine inconspicuously.

Selena sometimes worked the front desk, but was currently at College studying psychology so couldn't always be there. Lorenzo came in when school finished but other than that there weren't many spare hands around to help out.

Years ago when I had suggested to my father about hiring on some other people he had looked so offended. He had gone on to rant about how the family business was sacred to the Martinez name and how we didn't need any help.

I had never suggested it again.

In truth, my father was just tight with money and didn't want to pay someone else when he had four perfectly good slaves who could do it for free.

Except now I was getting a wage, as that had been my only criteria for working at the gym.

There had been a short break in between clients and I used the opportunity to check my phone. I wasn't surprised at the amount of messages and missed calls I had. As soon as word had gotten around that I was back in town my phone had been going off almost non-stop with different family members calling and messaging me.

I sighed and pressed on the first missed call that was from one of my aunties.

The phone had barely rung once before she answered with a loud scream of "Daniela!"

"Hello aunty," I greeted her, holding the phone slightly back from my ear at how loud she spoke. I had too many aunties and too many uncles. I wasn't even sure if all of them were related to me by blood, but if you brought that up in front of them you would be getting slapped with a wooden spoon before you even had a chance to say, 'just kidding!'.

I listened as my aunty spoke to me in rapid fire Spanish. I tried not to fall asleep as she told me an in depth story about how I had missed my cousins primary school graduation.

"Sorry Aunty but I need to go, one of the boxing rings is on fire," I apologised as soon as she begun telling me about her cats new dietary needs. I quickly hung up and breathed a sigh of relief. Another boring relative catch-up expertly avoided.

23 phone calls later I was staring at the clock on the wall and planning my death out of sheer boredom. Whilst contemplating whether it would be a faster death with a pencil stab to the neck or a ruler the door swung open and Satan entered the gym.

"Sup brother from another mother," I saluted Rey as he walked up to the front desk carrying a cardboard box.

"Sadly we have the same mother," he replied with an easy grin.

"Damn, well any chance you wanna take over here for a bit? Considering we're related and all," I motioned towards the rivetingly exciting front desk.

"nice try Dani Fanny but some of us have actual jobs to get back to," Rey teased and I pretended to gasp in hurt.

"Well it's a bit hard to go back to your job when you got fired. Which I still argue was a totally unjust call!" I argued and he rolled his eyes at me. I told them that it wasn't me, but did anyone believe that? No. And I had ended up paying the price.

"I spoke to Luis," Rey began and I gazed at him, interested now, "first thing he said was to scrap it."

I sighed. I knew that my car was a piece of crap. It was about five years over being scrapped but it was my only option.