Watching the BMW drive away, Don looked at Alex and said, "You're too impulsive. You'll get yourself into trouble."
"He's all talk. Don't worry, I'm not afraid of him," Alex replied with a smile. He had no regrets at all. Instead, he felt that he'd had no choice but to teach Julian a lesson.
Don looked curiously at Alex, who seemed very relaxed. He thought for a moment.
Then he said, "You and I are going to ask Chief Lewis for a week's leave. We'll go and hide somewhere for a week and hopefully they'll have given up by the time we come back. If they return with more people and we're still here, they'll beat us to a pulp."
His life had always been a struggle. Experience told him that Alex hitting the rich young guy was only the start, and that there was a lot more trouble to come.
"No, Don. I told you, I'm not afraid of them." Alex knew Don was trying to be kind, but he wanted to stay there to protect Debbie.
"In that case, I'll ask for leave just for myself. But be careful over the next few days and keep in touch." Don knew that he couldn't persuade Alex to hide, and he was very afraid for him. He went to the administration building and Tony agreed to his request for leave.
Alex continued to stand guard. When he saw Debbie leaving for her classes, he went and lay in bed to try and get some sleep. She didn't know anything about what had happened earlier.
In the afternoon, when Debbie returned to the dormitory, she asked him, "Where's Don?"
"Well, he asked for leave to go home to see his sister," Alex replied. He had decided that it was better not to let her know about the fight. He quickly changed the topic. When he saw that there was no one around, he said in a low voice, "Wife, where are you going now?"
The word "wife" immediately filled Debbie's heart with joy.
She smiled, looked deeply into his eyes, and said, "I'm going to the library to review what I learned today. I'll bring you a snack when I come back." Then she turned and quickly walked away.
Although the weather was very cold, Alex's heart felt warm.
**
Meanwhile, Julian had been driving through the streets of Baltimore, stewing over what had happened. His was in a foul mood and was so distracted that he almost hit another car.
"Drive more carefully," Chris reminded him nervously.
"Chris, why did you stop me with the two security guards at the university? Why didn't you let me beat up those two losers? I haven't been that humiliated since I was a kid."
Julian's anger hadn't subsided an iota. He rarely spoke to Chris so angrily, but he was still fuming and he all he wanted to do was beat people and curse. If it hadn't been Chris sitting in the car with him, he would have thumped his passenger in the face to vent his anger.
Chris looked at Julian and asked, "But do you think you could've beaten him?"
"I—" Julian hesitated. He remembered that a single slap in the face from Alex knocked him to the ground. Deep down, he knew that he was no competition for Alex but there was no way he was going to admit it.
He quipped, "I'm sure I could beat him, and even if I couldn't beat him in a fight, he should have shown us more respect. I'm from one of the richest families in Baltimore, and your father is a hugely important political official. They're just security guards, how dare they treat us like that?"
"I've known you all your life and I respect you, but how can you be so blind about people? Didn't you see that that guy didn't give a damn who we were? You could've told him who you were, and it wouldn't have changed anything." Chris said.
"Buddy, you're talking nonsense, aren't you?" Julian looked at Chris with a puzzled expression.
Chris didn't answer. He just shook his head slightly. After pause, he said "I saw how calm that security guard was. Status and identity meant nothing to him at all."
"You obviously thought a lot of that guy. I thought he was just a country bumpkin who's moved to the city. Thinks he's a big man, but really doesn't understand anything," Julian said. When he thought about Alex, he wanted to kill him. Looking at Chris, he pleaded, "Chris, you have to come with me and help me teach that security guard a lesson."
Since he was a child, whenever Julian was bullied, he turned to Chris for help. Although Julian's family was well known in Baltimore, it was nowhere near as powerful as Chris's.
The Steadmans were one of the top families in Baltimore. They had a fearsome reputation and controlled a lot of the business and underground networks of Baltimore and the whole of Maryland. It was the only family that could compete with the Clifton family in terms of influence.
"I know," Chris said. Although his face remained expressionless, he was also very angry about the situation. He opened the contacts on his cell phone and called number that was simply labeled, "Information."
"Mr. Steadman, how can I help you?" A man answered respectfully.
"I want information about two security guards who were working at the residential house at Johns Hopkins today," Chris said quietly. Then he ended the call.
He was still a little curious about Alex's identity. He asked himself, How could a security guard behave so calmly in such a risky situation?
Ten minutes later, the man called back.
He said, "Mr. Steadman, I found out what you asked. The security guards are called Don Landers and Alex Ambrose."
Hearing the name "Alex Ambrose," Chris was stunned. A few days ago, the Steadman family had received a message from the Ambrose family telling them that the eldest son, Alex, had been expelled from the family. Was the troublesome security guard the same Alex Ambrose?
He quickly dismissed the idea. He knew that the Ambrose family's wealth outranked any other family in the world. There was no way that security guard could have come from such a privileged background.
Chris asked himself, If I was suddenly deprived of all my money and status, would I be humble enough work as a security guard? He knew he definitely was not, and he was certain that it was even less likely the case for the oldest son of the Ambrose family.
But Chris didn't know anything about how the Ambrose family trained their children. If he had known that Alex endured seven years of poverty training, worked as a waiter and a delivery man in the canteen and restaurant, and sold pancakes in D. C., he might have thought differently.
"Don is a thirty-two-year-old man from Maryland. He lives with his sister, Daisy. They rent a cheap basement flat on Fenshaw Road, but Don spends more of his time in the staff dormitory of Johns Hopkins University."
"Alex is a twenty-two-year-old from New York. He has just joined the security team at Johns Hopkins, and he has no relatives or friends in Baltimore. He once studied at Richmond University and before that, at Preston. He had a bad reputation at both schools and most of his teachers thought he was a troublemaker and a bit of a time-waster."
As for Alex's donation of one and a half million euros at Richmond University, the Ambrose family had managed to suppress it, so that information had not been divulged.
"I see," Chris said and ended the call.
When he told his cousin what he had learned, Julian said, "Well, sure enough, they're a pair of losers." With a voice full of hate, he looked at Chris and said, "Send a couple of people to teach them a lesson."
Chris thought about it, and then took out his phone and dialed another number.
A voice answered the call rudely, "Mr. Steadman, what's up?"
"Saul, I need you to help me teach two guys a lesson," Chris said quietly.
Hearing the name, Saul, Julian was pleased. He had spent a lot of time with Chris and knew that Saul worked as a bodyguard and enforcer for the Steadman family.
He had been a bare-knuckle boxing champion as part of the underground scene of Baltimore, and it was well known that the level of competition in Baltimore was one of the highest across the whole of the United States. He was powerful, skillful, and fearless.
The underground fighting scene in Baltimore attracted international gamblers, and the bets tended to be higher and the fights fiercer than in the rest of America. Only the underground fights in Los Angeles could compare.
That meant that the title of underground boxing champion in Baltimore was hard earned and very well respected.
More than twenty people had seen the end of their careers in the ring at the hands of Saul. Each of them had been famous fighters themselves.
Julian was satisfied. His cousin had sent an incredibly ferocious man to his pride. The security guards would be beaten to a pulp.
When he imagined the two of them being beaten, spitting blood, and in agony, Julian felt a warmth flowing through his body and felt very satisfied.
"Is it necessary for me to take care of this personally?" Saul had asked in a casual tone. To him, beating someone to near death was just part of his job.
"Yes, I want you do to it yourself," Chris had confirmed. There was no hesitation in his voice. He had given that kind of order many times. "Let me know when it's done. Travis will give you all the information you need about them."
Travis was the person who had provided Chris with the information about Don and Alex.
Satisfied, Chris ended the call.
"Chris, that's brilliant. They won't stand a chance against Saul. He'll soon get them eating their words," Julian said happily.
"Why are you so excited? They're two nobodies." Chris looked at Julian with slight disdain.
"Yes, I know, compared to you they're nobodies. You're so powerful I'm sure that in the future, you'll control the Baltimore underground world. I'm so proud that you're my cousin." Julian complimented Chris. He had the mental image of the two security guards being pulverized clear in his mind.
"Cousin, let's go to a restaurant for dinner, and then back to mine. I'll contact two girls to wait for us there. Maybe by the time we're done, Saul will have called to tell us that he's finished with those losers. What a perfect end to the day," Julian said enthusiastically, and then the two cousins drove to the restaurant together.
As they made plans for the evening, Saul drove through the streets of Baltimore toward the university.
He was holding the steering wheel with one hand and holding two photos in the other hand. They were the photos submitted by Alex and Don when they were first employed.
Saul threw the photos onto the passenger seat and pushed his foot down on the accelerator.
In his opinion, the job was going to be a piece of cake.
He hummed to himself, thinking that it would take a couple of hours to sort out these two losers, and then he'd go to the casino to have a drink and gamble for a while.
His cell phone rang. When he saw that the caller was Travis, he answered the call.
"Saul, the security guard named Don has already left and gone home. His home is in a basement on Fenshaw Road," Travis said. Saul listened to the information, and then ended the call.
Originally, he had planned to deal with both men at once at the university. He had thought they would both still be there.
After thinking for a moment, Saul turned the car round and headed toward Fairfield. He decided to deal with Don first. That would be a simpler job because it wasn't on the university campus.