They Left Me to Die, So I Became Undefeated in the Cage novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Nobody Is Undefeated
Dalia drops the Bull in the cage under Warehouse 9, tears off her mask in front of her brother Tomas, and learns her mother has bought the building and will have her committed unless she signs.
The bell rang, and two hundred people packed into a basement started screaming for the big man to break me.
They did not know my name.
On the board above the cage door I was just NOBODY, thirty-one wins and no losses.
The mask on my face was the only part of me anyone in that basement had ever been allowed to see.
I fought here, under an old warehouse, because this was the place my family had left me to die.
My trainer stood at the cage door with a towel on his shoulder and his flat nose twitching.
"Seat A1 is empty again," he muttered.
That seat had been empty every fight night for two years.
He said it was paid for and nobody sat there, and he never said who paid.
I did not have time to care about a chair.
Two days ago the lawyer who handled my grandmother's trust had written that my family was asking where I lived.
Tonight a stranger had offered triple pay to put Nobody in the cage with the Bull.
I knew who had paid.
The Bull was twice my weight, with a neck as thick as my waist and hands that could close around my skull.
He came across the mat like he meant to end it in one grab.
I slid left and drove my fist into his ribs, right where the liver sits.
He grunted and swung.
I ducked under it and put my elbow into the side of his head.
He went down faster than I expected.
The whole cage rattled when his back hit the mat.
The crowd went silent for one beat, and then it roared.
The Bull did not try to get up.
His eyes slid past me and fixed on the front row, on seat A1, which was still empty.
I did not know why he would look there.
I knelt beside him and put my mouth next to his ear.
"Tell Renata Aldecoa her daughter says hello," I whispered.
His eyes jumped back to my face.
"She paid you to bring me out of here," I said. "She doesn't pay for anything she can't get back."
I stood up.
I reached behind my head, pulled the knot loose, and tore the mask off.
The lights hit my face for the first time in five years.
A woman near the cage screamed that I was a kid.
I did not care.
I looked past the lights to the back wall, where the crowd thinned out under the broken pipes.
A man in a dark suit was standing there with two others behind him.
I knew his shoulders before I knew his face.
He used to stand like that outside my bedroom door, waiting to see if I was still awake.
Tomas stepped forward into the light, and his mouth fell open.
"Dalia?"
He was twenty-two now.
He still had the dimple on his left cheek, and he still looked like the only kind person in my family.
"Hello, Tomas," I said.
I walked to the cage door and kicked it open.
My trainer, Beto, reached for my arm, and I shook him off.
Tomas came down the aisle as the crowd parted for him.
"Pastelito," he said, and his voice cracked.
That was what he had called me when he snuck pan dulce up to my room at midnight.
Hearing it in this basement turned my stomach.
"Don't," I said.
"I looked for you," he said. "I swear I looked for you."
"You looked for me five years later, with two men in suits and a stranger in a cage."
His eyes filled.
"Mama sent us to bring you home," he said. "She wants you home."
"Mama put me in cold storage," I said. "Eleven feet from where you're standing."
I pointed at the steel door at the end of the Cellar.
"I climbed out through the vent after two days, and I cut that padlock off the door with a hacksaw blade."
Tomas's face went gray.
One of the men behind him put a hand under his jacket.
I looked at that hand, and I smiled.
"Go ahead," I said. "Everyone here has a phone."
The hand stopped.
"She owns this place now, Dalia," Tomas said, very quietly. "Last week she bought the company that rents it to Beto. Nobody knew it was her."
My stomach dropped.
Beto's whole life was this basement.
Thirty fighters ate here and slept here, and half of them had nowhere else to go.
"So that's the threat," I said.
"It's not a threat," Tomas said. "It's what she's offering."
One of the men held out a phone with the screen already lit.
A familiar voice came out of the speaker, smooth and warm, the voice that had once told me to be good and wait in the dark.
"Hello, darling," Renata said. "You're even more dramatic than your father said."
Every muscle in my back went stiff.
"You turn eighteen in nineteen days," she said. "Your grandmother's shares come to you that morning, and I intend to have them first."
"Come home Friday and sign what Tomas puts in front of you."
"Or I'll have you committed as a danger to yourself, and Beto's little club can burn."
The crowd was so quiet that I could hear the bulb above the cage buzzing.
I took the phone out of the man's hand.
I looked Tomas straight in the eye while I spoke into it.
"I'll come to dinner Friday," I said. "I'm not signing anything."
Then I dropped the phone on the concrete and put my heel through it.
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