They Left Me to Die, So I Became Undefeated in the Cage novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Guards, Two Hundred Phones

Renata's guards try to haul her out in front of the crowd and Dalia puts both on the mat; she agrees to Friday dinner and Beto notes seat A1 was paid for again.

The phone cracked under my heel, and Renata's voice died in the middle of a laugh.

For a second nobody in the Cellar moved.

Then the two men behind Tomas came at me together.

"Take her out the back," one of them said. "The car's running."

Tomas did not tell them to stop.

He stood there with his hands open and his eyes wet, and he watched them come.

I noticed that, and I put it away to think about later.

The first man reached for my arm.

I turned my wrist out of his grip, stepped inside, and drove my knee into his thigh.

His leg folded.

I hit him once under the ear, and he sat down on the concrete and stayed there.

The second man was bigger and slower.

He got both arms around my waist and lifted me off the floor.

Two hundred people screamed.

I threw my head back into his nose, and I felt it break.

His arms came loose.

I dropped, spun, and put my elbow into his jaw while he was still reaching for his face.

He went down across his friend.

Neither of them got up.

It had taken less time than a round.

The crowd stayed silent for one beat, and then every phone in the room was in the air.

"That's Nobody!" someone yelled. "That's her! She's a girl!"

"Film it," a woman shouted. "Film all of it!"

I turned to Tomas.

He had not moved.

His mouth was open, and he looked at my hands, my face and my scar.

"You've gotten so good," he whispered.

"I had to," I said.

He flinched.

He took a step toward me, and I let him come close enough to touch.

"Dalia, I'm sorry," he said. "I am so sorry. I didn't know it would be like this."

"Like what?"

"Like this." He waved a hand at the cage, the blood, the phones. "You're seventeen."

"I was twelve," I said. "That's what you should be sorry about."

His face crumpled.

He put his hand in his jacket pocket, and Beto stepped between us fast.

Tomas held up both palms.

"It's only this," he said.

He took out a small paper bag, soft and crushed at the corners.

It was a pan dulce, the pink kind with the sugar crust, still warm.

He had bought it on the way here.

He had known that he would find me.

"I know it doesn't fix anything," he said. "But you always liked these."

I looked at the bag for a long time.

I wanted to knock it out of his hand.

Instead I took it, because I was hungry, and I hated that I was.

"Friday at seven," Tomas said. "The house in River Oaks. I'll send a car."

"I'll take my own way there."

"Okay." He nodded too fast. "Okay. Whatever you want."

He bent, pulled the second man's arm over his shoulder, and helped him up.

The two guards limped out between the crowd, and nobody made room for them.

When the stairs had stopped echoing, the Cellar exploded.

People were shouting my real name, and some were shouting for a rematch.

A boy near the cage held up his phone and screamed, "It's already posted!"

My trainer climbed into the cage and took my shoulders in his thick hands.

"Mija," Beto said. "Look at me."

I looked at him.

He was sixty-one, and he had found me coming out of a ventilation hatch at twelve years old, with my hands cut open and my lips split from thirst.

He had put his coat around me and never once asked me to explain.

"I'm all right," I said.

"You're shaking."

"It's the adrenaline."

"It isn't."

He walked me to the back office, shut the door on the noise, and sat me down on the old couch.

Then he bent and picked something up off the floor by the door.

It was a thick white envelope, sealed, with the Aldecoa Freight logo in the corner.

"One of the suits dropped it when you put him down," Beto said. "It has your name."

I tore it open.

Inside was a court order with a judge's signature at the bottom.

It was a seventy-two hour psychiatric hold on Dalia Aldecoa, minor child, signed on the family's request, to take effect the moment I was found.

I read the date at the top twice.

It was dated Tuesday.

Renata had not decided to take me after she found me.

She had decided before she ever knew where I was, and the guards had been carrying the paper the whole time.

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