They Left Me to Die, So I Became Undefeated in the Cage novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Welcome Home Dinner

At the River Oaks table Renata stages an intervention with a psychiatrist; Dalia refuses the drink and her father grips her wrist and says her name.

The house in River Oaks had the same white pillars and the same iron gate.

I rode up the drive on the back of Beto's old motorcycle, in my fight jacket, with my hair still wet from the gym shower.

A man in a vest opened the front door and stared at the scar through my eyebrow.

"Miss Dalia," he said, and he did not know where to put his eyes.

I walked past him into the hall where I had learned to ride a tricycle.

The tile was the same.

The smell was different, lilies instead of the cinnamon Abuela used to burn.

"There she is," Renata said from the dining room doorway.

She wore a cream suit and her silver-streaked hair in a tight twist.

She came toward me with both arms open.

"My baby," she said. "My poor, lost baby."

I stepped sideways, and her arms closed on air.

Her smile did not move.

"You've had a hard five years," she said, loud enough for the dining room to hear. "Come and sit. Everyone has been so worried."

Everyone.

I walked into the room and looked them over.

Tomas sat at the far end, pale and shining with sweat.

Two men in dark suits sat on the left, and I knew their faces from the company's annual report.

They were board members.

A thin woman in a gray cardigan sat on the right with a leather folder in front of her.

She smiled at me with all her teeth.

"Dalia, this is the doctor," Renata said. "She's an old friend of the family."

"A friend," I said.

"Just here to talk."

At the head of the table, in a wheelchair with a blanket over his knees, sat my father.

I stopped walking.

He was fifty-eight and he looked eighty.

One side of his face hung lower than the other, and his left hand lay curled and useless on the armrest.

He was looking straight at me.

His eyes were wet.

"Papa," I said.

My voice broke on it, and I hated that.

His good hand lifted a few inches off the blanket and fell back.

"Sit down, darling," Renata said. "Next to your father."

She had put my chair beside his on purpose.

I sat, and I felt the whole table watching me.

A maid set a glass of fresh orange juice by my plate.

"Fresh squeezed," Renata said. "Your favorite."

I had not liked orange juice since I was nine.

I looked at the glass, and I looked at the board members, and I looked at the doctor's folder.

She had her pen out already.

"So, Dalia," the doctor said, in the soft voice of someone who has been paid to be soft. "How have you been sleeping?"

"On a cot in a basement."

One of the board members coughed.

"And do you ever feel," she went on, "that people are out to hurt you?"

"Yes," I said. "You're all sitting at the same table."

Renata laughed lightly.

"She was always so dramatic," she told the board. "Ever since her grandmother died, she had these episodes."

"I had one episode," I said. "You locked me in a freezer."

Nobody breathed.

"She believes that," Renata said sadly. "She's believed it for years. It's what we are here to help with."

The doctor wrote something down.

One of the board members looked at his plate.

The other looked at me and said nothing at all.

I understood then.

This was not a dinner.

Every person at that table was a witness she had picked to hear me sound insane, and the juice was the last piece.

"Drink your juice, mija," Renata said, and her voice went warm. "It will help you relax."

I picked up the glass and held it where everyone could see.

The pulp had settled to the bottom in a pale gray line.

"There's something in it," I said.

"Don't be silly."

"Then you drink it."

Renata's smile finally slipped.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You said it's my favorite. Taste it, Mother."

For a beat, the only sound was the clock in the hall.

Then Renata laughed again, higher, and reached for the glass.

I set it down out of her reach.

I stood and pushed my chair back.

"I'm not drinking anything in this house," I said. "I'll eat at Beto's."

"Dalia, sit," Renata said, and for the first time her voice had an edge.

Something closed hard around my wrist.

I looked down.

My father's good hand had caught me.

His grip was weak, but it was shaking with effort, and it did not let go.

His mouth worked.

The whole table went still.

"Da," he said, thick and slow. "Da... lia."

It was the first word anyone had heard him say in months.

Renata's face went white.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend