Mia parked four streets from where she believed Carla Reyes lived, crooked between a delivery van and a battered sedan with two flat tires.
She sat behind the wheel for a moment with the engine off, listening to the metal tick as it cooled.
She took the rucksack from the passenger seat, checked the memory card was still snug inside her waistband, then placed the car key beneath the driver’s seat.
She wasn’t coming back for it.
Mia continued on foot, thumb moving between three photographs of Carla she had already studied twice. One was a fighter profile. Another showed her outside a gray apartment block, the corner of a bakery sign visible behind her. The third had been taken from a balcony, with the name of a nearby school visible across the street.
She knew she was in the right street. Now she just needed to match the photographs to the right building.
Her gaze shifted between the phone and the storefronts ahead, checking balconies, doorways, and anything else that matched the photographs.
She stopped. There it was: the bakery sign, with the gray apartment block beside it.
The building was six floors of gray concrete, with security grilles over the ground-floor windows and small balconies scattered across the facade. Laundry hung from two of them. A camera sat above the front entrance, angled down toward the door.
Mia stayed on the opposite side of the street and watched from beneath the awning of a closed café.
For several minutes, nothing moved at the front entrance. Then a metal door opened in the narrow passage running alongside the building.
Carla stepped out with a sports bag slung over one shoulder. Bruising still showed along her jaw beneath the makeup, yellow-green at the edges. She favored her left leg as she came down the short concrete steps.
Instead of heading straight for the street, she stopped near the mouth of the passage and looked both ways.
Her attention moved from a parked sedan across the road to the street corner, then to a delivery van idling near the curb before returning to the sedan.
Mia stepped out from beneath the awning.
Carla saw her before Mia had made it halfway across.
She spun and ran back toward the side passage. Mia went after her.
Carla shoved through the rear service door. Mia caught it before it swung shut and followed her inside.
The stairwell smelled of damp concrete and old cigarette smoke that seemed to live permanently in the walls. Bare steps climbed past a metal handrail that felt cold and sticky under Mia’s hand. A fluorescent tube flickered overhead.
Carla had reached the first landing and found nowhere else to go. A locked fire door blocked the way up. Mia blocked the way down.
“I’m not doing this,” Carla said. Her voice bounced off the concrete, then dropped. “I’m not doing this with you.”
“Yes, you are.”
Carla’s back was against the fire door, one hand gripping the bag strap like she might swing it. Up close, the bruising was worse, a mottled patch along her collarbone Mia hadn’t seen from the street. Her eyes were flat and sunken.
“You were supposed to stay down in the second.”
“Who told you?”
Carla looked away. “I can’t say.”
Mia took out her phone and brought up the photograph. Luis’s hand lay beneath the harsh police lights, the brass coin in his palm.
“They killed my boyfriend last night. After the fight. They left this.”
Carla’s face lost what little color it had.
“Oh, God.” She swallowed. “I knew there’d be consequences if the fight went wrong. I thought they’d come after someone close to me.”
Mia climbed one step toward her.
Carla’s free hand slipped beneath her jacket.
When it came out again, a small folding knife was already open in her fist. The blade trembled with her hand.
“Stay back.”
Mia climbed one step.
“Put it down.”
“I said stay back.”
Mia climbed another step.
Carla came off the wall first, the knife leading, a clumsy diagonal slash, more flinch than attack. Mia turned her hip into it, felt the blade catch along her lower ribs on the left side, a line of heat. She grabbed Carla’s wrist with both hands and drove it into the handrail once, twice, until the knife clattered down two steps and skittered against the riser.
Carla threw a knee that Mia blocked with her thigh, then an elbow that caught nothing but air because Mia had already closed the distance, turned her, and put her face-first against the concrete wall of the landing with one arm pinned behind her back. Carla’s cheek pressed flat against the wall, her breath coming hard. She stopped struggling, bracing for whatever came next.
Mia held her there for another second, then released her grip and stepped backwards.
She bent and picked up the knife from the step below.
Cheap black handle, short blade, a smear of her blood along one edge.
She folded it carefully, and clipped it inside her waistband.
“Who ordered the fix?”
Carla didn’t reply.
“Why did you go along with it?”
“My brother. Dario. He borrowed money he shouldn’t have. Small at first. Then it wasn’t small anymore, and the people he owed weren’t the kind you pay back late.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “They worked for Valdés.”
Mia watched her. “I’ve heard that name before. Who is he?”
Carla looked at her properly then. “Alejandro Valdés. He runs this town, or enough of it that the difference doesn’t matter.”
“And Cruz?”
“He works for him. The fights, the betting, collecting debts. Cruz handles that side of things.”
“So Cruz answers to Valdés.”
Carla nodded. “Everybody answers to Valdés eventually.”
Mia’s eyes stayed on her. “And the fight?”
Carla looked away.
“Cruz set it. Told my manager what round, what finish, what it needed to look like.” Her mouth tightened around the words. “They had Dario. I was told if I did what they wanted, he stayed safe.”
“And you believed them?”
“I didn’t have much choice.” She rubbed at her jaw. “They told me you’d already taken the money. Said you knew exactly what was happening and all I had to do was make it look real.”
Mia said nothing.
“When you started working your way out in the second, I thought you were changing your mind.” Carla swallowed. “I thought they’d take it out on Dario.”
“I never took any money.” Mia kept her voice flat. “Cruz made threats. Made it clear that I needed to lose in the second.”
Mia thumbed the photo of the coin back onto the screen. “You know what this means?”
“I’ve heard stories. Valdés leaves those as a calling card.”
“How do I find him?”
Carla hesitated.
“Cruz runs underground fights for Valdés. No commission, no real rules. There’s one coming up in a few days.” Carla rubbed her jaw. “Valdés will be there.”
“Where?”
“Old warehouse district out past the rail yards. But nobody gets in cold. You need someone from the old circuit to vouch for you.” She looked at Mia. “Renato could do it. If he’s still willing to put his name behind anyone.”
Mia looked at the sports bag by Carla’s feet.
“Where were you going?”
Carla glanced down at it. “To look for Dario.”
“You know where he is?”
“No.” Her mouth tightened. “I haven’t heard from him since before the fight.”
“We should keep in touch,” Mia replied. “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
Mia took out her phone and held it toward Carla. “Put your number in.”
Carla took it, entered her number, and handed the phone back.
Carla’s eyes dropped to the blood at Mia’s side. “You should get that looked at.”
“I will.”
Mia headed down the stairs, pushed through the service door, and stepped back onto the street.
Two blocks later, she found a coffee shop quiet enough that nobody looked twice at her.
The restroom was locked and tucked at the back. She bought a coffee, took the key, and shut herself inside.
She opened the rucksack and took out the small medical kit. It was stocked for split knuckles and swelling after fights, not a cut this long. Eleven, maybe twelve centimeters, running diagonally along the bottom of her ribs toward her side. It looked a lot worse than it felt.
Her hands weren’t steady. Adrenaline leaving. Or the concussion. Or both.
She cleaned around the wound as best she could, then pressed an antiseptic wipe against it and bit down at the sting.
Luis usually helped patch her up.
Never for anything like this. A split lip after sparring. A taped ankle. An ice pack against her jaw while he lectured her about seeing a doctor like she’d ever once listened.
You never follow anything they tell you, he’d said once, taping her wrist himself because she wouldn’t sit still for the trainer. One day that’s going to bite you.
She covered the cut with two gauze pads, wrapped the bandage roll around her ribs, then secured it with athletic tape.
It would hold for now.
She left the restroom and took a table in the rear corner of the coffee shop. Once seated, she pulled out her phone and started scrolling through her contacts.
She stopped on a number she hadn’t dialed in years and tapped it.
It rang three times before he picked up.
“Well,” he said before she’d spoken. “Didn’t think I’d hear from you again.”
“Renato.”
His tone changed. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the two men who came looking for you earlier, would it?”
Mia went quiet.
“Thought so.”
“What did they want?”
“You. Where you were, whether I’d seen you.” Renato paused. “They weren’t friendly about it.”
“I need your help.”
“I figured that much.”
“There’s an underground fight coming up in the Old warehouse district. I need to get on the card.”
The line went quiet for a moment.
“Mia, those fights are bad. Worse than you remember.” He paused. “You got out of that life.”
“I know.”
“Do you really want to walk back into it?”
“Yes.”
Another silence.
“Come to the gym after dark.”
“Renato…”
“After dark,” he repeated. “And make sure nobody follows you.”