Mia stood at the mouth of an alley across from the building, the sign above the shutter dark except where a streetlamp bled orange across half of it. RENATO’S.
She scanned the street. Quiet. Empty. No one in sight.
Security mesh covered the windows, with old fight posters curling at the corners behind it. A few lights were still on inside.
She crossed the street and went around to the rear door, metal and dented at the bottom from years of being kicked open by men carrying gear bags in both hands. She knocked three times, paused, then knocked twice. The pattern Renato had taught her before she was old enough to legally sign a fight contract.
Locks turned. The door opened four inches, then all the way.
Renato stood there.
“Luis is dead.”
Whatever he’d been about to say next stopped there. He stepped back, ushering her in as he glanced past her shoulder into the alley, and locked the door behind them.
“Upstairs,” he said.
The stairs to Renato’s office rose from the far side of the gym.
Mia’s eyes moved over the familiar walls as they walked. A corkboard covered part of the wall, crowded with old black-and-white photographs from Renato’s fighting days. He was younger, leaner, standing under harsh lights with taped hands and a face already marked by the rounds he’d fought.
Above the lockers, an old wooden practice sword rested across two wall hooks, the grip darkened by years of hands. Renato had started her on one at 17, convinced the discipline carried over into fighting. Footwork. Distance. Angles. Balance. Reaction. Draw, cut, recover. Again and again until the movements became automatic, teaching her to stay poised while something moved fast toward her.
Two young fighters sat on the bench near the ring, wrapping their hands, while Renato’s assistant, a heavyset man named Tomas, coiled a jump rope by the counter. The place smelled of old canvas and liniment.
One of the young fighters looked up, did a double take, and elbowed the other. “That’s her,” he said, not quietly enough. “The Hammer.” They both stared.
She kept walking.
“Go home,” Renato told the two of them without slowing down. “Tomas, close up. Now.”
Tomas nodded.
At the top of the stairs, Renato led her past his office and into the treatment room. A cot stood against one wall, with a cabinet beside it and a sink nearby, stained brown around the drain. An old desk took up the opposite side, its surface scratched and worn from years of use. Renato had patched a hundred fighters in here, men and women who couldn’t afford a hospital or couldn’t risk the questions one would ask.
“Sit,” he said, nodding at the cot. “Shirt up.”
He peeled the tape off first, slowly, and when the gauze came away, he made a sound in his throat that wasn’t quite a word.
“You wrapped this in a hurry.” He turned the improvised dressing over in his hand, frowning at it beneath the light. “And you didn’t clean it properly.”
“It worked.”
Renato set the ruined dressing aside and leaned in, close enough that she could smell the coffee on his breath.
“What day is it?”
“Sunday.”
“Who’d you last fight?”
“Carla Reyes.” She frowned. “You’re doing the concussion thing.”
“I’m doing the concussion thing. How many fingers?” He held up three.
“Three.”
“You lose consciousness at any point?”
“No.”
“You throw up?”
“No.”
He took a penlight from the cabinet and tilted her chin, shining it into one eye, then the other.
“One of your pupils is dragging behind the other.” He clicked it off. “You need a hospital, Mia.”
“No.”
“You get hit again and we’re not talking about a headache anymore.”
“Then don’t let anyone hit me.” She looked down at the wound. “You going to patch me up?”
Renato irrigated the cut with something that stung enough to make her jaw lock.
He worked along the cut with two gloved fingers, checking its depth before reaching for the closure strips.
“You got lucky,” he said. “It’s ugly, but it’s shallow. Nothing underneath looks damaged.”
He laid adhesive strips along the sections that closed cleanly, then stitched the gaps one at a time.
She watched the ceiling and breathed through it.
“So, you going to tell me what this is all about?”
“It’s a long story,” Mia said.
Renato just looked at her, lips pursed, waiting.
“Okay.”
She paused.
“Cruz wanted me to throw the fight. Second round. Made threats.”
Renato looked up.
“I couldn’t do it, and Luis ended up dead.”
“Jesus.”
“I went to find Carla to get some answers. She pulled a knife on me.” Mia pointed at the cut.
“So what you do to her?”
“Nothing. I wanted to know why she agreed to fix the fight.”
“And?”
“Her brother’s in debt to Valdés’s people. They were going to hurt him if she didn’t go along with it.”
Renato said nothing for a moment. He finished the last suture, smoothed ointment along the line, and laid a nonstick pad over it before winding the elastic wrap around her ribs, snug but loose enough to breathe.
“Don’t twist,” he said. “Don’t reach overhead if you can help it. Keep it dry, keep it clean, and if you start running a fever, you tell me the same night, not two days later when you’re already delirious.”
He brought her water and two painkillers from a bottle with a torn label, then handed her half a sandwich from a paper bag on the desk. His dinner, probably.
“So what makes you think Valdés is involved?”
Mia set the sandwich down. “Whoever did it put a coin in his hand.”
“A coin.”
“Brass. Heavy for its size. Some kind of snake on one side.” She took out her phone, opened the photograph she had taken, and held it toward him. “Carla said Valdés leaves these.”
He held out his hand for the phone. Mia gave it to him.
Renato enlarged the image until the coin and Luis’s fingers filled the screen.
A crease formed between his brows as he studied the image. “The coin goes under the tongue.”
“So you know about this?”
“Yes.” He rubbed his jaw. “Somebody wanted you to think it was Valdés.”
“If that coin came from Valdés’s world, he may know who put it in Luis’s hand,” Mia said.
Renato looked up from the phone.
“Carla said Cruz runs underground fights for him. There’s a private event tonight, somewhere in the warehouse district. Valdés is supposed to be there. She gave me the promoter’s name.”
Renato went quiet for a moment.
“The fight you want me to get you into.”
He handed the phone back.
“Valdés doesn’t fix fights. He controls the people who own the debts. You borrow from the wrong man, that debt works its way up the chain until it reaches Valdés.” He held her gaze. “He’s a dangerous man, Mia.”
“I know.”
“And you’re hurt. Concussed. If you turn up there to fight, they won’t have to go looking for you.”
“I need to get inside.”
“You remember what it was like before,” he said. “No doctor. Promoters shorting your pay. Men paying to watch people get hurt.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I spent years getting you out of that.”
“I did everything right. Followed the rules. Built a real record. Signed contracts with my name on them. Paid taxes on money I earned getting punched in a cage. And Cruz still thought he could decide how my fight ended.”
She looked away.
“The cage got nicer. The people behind it didn’t.”
Renato didn’t answer right away.
“You want justice?” Renato asked.
“I want the truth.”
“And you think Valdés is going to give it to you?”
“Someone used his name. I want to know why.”
Renato looked at her for a long moment.
“There’s another way,” he said. “I can get you somewhere quiet for a few days. Somebody outside the city who owes me. You disappear until this cools.”
“Disappearing doesn’t bring Luis back.”
“Neither does dying in that basement.”
“I need answers first. I need to know who gave the order on Luis.” She looked at him. “I don’t even know if Valdés had anything to do with it. I need to find that out before I decide what comes next.”
Renato’s shoulders dropped slightly.
“All right. I’ll get you in. But if Valdés isn’t there, you leave. No wandering around looking for trouble.”
“Fine.”
“The event’s behind a nightclub. Under it, technically.”
He pulled over a stool and sat across from her.
“Fighters go in through a loading entrance on the side.”
Mia nodded. “What about inside?”
“No phones. Fighters stay in holding rooms until they’re called. Valdés watches from a mezzanine with his own men around him.”
“I just need to get through the door.”
Renato exhaled through his nose.
“I can put you down as Maria Santos. Replacement fighter, out of district. That gets your name on the list.”
“And when they see me?”
“That’s the harder part.”
Mia touched the locks at the back of her neck.
Renato studied her. “The hair we can cover. Your eyes are the giveaway.”
He went to a cabinet and came back with a dark bandana, a plain hooded jacket, a sports vest, a pair of sweatpants, and sunglasses.
“Bandana over the hair. Hood up until they tell you otherwise. Keep the glasses on.”
“They’ll let me?”
“Half the fighters who come through that door are hiding a black eye or a split cheek. Nobody’s going to care about sunglasses. Just keep your head down and don’t give security a reason to look twice.”
Mia changed into sweatpants and a sports vest in the corner of the treatment room. Renato turned half away out of old habit, though he’d stitched her up often enough that modesty between them had become mostly ceremonial.
She pulled on the hooded jacket and transferred her things from the old one. Then she tied the bandana over her hair, tucking the loose strands beneath it.
Renato turned back and looked her over.
“The hood.”
She pulled it up.
“And the glasses.”
Mia put them on.
Renato studied her for another moment. “Better.”
“Good enough?”
“It’ll get you past someone who isn’t looking too hard.”
Renato went into the office and opened a locked drawer. He came back with an old prepaid phone and switched it on.
He pressed and held one of the keys, then put the phone to his ear.
Mia heard it ring twice, followed by a dull clunk as someone picked up.
“Renato Silva.”
He listened for a moment, then lowered the phone from his ear and looked at the screen.
Mia’s face fell.
“Wait,” Renato said.
A few seconds later, his phone rang.
He answered.
“Yeah. I’ve got someone. Maria Santos. Out of district.”
He let the voice on the other end finish.
“She can make it.”
Another pause.
“Good. Send me the details.”
He hung up and looked at Mia.
“You’re on the card.”