Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
I didn’t leave with him in that limo. My things were packed and some other nameless, faceless person came to collect me. He gave me something to drink, which made me tired, and the next thing I knew, I lived somewhere else.
That’s all I remember about the time before.
It doesn’t bother me, though. Because my life really began the day I met Cort van Breda.
I already knew how to fight. I don’t have any memories of struggling in that area and you’d think I would if it had been an issue.
Cort didn’t say anything to me that day. I think he was in the middle of one of his silent times. But I remember Maart yelling at me for what seemed like an eternity. I have no idea what he was going on about because I didn’t even speak English back then. Rules, maybe. Effort. Dying. Blah, blah, blah—shit like that, I’m sure.
But when it came time to sleep on that first night, I was put in a hut with the older boys. Sergey was there. He’s the only one I still remember, because he’s the only one still alive.
It took me a while to figure out why Maart put me in with the older boys that night. There was no girls’ hut. Ling, Sissy, and Cintia were there, but they were teachers. My girlness wasn’t enough to qualify me for sleeping in their hut with them.
But Maart always had a reason for his decisions. At first, I thought it was because all those boys spoke Russian. That was the most obvious reason. It was a nice thing, I thought, to put me in with Sergey and his peers. Things made a lot more sense when you could understand the people around you.
But I didn’t learn why Maart really put me in with them until the day of my sixteenth birthday when Maart bought me a dress and took me out to dinner.
He was relaxed and happy that night. Just a few weeks earlier Maeko had won a really big fight in Mexico City and it brought in enough money so the gym could finally afford to purchase a massive penthouse in a building right on Copacabana Beach.
Rainer had just moved in with some up-and-coming boys from our village in the jungle. That’s where I still lived with Cort and Anya and the rest of the younger kids.
Things were going well. Maart had just cut his hair—it was so short, barely there at all, and it was weird watching him across the table from me. He looked so different that night. Partly because I hadn’t seen him in so long, but also because—well, he was different.
This was three years after our daring escape from Udulf and Maart was almost unrecognizable to me. We had only just left the supply ship a year before at that point. Sergey, Lilith, Ivano, and Kioshi had been making most of the money to support us with their professional fights. But Paulo had won several too. And now Maeko.
And all I kept thinking was, Soon. He’s gonna call for me soon. And I will go live in the penthouse, and I will train at Sick Fights, and I will be on the TV, and I will make money to support us, and I will… well, that was where it ended, I guess. I didn’t know what came after that, but I didn’t really care, either.
I just wanted that moment. My moment. I just wanted Maart to say, “OK, Irina. It’s your turn now. Pack your things, you’re coming back to Rio with me.”
It didn’t quite go that way. Maart didn’t come to the village and make any kind of declaration about my readiness. It was Anya, actually, who came into the little house I was sharing with Zoya and asked me to go to the city with her. Rasha had already left to be with Paulo by this time. She wasn’t living in the Sick Fights penthouse. I would’ve been so pissed if she were. She was in boarding school somewhere. Paulo was paying for it like any good brother would.
But Anya came in and invited me to go to Rio with her. I knew the next day was my birthday. I mean, that date is a hundred percent not my actual birthday. But it’s the date I picked when Cort was getting my papers made up and I was officially turning sixteen.
I was excited because I thought, This is it. They’re planning something for me. Not a stupid surprise birthday party, but finally I will be invited to the penthouse and I will train with all the others who came before me (and who are still alive).
Anya and I did go the penthouse. I did see everyone. I swam in the pool, we went to the beach, and shopped, and had dinner. But there was no invitation.