3. Not His Guest

The door behind Renata opened without any warning at all.

She had barely turned her head when the man stepped inside, his body still damp with sweat, his broad chest rising and falling in a rhythm that hadn't fully settled yet. He carried a shiny black case in his left hand, setting it down on the low table by the door without even glancing at it again, as if it meant no more to him than a jacket he'd just taken off.

But Renata's attention didn't stay on the case for long. Her whole body froze the moment she realized who had just walked in.

The man from the ring. The winner.

Up close, he was even bigger than he'd looked through the glass. Broad shoulders still gleaming with sweat, a sharp jaw with a small spot of dried blood at the corner of his mouth, light brown eyes looking at her in a way that made Renata's stomach twist uncomfortably.

"That was fast," he said, his voice low, rough from breathing that hadn't evened out yet. The corner of his mouth pulled up, a smile that felt more like an appraisal than a greeting. "They usually take longer dressing someone up this pretty."

Renata blinked. "Excuse me?"

She didn't get a chance to hear an answer. He was already closing the distance at a speed that gave her no time to think, one hand rising to touch her chin, tilting her face up like he was inspecting merchandise in a window. His other hand started moving, tracing down her arm, down to her waist in a way that made her skin crawl instantly, and not from the cold.

It took a fraction of a second for Renata's brain to catch up with what was happening. A fraction of a second that was way too long.

"Let go of me!" She shoved his chest with everything she had, but her hands might as well have hit a stone wall. Panic started spreading fast through her chest, replacing confusion with something far sharper.

His hands didn't stop. His fingers had already grabbed the hem of her shirt and were starting to pull it up. Cold air from the AC rushed against her bare waist, and something inside Renata snapped.

She reacted on pure instinct. Her heel slammed down hard on his foot, her elbow drove into his ribs with a force she'd only ever thrown at her father's old sandbag in the garage. He staggered back half a step, startled enough that his hand let go of her shirt, just enough to give Renata room to shove him back fully, his back hitting the sofa behind him.

"¡Suéltame!" Renata hissed, her chest heaving, her hands up in a reflexive defensive stance, feet planted firmly on the floor. "Don't touch me! What do you think I am?"

He straightened back up, one hand still rubbing where her elbow had just hit, but his expression had changed. It wasn't the look of someone enjoying something that had been waiting for him anymore. Something sharper had taken over now, something starting to recalculate exactly who was standing in front of him.

"You're not what they promised," he said quietly, almost like he was asking himself.

"I don't know what they promised you!" Renata was still catching her breath, her voice shaking somewhere between anger and a fear she was only just starting to fully register. "I don't even know where I am right now!"

"You're in my VIP room, sitting on my couch, watching my fight." He took one step forward, his eyes narrowing. "Nobody just walks in here without an invitation."

"I wasn't invited!" Renata stepped back, her back meeting the cold glass behind her. "Some idiot driver picked me up from the airport by mistake! I was supposed to be going somewhere else, not... not a place like this!"

"Wrong pickup," he repeated flatly, like he was tasting the sentence, checking it for a lie. "You have any idea how much security you'd have to get through to reach this floor? You think any random driver can just walk people in here?"

"I don't know anything about this place! I only found out it existed two minutes ago!" Renata's voice rose, a mix of anger and desperation getting harder to control. "I just got off a plane tonight. I'm exhausted, I'm confused, and I only followed the guy who said he was sent to pick me up!"

"Sent by who?"

"That's none of your business. The point is I never meant to come here!" Renata jerked back as he grabbed her arm again. Her eyes widened slightly, holding back her anger.

Something flickered fast in his eyes, but he didn't answer that. Instead, his jaw tightened, and he took one more step forward, closing the space between them even more.

"You think I'm gonna believe that story?"

Renata pushed herself away from the glass, trying to get some room to move, but he'd already closed off her left side with his own body. "Why do you keep asking me like I'm some kind of spy or something?"

"Because everybody who comes to this place has a reason," he answered sharply. "And yours is a little too neat to just be a coincidence."

"I don't care how neat you think it sounds! That's exactly what happened!"

He didn't answer that. Instead, his eyes dropped to the crossbody bag still hanging on Renata's shoulder, and before she could register what was about to happen, his hand had already moved, yanking the bag away with one quick pull.

"Hey!" Renata tried to grab it back, but he turned his body, holding the bag out of her reach with ease, one hand keeping her shoulder at a distance.

"You have no right to go through my things..."

"I have the right to do whatever I want in my own place," he cut in, not even looking at her, his fingers already unzipping the small bag with movements far too practiced to just be curiosity.

A dark green passport.

He opened it, his eyes scanning quickly through the information inside. Renata could see his jaw tighten the moment he reached a certain line. Nationality.

"Mexico," he murmured, and this time his voice changed. Colder. More on guard.

"Yeah, I'm from Mexico, so what?" Renata snatched her hand out, managing to grab her bag back this time because he seemed too caught up in his own thoughts to hold on to it. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You're asking like you don't know anything," he said quietly, more a statement than a question, his eyes still on her but in a new way now, like he was rebuilding his whole picture of the girl in front of him.

"Why would I know anything?" Renata clutched the bag to her chest, her eyes flashing with anger.

"Your name?" His voice turned sharp. "If you're really as innocent as you're claiming, that shouldn't be a hard question to answer."

"Renata," she snapped back, irritated. "Renata Rivas. Happy now?"

He didn't answer right away. He just stood there, searching her face for a lie he couldn't find, and that seemed to only make him more suspicious, not less.

"Who sent you?" he asked again, quieter this time, too calm, the kind of calm that put Renata's nerves on edge more than any shouting could have.

"Nobody sent me! I got off a plane a few hours ago, the driver picked up the wrong person, I don't even know what this place is..." Renata's voice started cracking at the end, a mix of anger and desperation from not being believed at all.

"Too neat a coincidence," he said, more to himself than to her.

"This isn't some neat coincidence, this is a stupid mistake that almost got me..." Renata stopped herself, unable to finish the sentence, her jaw shaking as she tried to hold back the anger still burning from his hands on her moments ago.

Renata opened her mouth to fire back, but the sound that came next wasn't from her.

An alarm blared loudly from somewhere below, followed by red lights suddenly flashing across the ceiling of the room, spinning fast, flooding the whole space with a pulsing light like a warning of danger.

The woman in the black uniform who had greeted Renata earlier appeared at the door, her face pale, out of breath. "We need to go, now. They got here sooner than we thought."

The man shifted his gaze from Renata to the woman, his jaw hardening.

Down below, through the glass still trembling from the echo of the alarm, Renata could see the crowd scattering in a panic in every direction, knocking over chairs, shoving each other toward the nearest exit.