Benedita asked what would happen if she lost.
Joaquim replied that they would lose together. He would lose the quinta. It could be resold. But at least they would have tried.
She didn’t trust him. Still, she didn’t have many other choices. Something in Joaquim’s voice, an honest fatigue and recognizable pain, made him think that maybe he was telling the truth.
She agreed, with a simple threat:
“I fight. But if you betray me, I’ll kill you. “
Benedita’s secret training
The next day, Joaquim woke Benedita before dawn. He took her to a hidden clearing, out of sight, and improvised a ring with ropes tied between the trees.
He brought sandbags for beatings, pieces of wood to break, and old books of fistfights that he had kept since his youth. He didn’t know how to apply all the techniques himself, but he knew the theory: positions, movements, dodges, attacks.
