Chapter 10 Brooks
Brooks
We enter the warehouse by the river like it’s a fucking tunnel right into hell. Outside, the sun is bright and clear, the day warm and welcoming.
But when we walk into the building, I have only one thought: This is where sunshine and happiness come to die.
This is where freedom ends.
And I’m standing on the wrong side of that battle.
My father takes my arm then, distracting me, and threads my hand through the crook of his elbow like it’s always belonged there.
I cringe, but then force myself to walk beside him, remembering that I’m here to do a job.
I’m here on a mission, more or less. Find the girls.
Figure out how and where my father is taking them, and then where he’s holding them.
Catalogue the process, figure out how the ring actually works, and locate any patterns I can use.
Yes, I’m working with the lowest human beings on the planet in a role that makes me want to slit my own throat.
But I’ve got plans to end that, and if I can find way to tear this smuggling ring apart from the inside, it will all be worth it.
“This,” my father says smoothly, as we walk out onto a catwalk over the main floor of the warehouse, “is our main holding center. The building where we keep the bulk of our merchandise.”
My God, I’m going to have to murder him, and sooner rather than later.
“Merchandise?” I ask, glad that he’s looking below our feet rather than at my face.
Because there’s no way I can control my expression right now.
“Look below you,” he says, pausing to give me a grin.
I don’t want to. I would literally sell my soul to not look below me. But I remember what I just told myself, and then go a step further: If I’m going to stop this ring the way I mean to, I have to know what’s going on. All the pieces of the operation.
I need to know how to tear it apart, block by block.
And I’ve never been a coward.
So I take a deep breath, build a steel wall around my soul, and then look down, already knowing what I’m going to see.
It’s even worse than I expected. Below us, I see what looks like a maze.
Room after room, all connected together, with halls running around them.
Every room has several girls in it, with beds and dressers pushed against the wall.
The girls are all in the same uniforms–colorless sack dresses that don’t give them any privacy at all and make them look all the same.
They’re sitting on the beds or staring at the walls, quiet and despondent, and the despair hangs over the place like a fucking fog.
Men are walking through the halls, visiting room after room and either shouting at the girls or testing them for how willing they are to be handled. The girls are turning their faces away. Pretending they’re anywhere but here as the men run rough, uncaring hands over their bodies.
They’re working so hard to disassociate that I wonder if they even remember where they are, or what their names are.
The men move through the rooms like they’re entitled to every girl there, writing on their clipboards and shouting instructions at the other men, and the girls are just...
Chattel.
They’re so dehumanized that they barely even react like human beings.
And they have no shelter, no privacy, because there are no doors between them and the hallways. The one bastion of protection and privacy has been stripped from them, so they have no place to hide anymore.
I feel bile rising up the back of my throat and swallow it down as quickly as I can, retreating back into my mind.
There have to be at least two hundred girls here, but this is just a holding warehouse.
A place to hold the girls until they’re due to be shipped out or auctioned off.
So these aren’t the girls who are shipping out tonight–at least not in theory.
I guess they could be–the men could just take a bunch of these girls and move them to the next house, where they’ll be prepped for shipment–but that doesn’t make sense to the process I’ve seen before.
According to my own time in the ring, the girls who are being prepped for shipment should be moving through the catacombs, stopping at a series of underground rooms as they make their way to either Canal Street or the port.
I don’t know where this warehouse falls in the larger scheme of things, but I think it must be near the start of the process.
Either that or different girls follow different routes.
I put that to the side as too complex, since it would mean I don’t actually know the whole process, and see that we’re nearly to the other side of the warehouse, now, and the walkway that runs around the circumference.
There, I see a girl around my age, with jet-black hair and dark eyes, a clipboard in her hand and glasses on her nose.
She’s wearing a sharp business suit and heels, and looks like some sort of administrative assistant.
Far more professional than anyone else I’ve seen in here.
“Ah, Samantha,” my father says, a smile lighting up his voice. “Brooks, this is my assistant, Samantha Duhon.”
Samantha Duhon.
I don’t know her personally, never did, but I know her family.
Sean Duhon is head of one of the oldest and most powerful families in the city, but he’s also an outlaw.
A freelancer. He doesn’t work in a specific industry or sector of the city, like most of the gangsters down here do.
The Boudreaux are in gambling and weapons, the Landry family in shipping.
Benoit is a businessman, but deals with shipping, and Crow Lafayette runs gambling dens, entertainment venues, and whore houses.
Sean Duhon does whatever he wants, and that makes him dangerous to everyone else.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that one of his nieces is working for my father. I’d like to think Sean put her here to keep an eye on Dominick Landry and what he’s doing, but it’s far more like Samantha was offered as a way for Sean to get his hand into the money.
I immediately hate her.
Her eyes run up and down my body, one brow lifted arrogantly, and I’m guessing she’s thinking the same thing about me. When her eyes come to my face, I offer her a feral grin, and hope it says exactly what I want it to say: That I don’t trust her, and that I’m not going to make her job easy.
“Brooks,” she says quietly. “Finally I meet the girl who left her family behind for New York.”
My smile turns even sharper at that. “Had to get out of New Orleans to find some real prospects,” I return. “See how the world actually works so I could come home and introduce New Orleans to real power. If you catch my drift.”
Look, word play isn’t usually my thing, but when the situation calls for it, I can hold my own.
Samantha’s eyes narrow, then flash to my father, and I wonder if he’s told anyone else that he wants me to take over the family business.
I wonder, further, if he’s fucking explained why to anyone else, because it still doesn’t make any fucking sense to me.
Surely my father realizes that this isn’t what I’m built for.
I want to bust these girls out, take them home, and feed them chicken noodle soup.
Give them warm, fuzzy pajamas and get them back to their families.
And I’ll do it the first chance I get.
So why in Christ’s name is my father taking me through his warehouses and explaining the process like I’m on board with any of this? He has to know he can’t trust me. Has to realize that I’ll screw him over the first chance I get.
What’s the catch, here? Why is he doing this?
And where the fuck is my brother?
“Samantha is going to take you downstairs and show you how things work down there,” my father says suddenly.
I watch Samantha jerk at that, like she had no idea that was going to be happening, and when her eyes turn to me again, they’re cold and brittle as black ice.
Oh, she definitely didn’t know that he brought me here to show me how to run things.
And now she’s starting to feel threatened.
I like the situation a bit more, now. I hate that I’m going down to see the girls up close, because I know how much that’s going to hurt, but I really like the sudden echo of fear I see in Samantha’s eyes.
I like it even more when I see the fear turn to hatred, and realize she’s going to try to make this difficult for me.
Perfect.
I love it when I know exactly who my enemies are.
Within moments I’m following Samantha down a set of stairs into the bowels of the building, building up my walls brick by brick and preparing for what I’m going to see down here.
It’s even worse than I expected, though.
Evidently Samantha is also what they call a ‘talent scout,’ in charge of scouting the girls they want and then coordinating the collection efforts.
She takes me into their version of a war room, where I see picture after picture of girls in city settings, each with notes about her habits and patterns, and each with a ‘Potential Rating.’ I overhear several men discussing the newest girls being brought in and their plans for testing those girls, and my hands tighten into fists.
God, I need to hit someone.
Murder would be even better.
The next room holds a girl who was caught trying to run away. She’s sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, and a ring of men surround her, throwing questions at her and threatening her when she doesn’t answer quickly enough.
“She tried to get out, and must now serve as a reminder to the other girls about the consequences,” Samantha says coldly.
I let my eyes linger on the girl for a moment too long, and when she looks up and meets my gaze, her eyes are filled with fear... and hatred.
Absolute fury.
And I realize that the girls aren’t as defeated as they looked like they were from above, or at least not all of them. Some of them, like this girl in front of me, are horrified and angry and desperate to get out of this place.
If someone can give them a hand.
If someone can figure out how the ring itself works, and where the holding centers are, and start getting them out group by group.
And in that moment, I start to see a way out of this.
Because there’s a shipment going out tonight, but only if the group that’s meant to be shipped is still in attendance.
But what if they’re not? What if they’ve escaped and are on their way to some safe location, where my father will never find them?
What if I can take down this entire ring by eliminating their merchandise entirely, and then cutting off their supply?
I know my eyes have flared because the girl’s eyes sharpen on me and she tips her head slightly, like she’s trying to catch what I’ve just said. I put my fingers up to my lips and rub slightly, shaking my head a bit to warn her against giving me away, and her eyelids dip in response.
God, this girl is good, and with just that much expression, she’s got my brain flying with ideas.
I want to take these girls home and feed them chicken noodle soup. Give them fuzzy slippers and sit them in front of the TV with a rom com. I’m itching with the need to save every one of them... and that might be exactly how I get us all out of this.
I’m going to find the girls who are supposed to ship tonight and bust them out before they can ship.
And tomorrow, I’ll get another group out.
And then another. And then another. Sure, Lucien might be planning to be at the port tonight to stop the shipment, but what if I can stop it before the girls even get there?
What if I can clean out my father’s warehouses while he thinks he’s training me to help him sell these girls to the highest bidder?
If I can figure out how the ring is running–the intake pattern, the collection methods, and the movements–I can track the girls down and stop everything from the inside.
And isn’t that why I came here in the first place?
Sure, I need to find Aislyn and make sure she’s safe, but if I’m rescuing girls before they can ship or go to auction, at some point I’ll run across her.
I’m perfectly placed for this sort of insider espionage plan, and as long as I do it in a way that my father can’t track, get the girls safe before he realizes it’s men. ..
I always thought I’d be a good fucking spy.
I just never thought I’d have to do it to take down a trafficking ring.
And if I can interrupt the supply long enough for Lucien to do whatever he’s doing on the outside to take my father down...
My God, it might work.
But I can’t do it on my own. I’ll need someone on the outside, and a place to send the girls once they’re out of the ring. I can’t leave the mansion, or my father will notice and immediately suspect.
But I know someone who might be willing to help.
I give the girl in the chair a slow wink, mouth ‘stay alive,’ to her–knowing she has no control over this, but hoping it will tell her that I’ve got a plan–and then get my phone out of my pocket.
“I need a moment,” I tell Samantha, and, without waiting for an answer, I walk into the hallway and hit the first number on my call list. Moments later, I hear a familiar voice on the line.
“Brooks, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say smoothly. “And I need a favor.”