7. The Warehouse
The Warehouse
Monika
I'm not sleeping. I haven't been sleeping well since I called the number on the card, since I heard Aleksander's voice on the other end of the line, since I said the words yes and I'll do it and part-time, cash, no questions. Since I became something other than a waitress in a diner.
Since I became his.
The phone is a burner—his, not mine. He gave it to me two days ago, sliding it across the counter wrapped in a napkin like it was something shameful. For work, he said. Keep it on you. Answer when I call.
It buzzes against the wood of my nightstand, a harsh vibration that cuts through the dark. I answer on the second buzz.
"Yes."
"There's a warehouse on Grant Street." His voice is low, calm, the same voice he uses when he orders coffee. "One of my men needs attention. Nothing life-threatening, but he's bleeding and he won't go to a hospital. Can you handle it?"
I'm already out of bed, reaching for my jeans. "What happened?"
"A disagreement. He lost."
"Give me the address."
He gives it. I write it on my palm with a pen that's been on my nightstand for three weeks, the ink smearing against my skin. I hang up before he can say anything else—before he can tell me to be careful, before he can warn me about what I'm about to see.
I already know I'm about to see something I don't want to see.
That's why he called me.
The warehouse is on the edge of the city, where the streets narrow and the streetlights stop working and the buildings look like they've been abandoned for years. Some of them have. Some of them haven't. It's hard to tell the difference in the dark.
The address takes me to a chain-link fence with a gate that swings open when I push it. No lock. No guard. Just the gate and the gravel and the smell of the river, somewhere close, somewhere rotting.
The warehouse is brick, three stories, windows boarded up.
A single light burns somewhere inside, casting a sickly yellow glow through the gaps in the boards.
I park my car—an old Civic, the only thing I could afford—and sit for a moment with my hands on the steering wheel, listening to the engine tick as it cools.
I should have brought my kit. I have a kit now—real supplies, things Aleksander bought for me after the second time I stitched one of his men.
Gauze, antiseptic, actual surgical thread.
Needles that aren't from my coat pocket.
It sits in a bag on the passenger seat, black canvas, nondescript. Like everything else in this life.
I grab the bag and walk to the door.
It opens before I knock. A man I don't recognize—broad, bald, wearing a jacket that doesn't quite hide the bulge of a shoulder holster—looks down at me with flat eyes.
"You the medic?"
"I'm the medic."
He steps aside. I walk in.
The smell hits me first.
Blood. Sweat. Rust. And something else—something that makes my stomach clench before I've even seen it.
Something that smells like fear. Not the fear of a single man, the sharp adrenaline scent of someone who's been hurt.
This is older. Colder. The fear of people who have been here for a long time, who have learned to live with the thing that's happening to them.
The warehouse is larger than it looked from outside.
High ceilings, concrete floors, the kind of space that's been repurposed half a dozen times.
There are shipping containers against one wall, stacked two high, their doors closed and padlocked.
There are desks and computers and a map on the wall with pins stuck in it.
There are men—five, maybe six—standing in clusters, talking in low voices, watching me with the same flat eyes as the man at the door.
And there are cages.
I see them out of the corner of my eye. A row of them, against the far wall, behind a partition of chain-link fence. They're large—big enough for a person to stand in, maybe, but not big enough to lie down. There are blankets inside. A bucket. Something that might be a mattress.
I don't look. I don't let myself look.
Because if I look, I'll see the women. And if I see the women, I'll have to do something.
And I can't do anything. Not here. Not now.
Not when I'm alone and they're watching and the man who needs my help is bleeding on a table somewhere in this building that smells like rust and rot and the particular sweetness of despair.
"The patient," I say, my voice steady. "Where is he?"
The bald man points to a door at the back of the warehouse. I walk toward it, my boots echoing on the concrete, my bag swinging at my side. I don't look at the cages. I don't look at the women.
I don't look to closely, at least.
The back room is smaller, lit by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. There's a table in the center—metal, the kind you'd find in a morgue or a butcher shop—and on the table is a man I recognize.
Dmitri. The young man from the diner. The one whose arm I stitched.
His face is a mess. Split lip, swollen eye, blood caked around his nose and smeared across his cheeks.
His shirt is open, and I can see the bruises spreading across his chest—purple and black, the kind of bruises that come from fists or boots or both.
He's conscious, barely. His eyes track me as I walk in, and I see recognition flicker through the pain.
"The farm girl," he says. His voice is thick, slurred. "You again."
"Me again." I set my bag on the table beside him and start pulling out supplies. "You need to stop getting hurt, Dmitri. I'm going to start thinking you like me."
"Don't like you. Just like your stitches."
"Same thing."
His mouth twitches—that almost-smile I remember—and then he winces as the movement pulls at the split in his lip. I can see the cut from here. Deep, but not deep enough for stitches. The kind of wound that will heal on its own if he keeps it clean and doesn't talk too much.
"Lie back," I say. "I need to check your ribs."
He lies back. I press my fingers along his ribcage, feeling for the places where the bone gives in ways it shouldn't. He hisses when I hit a spot on his left side—the eighth rib, I think, maybe the ninth. Not broken, but cracked. The kind of injury that hurts like hell and takes weeks to heal.
"Nothing's broken," I say. "But you've got at least one cracked rib. Maybe two. You need to rest. No heavy lifting. No fighting."
"Can't promise that."
"Then at least wrap it." I pull out an elastic bandage from my bag and start winding it around his chest. "It'll help with the pain. Keep the ribs from moving too much."
He watches me work. His eyes are young—younger than mine, I realize. He's nineteen, maybe. Twenty at most. A kid. A kid with a cracked rib and a split lip and the kind of job that puts him in warehouses at three in the morning, surrounded by cages and chains and women who aren't there by choice.
"The lip needs cleaning," I say. "It doesn't need stitches. But it's going to hurt."
"Everything hurts."
"Then a little more won't make a difference."
I pour antiseptic onto a gauze pad and press it against his lip. He doesn't flinch—not really—but his hands curl into fists at his sides, and I see the muscles in his jaw bunch and release.
"You're good at this," he says, when I'm done.
"I've had practice."
"On animals."
"On animals." I pack up my supplies, snapping the bag closed. "You're going to be fine. Don't do anything stupid for at least a week. And if you start coughing up blood, go to a hospital. I don't care what your boss says."
"He's not my boss."
"Aleksander?"
Dmitri's eyes flicker. Something in them changes—guarded, suddenly, careful. "He's not my boss."
"Then who is?"
He doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. I already know. I've known since the first night, since the suit and the blood and the stack of hundreds. Aleksander is the center of this. The eye of the storm. Everything in this warehouse—the men, the cages, the women—exists because he exists.
I should be afraid. I am afraid. But fear is a familiar thing, an old coat I've worn before, and I know how to move inside it.
"Stay still for ten minutes," I say. "Then you can get up."
I walk out of the back room and into the warehouse.
The cages are impossible to ignore now.
I don't know why I look this time. Maybe because Dmitri's face reminded me that he's just a kid, and if he's just a kid, then the people in those cages are someone's children too.
Maybe because I've been lying to myself for weeks, telling myself that Aleksander is different, that his business is something else, that the blood on his hands isn't the kind that leaves stains.
Maybe I just wanted to see.
There are three of them. Women. Young—younger than me, some of them.
They're sitting on the floors of their cages, backs against the walls, knees drawn up to their chests.
Their clothes are dirty. Their faces are blank.
The kind of blank that comes from being looked at too many times, from having nothing left to hide.
One of them looks at me. Just a glance, a flicker of her eyes, and then she looks away. She's seen people like me before. People who come in, see what's here, and leave. People who don't do anything.
I want to do something. I want to open the cages, take them by the hand, walk them out of this place. I want to call the police, the FBI, someone with a badge and a gun and the authority to burn this warehouse to the ground.
But I don't.
Because if I do, I die. And if I die, I can't help anyone.
That's what I tell myself. That's what I'll keep telling myself, for years, until I can't anymore.
I walk toward the exit. My legs feel strange—heavy, like they're moving through water.
The men watch me pass, their flat eyes tracking my movements, and I wonder if they can see what's happening inside me.
The screaming. The breaking. The part of me that knew better, that knew this was a bad idea from the beginning, that knew Aleksander Mire was not a man who could be trusted.