Chapter Text
Back at Graceland, Mike had been trying to figure out next moves. He still wasn’t sleeping and the electrical synapses in his brain were firing constantly with one negative thought after another. Each day, the case loomed over his head like a dark storm-cloud, ever growing, and threatening endless floods to wash away the last little bit of sanity he had left.
He was physically and mentally drained, hanging by a rapidly fraying thread about to snap.
Mike felt like he had done everything for Paige to make what had happened to her better somehow. He compromised himself because she wanted him to, so he could make whatever it is she thought he had done wrong right again. Every day, she kept making it more and more impossible. More hopeless.
One of the things he was learning in his position as a leader on the drug bus case was that giving orders or forcing people to conform to his methods wasn’t producing the results he needed, especially considering that his friends who were helping him were all exceptional at their jobs. They made mistakes, but they got shit done. He had seen it, but the stress of a leadership role and the need to feel like he was making a difference continued to make his case crumble. It had made the people he cared about the most mad at him for trying to police their tactics. It had made all of their jobs a lot harder than they needed to be.
It seemed like Paige was doing that to him now because she was desperate. Something in her had broken and all that really mattered was saving those girls. He understood that, he did; he just needed more time and she wasn’t willing to budge.
“You’re batshit crazy for not shutting Sulla down,” she said to him after surveilling the compound all night, sounding even more frustrated in her sleep deprivation than she already had been with his choice to allow the trafficking to continue under their noses.
“Sulla’s our only connection between Carlito and Sid,” Mike tried to explain, but he couldn’t make his point without her immediate rebuttal.
“Both Briggs and Charlie are working Sid from two angles, so you don’t need another one,” Paige insisted. She already had a plan in mind and knew exactly what she wanted him to do, and he had to do it because he was already feeling guilty for betraying her.
He was also sleep deprived and already overwhelmed with the whole damn case before Paige had started making demands.
“I need everything I can get,” Mike said, exasperated. He didn’t know what the missing link in his case was and having multiple open channels increased his chances of having the right pieces fall into place; then he could finally close a case he had dedicated months of his life to. “and Sulla works for Carlito,” he tried to make his point again: the more that they knew and the more evidence they could gather could actually dismantle a whole cartel ecosystem in one fell swoop, but that’s not what Paige wanted from him.
Paige wanted to shut down the human trafficking ring. That was her priority, but if he wouldn’t do it, she would try to work around that idea.
“Have you considered getting these girls out without shutting Sulla down?” She suggested to him.
“How?” He asked her, pressing his tongue to the back of his teeth, slightly aggravated that she wouldn’t leave well enough alone. They were already monitoring the compound.
“Buy them. All of them.” It was simple really. Exchange of money for goods and/or services, which in this case was teenage girls. “He’s taken your money once. He’ll do it again,” she said, steely. She was already convinced that he would do this for her. The idea sounded rational until all the variables were considered.
“That’ll cost over a million dollars,” he told her. He was hoping she could hear how insane that number sounded.
“1.5 million,” she confirmed the exact amount. He stared at her. Guess it wasn’t that insane after all, at least in her mind.
1.5 million, huh?” He almost laughed but he bit his tongue instead. There was no world in which he thought her plan would actually work.
“I filled out the requisition. It just needs your signature. File it within the hour or I’m gonna hurt you, ” She told him, pushing a file folder into his hands. Mike felt his spine stiffen; it was the casual way she let the words slip out, even though he could hear the bite in them. He knew Paige meant every word she ever said and that made him uncomfortable.
When he used to look at her, the world fell away and she was the only person in the room; his heart would jump and flutter, but now all he saw was a blackhole sucking the happiness and light from everything in its wake.
Mike was familiar with abuse; he’d seen it in his own home with his parents and experienced it with his own father, but this felt different to him. Maybe because he had seen all of the cracks in Paige and knew what she had been through, or because this was the first time he was in love and it had all gone so wrong, but this wasn’t her and it wasn’t him. Something broke, it died and went rotten; this wasn’t okay. He didn’t like it.
When she closed the door in his face, he felt shaky. He tried to breathe and as he turned around, he found DJ digging through the fridge for something he had labeled as his. He closed the fridge door and looked at Mikey, “Have you seen my leftover vindaloo curry?”
Briggs definitely ate it. Mike shook his head. “Nope, it’s not in there?”
He wasn’t going to snitch. At Graceland, loyalty was key and he wasn’t getting in between those two. Jakes definitely knew already what happened to his food, but he was testing Mike’s resolve.
The dark skinned man shook his head, “So, are you going to file that?” He pointed to the requisition in Mike’s hands. The younger agent stared at the paper and his thoughts began to race, weighing out the pros and cons.
It all came back to Paige. Your word is shit she had said to him. If he didn’t do this, it was just proving her right.
“I think I have to,” Mike admitted to DJ. “Paige wants me to.”
Jakes put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I know you’re feeling guilty that she’s struggling. Heck, I feel guilty about not being there when she was taken, I was supposed to be there. If I had been, all this wouldn’t have happened.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Mike said, a bit defensive over him, “You didn’t know…” he trailed off.
“Don’t I know it, but it still doesn’t feel good. You know? It’s a miracle that you got her out alive. I really don’t think I ever could’ve forgiven myself if something worse had happened to her,” DJ told him, exhaling a long string of air. “Whatever you decide to do, you just gotta believe that it’s right.”
He breathed deeply, nodding at Jakes. “Thanks, man.”
Mike didn’t believe it was right. He didn’t want to do it because the idea was insane. It was too much money, too many girls, and he didn’t really believe that Sulla would ever agree to it. On top of all of that, it was dangerous, but Paige had asked him, actually she had insisted that he do it, because it was the right thing to do. It may have been right morally, but it certainly wasn’t smart.
But the truth was that he would rather put himself in harm’s way then let Paige march back into that compound untethered. It wasn’t safe for her in there and he would do what he had to do if it meant protecting her from them.
It still wouldn’t be enough for him to feel less guilty or for her to see him as worthy of anything other than her disdain. In his head, he kept hearing her voice.
Your word is shit .
He submitted the requisition and to his surprise the government actually complied. He had the money and now all he had to do was to convince Sulla that he wanted to buy the entire batch of female human commodities for his clients. It was a big ask and he didn’t know if it would actually be a workable plan, but he had to try though. At least for Paige’s sake because she had asked him for this.
He set the meeting with Sulla and was sent an address for a living care facility, but he didn’t bring the cash. This was merely a preliminary discussion.
“When you gave me a place to meet, I was expecting something different,” Mike looked around the sparse room, one corner curtained off and hidden from view.
“I want to show you something. It’s the reason we’re here,” Sulla told him.
The undercover agent let out a small chuckle. “I thought we were here to negotiate”
“Negotiate?” The trafficker raised his eyebrow.
“Yeah.” He tilted his head slightly, focused on the other man.
“I told you on the telephone, no, I’m not selling the girls,” the gray-haired man repeated his sentiment for the agent in person this time. “You insisted.”
“Hmm.” Mike waited, thinking if he was patient the guy who dealt in trafficking women might simply change his mind or give him more of an explanation.
“You want more? Here’s more,” Sulla opened the curtain revealing a comatose man with a scar around his eye. “He’s my kid brother. He’s a vegetable.”
“What happened?” He asked, inching forward for a closer look.
“My employer beat him with the butt of an antique rifle,” the older man said dryly.
The agent studied the scar on the comatose man’s eye and winced slightly. That sounded about right. “What’d he do?” He asked.
“Nothing. Just a product of my disobedience,” Sulla shakes his head, a small laugh escaping through his nose as he exhales in disgust.
“Your boss beat him to remind you who’s in charge?” The younger man asked, assuming he knew the answer.
“My boss beat him for fun. This, this place– this is the reminder,” Sulla corrected him, surveying the nothingness in the room that encompassed them.
“And this is why there’s no sale.” He nodded, trying to sound understanding, but his brain was cycling through his options and deciding on next moves.
“Not for lack of desire,” the trafficker told him, convincing Mike that a sale was still possible if he found the right angle to play.
“You see, my boss is having trouble with the FBI, doesn’t want to attract attention,” he explained to the agent. “The girls go nowhere. Just be a bit difficult to spend your money as a vegetable.”
Mike looked at him for a moment, knowing that it was only a matter of time with the right amount of money on hand. He turned to leave with the knowledge that they’d be meeting again soon. He just needed to solidify a plan.
When he got back to Graceland, he knocked on Paige’s door with an update. When she looked at him standing in her doorway, she asked him point blank.
“What’d Sulla say?” She demanded from him. Her temperament was volatile and she didn’t have time for answers she didn’t like.
“No sale,” He told her.
“Fine. Then we blow him up,” Paige affirmed, turning to her computer. “Just letting the FBI know that it’s time to move in.”
“No. The requisition came through,”the agent explained to her. “I’m gonna bring him the money. Let him smell it. I can make this happen.”
He had a plan and he wanted to see it though. It was odd that after pushing for him to make this happen that she would change her mind. It was like the case didn’t even matter to her and she only had one singular goal in mind: Save Lina.
“Do you know what’s actually happening?” She asked Mike. “The perimeter picked up audio of Lina being beaten this afternoon.”
“How do you know it was Lina?” He wanted to know, but he knew it was the wrong question. It’s not that he didn’t care about Lina or about the other girls in the compound, it’s just that they were only a small piece of something much larger and the agent had the chance to do something about all of it.
Shutting down the compound now wouldn’t topple the whole infrastructure of the Solano cartel, but with more time and evidence, it could be done. That’s what he had been trying to explain, but Paige couldn’t or wouldn’t hear it. She was too far gone, too in her own headspace to see the bigger picture.
“Are you serious?” She wanted to know. She stared daggers at him.
“Paige,” he tried to start. He could explain himself again.
“No, Mike,” She shut him down.
“I’m gonna get ‘em out of there. All of them,” Mike told her. “And i’m still gonna keep Sulla in play.”
“No,” she insisted, not giving up her priorities.
“I’m not asking,” the agent had drawn a line. He was going through with the plan to buy all of the girls and Paige would just have to wait and see. It wasn’t up for debate.
Your word is shit.
Her words continued to play in his mind, but right now he was determined to prove her wrong.
Mike set another meet with Sulla. This time at the compound and he brought a lump sum of cash with him. He hated everything about this, but he was this deep in already and he had to follow it through.
“The girls can’t leave with me,” he stated making sure the other man knew that he knew what the deal they were making entailed, “but that doesn't mean I still can’t buy ‘em from you.”
His offer was now officially on the table along with his unopened suitcase.
“You have trouble getting the point,” Sulla told him, but he was curious where the agent was going with this.
“Take a look at this,” He opened the case and flashed the money at his companion. “That’s $250,000. It’s a down payment. We’ll call it a layaway plan.” He had cast out a line and he was hoping against hope to catch a fish.
“I’m listening,” the older man said, not biting just yet but definitely paying attention.
“I know this doesn’t buy the girls’ exit,” Mike reiterated. “When the girls leave with me, you get the rest of the money.” The plan was simple enough.
“And the fish stay here until my boss says they can swim away,” the trafficker said. He was hooked onto the agent’s line and being reeled in slowly.
“So does the cash. And so do I,” the younger man confirmed. This could be a potential snag, but he wasn’t about to let the deal slip out of his fingers that easily.
“When you sign a layaway plan, you don’t sleep at the kmart,” Sulla pointed out, a sly smile playing on his thin lips.
“This is a lot of money,” Mike said, insistent.
“This isn’t a hotel,” the older man rebutted.
The young agent snapped the briefcase shut and took the money off the table. A tactic he had learned to keep the fish from getting away. It wanted the thing that was been taken away.
“My clients want their product undamaged and healthy. I need to protect their interests and their investment,” he explained and with that, he knew he had his fish.
“You.” The trafficker almost laughed. He didn’t know how well Mike could hold his own.
“It’s what they pay me for.” The agent smiled.
“Pick a room. There’s plenty to choose from,” Sulla said and now, he was on the inside.
It was an opportunity to learn more, to gather evidence. Also, it would allow Mike to see how the girls were being treated, maybe even help protect them. They were his now. He had bought them.
At least, that was the deal he thought he made.