By the fourth morning, the entire neighborhood knew about Lidia's strange purchases.
Small towns have a particular talent for turning unanswered questions into elaborate stories.
At the bakery, people whispered that the old woman had secretly become wealthy. At the tavern, a group of men joked that she was feeding an underground wrestling club. Someone even suggested that she had opened an illegal restaurant inside one of the abandoned factories.
The strangest rumor came from an elderly taxi driver who claimed he had once seen lights moving inside Warehouse 42.
According to him, the building had been empty for more than twenty years.
No one believed him.
Until Lidia started buying the beef.
Ovidiu tried to ignore the gossip. His business had never been better. He was making money, his supplier was happy, and the elderly customer paid on time.
But the mystery was becoming impossible to forget.
Every morning, Lidia arrived at exactly 5:30.
She never came five minutes early or five minutes late.
She never discussed the weather, asked about prices, or complained about the quality of the meat. She simply checked the packages, handed over the money, and loaded the crates into her old canvas cart.
Ovidiu began noticing other details.
Her hands were stained with something dark.
At first, he assumed it was dirt. Then he realized the marks looked more like machine grease mixed with rust.
There were also tiny cuts across her fingers, some fresh, others covered by old bandages.
One morning, when she reached for a package, Ovidiu noticed that her sleeve had slipped back.
There was a long bruise running along her wrist.
"Lidia, what happened to your arm?"
She immediately pulled her sleeve down.
"Nothing."
"That doesn't look like nothing."
"I fell."
"Do you need a doctor?"
"No."
She took the final package and pushed it into her cart.
Then she stopped.
For a moment, she looked as though she wanted to tell him something.
Instead, she whispered, "You have a good heart, Ovidiu. Don't let curiosity make you do something you'll regret."
The door closed behind her.
That night, Ovidiu barely slept.
He remembered something from the previous week.
He had seen Lidia walking near the old industrial district, pushing her empty cart toward a narrow road that had been closed to regular traffic for years.
At the time, he had thought nothing of it.
Now he wondered whether the abandoned warehouses were connected to her mysterious purchases.
On the fifth morning, he made a decision.
After loading the sixty kilos of beef into her cart, he waited until Lidia had disappeared around the corner.
Then he locked his shop.
He put on his heavy jacket and followed her.
He kept a considerable distance, hiding behind parked cars whenever she stopped to adjust the cart.
The streets became increasingly deserted as they approached the old industrial district.
The buildings there had once belonged to a textile company that employed hundreds of people. When the factory closed in the late nineties, the workers left, the machinery was sold, and the neighborhood slowly died.
Broken windows stared out from the walls like empty eyes.
Weeds grew between the railway tracks.
The road was cracked, and rusted signs warned visitors to keep away.
Yet Lidia moved through the area as though she had walked those streets every day of her life.
She passed Warehouse 17.
Then Warehouse 28.
Finally, she stopped in front of a massive concrete building.
Warehouse 42.
Ovidiu crouched behind a damaged metal fence.
The building had no windows. Its roof was partially collapsed, and thick ivy covered one side of the structure.
There was no electricity connection visible from the road.
No sign of human activity.
Yet Lidia reached into her coat and produced a heavy iron key.
She unlocked a small side door.
Before entering, she looked carefully in both directions.
Ovidiu pressed himself against the fence.
After several seconds, she disappeared inside.
The door closed.
He waited.
One minute passed.
Then another.
Suddenly, a low mechanical noise echoed from within the building.
A heavy metallic thud.
Then another.
Then a sound that made Ovidiu's skin tighten.
A man's voice.
It was distant, strained, and almost drowned out by the machinery.
"Again..."
There was a pause.
Then the voice repeated:
"Please... again."
Ovidiu stood frozen.
He had expected to discover an illegal business, perhaps a group of criminals or a secret restaurant.
He had not expected to hear a human being begging for something inside an abandoned warehouse.
And then he heard Lidia's voice.
"Not yet, my son. You need to rest."
My son.
Ovidiu felt his stomach drop.
He backed away from the fence, nearly stumbling over a broken piece of concrete.
The old woman was not feeding a restaurant.
She was not supplying a group of strangers.
She was hiding someone.
And whatever was happening inside Warehouse 42 was serious enough that she had spent years keeping it secret.
Ovidiu returned to his shop without confronting her.
But by the time he reached the main road, he had already decided what he would do next.
He was going to the police.