Hotline Fling

Epilogue 4: Worst Nightmare

A/N - Trigger/sensitivity warning (cruelty against minors)

Damian's POV - Nine months later.

Fucking disgusting.

I lifted my trembling fingers. Heavier than the three days' worth of exhaustion dragging them down, I couldn't close my eyes. I knew the moment I did, what I saw flashed through me and shifted from the conscious absorption to subconscious nightmares portions of my brain.

Like every time, I was unprepared.

Not even Hernandez's late-night 'Get your ass in' call that physically woke me up mentally prepared me for tonight's raid. My auto-pilot motions weren't enough, from unlocking my gun safe, standing bleary-eyed and half-asleep in the back of my closet, and blinking at the reflection of myself dressed in full Kevlar for the first time in thirteen months. The APBs from the com on my shoulder buzzing like static in my ears weren't enough preparation. After almost ten years working at the 34th, the numbered codes were only that, numbers. At this point, they floated in and out of my brain without much thought registered.

Vacant South Bronx brownstone.
New York Street.
Suspects apprehended.
Fourteen minors.
All under fifteen.

Not a single Bronx street was in our jurisdiction. Fuck, on the other side of the Harlem River, it was practically a world away. The 46th Precinct's Lieutenant Soreca called us in for investigative support, where 'us' loosely meant only my newly-minted Deputy Inspector supervisor and me. Every mental alarm I owned fired off when I realized that none of my twenty-six detectives were on the scene or even called to report.

The neighborhood's upscale and well-maintained appearance was the farthest visual from the story the coms painted beyond the sidewalk where I stood. Infused with development, preservation, and renewal enthusiasts, the pristine neighborhood proved that the most sickening crimes could occur anywhere and everywhere.

Sweat trickled down my neck, evidence of the dank, humid, oppressive space in contrast to the cherished, desirable brownstone-style house upstairs. At first glance, I couldn't separate the attached houses' distinction from this one. Its angular, red-brick front and wide steps with ornate black railings looked like any other New York Avenue upscale house. The solidarity front was my only guess of why the neighbors never called in this house of horrors.

Fuck, I wanted to be surprised, but I wasn't. Crime didn't discriminate anywhere. Not in my city, precinct jurisdiction, or not.

That perfect disillusionment included the 'family' projected by the two pimps who sat cuffed in the back of a cruiser I stepped around. The pathetic shit-excuse for humans went as far as to pose the victims as their own in fake family pictures on the main level. NYPD confiscated them as evidence while they tore apart the entire house like a fucking scavenger hunt for humanity.

Both pimps were arrested for sex trafficking after a local realtor came by on a cold-call visit. A local realtor became a hero because the house didn't smell right. They were right.

My nose twitched from being infused by the smell, which burned the insides of both nostrils and seeped into every pore on my body. Fuck, that smell. It always slapped me with the cruel, inhuman reality of how far money pushed people into unimaginably horrific conditions. Human feces, filth, and rotting bodies and souls hit me as I neared the basement door.

Taking the first step over the busted-in threshold hidden behind a taped plastic barrier, my foot trembled. Tension clenched my hands hard around the wobbly railings. Not even the prick of a splinter on the pad of my left middle finger detracted from my attention. I stepped down a creaky set of rotted wood stairs, bowing under my boots, into a basement.