More Than a Hotline Fling

-1-

A/N: Trigger/sensitivity warning (cruelty against minors). 

Damian's POV

This is fucking disgusting.

My fingers trembled as I lifted them up to my eyes. Heavier than the three days' worth of exhaustion that dragged them down, I still couldn't have closed my eyes if I tried. I knew the moment I did, what I saw flashed through me shifted from the conscious absorption to subconscious nightmares portions of my brain.

Like every time, I was unprepared.

Not even my supervisor's late-night 'Get your ass in' call that physically woke me up mentally prepared me for tonight's raid. My auto piloted 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 my full Kevlar for the first time in thirteen months.

The APB's from the com on my shoulder buzzing static in my ears weren't enough preparation. After almost ten years working at New York Police Department's 34h Precinct, the numbered codes were basic 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 fell in our jurisdiction. Fuck, on the other side of the Harlem River, it was another world away. The 46th precinct's Lieutenant Soreca called us in for investigative support, where 'Us' meant my supervisor Deputy Inspector Hernandez and I. Every mental alarm I owned fired off when I realized that none of my twenty-six detectives were on scene.

The upscale and well-maintained appearance of the neighborhood felt words away from where my feet now 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 the back of my neck, my own personal evidence of the dank, humid, oppressive space that contrasted the cherished, desirable brownstone-style house upstairs. At first glance, I couldn't separate the difference between the attached houses and this particular one. Its angular, red-brick front, and wide steps with ornate black railings looked like any other upscale house on New York Avenue. The solidarity in house fronts was my best explanation of why this house of horrors was never called in by the neighbors.

Fuck, I'd say that even I was surprised when I arrived but I'm not anymore. Crime doesn't discriminate, anywhere.

That perfect disillusionment included the 'family' projected by the two pimps who sat cuffed in the back of a cruiser that I stepped around. The pathetic, shit-excuse for humans even posed the victims as their own in fake family pictures. NYPD confiscated them as evidence as 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.

Local realtor becomes a hero, all because the house didn't smell 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, always the smell slapped me with the cruel, inhuman reality of how far money pushed people into unimaginable, horrific conditions. Human feces, perspiration, and the rotting of human bodies and souls hit me as I neared the basement door.