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.
At the first step over the busted in threshold hidden behind a taped up 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 my attention as I stepped down a creaky set of rotted wood stairs into a basement.
A bare lightbulb hung above, flickering and humming over the horrible sight that surrounded me. My scalp tingled where the low ceiling brushed against the crown of my helmet. Cement block walls and arched brick columns in a line down the center of the room defined most of the windowless space. Makeshift chain-link fences connected between the two shattered the façade that fooled every neighbor on the whole damn block.
Pretty sure the street blocked off with tape and cruisers has their attention now.
My heart squeezed at the dirt-stained skin that hung loose over their malnourished bodies. Skeleton-like fingers hugged their frail forms, the prominent bones etched with shadows. Dirty and torn scraps of fabric, pathetic impressions of clothing, hung over their ragged shoulders. Lifeless, yellowed, and sunken in eyes gazed up at me with the mixture of fear and disbelief that was too fucking familiar, yet my stomach clenched hard like it did every time.
"Did you see them outside -" Hernandez started when a concealed back door was busted through with an Enforcer. The metal, cylindrical battering ram swung back and rammed forward in arc-like motions, the pounding slams echoing through the basement.
"Yeah," I muttered.
Sickening was the best description of how I felt whenever I saw a rapist, pimp, sex trafficker, or murderer and knew within one glance that the perp was guilty.
Feels like I'm wearing the fucking cuffs, with how restrained I have to be.
I tried not to look at them once cuffed because my reactions didn't matter at that point.
Fuck yes, I saw the perps.
From where they sat in the back of a cruiser, their heads dipped down and blue and red highlights flashed over their sweat-soaked foreheads. I hoped they breathed the last free air of their lives. My throat choked and I swallowed the bitter pill of reality that prosecution slapped them with a negligible fine and a jail sentence too short for an incentive for them to change.
Given what's in front of me now, I'd better not see them again. Can't promise they won't 'accidentally' smash their heads getting out the cruiser for processing.
Random, frustrated shouts of 'In here!' broke through my thoughts. Feet trampled across the floor, followed by loud, crashing, wood-splintering intrusion sounds, and softer yells dissolved into strings of curse words. All the noise chatter dimmed in the back of my mind as I knelt down. My knees were weak but I towered over the group of four children nearest to the stairs.
Fuck, they're so close to that door.
As I crept down closer to eye level, they shrunk into the further away back corner. That part always angered me the most, the psychological damage inflicted until innocent children believed pimps were family caretakers and I was the enemy. All they saw was my uniform, the bulletproof vest, helmet, and holstered gun, but their recoiling was hard not to take personally.
The fear in their eyes was hard not to take personally.
My right knee hit the hard, rough cement floor, followed by my foot grounded until the cold permeated into my shin. With deliberately slow, careful movements, I reached out two open palms. As expected, four dry mouths parted and pairs of eyes widened were their reactions, even from my half-kneeling position.
"Back up," I commanded with a hand gesture. My own frustration rolled up the back of my throat like bile, which deepened and desensitized my voice, "Vuelve!" (Get back!)
Rustling sounds, like rats scurrying through New York's sidewalk trash, erupted deeper into the corner. The sad fact was that those rats lived better than these victims, with the freedom of mobility.
Cool metal brushed over my fingers and the worn familiarity of my holstered gun slipped into my right palm. The clicked sound as I smashed open the nearest lock with the base of my Glock 19 died in my ears. A tiny spark flared up upon contact, along with a loud smack of metal on metal that released soft whimpers from the victims.
Unlike the humming sounds around me, the clank as the lock dropped onto the cement next to my right knee pounded straight into my ear drums. The tiny shred of myself that clung to the naïve belief that humanity was good, and kind, and pure thinned and threatened to snap as the sound disappeared. My chest heaved with slow, deep breaths and my counselor's words echoed through my mind.
They're alive. They're safe.
"Estás a salvo," I croaked out, on repeat until my mouth dried and tongue swelled. My fingers curled for them to leave this hellhole showcasing the worst side of humanity. "You're safe."
My knees shook more when I stood up. "How much did you know, Sir?" Over my shoulder, my voice cracked from how much I restrained myself.
Already my muscles tired from how locked up they were and my bones ached with the expected long hours. My heart thumped hard in my chest. Adrenaline surged my blood through my veins.
My mind though...
Fuck, that's a mess.
Experience taught me that the worst mental part was still coming, the quieter darkness that leeched in after the adrenalin high crash. Incoming coping mechanism struggles sagged on my shoulders.
"They never made a sound, according to John." My superior and mentor, Hernandez, shook his head more times than I counted. 'John Doe' was the temporary name of the realtor, who'd requested his identity remained concealed.
Can't say I blame him.
"Of course not." A dry scoff left me because even though the Family Services specialists were enroute, I didn't need a degree in psychology to see that those children were psychologically poisoned into a situation that none of them deserved.
Hernandez' medium-brown eyes darkened the more he took in, his shoulders dropping the more he absorbed, and he palmed his hips on either side of his slightly protruded belly. His face aged when the corners of his mouth turned down. One of his hands lifted up and dragged over his goatee, which turned gray two years before the rest of his hair caught up.
His eyes lifted to mine, now weighed with additional knowledge he knew and bore responsibility of informing me as to why the fuck the two of us were here. I had more than enough nightmares and similar cases in my own work queue.
"Sir..." I stated, not asked, in an unusual prompt for his direct, blunt approach. "What aren't you telling me?"
My heart skipped a few beats as he pulled out his phone, flipped over the screen, then flashed me a picture of a man sitting in the backseat of a cruiser. Arms cuffed and back rounded, he slumped away from the camera. A red hooded sweatshirt was tucked under a black winter jacket. With his head dipped down, most of his black, unruly hair hid his tanned face.
I know him... How do I know him?
The more I studied the photo, the more a chill spread down my spine. My skin tingled like I plunged myself into an ice bath, or worse the nearby frozen over Harlem River. An itch raised with the hairs on the back of my neck and my breath stalled in my lungs until they burned.
Inspector Hernandez zoomed in on the perp's face, a pair of glaring black eyes and arrogant flash of yellow teeth. With that realization, only the sharp, painful beats of my heart verberated through me. Like sonic pulses against the walls of the empty vessel the rest of my body had turned into, the reason I'd been called in here wasn't professional but personal.
With a flick of his finger, Hernandez flipped to the perps apprehended tonight. One I didn't recognize. Even with his black locks upgraded to a shaved head, facial recognition was all I needed to know that Édgar Santino was arrested again.
And I didn't even know he'd gotten out of Rikers.
My right hand lifted on its own and clutched onto my lowest left rib. With a tight press of my palm into my ink, pain clenched around my heart. The invisible restraints I felt looking at the detained perps were slapped back in place.
June.