Wrong Number

15 ~ Inspection

*disclaimer- I don't claim to know/accurately represent any child protection services. This is purely fictional. Also, this is a heated chapter, proceed with caution. Thx, happy reading!

Taking a glance at her uncle, Katie gulps. His eyes held a fiery rage that petrified her. The strangers turn to face Katie. The woman sends her a nice comforting smile, and the man's facial expression doesn't change.

The woman invites her to sit down, so she goes to sit across from them with her uncle, Danny. She can practically feel the anger rolling off his body.

Soon enough, the people leave, discerning no threat to the teenager's safety. Once again, her uncle had persuaded them to draw the conclusion that Katie wasn't mentally well and sometimes acted out to get attention. All Katie could think about was who could've possibly called it in? One of her neighbours? If so, why now? Why not any of the other times? This doesn't add up to her.

When the social workers get far enough away from the building, a rough hand tightly grabs onto her arm. Dragging the teenager to her bedroom, Danny can barely contain his excitement. He has reason to really punish her. To make her pay for ratting him out.

Katie's bedroom door collides with the wall as he throws the door open, adding to the indent that's there from previous times he's done that. She's thrown onto the bed before her uncle goes to shut the door with another slam. Tears pour down her face as she backs up in fear. Danny storms over to the bed.

A stinging slap met her face, "thought you could get away from me?"

"No-no, please," she begs.

Pinning her down on the bed, he looks at her with a malicious grin. She cringes as his breath fans her face. "Who the hell did you tell?"

"I didn't tell anyone! I swear!"

"Don't lie to me!" He roars with another slap to her face.

"I-I don't know why the-they came!" She softly begs, "please, I never told anyone!"

Danny scoffs, "if you aren't going to tell me I'll just make it harder on you."

She knew that no matter what she did, he would always go harder on her. She wasn't stupid. She's played his games before. And she was entirely done with them.

Danny frowns. Usually, she caved when he said things like that. Usually, she wanted to be saved from the pain. She's just lying there. It's not as fun when she doesn't fight back, he thinks. His sick, twisted mind liked the cat and mouse chase. Giving her a little more time, he tries to provoke her to try and fight back. Much to his disappointment, it doesn't work. Katie has accepted defeat. She has completely utterly given up. No one was going to help her. Alone and trapped in this vicious cycle, she couldn't think of anything that made her want to fight. Finally, the last tiny spark she had in her died out.

Having enough of her just lying there, her uncle begins the abuse. Since he wasn't able to have the fun of her fighting back, he decides that he will just go harder on his niece. He makes sure that she won't be able to recover for at least a few days.

Meanwhile, the Avengers that attended the meeting are busy worrying about Dahlia. Tony hasn't stopped checking her hospital records. Bucky and Natasha have been worrying that they had done the wrong thing.

They are all attached to their phones, waiting for any texts from Dahlia that might come through. However, nothing comes.

The others who were not at the meeting could tell that everyone was on edge. They just didn't know what for.

After a week of nothing—no texts, no letters from CPS, no hospital entries—Tony decides to take things into his own hands. After doing a bit of hacking, he finds that the case, just like the last one, had found nothing amiss. Seeing that the reason for the call was both times claimed to be her just looking for attention, he sets off to find Natasha.