Page 21 of Under Their Watch

“No problem,” he says. No one else is allowed in my home, though.”

“Can he do that?” Mia whispers to Emma, and she nods.

“I don’t have much,” I say.

“I can stand here with Mr. Miller,” the officer says. I nod and scurry past Marvin. He doesn’t follow, so I rush to the bedroom. I start gathering my clothing into a bag. When I turn around, I fall back against the wall and scream when I see David kicking the bedroom door.

“You dumb little bitch,” he growls and grabs me by the throat. “You have three days to come to me, or I will start picking off your friends one by one until I get what I paid for.”

“Please let go of me,” I whimper. He chuckles and tucks a business card into the front of my dress against my breast before taking a few large steps backward.

“I’d advise you to keep your mouth shut,” he says before the door comes open. Quinn comes straight to me and wraps me in a hug.

“What happened? What did he say?” Quinn asks. I shake my head, and he grabs my face. “Talk to me, Rhea. What happened?”

“He… He said I had three days to come to him or he would hurt you guys,” I whisper. I pull the card out of my dress and hand it to him. “He put this in my dress.”

“Good girl, Rhea,” he praises as he hands it off to the officer without looking away from me. “I’m proud of you.”

“You put something down her shirt?” Emma asks David.

“Yeah, Jealous?” David says with a smirk.

The officer gets on her radio and calls for backup. David and Marvin are glaring at me and I feel nervous being in this room. Marvin is standing in front of the armoire that holds his guns. “He has guns in the armoire behind him,” I whisper to Quinn.

Officer Gett hears enough of my sentence to react. “I need for you two to step out of the room with me so she can finish getting her belongings.”

“I don’t want them in my home,” Marvin snaps. “I have the right to make sure no one steals from me.”

“Should have thought about that before your buddy here assaulted her,” Casey says. “Out.”

When they step out of the room, I push away from Quinn and hurriedly pack the rest of my belongings. Everyone is in the room with me and helping me where they can. I take the last bit of my clothing off of the bar in the closet and I see the back panel on the wall. That’s where he keeps everything that he tortures me with. Why does he keep it hidden? They are just sex toys.

“Uh… can I show you something?” I say to Theo. “You said you wanted to understand… I… This is admittedly embarrassing for me, but I feel like you would be the person I could show this to.”

“Yeah,” he says as he walks over to me. I pull the panel off and step back so he can see what is behind the wall. He immediately turns and looks at me. “Is this… Was he using this shit on you?”

“Yeah,” I say. Quinn and Jace step over to him and the first thing that Quinn pulls out is a flogger. The tails are made of thin chains with metal points on the end. The handle is simple, metal tubing, wrapped with black leather. One by one, they start pulling items out like metal clamps, full face leather masks, restraints, bars, and metal whips. The whips are all made of stainless steel and the popper on the end is simple braided cow leather with a metal point fashioned to the end.

“What the fuck,” Theo says. “I’m at a loss for words.”

“Hand me that bag,” Anika says to Mia. Mia hands it to her and Anika squeezes past Theo, Quinn, and Jace to start putting the items in the bag.

“What are you doing?” Rowan asks her.

“Being a petty bitch,” she says. “I should be encouraging Quinn and Jace to beat the fuck out of him with these, but we are taking them with us instead.”

“I don’t want them,” I say.

“Yeah, but we don’t want him to have them either,” she says. “We can get rid of them, but you can claim to them if he was using them on you. He’s not dumb enough to argue that point in front of that cop. These are torture tools, especially combined with all of the scars you have.”

“Uh,” Emma says. “Rhea, did you ever meet any of these subs that he brought in?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t know if they even knew I was there.”

“We are taking all of this to the police,” she says. “If you haven’t touched it, don’t.”

“Why?” I ask.

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