Page 24 of Under Their Watch

“Okay,” I say quietly.

“We talked earlier about how he’d bring others over to the house. Can you tell me about that?” she asks.

“He said he had other submissives. Sometimes he’d go to them, but sometimes he’d bring them to the house. When they would be at the house, I was instructed to sit in the closet and meditate. He would put me in there before he’d go pick them up and let me out once he took them home and got back,” I say.

“Put you in there, how?” she asks.

“Uh,” I say. “He, uh… he would generally restrain me. There is this metal hook in the floor where he attached the chain from my wrists to the floor… Most of the time, he would put that full face leather mask thing on me. It had holes in it to breathe, but otherwise it fully wrapped around my head, kind of made things muffled to hear, but mostly I hated it because I couldn’t see.”

“What would you hear when he’d have people over?” she asks.

“The same thing as when he would do scenes with me. I was never allowed to be that loud, though. I would’ve been punished for it,” I say.

“Loud how?”

“Well, they would yell and scream. Eventually, I wouldn’t be able to understand what they were saying. I think he would put a gag in their mouth,” I say.

“When you could hear, what would they say? Do you remember anything?”

“They would just beg him to stop,” I say. “Again, it’s basically the same things he did with me. The only difference is that I learned how to keep my mouth shut. They didn’t.”

“Did you ever hear anyone else?” she asks.

“Yeah. He would sometimes have a friend over. I never met them though,” I explain.

“What’s the longest he kept you in the closet?” she asks.

“Uh… A few days,” I say. “The closet was always locked, so when he would keep me in there for more than ten hours or so, he would leave that mask thing on me and put bottles of water and a bucket in there.”

“How often did you leave the house?” she asks.

“Every few months,” I say.

“So… here’s the problem we are having,” she says, picking up the tablet from the table and tapping around on it.

“What?” I ask.

“When is the last time you saw your mother?” she asks.

“When I turned eighteen and married Marvin,” I say.

“Your mother, stepfather, and Marvin filed a missing persons report,” she says.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“You mother thinks you are dead,” she says. “Two days ago, they filed to have you considered deceased.”

“How did I never know about this?” Quinn asks. “It was never on the news or anything. Her family was well known enough that it should have been on the news.”

“They were well known enough to get away with it,” Theo says. “Have you talked to her mother and stepfather?”

“I did,” she says. “I had to come forward and explain that you are no longer a missing person, so the court wouldn’t consider her dead.”

“I am so confused,” I say. “Was I not under a conservatorship?”

“No,” she says.

“I was in the hospital and at a facility,” I say.

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