Twisted Rose: Motorcycle Dark Romance 3 (The Darkness Trilogy) by Abby Weeks

them. All of that means something.”
    Josh was still shaking his head. Rose put her arms around him and held him close.
    “Shh,” she said in his ear as if soothing a child. “You let go of it all. You did what you could. It’s more than most men would ever do. You can’t control destiny but you can control your own actions, Josh. And you’ve done that.”
    “And what about the kid, Patrice. Should I have done something about him too? Why did I let him go. He raped you and I let him go.”
    “You didn’t know he raped me.”
    “I could have guessed.”
    “You followed your instincts, Josh. You followed your heart.”
    “I shouldn’t have. It’s just, there was something about him. Something about him that just made me feel pity for him. What was that?”
    “I don’t know,” Rose said, and she genuinely didn’t, “but if you think it will help any, I can tell you what happened the night he raped me. I can tell you the way it went down. Maybe that will help you understand.”

XXII
    T HEY WERE SITTING NEXT TO each other on the bed. Rose noticed the thin cotton of the sheets, the faded curtains, the stained paint on the walls. The place was poor and it showed but to her it was a palace. Compared to the places she’d been forced to live for the last couple of years it was like heaven. She would have happily stayed there for the rest of her life with Josh.
    Josh looked at her. She felt self-conscious under his gaze. There was something about him that was different from any other man she’d ever met. He seemed harder, grittier. It was as if he came from a different world, a place where things were harder and meaner. He seemed ready for anything.
    “I’m not sure I want to hear this story,” he said.
    “I don’t have to tell it,” she said.
    And she knew she shouldn’t. It was a bad idea to tell Josh too many of the details of the things that had happened to her before he’d rescued her. It might make him see her differently. He might look at her as a victim, as weak, or worse, he might look at her as dirty, tainted. But there was another reason too. He might want to punish every man who’d ever hurt her, and that could get him killed.
    “You said earlier that he was a soldier, obeying orders.”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “But they didn’t order him to rape you, did they?”
    Rose looked at Josh and knew she was crossing a line. She was going to tell him things that would have consequences, things that it would be better never to speak of. But for some reason she felt compelled to speak.
    “They did actually,” she said. “Serge and Fat Boy made him rape me as a final show of his loyalty to the club.”
    Josh looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “Why would that show loyalty?”
    “Because he didn’t want to do it.”
    Josh was quiet again. Rose looked at him as he sat there, lost in his thoughts.
    “What are you thinking?” she said quietly.
    “He was sweet on you, wasn’t he?”
    She nodded.
    “He was nice to you?”
    “He was. At least for a time he was.”
    Josh shook his head. “That’s why I spared him. I could tell he was kind, at least deep down.”
    “I knew he didn’t want to rape me. He didn’t even want to look at me. Fat Boy and Serge had left me in a terrible state. I was tied to a bed.”
    She thought about telling Josh that they’d made her piss herself but the words just wouldn’t come. She wasn’t able to say it. It had been the most humiliating, brutal thing that had ever happened to her and she simply wasn’t able to voice it out loud.
    “So Serge and Fat Boy figured out he was sweet on you and they made him rape you?”
    “That’s what happened.”
    Josh was still shaking his head.
    “That’s the way they did things. I don’t understand it. It’s almost as if they sought out beautiful things in the world just so they could destroy them. That’s the reason they had you in the first place, so that they could disrespect the memory of your father. Why would