Twisted Rose: Motorcycle Dark Romance 3 (The Darkness Trilogy) (17 page)

“There’s something I have to say to you,” Patrice said.

Rose knew what he was going to say. He was going to apologize for what had happened. When he’d refused to shoot Josh back at the clearing, she knew he still had feelings for her. Or at least she knew he still had strong feelings about what had happened two years ago.

“If you’re going to apologize for what happened, don’t.”

Patrice looked surprised, maybe even a little taken aback by her words. Rose didn’t care. She didn’t care if she’d offended him. He’d raped her!

“I
was
going to apologize,” he said.

Rose looked at him. His face was kind and sad.

“Some things, you can’t apologize for,” she said. “It’s sad but it’s true, Patrice.”

He nodded. He knew she was right.

“Maybe you can’t apologize with words,” he said, but you can apologize with deeds.”

Rose thought about that. Maybe it was true. It would depend on the deed, but she agreed with him that some things that couldn’t be undone with mere words, might be somehow atoned for in deeds.

“Like what?” she said.

“I know I can’t ever take back what I did to you. I can’t undo the pain of it, and I know I should have stood up to Serge when he told me to hurt you.”

“Yes, you should have.”

“And I wish I had. I really do, Rose. I wish I would have told Serge right then and there that I wasn’t going to do it. I should have told him that nothing was worth hurting the girl I loved.”

Rose flashed her eyes at him. She’d never heard those words from him before.

She said nothing. After all that had happened to her in the two years since he’d betrayed her, what was there to say?

“I still remember everything about that day,” he said. “I remember pulling into the motel lot, the way I felt as I climbed the stairs toward your room. I was so excited to see you. I was going to tell you to run away with me. I was going to tell you that we could escape together, that we could make a run for freedom together if you wanted to try for it.”

Rose thought about that. She thought about what might have happened if he’d come into the room and told her that they could try to escape. She’d have gone for it. She was certain of that. But in a way she was almost glad it had never come to pass. She’d have avoided a lot of agony, but she also would have spent the rest of her life with a man who deep down was a coward. And she never would have met Josh.

“And then I came into the room, and Fat Boy was there, and he had you tied to the bed, and his semen was on you, and you were covered in piss.”

Rose lifted her hand. She didn’t need to be reminded of the details of that sordid night. She didn’t need Patrice to tell her how disgusting she’d looked and how much she stank. Lying in that bed, covered in piss, she’d never forgot what that had felt like. It had been horrible. She’d been disgusting. She could even see the disgust in Patrice’s face when he’d been forced to rape her. But all that was behind her now. She wasn’t going to let that one, awful crime define her any longer.

“I’m sorry,” Patrice said. “You don’t need to be reminded of all that. But just know that while it was happening, the only disgust I felt was at myself. You were beautiful. You always were and you always will be beautiful to me.”

Rose looked around at her surroundings. She didn’t know why Patrice was telling her these things. She wasn’t interested in discussing the past with him. He’d betrayed her, he’d wronged her, and she’d suffered brutally for two long years as a result. She didn’t think there was anything he could do or say now that would change the way she felt about all of that.

“Let me do one thing to redeem myself,” Patrice said.

XXXIX

“W
HAT IS IT, PATRICE?
What is it that you think you can do to make up for what happened to me?”

“I can hurt the DRMC.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can get to the president.”

“Josh already got Deuce.”

“Deuce was the chapter president up in Val-d’Or. I can get to the leadership of the entire club. If I took out these guys the entire structure of the club could fall apart. There is no DRMC without these guys.”

“There will still be all the local chapters,” Rose said.

“Well, it would be a start at least. If you take out their leadership they can’t function. It would be a blow to the DRMC, and perhaps others could take up the fight from there. The DRMC is so entrenched in Quebec politics, it’s so powerful, that no one can even take a shot at them. Not even the government. If I succeeded in doing this, it would at least give others a chance to take them down.”

“And what if you failed?”

Patrice looked into her eyes. “At least I’d get to die knowing I hadn’t lived my entire life as a coward.”

There were so many questions Rose wanted to ask. She wanted to know what exactly his plan was, she wanted to know who would be taken out, and she wanted to know what the probability of success was. But as she looked at Patrice she realized that none of those questions really mattered. What mattered was Patrice’s own soul, and this was the only way he’d ever be able to redeem himself for what he’d done to her.

“You don’t need my permission to try something like that,” she said. “You don’t need my blessing.”

“No,” Patrice said. “I know that. I wasn’t asking for your blessing. And I’m not asking for your forgiveness for what I did to you in the past. I just wanted you to know what I was going to do. And that if I died in the attempt, at least you’d know that I wasn’t all bad.”

Rose looked at him for a long time. “You’re not all bad,” she said at last. “And I hope you succeed in whatever it is you’re going to try to do.”

*

R
IDING BACK THROUGH THE FOREST
toward the highway, Patrice felt better than he had in a long time. Ever since he’d joined the DRMC he’d felt as if a cloud was hanging over everything he did. There was no happiness in that life for him. There was no rest in it. All the DRMC ever seemed to do was hurt people. The only joy that was allowed was the joy of causing despair to others. He’d had to rape Rose to get his patch and ever since then he hadn’t found any joy in life.

When Murdoch told him to kill Josh back at the clearing it was as if something inside him broke. He just wasn’t able to do it. He’d spent years telling himself that he was worthless, that he was a bad man and that no one would ever be able to love him after the things he’d done. He’d learned to think of himself as a monster, an outcast and a fiend. And he’d done things that only a fiend could do.

But looking at Rose and Josh back in the clearing, seeing how they were willing to die for each other, seeing that they would rather die free than live as slaves of the DRMC, something had snapped. He hadn’t been able to obey the order. He hadn’t been able to kill Josh Carter, the man who’d spared him back in Val-d’Or.

And he felt better for it. He felt more alive than he’d felt in years. He couldn’t remember ever feeling as good about himself and about the things he’d done as he did now.

He knew too that he might be facing the end of his life. Killing the president of the Dark Rebel Motorcycle Club was no easy task. It would be difficult to succeed, and then, even if he did succeed it would be next to impossible to escape with his life.

But he didn’t care. He’d made up his mind. This was what he wanted. He wasn’t going to be a slave any longer. If he died, at least the harness that the DRMC had put on him would be off his back.

He knew where the DRMC master clubhouse was located. It wasn’t the same as the regular clubhouses in Montreal where members hung out and drank beer and slept with whores. It was completely different.

The real headquarters of the DRMC didn’t look like an MC clubhouse at all. It was an office with a boardroom and computers and secretaries on computers. It was located in one of the most prestigious and expensive office complexes in all of Montreal. It was a place where politicians and business leaders could meet with the president of the MC, the real president, and do shady deals that affected the entire province of Quebec.

Few people knew it but the president of the DRMC wasn’t even a biker. He wasn’t the kind of man anyone would expect to find at the head of an organization like the DRMC. He was rich, and white, and well educated and soft-spoken. He had a business degree from Harvard and was friends with the richest and most powerful men in Canada. His stockbrokers on Bay Street handled more transactions than any other firm in Toronto. His lawyers were the same firm that represented the Governor General. His business holdings included some of the largest and most powerful corporations in Canadian commerce, including banks, insurance firms, government contractors and municipal suppliers.

His name was John Grady Heart and Patrice knew firsthand that he was a man so ruthless and evil that he doubted he had a heart at all.

XL

R
OSE STOOD IN THE CLEARING
and watched Patrice ride off into the forest. She had no idea what he was going to try to do. She’d never heard of John Grady Heart before and she didn’t know if Patrice would succeed of not in his plan to kill him. She would have been lying to herself if she said she didn’t care. She cared a great deal for Patrice, she always had, ever since the time she first met him. Her feelings for him had always been genuine. But after the things he’d done to her, after that rape that had been orchestrated by Serge and Fat Boy, she’d known that there could be no future between them.

As the sound of Patrice’s engine faded into the distance, Rose uttered a quiet prayer. She didn’t pray that he would be safe. She knew he wasn’t going to be safe, not while he was headed out on a mission to assassinate the president of the DRMC. And she didn’t even pray that he would succeed in that mission. She was beyond caring about the future of the DRMC and the corrupt politics of Montreal and Quebec. What she prayed for, what she wished for Patrice Dupuis, was that he found redemption. She wanted him to overcome with courage and bravery the terrible crimes he’d committed in the past. She wanted him to find peace.

She thought it was strange that she was wishing for peace for a man who’d committed an unthinkable crime against her. And it
was
strange. But she also felt that she’d come a long way since that had happened. Two years had passed. And people moved forward.

She’d always known that Patrice had been as much of a victim in that incident as she had. He’d been a DRMC man, he’d wanted to become part of their awful club, but she knew that he’d had very few other options in life. The DRMC was the only game in a town like his, there was nothing else for the men to aspire to, and they usually didn’t realize just how bad the club was until it was already too late. It wasn’t really an MC at all, but a branch of a big corporation based in the city whose sole purpose was to spread fear and terror throughout the province. While other MCs had strip clubs to make money, the DRMC had them to show that they could allow men to rape women without any consequence. While other MCs engaged in smuggling and petty crime to raise funds, the DRMC’s biggest business was wiping out other MCs. They’d made a business out of slaughter. They killed off other bikers, enslaved women, and created a state of fear and anarchy that allowed them to make money in other ways.

The real money wasn’t related to anything the DRMC did directly. It was all related to big business deals that happened in offices in Montreal and Toronto. The MC was just a front. And the men in it were just pawns. They were being used by the men at the top. They weren’t ever treated as part of a brotherhood, they weren’t offered any kind of solidarity or friendship, and there was no future for them other than a life of crime and violence that would eventually get them killed or locked up.

Standing there in that clearing in the forest, Rose thought about all the men who’d been sucked into the DRMC, and she felt no anger against them. All she felt was pity. They’d killed her father, they’d raped her, and for some time to come they would be hunting her and Josh and trying to kill them, but all she could muster up for them in her heart was a feeling of tremendous sadness. It was a sadness for all the waste and pain that their lives would bring.

And she felt something else too. She felt ready to move forward. She felt that she would be able to move on from the dreadful experiences she’d had at the hands of the DRMC and make a future for herself that was brighter and stronger. She knew that the things that had happened to her were wrong. They never should have happened to her or any other woman. They were evil. But she had a new perspective. She knew that the men who’d hurt her were hurting themselves too. They were all lonely men. They lived sad, sorrowful, painful lives of darkness and despair. She didn’t have to go through her life holding a grudge against all of them. She didn’t have to let those two years of hell stretch out to fill the rest of her life.

No. She would move on. She’d be able to see what had happened to her for what it was, a crime committed by a vicious organization to spread fear and terror.

And while Patrice was making his way toward the city with the goal of killing the man at the helm of the DRMC, she realized that she had a battle of her own to fight. It wasn’t one against the DRMC but against all darkness and fear in her life. She wanted to be happy. That was the journey she would make.

She knew that wherever she and Josh fled, whatever city they chose to make their home, there would be pain and suffering there. It wasn’t just the DRMC that hurt people. Everywhere, women were suffering. Men were living brutal lives of crime and violence. And she knew that with a man like Josh at her side, she could find some way of helping people like that. She could find women who’d experienced things like she’d experienced, women who’d been through sexual and physical and emotional abuse, women who’d been forced to think of themselves as filthy and worthless, and she could seek to show them that their lives could still be full of hope and joy if they only opened their hearts to those things.

Rose realized that the DRMC wasn’t her enemy, her real enemy was suffering and humiliation and degradation. And once she and Josh got away from the DRMC, she would direct her energy toward fighting those things.