Free Tangled Rose by Abby Weeks

didn’t know who to believe. Rose’s heart was breaking. She knew that she couldn’t win this. It didn’t matter who’d done this to her. What mattered was that it had been done. How could he ever consider forming a relationship with her now? She was property of the MC and the MC could do whatever the hell they liked to her.
    “Listen,” Fat Boy said. “Take a seat.”
    Patrice was shaking his head. He looked from Rose to Fat Boy and then leaned against the dresser that the television was on. Rose noticed that he didn’t want to sit anywhere near her. She couldn’t blame him. The smell of urine must have been revolting to him.
    “I know this can’t be easy for you to hear,” Fat Boy said. “But you’ve got to listen. If you want to ride with a club like the DRMC then you’ve got to listen to me. Serge planned all this. It’s part of your training.”
    “This is part of my training?”
    “Yes it is.”
    “What the fuck?” Patrice said.
    Rose was thinking the same thing. If this was part of the training of a new DRMC member, then the club was crueler and more brutal than even she’d imagined.
    “What’s going on?” Patrice said.
    He was having a hard time with this information. He kept looking at Rose, the girl he’d been falling for just the day before. He looked back at Fat Boy and it didn’t make sense. There she was, a humiliated, degraded wreck. How could they do that to a girl? What was the point of it? They’d ruined her.
    “It just doesn’t make sense,” Patrice said. “It’s a waste. She was a good girl. Someone could have had her. Now, she’s just disgusting. Why would you ruin a girl for no good reason?”
    “We have our reasons. There are things you’ve got to know,” Fat Boy continued. “Serge needs to know he can trust you. He needs to know he can rely on you to get the job done. Any job. The MC is going to be asking you to do some very difficult things once you become fully patched and Serge needs to know that you’re man enough to do them. He needs to know you’re not soft.”
    “Of course I’m man enough,” Patrice said.
    “Are you?” Fat Boy said, looking Patrice up and down.
    Fat Boy seemed to be assessing Patrice, weighing him up.
    “Yes. I’d do anything for the MC. Serge knows that.”
    “Well that’s a good thing,” Fat Boy said, because Serge is on his way here right now.
    “What?” Patrice said.
    He looked shocked, frightened even. He wasn’t used to dealing directly with the VP of the chapter and Serge had a tough reputation, even among members of his own club. He looked at Rose then and she knew it was the end of everything she’d been hoping to create with Patrice.
    He’d been her one ray of hope, her one chance at making something bearable of her new life here under the DRMC, and she could see it all slipping away before her eyes. She squirmed under Patrice’s gaze. She felt ashamed, humiliated. She was horrible. She was worthless. What would he see when he looked at her now? He wouldn’t see the girl she’d been. He’d see the girl she was now. He’d see what she’d become. She’d become a filthy, disgusting, worthless animal.

XVI
    W HEN ROSE HEARD SERGE’S MOTORCYCLE pull up outside the motel she knew she was in trouble. Everything that had happened to her since being captured by the DRMC had been leading up to this point and it was going to be her hardest test yet.
    Patrice and Fat Boy were standing in the room looking down at her and they both seemed a little more nervous than they had before. She hated that they were looking at her. She felt so ashamed. All she wanted was for someone to cover her up with a blanket. Even being dead would have been better than this, she thought. She knew she shouldn’t let herself think like that but it was how she felt. She could smell the stench of her urine on the sheets around her. She could look down at her naked body and see how exposed she was. She wanted to disappear. She wanted to die.
    When