jacket.
“What are you doing?” Rose said.
But before he answered she saw that he’d taken a handgun from his jacket and was checking to see that it was loaded. Rose saw everything. They were headed for disaster. Someone was going to get hurt.
“Patrice,” she called out, but it was already too late.
Right at that moment Patrice crashed against the door and the lock broke. The door burst open and Patrice came rushing in after it, falling to the ground.
Rose saw it all unfold before her eyes like a nightmare. She didn’t know what it was that terrified her most. Was it the fact that Patrice was about to see her tied naked to the bed in a pool of her own urine? Or the fact that Fat Boy was standing in the corner with a gun, ready to hurt someone?
Patrice shook himself off as he got to his feet. He glanced wildly around the room and when he saw Rose his eyes widened.
“What the fuck?” he said.
Rose knew that this was going to change everything. In that instant that he laid eyes on her she could see everything in her life change. The future she had briefly imagined with Patrice, it was never going to happen now. It had been a pipe dream anyway, how could she hope to have a future with a prospect for the DRMC, the gang that was going to use her as a slave? But at least it had been a dream. In the second it took for Patrice to take in that view of her, she knew that none of it was ever going to happen.
Whatever happened now, it wouldn’t be what she’d been hoping for. Patrice wouldn’t be able to get this out of his mind. He couldn’t unsee what he’d already seen. She was lying there, in urine and jizz, and she was disgusting. That’s all she was, a worthless, disgusting, whore. That’s all she was and that was all she would ever be and she knew it.
XV
“W HAT HAVE YOU DONE TO her?” Patrice said to Fat Boy.
Fat Boy was smirking cruelly. He had his handgun drawn and pointed right at Patrice.
“What do you mean?” he said to Patrice. “She did all that to herself.”
“She didn’t tie herself up?” Patrice said.
“No, I did that. But she’s the one that pissed all over herself. She’s the one that took off her clothes. She’s the fucking slut she always was, and it’s not my fault that she managed to pull the wool over your eyes.”
“She’s not a slut,” Patrice said.
He looked down at Rose and she tried to look away but she couldn’t. There was such confusion in his face. It was like he didn’t know what he was looking at. He didn’t seem to be sure even if Rose was the same girl he’d spent the previous day with. She could understand his confusion. He’d left her barely eight hours earlier and she’d been dressed in clean clothes, she’d looked together, like someone who might be able to work her way out of slavery and become someone’s old lady.
Now she looked utterly worthless. She looked disgusting, like a whore. There’d be no recovering from this for her. Patrice would never look at her the same way.
“Look at her,” Fat Boy said. “She’s a disgusting mess. You can’t fucking trust a woman like that, Patrice.”
Patrice nodded slowly. He looked at Rose and then at Fat Boy. Fat Boy was still pointing his gun at him.
“What’s the gun for?” Patrice said.
Fat Boy smiled. He lowered the weapon and began talking.
“You don’t want anything to do with a girl like this, Patrice,” he said. “I know you were getting attached to her. Serge knew. He told me to make sure you saw her for what she was.”
“So you pissed all over her?”
“I already told you, that’s her own fucking piss, Patrice. That aint mine. She spent the night drinking beer and flirting with me and then I tied her up for safety. I woke up and this was what I saw. This fucking disgusting mess.”
Rose was shaking her head.
“What?” she said in disbelief. “What are you saying? Patrice, you can’t believe this.”
Patrice looked at her. He genuinely looked pained, as if he
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