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Actually… nah, afraid wasn’t exactly it.
But everything Alicia said about her being volatile and unpredictable was absolutely true, and inthismoment… I couldn’t be sure how that would pan out.
Before, it was part of the appeal with her.
I was a wild nigga, and she brought the energy to match.
Now though… I’d found myself… off that.
And it would be fruitless to claim—even just in my own head—that Tati wasn’t a large part of that. She’d made the point that she was about the motorcycle club, gang shit life before she ever knew I existed, and I respected that. Especially knowing she was raised by runawayRosesandThorns.
Toughness wasn’t a question.
But she had limits I wasn’t sure existed in Margeaux, by no fault of her own, honestly.
Margeaux wasn’t a bad person—by my standards, which weren’t everyone’s. But I couldn’t fool myself into believing she wasn’t capable of hurting anybody she perceived as in the way of whatever her goals were.
And that was part of the problem, honestly.
Whatwereher goals?
Etienne was in prison. She’d already been torturing him bit by bit there, but she’d promised me that particular kill was mine.
Since she’d snuffed out the lights in my mother.
Renard though… I wasn’t sure exactly what he’d done to her, but she’d been excited about the prospect of ripping him apart.
We’d agreed on that, so it was a matter of who could get to him first.
It wasn’tonlyaccess though; it was opportunity.
Renard kept himself well protected and we were walking around with kill switches in our brains. Getting close enough to take him out would have to be strategic; it wasn’t a thing you could just wake up and decide, if the goal was actual success.
Hopefully… that’s all Margeaux was about.
We had in common that we felt like our abusers needed to die in order for us to see peace. But in the back of my mind, I could draw a connection—yes, the Belroses were ultimately themostresponsible. No,RosesandThornsdidn’t have much choice in a lot of the terrible things we’d been directed to carry out.
There wassomenow though.
At least while we were cognizant.
Alicia’s research had revealed that the escape of Jesse and his cohort had forced a change in the science of the psychological torture and control mechanisms they used.
There was such a thing as too far, which varied for each individual person.
If pushed past that line, it made it much more likely for the control to be broken.
So with the modern iteration ofThe Garden, there were different divisions for different things because some were capable of things others weren’t.
I’d never been forced to do what Jesse had done, but only because they knew they wouldn’t have been able to control me after. There was no doubt in my mind that they would’ve if they could’ve, just to add to my torture.
It was honestly kind of relieving.
And vaguely, I wondered if we should be grateful; what that originalGardenhad endured was by all accounts, evenworsethan what we had.
Their escape was how they figured out the even harsher methods didn’t work long term.
But, even knowing they were under a certain level of control, it stood to reason that a victim of their actions would still see them as responsible. And in a roundabout way… they could fall under the umbrella of people Margeaux saw as part of her abuse.
