rape plot

I see a lot of people saying "what were you expecting" regarding the rape and I want to put down my thoughts on that.

It's not that a lot of us weren't 'expecting' it. We were just hoping that, for once, we could have a story with a twisted black flag ML who didn't resort to rape. You can write a character who is okay with maiming and killing people just to further his mafia/business ambitions, but still see rape as the low class act that it really is. Not every murderer needs to be a rapist and vice versa. They're separate crimes. You can be a complete piece of shit in multiple ways.

Besides, Lorenzo raping Rian makes no sense based on what we learned about his upbringing. Around chapter 12, we see Lorenzo's grandfather teaching him that nothing is worth it if you haven't bled for it. If Lorenzo really wanted to conquer/win over Rian, raping him when he was drugged and in no state to fight back isn't really 'bleeding' for him. I personally expected him to put in a lot of effort into winning him over to his side. I also expected Rian to put up a big fight against him since he's a capable secret agent.

A lot of BL readers are fatigued by rape being such a prevalent trope. 99% of the time it does absolutely nothing for the plot but ruin any and all tension that had been built up. Honestly, I can't even think of any instances off the top of my head where rape actually furthered the plot. It is an incredibly tacky way for authors to show that "hey guys, in case you already didn't know, this character is supposed to be a bad person because they just committed rape". We already KNOW Lorenzo is a bad person; him biting off that dude's tongue and murdering over a dozen people since the start of the story is enough to tell us that.

Will I keep reading this? Yes, but not with the same level of fanaticism/excitement that I had for it previously. It just became another generic BL. I also won't be recommending it to other people because I don't want to accidentally trigger anyone with that brutal rape scene. Most people, unsurprisingly, aren't so hot about rape.