Page 117 of Ravaged Devotion

Bowie made a sound of frustration, turned the weapon in his hold, and then hit Ryker on the head as hard as he could with it.

“Stop!” Rue pushed Bowie, sending him flying, and then dropped down at Ryker’s side.

There was blood at his temple where the skin had torn, an ugly bruise already beginning to form. His head lolled when Rue shook him, and he gave no response. There was a pulse when Rue checked, the only thing keeping him from completely coming apart at the seams and losing his mind.

But the fact that he was unconscious was bad in its own way.

“Wake up!” Rue demanded.

There was still one of those modified creatures left on the other side of those thin wooden doors, and even without a loaded weapon, Bowie had already proven how dangerous he was.

The sound of Bowie’s bark of laughter had him looking over, frowning when he saw that his friend was crying, despite the full belly laugh shaking his entire body.

“It doesn’t matter what that family does to you, you’re always going to choose them,” Bowie mumbled, clearly speaking to himself, though loud enough that Rue could hear every word. “The twins. Rhys. You’ll do anything just for the chance to suck their cocks, won’t you?”

“What?” Rue’s arms tightened around Ryker defensively when Bowie glanced at them.

“It’s their fault you had to leave the first time,” Bowie said more firmly. “Ryker and Ryder made a fool out of you. Shared you between them. And, what? You’re just going to pretend they didn’t and forgive that piece of shit?” He motioned at the Black Hart with the gun. “I did everything I could to make it easier on you. To set it up so it could just happen, but you had to go and ruin it each and every time!”

A river of blood from Rhys’ body reached the end of Ryker’s stretched out leg, pooling around his heel.

If it really wasn’t Rhys behind all of this…then…

No.

Rue refused to believe it. Refused to believe the person standing in front of him now, the one he’d known since high school, was capable of this type of evil.

Bowie, however, must have been tired of hiding, because he didn’t give Rue the chance to create a compelling excuse for him in his mind.

“Do you even know what your mother went through because of you?” Bowie asked. “Because you couldn’t muster the courage to tell Ryker to fuck off? I saw the video of that day. Your mom showed it to me. There’s no audio, but we could both see that whatever Ryder told you shook you. You ran away right after. Rhys wanted you arrested at first. Eulalie had to talk him down. It was only because he’s had the hots for her for over three decades that she was finally able to convince him, and it took offering herself to do it.”

“No.” Rue vehemently shook his head, rejecting that notion. “She said—”

“That they were merging the family and the companies because it was what was best for business, right?” Bowie sneered. “She did it because offering to smooth over Rhys’ reputation through a marriage merger was the only way to calm him down enough not to go after you. Ryker might be his heir, but everyone on the planet knows Ryder was his favorite, and because you weren’t there that day, he’s now trapped in a virtual reality.”

“He did that to himself.” They’d all been told as much. That it wouldn’t have made a difference if Rue had been there watching. “My mom knew, and so did Rhys.”

“Rhys was convinced you were the reason his son decided to stay there,” Bowie explained. “The video made it seem like it. Like the two of you were having a lovers spat. That’s why he didn’t show it to Ryker. He knew he wouldn’t be able to handle it and would do something stupid. You and Ryder were always the only ones who could keep that bastard’s anger issues in check. As soon as you both left him behind, he lost his mind. He’s been a nightmare for that family to deal with, including Eulalie. But all she could think about was getting you back home. It just had to be safe first.”

“What are you saying?” Rue knew what he was saying.

Rhys might not have been responsible, but his money still could have been.

It’d never occurred to him because it seemed farfetched, but…not any more so than modified creatures and aggression inducing patches.

After they were wed, his mom had access to the Hart accounts. They really did have more coin than they knew what to do with, and she was certainly smart enough to come up with a believable excuse for a chunk of money to be missing if Rhys ever noticed her big spending.

His mom had also been proud. Every bit as much as Rhys Hart, or any of the other Black Harts. She’d been raised above the rest, taught to keep her head high.

Selling herself to Rhys to keep her son safe would have been a serious blow. An understandable one too, so Rue was in no way blaming her for it. But…The two of them had never been close. Not in the normal sense of the word. Sure, maybe she’d convinced herself, and Bowie, that she wanted revenge for Rue’s benefit, but she wasn’t that much different from Rhys at the end of the day.

Rue knew all about the rumors about him after the incident. Knew how it’d taken a lot of influence and funding to bury the story as much as they were able. Stocks in the family business had dropped, for both the Vadims and the Harts.

Merely because Rue had been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Or…Really because he hadn’t been.

Ryder was the one responsible for everything. For the misunderstanding between him and Ryker, and for the stress the families were placed under after it’d leaked he’d opted to choose a life in a computer system over them.