Page 100 of Ravaged Devotion

Apparently that dessert had been served at their wedding.

Rue had looked for it when his mom had married Rhys two years ago, but it had been absent.

“No.” Rue answered honestly. He’d made a game for his brother. No one could have imagined something like this would actually happen.

Ryker may have inherited his dad’s anger issues and arrogance, but he didn’t waste time on intricate plots and schemes. He certainly wouldn’t find joy in making them all fearful for their lives for days on end, without needing them to know the exact reason for their suffering beforehand.

“If you were the villain of this story,” he dared to say, “you would have locked the doors with one of those things inside the very first night. Would have laughed as you watched us all scramble and panic. You’d make sure we all knew we were being tormented for crossing you. You and Rhys are miles apart.”

Ryker grew quiet, and in his silence, it became apparent that he didn’t believe him.

To anyone else, it might come off strange, but Rue knew about his hidden insecurities, especially when it came to members of his family. Ryker hated his father and compared himself to his brother. Not with the intention to change himself or try to be more like Ryder, but almost as a desperate attempt to stand out from the rest of the Harts.

On the outside, he was a bratty bully. Vicious and cruel. But anger issues aside, Ryker was hardly the most violent of the Black Harts. Hell, he wouldn’t even make the top three.

Rue should have known, no matter how upset he was, Ryker would never resort to this. Not only because it was certifiably insane, but also because pulling something like this off required a level of fixation that, frankly, the eldest Hart twin lacked.

Ryker acted in the moment.

Spending three years concocting some wild scheme would seem like a massive waste of energy to him. He would have either gotten bored halfway through, or lost patience with the process and openly attacked them to vent his anger.

“You didn’t know I was sneaking into your room at night,” Ryker said softly then, as if able to read Rue’s mind.

He hummed. “You left me covered in come every time, Ryk. You were hardly subtle.”

“Are you saying you knew?”

He hadn’t, because it would have been a major stretch to assume his new stepbrother who openly hated him spent his evening pleasuring himself over Rue’s body. “Even if I didn’t know about that part of the equation, you made your ire toward me abundantly clear. Whenever anything went wrong, I knew exactly who to suspect first.”

Yet even pinning down it was Rhys didn’t give them any clues as to what his motive could be. That part still stumped them both.

“Who else worked with you on the game?” Rue asked, because there had to have been a team, for all the reasons he’d just thought of and more. Even if it was something he was interested in, Ryker wouldn’t have stuck with it for a year without outside motivation.

“Arcadia,” he answered. “It was a start-up company when I approached them. I paid for everything, with the understanding that they don’t own the rights and aren’t allowed to reproduce, copy, or distribute the game without my say so. It’s in the contract.”

“Do you think someone from there helped your dad?”

“Doubtful. Even though I wouldn’t give them the rights to sell, it was a small team, and we got on pretty well. I still speak with most of them. We just haven’t talked about the game. The setting is wrong too. I put the players in the middle of an old sanitorium. There are ghosts from wronged patients and an evil doctor.”

“He create the monsters?”

“Yes, but he isn’t the killer in the story. Players have to uncover the truth as they go, but eventually they find out the doctor was murdered by one of them. The real culprit is amongst them, and planned the whole thing out.”

“For revenge?” Rue would prefer if they were playing that game instead of partially living in it.

“No,” Ryker said. “Just for shits and giggles. They’re all test subjects in his mind.”

“Did you pull that from Ares’ dad?” Their friend’s father had been the epitome of a mad scientist. And also one of the worst people Rue had ever had the misfortune of knowing. Thankfully, he was dead now, but the suffering he’d caused when he’d been alive still lingered.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t see Rhys randomly deciding to play a video game, even if he found your copy.”

“Notes, game maps, character sketches, and basic gameplay and lore details were in my desk,” Ryker replied. “I had the materials printed because I knew Ryder would get a kick out of spreading them all out on the floor. My dad had access if he wanted it. I never bothered checking if the materials were still there. I was trying not to think about it.”

Trying not to think about Ryder, he meant.

The Black Hart sighed. “Sleep. We still have a couple of hours before the sun is up.”