Page 118 of Ravaged Devotion

No matter which way his mom looked at it, she’d probably seen that same truth.

A Hart was responsible.

So a Hart should pay the price.

“Rhys disrespected her with his marriage proposal,” Rue figured, “and she would have found his constant need to place the blame on me further insult. Decades worth of friendship, and that’s all it’d come down to. Him only agreeing to help clear the air, and my name, if she finally accepted him in her bed.”

Suddenly, Rue wished he had been the one who’d shot Rhys.

“What was the plan?” Rue asked, piecing it together in his head. “She realized if she accepted his terms and married him, she’d have access to his money and control over the company if he passed, am I right?” She wouldn’t have done it solely for Rue’s sake. This sacrifice would have been made for herself and Vadim Enterprise. “She was going to claim it all after getting rid of him. But what about everyone else? Why did she have to turn her revenge into such a public spectacle?”

“The board sided with Rhys when he suggested the best way to save Vadim Enterprise was through assimilation with Hart Holding. He had more than enough money to pull them out of the minor difficulty they underwent after the media tied you to Ryder and Uriel’s incident, but he chose to steal her life’s work instead.”

Rue had always thought it’d been mutually beneficial. His mother had even made it sound that way when she’d explained it to him over the phone. As far as he’d known, the company had also never been in dire straits. Yes, stocks had dropped, but not enough for them to be at major risk.

“She found Ryker’s game while she was looking for clues about what you and Ryder last spoke about. She was fixated on that final conversation between you.” Bowie grunted. “We both were. When she came to me with this idea, you had just called to tell me about your first week at Foxglove Grove. You hated it. You even said—”

“I wanted to come home.” Rue recalled. He’d been close to tears, sitting on his bed in his tiny shoebox of a dorm room, listening to the other new students chat and get acquainted in the halls.

It hadn’t really been home he’d been missing though.

It’d been Ryker.

The man currently bleeding out and unconscious.

“She saw you running out of the main house the day of the wedding,” Bowie revealed. “She knew Ryker had done something to upset you. That’s the moment when she really lost it. The moment she decided the whole family had to pay.”

“She could have just shot them in their sleep,” Rue pointed out, even if it made him sick to think about. “I don’t think I’m the only one she lied to, Bowie. Maybe at the beginning a part of her really did feel bad for me. Maybe she agreed to marry him so Rhys wouldn’t threaten to hurt me or have me arrested.” His mother wouldn’t have stood a chance against him if he’d gone through with either of those things. Rhys had been too powerful.

“But if all she’d wanted was to stop them from being able to harm me, there were a million ways she could have gone about it. What she chose to do instead is crazy. She hired a team to create monsters based on her new stepson’s video game design, and convinced Rhys to hold the retreat here all so she could get rid of the Harts and take over as the most powerful person on the planet.”

She’d always wanted it.

Used to get drunk on his father’s death date and complain to Rue about how unfair it was that the Vadim’s had to bow their heads to the Harts.

“It was a lot,” Bowie admitted, “but there was a reason for it. Ryker has always been considered volatile. The original plan was to convince Rhys to take Ryker with him on the fishing trip. The four of them would be attacked and killed, and the fog would prevent anyone from searching right away. It would also attract the bears, which would be seen from the windows, and cause fear to spread.”

“Why modify any of them if a bear attack was the plan?”

“Because she wanted Ryker to know before he got torn apart that it was happening because of him. She thought he’d recognize them.”

He had. The second Ryk had gotten a clear look, he’d realized.

“She also wanted the authorities to find them later, and link it back to him. Spoiled, unhinged heir murder’s father, loyal members of the board, and dies himself in the process. Bringing monsters from a video game to life for that was poetic. It would help sell the story. Make people believe he’d done it out of grief for Ryder’s choice, and show that he’d blamed their dad for it.”

“And you?” Rue asked. “Why’d you get involved in all of this?”

Bowie looked uneasy for the first time. “I thought she was doing it to protect you.”

“Realized that was a load of shit, huh?” Hold on. A sinking feeling entered Rue’s gut, and it must have flashed across his face, because Bowie actually glanced away, suddenly finding it hard to maintain eye contact. “If my mom was in charge of this plan, then…”

It was kind of hard to claim the benefits of a grieving widow if she, herself, didn’t make it out alive.

“I really thought this was about paving the way for you,” Bowie said. “That she was doing all of this to get them out of the way so you could come back.”

“I came back six months ago,” he reminded, but his friend shook his head.

“When I brought that up, she told me it still wasn’t safe. Not really. Rhys had allowed you to return, yes, but he could just as easily send you away again. Even if that was mostly an excuse, and she was in too deep and unwilling to give up her chance at gaining control of the Hart fortune, you have to admit she wasn’t wrong. He was going to get rid of you.”