Ravaged Devotion (Vicious Vices #2)

Prologue

Three Years Ago

“I’m sorry, Imperial Hart, I’ve done all that I can. The game is still in testing stages. It should have never fallen into your son’s…” the female doctor’s voice drowned out.

Ryker wasn’t listening to it anymore. Heard his father’s clipped tone, but the sounds were echoes, a range of noise from loud to louder with no distinction. His eyes remained glued to the sleeping form inside the gaming pod—the stasis pod now.

The pod would keep its occupant alive. Would use electricity and chemicals to prevent atrophy from setting in.

Would ensure vitals remained stable and adjust the fluids being pumped regularly into the occupant’s system according to need.

There were temperature controls, discrete waste removal tubes, and the pod itself was fire resistant and virtually unbreakable.

His lips curved upward in a humorless smile at those words. First at virtual, which now held an entirely different meaning to him since this whole mess was being caused by an incomplete—and nowhere near ready for live trial—virtual reality game.

Second on the word unbreakable.

Because it was growing increasingly harder to believe that anything in this universe could ever truly be unbreakable when here he was, the great Ryker Hart, shattering from the inside out.

Cracking apart chip by chip, piece by piece, all the carefully constructed restraints and tools he’d been taught as a child to rein his demons in and make himself more palatable to society, buckling as the broken bits inside of himself expanded and pushed, demanding an out.

Demanding to be released and unleashed and—

“With all due respect, Imperial, your son chose to enter the game. A game he had no legal business getting involved in.” The doctor was still talking.

Still making excuses.

Still filling the room with her nonsense and her bullshit and her petty explanations that landed nowhere and answered nothing.

Sit still.

Keep calm.

Be quiet.

Present only the best version of self publicly at any given time.

The Harts may not be emperors now, not since a distant relative had abolished the system in some misguided bid for democracy, but they were still the oldest Imperial family on planet. Still the ones the people turned to in time of tragedy or hardship.

Only, who the hell were they meant to turn to?

Now that there was a tragedy, who the hell was Ryker meant to look to for guidance?

Certainly not motherfucking Rhys Hart, who was standing there, listening to this garbage, putting his pride above his son like fucking always—

“We’ve spoken to the technician who supposedly leaked it, and he stands by his story that your son and Urial Jayce threatened him into handing over a copy,” the doctor stated, the edge of a warning in her tone.

“I’ll remind you to watch yourself, Doctor Aura,” Rhys replied coldly.

Evenly.

As though she hadn’t just accused his heir of a crime.

As though she hadn’t just tried to hand off the blame and place it on a man who was currently trapped in a damn stasis pod getting his muscles electric shocked hourly and his piss and shit carried out of his body through plastic tubing and—

Ryker snapped.

The veneer exploded, the porcelain doll, the outwardly perfect Ryker Hart sending pieces of himself like shrapnel in every which direction in a flurry of motion.

His body acted on its own, mind too gone to track or control or process.

The scalpel left on the medical table was in his hand in a flash, the space between himself and the other side of the room where the doctor and all of her excuses had been sucking up the air and sullying it with her filth eaten up by his boots.

She had just enough time to turn her head and see him coming. For her eyes to go wide and her spine to stiffen and the fear to show in bright, brilliant technicolor that honestly fed something within him he thought was also now trapped in fucking stasis.

Rhys tried to stop him, another half assed comment telling him to stand down in a voice that barely lifted loud enough to be heard over the beating of Ryker’s racing heart.

Even if he had heard it clearly, it was too late.

There was nothing left.

Nothing left in him to keep him playing the part of the good son.

The healthy son.

The perfect little prince of the Hart-cold-blooded-to-the-core-family.

Ryker attacked, slicing her throat in one swift strike, the scalpel cutting through her like butter.

Unsatisfactory.

Too easy.

She gasped and stumbled back, hit the wall and crumpled, hands going to her throat in a desperate attempt to staunch the blood flow.

Ryker didn’t let her do it for long, already dropping down in front of her, reaching out to tear her hand away so he could drive the blade straight through her jugular.

He thought of that Yuletide morning, when he was seven, how his mother had smiled kindly at him, completely unaware she’d be dead by dinner.

Thought of his brother telling him not to be such a fucking loser the other day when he’d warned him against doing something that would displease their father.

He thought of the way it felt to carve through a good roast—sort of like how it felt now, hacking through the doctor’s muscle and tendon, the scalpel sawing at sinew and bone.

The noises had stopped by the time he was finished.

By the time he sighed and stood and retreated far enough to take in his handy work. The scalpel was held loosely between his fingers for a moment while he took in the sight of the doctor, covered in crimson, that snide expression gone.

“Say one more fucking thing about my brother,” his voice was…off. Wrong. Didn’t matter. “I dare you.”

The slap caught him off guard. The sting swift, the fury growing. He growled and turned his head, catching sight of his father.

The scalpel dropped to the ground with a clatter.

Rhys shook his head and stared at him wordlessly that way he always did.

The way that screamed he thought Ryker was a disappointment.

The way that said in no uncertain terms that he should have been the one who died that Yuletide evening, and not his mother.

Wesley, his father’s secretary, was at the door then. Or maybe he’d been there for a while. A witness to the carnage. A witness to Ryker’s true nature.

Ryker laughed at that, the sound broken and cracking against the air, echoing against the walls. He laughed and laughed and laughed until his eyes were dripping with tears and his lungs burned and the world began to spin.

He twisted on his heels and stumbled to the pod, slamming bloodstained palms against the surface, leaning over it to stare down at the face of the occupant.

His brother.

His twin.

“Sir,” Wesley cleared his throat, “we’re having trouble locating Master Rue.”

“What?” Ryker twisted on his heels, the laughter and the anger both snuffed out in an instant. He took a step toward the secretary, who flinched but knew better than to move away. “Repeat that.”

“Calm down, son,” Rhys ordered, but Ryker was too far gone to listen to fools who didn’t know how to defend their own children against heckling doctors who knew both too much and too little for their own good.

“What’s wrong with Rue?”

Wesley looked to Rhys.

Ryker found his hand wrapped around the guy’s collar, hauling him up onto his toes as he backed him against the door. “Where is Rue?” He shook him violently, wishing he hadn’t dropped the scalpel just because his father had slapped him. “Where is he?!”

“We…We don’t know, Master Ryker.” Wesley shook his head pleadingly. “I’m doing my best to find him.”

Ryker tossed him to the side and reached for the door handle.

“Where do you think you are going?” Rhys clipped out, and his hand immediately froze.

“I can find him,” Ryker said.

“And do what?”

“Bring him back and get answers.”

“No. You’ll remain here with your brother.

You can’t go out there in this state. You’re covered in blood for Light’s sake.

” Rhys huffed and pushed past him, opening the door himself and blocking the entrance with his broad shoulders.

He motioned to Wesley to follow him, and then delivered one final command Ryker’s way.

“Stay here. If I find out you’ve disobeyed, or that you’ve lost control and killed anyone else, your brother won’t be the only son of mine currently in a box. ”

That was cold.

Even for him.

But then again…maybe not.

Typically, people who murdered their wives in front of their children didn’t have a much colder freezing point than that.

Ryker held his ground, not because he was scared of his father—although he sort of was, mostly because he wasn’t like the doctor and therefore not a complete idiot—but because Rhys had made a point.

Even if Ryker did find Rue, what then?

Rue wouldn’t be able to wake his brother.

And if Wesley couldn’t find him, that meant Rue had gone into hiding.

Why?

Guilt?

Okay.

Okay. Ryker could understand that.

Ryker could wait.

He’d wait right here until Rue was ready or was found by someone else. Then they’d find out why he wasn’t here when Urial and his brother had entered the machines they were now both trapped inside.

There was a good reason.

Rue always had a good reason.

And he always came back to Ryker.

Always.

With everything else going on, all the ways his life was currently falling apart around him, that was one thing he knew he didn’t have to be worried about.

Moving back to the chair he’d occupied next to the pod, Ryker lowered into it and inhaled.

He’d put the pieces back together. Carefully glue the mask back in place.

Sort through his demons and his chaos and cage them like they were meant to be caged.

The locks didn’t have to be foolproof. Didn’t have to be made of the same solid steel it’d taken him eighteen years to form.

No, Ryker only had to hold it together long enough for Rue to come to him.

Once Rue was here, everything would be fine again.

Better.

He could do that.

He could keep himself whole for a little while.

His eyes found his brother’s face once more behind the fogged glass, nails digging into his own palms hard enough to break skin.

Rue would return and tell him everything was going to be all right, and Ryker would believe him.

Because Rue never lied, and Ryker always believed him.

Because for years now, Rue had been the only speck of color in an otherwise frozen wasteland of a life that Ryker, and his brother, had been living in.

“Where did you go?” he asked the empty room.

His brother didn’t answer.

Rue didn’t answer because Rue wasn’t here.

Ryker waited for him.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.