Chapter 10 Rafe
RAFE
Leonardo is smirking into his glass like someone just whispered a joke about God dying.
Up there in his little metal box, lit by the flicker of cigars and greed, Don Bellini lifts his crystal tumbler in the air with the grace of a man who just won a bet that cost someone their life.
Which, to be fair, he did. My bullet’s still echoing somewhere between the rafters.
The corpse is still warm. One of the cartel runners is dragging it off the ice by the ankles, boots leaving red streaks across the rink like a signature.
Leonardo meets my eyes through the glass, still smiling.
There’s no nod, no salute, no acknowledgment at all—just that quiet, ugly satisfaction sitting on his face like he’s watching something he paid good money to see.
Fuck him.
Fuck all of them.
I skate back toward the crease with the kind of control that comes from rage welded into bone.
My pulse is calm. My gun’s holstered. My blade drags clean across the surface.
I pass the trail of blood without flinching.
No one tries to stop me. No one even looks twice.
The message has already been received: You touch Julian Reaver again, you don’t get up.
Finn’s still in my net, crouched low, mask off, smile too wide.
When he sees me coming, he does a little pirouette, then bounces out of the crease like it’s all part of the dance.
“Welcome back, big guy,” he chirps, slapping my ass with his stick as he goes.
“Kill a man, take a seat. Love that for you.”
I don’t answer. I just slide back into position—pads heavy, gear biting into my shoulders, heart still dark and steady. The net is mine again. The ice is scarred. The crowd’s fucking high on blood. But I’m not watching the puck.
I’m watching Julian. Knife still embedded in his thigh, Kai’s fingers gripping the back of his neck like a leash made of steel.
I know that hold. It’s not dominance. It’s grounding.
It’s control through contact. And for a second, Kai pulls Julian closer—buries Julian’s face into his chest like a priest shielding a sinner from the flames.
If I didn’t know what the fuck Kai was doing, I’d slit his throat for touching him like that. But when Julian lifts his head again, I understand immediately. His eyes are wide and wild, shot through with something unholy.
His pupils are blown, his cheeks flushed, his breathing fast and uneven.
Kai gave him something.
For the pain, or the fire, or both—something strong enough to kick a horse in the ribs and make it sing. Julian isn’t just standing anymore, he’s buzzing.
That soft chaos that lives in his bloodstream has gone radioactive. He’s twitching on the edge of something violent and divine. And when he turns his face toward the ice again, he looks like someone reborn through fucking violence.
He’s back. No, worse—he’s better. Julian Reaver with a knife in his thigh and a bloodstream full of painkillers is a goddamn event.
He hits the puck like it owes him blood.
He slices through two defenders like they’re cardboard props.
Spins past a third. Doesn’t pass. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t slow down.
He plays like the NHL golden boy he used to be—except now he’s feral. Faster. Meaner. Burned raw and grinning through it.
He scores. Of course he fucking scores. The crowd loses its mind—half cheering, half screaming, all of them clawing at the edge of the rink like, if they could reach him, they’d tear him apart and eat him alive.
But no one will.
Because he’s mine, and I’m still watching. And if anyone else throws a knife tonight, I won’t stop at one bullet.
The game keeps going. Or at least it pretends to.
Nothing is really the same after the body hit the ice and the echo of my gunshot melted into the rafters, but technically, yeah—skates are still moving, pucks are still flying, and blood is still being spilled like this is just another Wednesday night at the fucking Coliseum.
Except now it’s predictable.
Julian doesn’t let anyone touch the puck.
Anyone who isn’t in black and gold gets stripped, humiliated, dropped cold.
It’s not even showy—he’s not playing for the crowd anymore, or even for the team.
He’s playing like the puck belongs to him and he’s personally offended every time someone tries to take it.
He moves like fire given form—blistering speed, perfect angles, sharp little edge cuts that don’t waste a single fucking motion.
And all of it with a knife still lodged in his thigh, pulsing bright red against his dark gear like a fucking battle flag.
The other team gets twitchy. You can see it—flickers of hesitation, little stutter-steps, the way they start second-guessing every rush.
They’re not just losing the puck—they’re losing the will to take it back.
That’s what he’s doing to them. Not breaking their bones.
Breaking their nerve. And that’s worse. That lingers.
I’ve stopped tracking shots.
Haven’t had one come near me in four minutes.
Finn's hanging off the boards near center ice now, chirping at the rival bench like a rabid cheerleader with a grudge and zero self-preservation. I think he stole someone’s helmet and is wearing it backwards. At one point he starts mimicking a dying swan every time their goalie moves.
No one tells him to stop.
Kai’s skating like a blade in water—quiet, cold, impossible to catch clean. Misha knocked someone into the side wall and broke a rib three plays ago. Bishop’s chewing on tape again like it’s meat jerky and licking blood off his glove between whistles that never come.
It’s chaos.
It’s violence.
It’s boring.
I shift in the crease. Crack my neck. Tap my stick once, twice, blade down, just to remind the ice I’m still here.
But nothing’s coming. Nobody’s charging.
The other team won’t even look at me anymore.
Their offense has collapsed, reorganized into slow, staggered rushes that die the second Julian hits the zone.
I’ve seen a lot of things in this rink—skulls cracked open, blades jammed into ribs, people crawling off the ice because they’d rather bleed out than show weakness. But I’ve never seen someone bore me with brilliance.
Until now.
Julian is dismantling them, and he’s not doing it with brutality. He’s doing it with perfection.
It’s almost worse.
Because there’s nothing for me to do. I can’t protect him if no one touches him. I can’t kill anyone if no one gets close. I can’t even move if nothing comes for me.
My fingers start drumming against the top of my pad, a slow, irritated rhythm that feels like the beginning of a snap.
Julian cuts past three men and feeds the puck to Luca, who laughs, skates backward, and then tosses it right back to him just so he can watch him do it again.
A quiet growl slips out of me, low and frustrated.
I need someone to make this interesting again. Because if this goes on much longer, I might walk out of the net myself—just to give someone a reason to bleed.
And then some absolute fucking genius in the crowd decides to “level the playing field.”
Two guns hit the ice. They clatter across the rink like loose teeth—skidding, spinning, flashing metal in ugly arcs until they slide to a stop near the enemy forwards.
The moment they appear, the air changes.
It snaps tight, sharp enough to cut. The roar of the crowd goes from blood-hungry to feral.
Everyone knows what this means. Rules are gone.
They were already gone. But now they are obliterated.
Shit.
The puck becomes irrelevant. The game becomes irrelevant. Those guns are the center of gravity now, and every fucking syndicate dog in the rink knows it. Every Fiamma player’s head lifts at the exact same second, instinct tightening vertebra by vertebra.
Julian is supposed to worry about the puck. But the rest of us—we’re worrying about the guns.
Finn glances at me. I nod. He knows what to do.
I leave the crease without a second of hesitation, skating straight out, abandoning my net like it doesn’t exist, because protecting Julian is the only job that matters.
Finn slides his happy gremlin ass right back into my spot like this is a well-rehearsed waltz, banging his stick against the post as if welcoming the challenge.
The crowd screams louder.
Every Fiamma player moves as one—circle formation, tight and thick around Julian. Luca, Bishop, Misha, Tank, Corso—they all shift instinctively, blades cutting in a radius around him like we’ve done this for years. We haven’t. But this is us. This is how we protect our own.
Someone’s eyes are always on the guns. Someone’s blade is always positioned to block. Someone’s shadow is always falling across the danger line.
Julian doesn’t break rhythm for a second.
He’s chasing the puck up ice like the gun wasn’t thrown two feet from him.
His thigh is still bleeding around the fucking knife, but he’s skating like pain is an inconvenience he’ll deal with after he destroys the world.
The other team, emboldened by the sudden appearance of firepower, surges back with stupid, sloppy confidence—thinking guns make them equal.
They’re wrong.
Unfortunately, they know exactly who in Fiamma has the gun.
Three of their forwards split off and come straight for me—like they think they can swarm me, overwhelm me, take my weapon and turn the tide.
Idiots. I shoulder the first so hard he ricochets across the ice like a rag doll.
The second tries to slash me and gets a glove to the throat for his trouble.
The third jumps on my back, legs locking, trying to choke me or stab me—I’m not even sure which—and I slam him backward into the ice hard enough to crack a rib.
The crowd eats it up—pure chaos, pure fire. I can even hear Finn cackling somewhere near my crease, waving his stick at someone’s aunt in the stands like this is all just another joke.