Chapter 10 Rafe #2
Then a gunshot cracks through the air again.
The sound is ear-splitting, bone-hot, and close. Too close.
My entire spine snaps straight as my eyes whip toward where Julian is. He’s still upright, still skating, still chasing the puck like nothing happened. But Kai is screaming.
“KID—DON’T FUCKING DO IT!”
That’s when I see it. Julian’s hand is wrapped around the hilt of the knife still buried in his thigh. And before anyone can stop him, he rips it out in one brutal, gut-wrenching motion, tearing the blade free in a spray of blood that hits the ice before the metal even clears muscle.
He screams—high, sharp, ragged—but he doesn’t stop moving.
The rival player in front of him has a gun raised, the barrel pointed straight at Julian’s chest. He’s about to fire, his finger tightening on the trigger, his stance locked and steady.
And Julian lunges.
Not to flee.
Not to dodge.
To kill.
He stabs the motherfucker straight in the wrist, burying the blade to the bone. The man howls, the gun jerks upward, the shot goes wild and blasts somewhere useless into the crowd—someone screams but it’s distant, irrelevant, unimportant.
Julian doesn’t even watch him fall. He fucking skates around him—blood pouring down his leg in bright red sheets—blade dripping in his right hand—and he scores.
He fucking scores.
Top corner. A shot that would’ve won a national headline and a commercial deal if he hadn’t detonated his entire goddamn life.
The crowd explodes. Half of them in bloodlust. Half of them in awe. All of them changed.
He collapses after the shot, one knee hitting the ice, blood pumping fast from the open wound in horrifying pulses. Kai is already sprinting toward him, full speed, gloves off, eyes wide.
I’m already moving too. Because Julian Reaver just scored a goal through agony, and is bleeding out in front of an entire mafia syndicate—and I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my fucking life.
We reach him in seconds.
Julian’s on the ice, half-crumpled, blood already soaking through his gear, staining the rink under his thigh like someone spilled a goddamn bottle of merlot in fast motion. His face is pale—too pale—and his eyes are rolling back just enough to make my stomach drop.
Kai hits the ground first, knees sliding across the ice, gloves gone, hand already reaching for the wound. “LUCA!” he bellows, not looking away, voice cracked with urgency. “CLOTTING AGENT. NOW.”
Luca appears beside us like a fucking demon in glitter and blood, pulling something from the inside of his jersey. He tosses it to Kai, who catches it with one hand and shoves his entire other palm into Julian’s open wound.
Julian screams.
Not a hockey scream, but a real one—raw, animal, involuntary, the kind that tears straight out of your ribs and dies in someone else’s throat before you even realize you made the sound.
His body starts to convulse, jerking violently as his face twists in agony, every muscle fighting whatever the hell Kai just pumped into his system.
And that’s when I grab him. One arm across his chest, the other gripping his jaw. “Stay the fuck awake,” I growl into his ear, dragging him back against me, locking him down with my weight. “Don’t fucking dare pass out on me, Reaver.”
His eyes flicker, glassy. Blood slicks the side of my neck. I shake him hard—once, twice. His head lolls. “Hey. HEY. Look at me. You don’t get to fucking sleep. You sleep, you die. You die, I kill you myself. You hear me?”
Julian tries to talk. Just a croak.
“Fucking louder.”
“I—I scored,” he mumbles, mouth wet, breath stuttering.
“Yeah, you scored. Big fucking deal. You pass out, and I gut you in your sleep.”
Kai’s ripping open the clotting pack, pouring the powder straight into the wound with no warning, no apology. Julian screams again—this one higher, sharper, desperate—but he doesn’t pass out. Which means he can still feel it. Which means he’s still alive.
That’s something.
But he’s still bleeding.
“Kai,” I snap, voice low and lethal, “he’s draining too fast—”
“I know!” Kai barks, elbowing me aside. “Rafe—grab something. I need a fucking tourniquet. Now.”
I don’t hesitate. I reach down, grab my own skate, rip the lace out with a violence that pops three of the eyelets. Doesn’t matter. I wrap it around Julian’s upper thigh and pull.
He screams again. Body jerks like I electrocuted him. Kai doesn’t even flinch—just nods sharply and shoves harder, pressing into the wound like he’s trying to crush the bleeding out with pure will.
“Don’t let him sleep,” Kai snaps again, already packing gauze into the torn skin.
I slap Julian across the face, hard. His eyes fly open—wide, bright, furious—and that’s the first time I breathe since I saw him drop.
“Still with me, golden boy?”
His breath rattles. His voice is barely a whisper. “I’m gonna kill you for that slap.”
I grin. “Good.”
Above us, Leonardo is standing in his box.
The rest of the crowd is either screaming or stunned, but Leonardo’s lit up like fucking Christmas tree—face glowing, drink raised, eyes shining like this is the single greatest night of his goddamn life. A body dead. A goal scored. A legend reborn.
The bleeding starts to slow. Kai’s hands are still working fast and vicious—gauze, pressure, tape, clenched fingers and clotting dust like black market magic.
Julian’s face is white with blood loss, but his breathing steadies.
The panic in my spine begins to ease just enough for me to think straight again, and that’s when I know—we move now.
“We’re taking him off,” I growl.
Kai doesn’t argue.
We lift him—Kai under his arms, me gripping under his knees, careful to keep the pressure tight around the thigh.
He groans, bites down hard on a curse, but doesn’t scream this time.
The crowd watches like jackals tracking the wounded antelope, but nobody interferes.
Not with me still holding a gun and Kai glaring like he could kill with just his fingers.
As we haul him toward the edge, I bark over my shoulder, voice booming across the ice—“FINN! Keep the net. Three more minutes, puppy. Fucking kill them all.”
Finn’s head whips around—eyes bright, grin spreading like blood across white. “Yes, sir!” he howls, raising his stick like a weapon, already skating backward into the crease like it’s a throne he built with his own madness.
Luca waves them on, Bishop laughs like he’s missed this, and the rest of Fiamma snaps back into position like nothing ever went wrong.
The game goes on and the war keeps raging behind us, but I’ve already taken the only piece that matters.
Julian is bleeding into my chest as I carry him off the ice, his weight heavy in my arms while the chaos of the rink fades behind us.
By the time we reach Kai’s container, he's already kicking the door open, and I shoulder us both through, laying Julian down on the metal slab of a bed already lined with surgical tools, tape, vials, tubing, towels, syringes. The place is a fucking apothecary for killers. The floor’s clean, stainless steel counters, light overhead surgical-bright.
He wasn’t kidding when he said this place was more OR than bedroom.
Kai’s already ripping his shirt off, snapping gloves on, grabbing a scalpel.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I bark, stepping into his space, looming over him fast enough to make most men twitch.
“I’m saving his fucking leg, Scalzi,” Kai hisses back, tearing a packet open with his teeth and reaching for a curved needle. “Unless you’d like to shoot me first and watch him bleed out instead?”
I don’t back off. But I don’t shoot him either.
Kai shoves a tray of supplies toward me with one hand. “Sterilize the knife. I’m not fucking around. This isn’t a street patch. This is real. That knife might’ve grazed the femoral. He’s lucky. Barely. Now either help, or get out.”
Julian groans on the slab, eyes fluttering.
I growl but grab the fucking knife, find the tray of alcohol, and do what he says. The smell hits me hard—sterile and sharp. Kai’s already slicing into fabric, cutting through tape and skin and blood to reach the damage with brutal, surgical confidence.
“You gonna tell me what you’re doing?” I grind out, eyeing the tubing in his hand.
Kai doesn’t look up. “Debriding the wound. The clot held, but I’m not risking internal buildup. I’m cleaning out the trauma, checking for splintering, and then I’ll stitch it in layers.”
“And if he goes into shock?”
“Then you better fucking pray I work fast.”
I grit my teeth and stay. Because if Kai falters for one fucking second—if Julian stops breathing—if anything in this container looks like death instead of life—I will put a bullet in someone.
Even if it’s mercy.
But Kai works like a goddamn machine. And Julian keeps breathing.