Chapter 25 JULIAN
JULIAN
It hits me mid-turn. A sound. A moan. Familiar.
Too fucking familiar. It threads through the cold like a wire pulled tight, slicing straight under my skin.
My skates screech as I twist, nearly eating the ice.
My whole body jerks, a violent convulsion I don’t control, heart slamming so hard I swear I taste copper at the back of my tongue.
I spin again, frantic, wild, breath caught somewhere between my ribs and my throat because I know that sound—know it like muscle memory, like trauma, like goddamn scripture carved into the marrow of my spine.
It’s me.
My moan. My gasp. That high, broken noise I’ve only ever made with my face smashed into a mattress and a cock shoved so deep inside me I forget how to breathe.
But it’s not coming from my mouth right now.
It’s drifting through the rink on a loop, tinny and obscene, echoing off concrete and steel like a ghost I never buried.
I whip around like something hunted, panic boiling under my skin like poison, eyes scanning the ice so hard everything blurs into streaks of red and black.
Finn’s laughing at something Vlad muttered—sharp, feral.
Luca’s chasing Misha with a stick raised like he’s about to sacrifice him to the hockey gods.
Kai is talking to Noah near the bench, calm as a surgeon.
None of them have a phone out. None of them are looking at me.
And then I see him.
Ezio Bellini, standing by the rink doors, not even dressed to train. White jacket, immaculate, one shoulder leaned against the wall like this entire fucking place exists for his convenience alone. The Bellini brat, the golden son of the devil himself. Phone held loose in one hand like it’s nothing.
Except it’s not nothing. Because I can hear it. Because that sound is mine.
That fucking tape.
Me and Nathan. Hotel room. Six months before the scandal.
Before everything rotted from the inside.
Me tied down, moaning like a fool, smiling like a boy who believed he was loved.
Begging him to fuck me harder. Whispering things into his throat that should’ve died in that room and nowhere else.
The tape I watched so many times I stopped seeing myself and started seeing a ghost wearing my face.
Ezio is watching me now with that exact ghost reflected in his eyes.
Like he’s been waiting for the moment I hear it.
Waiting to enjoy the fallout. His mouth curls—lazy, cruel, aristocratic poison.
He tilts the phone just a fraction, enough for me to catch a flicker of motion on the screen: my own thighs spread wide, my lips forming words I don’t let myself remember sober.
I don’t remember skating. I don’t remember dropping my stick.
My body just moves, blades shredding the ice as I charge the boards with enough force to bruise bone.
Ezio doesn’t flinch, because of course he doesn’t.
The prince of this mafia pit doesn’t flinch for anyone.
Not when Leonardo kisses his forehead. Not when the whole compound lifts his name like a threat.
Not even when Rafe looks right through him.
But he looks at me. Right at me. And he plays my moan again.
The second I hit the boards, I vault them like they’re nothing. One hand on the top rail, the other already curling into a fist, ready to break something beautiful. “Turn it the fuck off,” I snarl, voice scraping out of my chest raw and shredded.
Ezio’s response is to slip the phone casually into his pocket, like he’s teasing a dog with a treat. Still smirking, proud of himself. “Well, well,” he murmurs, silk stretched over venom. “Didn’t realize you were mic’d up, Reaver.”
My fist slams into his collarbone. Not hard enough. I want bone. I want blood. I want that smug look wiped off his perfect fucking face. “Where did you get it?” The words shake out of me—rage, terror, humiliation all spiraling together.
Ezio leans in like we’re sharing a secret. His breath ghosts over my cheek. “Found it,” he says softly. “Like a treasure.”
My whole body snaps tight, every nerve ending burning. Heat scalds up my throat so fast I think I’m about to be sick.
Ezio chuckles, delighted. “What’s wrong? Don’t like being famous?”
I lunge again, ready to claw his face off, but he grabs the front of my hoodie and shoves me back. My skates hit the rubber mat awkwardly and I stumble, vision strobing white with fury.
The others finally notice. Finn’s grin drops, Misha’s already closing the distance like a freight train.
Ezio’s eyes gleam, bright and hungry. “It’s not just porn, Julian,” he whispers. “It’s art.”
Before I can decide whether to break his jaw or shove him into the boards hard enough to dent the wall—another sound splits through the air. Another moan. Mine. But not from his pocket. Not from anywhere near him. It comes from across the rink.
I spin so fast my blades skid out and nearly tangle. My breath punches out of me in a strangled gasp because that’s my voice, that little broken whine Nathan used to pull out of me when he had my knees over his shoulders. It ripples through the cold like it’s alive, like it’s hunting me.
Then another. From the opposite corner. Then another, higher, wetter, viciously intimate—diagonal, behind me this time.
I turn again, almost slipping, vision shaking.
My heart is a wild animal in my chest now, slamming itself bloody against my ribs.
Everyone on the ice freezes, heads jerking like they’re watching a ghost sprinting circles around us.
No one has a phone out. Not Finn, not Luca, not Misha or Kai or the crowd pressed up against the rails.
They’re confused. Brows drawn. Looking around like they’re trying to find the speaker system we don’t have.
Because the sound is everywhere. Every corner. Every shadow. Every echo. My moans—my humiliation—filling the rink like a storm I can’t outrun.
Ezio is still smirking. Hands in his pockets. Like he’s orchestrating a symphony of my suffering. Like he’s proud of himself.
Something inside me detonates. A scream tears out of my throat—raw, ripping—and before I even register what I’m doing, I lunge blind with rage.
I grab Finn’s stick right out of his hands; he barely reacts, just stares wide-eyed as I wrench it free and whirl, momentum carrying the swing like I’m trying to kill a god.
The stick cracks through the air with a sound that feels biblical. Then it meets Ezio’s face.
Bone. Tooth. Blood. A sickening crunch vibrates up my arms and into my shoulders.
“MOTHERFUCKER!” I roar, voice splitting the rink.
Ezio’s head snaps sideways; two white teeth arc through the air like fucking snowflakes.
He slams into the wall hard, hand flying to his mouth as blood spills between his fingers, thick and dark.
But the victory doesn’t land. Because the sound doesn’t stop.
If anything, it gets louder. My own moans play over themselves in a grotesque loop—panting, pleading, whimpering—layered beneath Nathan’s voice, low and intimate, whispering filth straight into my ear. Good boy, take it… look at the camera… open your mouth for me…
My knees buckle. I can’t breathe. Can’t think.
The images hit me like gunshots: Nathan’s smile in that hotel room, the flashbulbs at the conference, the cubby where he hid me like dirty laundry, the night everything ended, the tape looping in my own hands later while I tried to convince myself it meant something.
They slam into my skull one after another, vicious, relentless, until all I see is white static and all I hear is myself breaking on repeat like a dying animal.
I scream again—desperate, shredded. My fingers claw into my own hair, nails tearing at my scalp as I pull hard enough to rip strands free.
My legs give out. The ice rushes up. I hit my knees so hard the pain barely registers.
“MAKE IT STOP!” I choke, voice cracking.
“MAKE IT STOP—MAKE IT STOP—PLEASE—MAKE IT—”
The sound keeps going. Nathan whispering. Me begging. Ezio bleeding and smiling. And the whole rink frozen around me as I come apart at the seams.
Rafe isn’t here. And that fact hits me like a blade under the ribs.
Ezio wouldn’t dare try this shit with Rafe in the rink—not unless he had a death wish and a coffin already carved.
The realization shreds what little sanity I’m clinging to, ripping it clean out of my chest. My vision tunnels, and the sound—my sound—keeps echoing from every corner like the rink itself is mocking me.
My eyes snap open so wide the cold air burns.
Hot tears spill instantly, blinding, useless, making everything smear into streaks of blood-red and white.
And before I even know the word is leaving my throat, I scream it—raw, terrified, begging and furious all at once.
“KAAAAAAAAI!” The only name I have left to throw at the world that might understand, even a fraction, what the fuck is happening inside me.
Because Kai’s the only one here who knows the truth—who’s seen me unravel, who knows the pieces of me Rafe didn’t fix yet, who knows what that tape actually does to me.
I don’t wait for him to reach me. I don’t wait for breath.
I don’t wait for anything. My body moves like something possessed.
I lunge again, claws bared, fists flying straight into Ezio’s ribs with every ounce of rage and humiliation and trauma burning behind them.
He’s twice my size, built like a spoiled aristocrat who thinks violence is something hired men do for him—but I don’t care.