Chapter 30 Rafe #3
Not because I give a damn about the Belladonna bastard bleeding out on the ice. But because if Julian kills someone tonight, he stops being mine. He becomes theirs—a story, a warning, a fucking myth carved into the syndicate’s memory.
And I’m not sharing him with anyone.
The team is already surging—Vlad stepping forward like a wall of taped fury, Luca baring his teeth in a grin that promises pain, Bishop screaming something incoherent about round two—but I don’t take my eyes off him. Julian.
Bleeding. Smiling. Holding half a broken stick like it’s a vow carved in carbon and spite.
Staring at his next mistake with the kind of holy, unblinking intent that makes the air feel thinner.
He hasn’t moved yet. Not a single stride.
But if he does? I’ll shoot the fucker first, just to keep Julian’s hands clean.
Just to keep him from crossing into territory he can’t come back from.
He turns his head then—just slightly—and locks eyes with me across the ice. For one suspended second he looks almost curious, like a child asking an impossible question. Would you stop me, Rafe? Or would you let me become the monster you made?
My hand tightens on the grip behind my back. Not yet, halo. Not tonight.
He’s still holding the broken stick, one hand wrapped tight around the splintered shaft, fingers curled just below where the carbon split in a jagged, toothlike tear.
Blood drips steadily down his glove now—his own, dark and fresh from the gash across his ribs—but it doesn’t slow him.
Doesn’t faze him. If anything, the pain has only honed him sharper, turned every nerve into a blade of focus.
Like his body just received the clearest instruction of the night: you can kill him now if you want. And fuck, he wants to.
Julian starts skating toward the guy who slashed him with the kind of speed you save for when the outcome is already written in red—every stride deliberate, unhurried, closing the distance more than necessary.
Closer than any sane person would allow on a rink without refs, with blood money riding on every touch of the puck.
He’s not rushing to the kill. He’s savoring the walk to it.
Every muscle in my body locks tight, the roar of the crowd dropping away until it’s nothing but distant static.
The team blurs at the edges of my vision, irrelevant.
My hand moves behind me—slow, silent—fingers finding the familiar grip of the gun before my next breath even finishes.
I don’t twitch. Don’t shift my weight. I just track him, every sense narrowed to the single point where Julian now stands.
He’s toe to toe with the Belladonna goon. Their skates bump, metal kissing metal, and the guy doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even seem to breathe anymore.
Julian stops so close their chests nearly brush.
He looks up at the man from beneath the wet tangle of curls plastered to his forehead, blood smeared dark across the side of his jersey, ribs heaving with the raw mix of adrenaline, speed, and fury.
Then he smiles. It isn’t a threat. It’s a challenge.
It’s permission. Like he’s saying: Move. I dare you. Try to stop me.
The broken stick stays in his left hand, angled just enough to catch the overhead lights and flash every jagged, splintered edge—edges that would slide clean between ribs with almost no effort.
My grip tightens on the gun, finger hovering over the trigger, every instinct screaming at me to intervene, to pull him back, to keep him clean, to keep him mine.
But then Julian releases the guy’s collar, reaches out, and takes the man’s unbroken stick and the guy lets him.
Doesn’t resist. Doesn’t flinch. He stands there like the rest of us—frozen, waiting, breath held—watching as if this is the new way to die in front of five thousand criminals: not by being gutted, but by being allowed to live by the person who should have already ended you.
Julian now has both sticks—one whole and gleaming, the other ruined, jagged, and dripping with the promise of violence. Of fucking course he doesn’t drop the broken one.
He skates backward, slow and deliberate, dragging the new stick behind him like a trophy claimed in battle.
His grin stretches wide, feral and unapologetic, while fresh blood continues to soak the side of his jersey, darkening the fabric in uneven patches.
The entire rink is locked on him—no one moves, no one breathes, the air thick with the kind of silence that only comes right before something irreversible.
Then Luca shatters it. “Yo, King Chaos!” he shouts across the ice, voice cutting through the tension like a snapped rubber band. “You gonna actually play, or just reenact The Purge?”
The words barely land before the puck is in motion—flicked high across the neutral zone with the same reckless, cocky energy Luca pours into everything he does. The arc is perfect; the timing is trash. It shouldn’t matter. But Julian catches it anyway.
He traps the puck mid-air with the unbroken stick, blade snapping down in one clean, effortless motion, never once loosening his grip on the splintered half still clutched in his other hand.
Then he surges forward, skates digging in, carrying both weapons—one for the game, one for whatever comes after—like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
He’s still bleeding. Still smiling. Still holding death in one hand and the game in the other.
And now he’s toying with them.
He dances past one defender—a tight little toe drag that makes the man stumble—and flicks the puck backward to Finn, who grins like a psychopath and immediately starts laughing as he takes off down the wing.
Finn fake passes once, twice, taunts the goalie with a “look left, bitch,” then sends it across to Bishop, who catches it in his glove, flips it up, kicks it with one skate like it’s soccer, and chucks it—illegal, violent, borderline disrespectful—back to Julian.
Julian traps the puck on the blade of the broken stick without even blinking.
He spins—one full, fluid body rotation, fast enough to send an arc of his own blood spraying across the ice like it was choreographed for the spotlight—and fires the pass backward through two sets of legs straight to Vlad.
Vlad, who hasn’t moved all game except to deliver punishment. Vlad, who doesn’t shoot unless it’s a kill shot. This one is.
Clean. Low. Post in. The goal horn screams. The crowd detonates. Money flashes through the air like confetti, and somewhere in the stands a warning shot cracks into the ceiling.
And Julian skates a lazy, taunting circle in the Belladonna zone, one and a half sticks still in his hands, blood drying dark on his jaw, that same grin carved deep across his face like a signature he refuses to erase.
I don’t breathe again until he glances back at me—just once, just long enough for the message to land: He’s fine.
He didn’t kill. But he could have. And every single person in this building knows it now.
Belladonna snaps exactly the way I knew they would—messy, impatient, strategy gone to ash. They don’t target Julian. They don’t chase Luca. They go for Finn.
Because Finn is easy to underestimate. Small, wiry, chirping nonstop like a feral raccoon someone taught to skate, but lightning-fast and vicious when cornered. So Belladonna does what cowardice always does: they hit him from behind. Not a shove. Not a clean check. A fucking blindside ambush.
A tank of a defenseman barrels across the ice at full speed and slams Finn into the boards so hard the impact echoes like a crack splitting the foundations of the arena.
Finn’s body goes loose in an instant—collapsing downward as if his strings were severed.
He hits the ice face-first. And doesn’t move.
Everything in me stops for one long, frozen breath.
Kai hits the ice before anyone else can react—vaulting over the bench with a knife already flashing in one hand and the first-aid pouch clutched in the other.
He’s at Finn’s side in a heartbeat, two fingers pressed to the pulse at Finn’s neck while his other hand checks pupils, chest, ribs in rapid, practiced succession.
But Julian screams. Not fear. Not pain. Rage. Pure, unfiltered, war-born fury that rips through the arena like a blade. “KAI—MOVE!” He doesn’t mean help him. He means get the fuck out of my way.
And I see it—I see it before anyone else does.
Julian’s eyes lock onto the man who hit Finn—the Belladonna bastard still standing over the spot, chest heaving, breathing hard with the smug pride of someone who thinks he just did something impressive.
And he lunges. Straight-line. No hesitation.
Blood still soaking his ribs, both sticks gripped tight in his hands—one whole for the game, one broken and jagged for murder.
I’m out of the crease before my brain even registers the decision. I vault the net, gun already out, safety off, skates carving deep, desperate grooves across the ice as I sprint after him, shouting—“JULIAN!!”
“JULIAN—STOP!”
But he doesn’t. He reaches the bastard first. And the scream that tears out of him isn’t human.
It isn’t sanity. It’s loyalty weaponized into carnage.
He drives the broken stick forward with both hands, shoving the jagged end straight into the man’s thigh just above the knee.
The sound is wet, ugly, sharp—cartilage and muscle giving way.
The man howls, loud and panicked, hands flying to the wound as Julian slams him back into the boards and shoves harder.
The stick bursts clean through the other side. A full impalement.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.