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.
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—toopale—and his eyes are rolling back just enough to make my stomachdrop.
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.”
