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 snapssideways; 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 aspoiled aristocrat who thinks violence is something hired men do for him—but I don’t care.
I don’t see Ezio. I see Nathan. I see that damn hotel room mirror. I see the camera red light blinking like an execution countdown. “You fucking snake—” My fist cracks into bone. “—you fucking parasite—” Another hit, knuckles splitting. “—you think you get to touch my life—my life—” My voice breaks, but I don’t stop. “I’ll kill you—I’ll rip your fucking throat out—give me the phone—you motherfucker—you think this is funny? YOU THINK THIS IS FUCKING FUNNY?!”
Ezio tries to raise an arm to block, but I’m already slamming into him again, nails dragging, teeth bared, hitting, clawing, anything to get at the pocket where he put that phone, where he hid the pieces of me I never wanted the world to hear. Tears blur everything. I’m choking on my own breath, my own screams, my own history. The world narrows to my fists meeting bone and Ezio’s groan when I clip his jaw.
Finn moves first—because of course he does, he’s always the feral one—and he grabs me from behind, arms hooking under mine to pull me back.
“Julian—hey—HEY—” Finn grunts as I thrash so violently he almost loses grip.
Luca is right behind him, eyes wide, lips parted in shock he’ll deny later. He grabs my waist, trying to anchor me, muscles straining as I kick, twist, try to tear through both of them like they’re nothing but fog.
“Let me go! LET ME GO!” My voice shreds into something closer to an animal’s roar. “He has it—HE HAS IT—give it back—give it back—you fucking prick—I swear to God—I’ll break your fucking HANDS—”
Ezio is curled to the side, blood all over his mouth, panting, but still smirking. Still fucking smirking. And that drives me even more insane, more unhinged, more desperate to cave his skull in.
