I lift my head. Rafe’s already stepping onto the ice, boots crunching, expression carved from stone and murder. Good.
The door opens. I don’t look up right away. The air shifts when he enters. There’s a ripple across the rink, a change in posture, a crackle of anticipation that dances up the spine like static before a storm. Conversations drop, sticks go still, even the fucking puck seems to pause mid-glide like it doesn’t want to get involved.
Then I lift my head. And there he is: Ezio Bellini, golden boy turned porcelain doll—jaw wrapped in medical tape, lip split, one eye bloodshot from the impact of my stick to his mouth yesterday. His jacket is pristine; his ego isn’t. He stands in the doorway, one foot planted on the rubber mat, the other testing the edge of the ice like he’s daring the world to remind him he no longer belongs here.
He shouldn’t have come back. He knows it. He also knows I’m looking at him. He meets my stare across the rink like we’re opponents in a war no one else understands. The silence thickens, heavy and electric. Finn stops mid-turn. Kai glances up from his clipboard. Even Luca drops the pretense of indifference. Everyone watches.
And I smile—not nice, not polite, not even remotely fucking sane. My lips pull back slowly—razorblade grin, no warmth, all teeth.
Ezio flinches, just a flicker. But I see it.
I let my stick drag along the ice behind me as I skate forward—one slow, deliberate push at a time—eyes still locked on his like a heat-seeker. My smile doesn’t waver; it only gets worse. Wider. Wilder. Like I’m no longer a player. Like I’m something no training program was ever built to contain.
Ezio’s hand slips into his pocket—probably touching the phone, probably reassuring himself the tape is still there. It doesn’t matter.
I already replaced it.
I keep skating. He keeps watching. His mouth twitches like he’s trying to remember what a smirk feels like. But this time I see the fear—clear as a crack in porcelain—just a breath of uncertainty behind the arrogance.
And I want him to feel it. I want him to fucking drown in it. The ghosts aren’t mine anymore. They’re his now.
Ezio opens his mouth. It’s a mistake. A stupid, arrogant, Bellini-born mistake. The tape around his jaw strains, pulling taut as he tries to shape words around the swelling and the bruises and the two teeth he no longer has because of me. He wants to smirk. He wants to gloat. He wants to remind me he’s untouchable, golden, the prince of this rotten little empire.
He’s about to taunt me. I see the exact second he decides to speak—the twitch of his cheek, the arrogant lift of his chin, the way his tongue presses against split lips like he’s preparing to insult me with a jaw that no longer works.
He gets three syllables in. “Well, if it isn’t—” Crack. His jaw audibly shifts wrong, the tape pulling too tight, cartilage grinding against bone. The sound echoes across the rink like someone stepping on a wishbone. Ezio’s breath hitches; his face contorts in raw, involuntary pain.
And I laugh—loud, sharp, unhinged. It rips out of me like a bark, like a glitch in reality, like my body can’t contain the dark amusement tearing up my throat. I bend forward slightly from the force of it, one gloved hand slapping against my knee as the laugh bounces off the boards and comes back bigger, filling the entire space with something feral and unstoppable.
Ezio’s eyes widen. His hand flies to his jaw. He looks humiliated—utterly, publicly humiliated.
Perfect. Absolutely fucking perfect.
I straighten slowly, still smiling, still giggling under my breath like something cracked open in my ribs and let the madness breathe. I skate toward him—one slow glide at atime, each stroke cutting deeper lines into the ice, carving a path straight to where he stands frozen in the doorway like prey pretending to be a statue.
My smile spreads wider the closer I get. Ezio takes one half-step back—good. Back up farther. Or don’t. Let me touch you. Let me finish what I started. Let me—
A hand closes around the back of my neck. Hard.
I stop breathing for half a second as heat brands the top of my spine. My body recognizes the grip before my mind can catch up: rough fingers curling under the hair at my nape, thumb pressing firmly into the side of my throat just under the edge of my helmet. Rafe. He pulls—not gently. He drags me backward like I’m nothing but unchecked momentum he refuses to let collide with the wrong man. My blades scrape hard across the ice, the sudden shift in balance forcing my knees to bend reflexively. I lean back into him instinctively because my body knows the command even if my brain is still locked on Ezio, still hungry for the next swing.
“Easy,” Rafe growls into my ear—quiet, low, deadly—a storm held in human skin.
My breath stutters. He’s not doing this to protect me from Ezio. He’s doing this to protect everyone else from me.
His grip tightens when I instinctively try to take one more step toward Ezio—not much, just enough to test the boundary. Just enough to remind my muscles exactly where the line is drawn and who holds it.
I stare at Ezio over my shoulder, still smiling, still tasting the sharp, metallic high of violence in the back of my throat. He looks pale now, unsteady on his feet, maybe finally realizing that the thing that wants to kill him isn’t the other players on the ice.
It’s me.
But I’m not stupid enough to miss the bigger truth. Ezio is Leonardo’s son—untouchable. And if I rip him apart here, we don’t just die. The entire team dies. Rafe dies. Kai dies. Finn. Misha. Luca. All of them.
Rafe’s thumb presses harder into the side of my neck—a silent warning, a tether, a command pulling me back from a cliff that would drag everyone down with me.
“Look at me,” Rafe murmurs.
I don’t. I can’t. Not yet. I’m still staring at Ezio like I want to carve his name out of my own skin with a blade. My smile lingers—wrong, feral, sharp enough to cut me open from the inside.
