Page 112 of Break the Ice
“It’s over,” he warbles out, his tongue poking the inside of his cheek. Probably checking for loose teeth. “The whole frame job.”
“Then release Marisse!”
“We’ll need to come up with something else.”
“I don’t give a fuck—Gomez is uncuffing her now!”
I stride past him toward the door, about to head up to make it happen. A second passes where Dad doesn’t object. He doesn’t even move. He waits ‘til I’m several paces away from leaving the room altogether before he strikes.
His body careens into me with as much power as he can muster up. He collides with me from behind, taking us both down to the ground. A step ahead of me, he makes it to his feet first, swinging his leg and delivering a swift kick to my ribs.
Like father like son, he loses himself to the violence. My punches have become his kicks as he deals me several blows, spilling blood without a fuck to give.
“I’m your father, you fucking ungrateful jackass!” he roars. “You have what you have because of me—without me, you would’ve been nothing! You would’ve been jailed a long time ago. Now show some fucking respect and get with the program. You have no say in what happens!”
Every time I go to push myself up, his foot’s stomping me back down. He connects with more than my ribs. He knocks the air out of my lungs and smashes his boot into my face. I grunt as I force my body into a tumbling roll, narrowly escaping his next kick.
The instant I’m able to regain my footing and get back up, he’s on me. Throwing punches. Issuing headbutts. Slamming his body weight against mine.
Dad fights like he’s still a rough-edged hockey player out on the ice. He got into plenty of brawls in his day and it shows.
We go at it. Neither one of us pulling punches or holding back. A tornado of violence has taken over the den as we scrap through the room, leaving a trail of broken lamps and knocked over furniture in our wake. Blood’s everywhere. Our fists are a blur.
I’m operating off of a pulse of intense fury. It’s past the blackout stage. It’s a level of anger that drives me into a trance that’s violent and demented. I’m fighting my father as if he’s an enemy and I’ve got no regrets about it.
Dad spent plenty of years putting his hands on me and Colt. Discipline is what he called it. He took out his every frustration on us—on me—knowing we wouldn’t fight him back. But tonight’s different as we slam into the wall and the glass display case of his hockey skates shatters. Dad scrabbles for anything to grab a hold of and blindly finds the fire poker. He lands his swing.
The iron rod strikes me in the face, almost knocking me off my feet. I stumble back as my cheek’s cut open. The fresh wave of pain sears. It leaves me damn near blind and disoriented as I finally drop to the ground.
Dad’s got no mercy to give. He rushes toward where I’ve fallen with revenge darkening his eyes, his bloodied, swollen flesh. “If you won’t go along with it, then guess what? You’ll go down too!”
It comes to an end in the next second.
I grab onto one of his prized hockey skates that’d been preserved in the glass case, flipping it around blade side up. As Dad bunches a fist in the front of my shirt, I’m pressing the blade into his throat, making his skin tauten.
“R-Rafe…” he chokes out in immediate alarm.
“I’m your son, remember? By your own admission, I’m more fucking crazy than you are.” I press the blade tighter into his skin. Droplets of blood percolate to the surface. The muscles in his throat work double-time, so strained the veins protrude. “I’m a wild animal in the body of a man.”
“We can control things together! We’re Goldings! We’re the kings of the lea?—”
I shut him up with a slash of the hockey skate’s blade. It slices into his throat and tears apart the fragile skin and tissue it’s made up of. Blood gushes out in gory fashion, spreading everywhere. Down his front. On my face and hands. In my mouth. Coating the blade of the hockey skate I’ve used to kill him with.
Dad’s eyes hold recognition of what’s happening—he’s bleeding out, quickly dying. He produces a couple of gurgles and claws at me as if in hopes I’ll grab a piece of fabric and apply pressure to his deep gash. Instead, I let him drop to the floor and stand up to watch him bleed dry. His body twitches ’til life fades away and he goes still.
A sense of calm I’m not familiar with settles over me. I spend a second soaking in it, catching my breath.
Then I look up in the doorway and find a pair of familiar green eyes already on me.
Colt’s just arrived. He leans against the doorjamb with arms folded, surveying the wreckage we’ve made of the den and then Dad collapsed in a thick puddle of his own blood.
His tone even calmer than I feel, he stands up straight and says, “We better get this cleaned up.”
30. Marisse
“Mr. Golding’s taking longer than I thought,” Detective Gomez says. He’s shoved me into one of the many guest bedrooms in the huge house and stands guard with his barrel pointed straight at me. “It might be worth offing you. We can always make it look like a suicide.”
I’m not even sure how to respond to such a dark idea. I merely glare at him like I’ve been doing.
