Page 43 of Healed

“You can do this, Gabriella,” I whispered to myself, splashing cooling water over my wrists and face.

As I opened the door to go back to the club, I almost jumped backwards when I came face to face with a stern looking Vienna and a harassed looking Doc.

“You weren’t where I left you, princess,” Vienna murmured to me, barely even seeming to notice that Doc was stitching one of his re-opened wounds.

“I needed—”

“We know what you needed!” Doc snapped. “Now would you do me the fucking honour of going back to where you’re supposed to be so I can get this one to behave?”

He punched Vienna’s side, but Vienna just smirked at him, his eyes locked on mine.

It was me who looked away first, feeling the blush creep over my skin at the intensity of his gaze.

Without another word, Doc frogmarched us back into the pub and business resumed as usual.

The hours slipped by, and by the evening I found myself leaving the booth, propping up the bar instead and observing everything around me.

Every member of the Leeds charter was in this room, alongside their old ladies. And it was there that I had found my biggest change.

“You can’t pull a pint to save your fucking life,” Steph snapped, slapping Dante around the back of the head.

“Told you!” Rachel whooped, throwing a plastic animal at him.

Dante chuckled. But it wasn’t one of amusement. It was one of annoyance. And then he grabbed the pint out of Steph’s hand and chucked it in her face.

“What the fuck, Dante?” she spluttered.

“Enjoy your drink, Snow White. You’re banned for the rest of the night.”

“Oh, Dante. You really think you have the authority to make that call?”

“I own the bar.”

“And I own you,” Rachel piped up, sliding her pint in front of Steph.

Steph smirked, bringing the pint to her lips and downing it in one. “Ahh,” she gasped, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Tastes like victory.”

I watched in disbelief as Dante stormed off, muttering under his breath whilst Steph and Rachel high-fived each other.

What in the actual fuck?

“Here,” Rachel said, leaning over to me and extending her hand to my face. “Let me just close that for you.”

Her index finger hit my chin, and I realised then that my mouth was hanging open. She shot me a wink as she jumped down from her bar stool and walked around to the other side, taking over with serving the drinks.

It didn’t take long before the men were banned from serving entirely, and their orders were fulfilled by the women. And you’d think this would have made the men in charge, right?

Wrong.

Over the space of half an hour, I watched the old ladies do whatever the fuck they felt like doing.

Monster had ordered a pint of Guinness. He was served an orange and vodka with an umbrella. Ant had asked for two pints for him and Riley. Imogen threw them a packet of pork scratchings and a water bottle.

Pivot had approached the bar and then scurried off again without even asking for a drink, and he was served a pint which only had about a quarter froth. Which was better than Dante, who had received a pint with a coaster on top of it. When he questioned it, Rachel had shaken the pint, shook her hands off in Dante’s face, sucked her thumb to clear the remaining spilled beer, and left him with nothing but a foamy drink.

Crash would have had the old ladies banished for much less—so would my own dad, in fact. But Dante had just laughed and slapped Rachel’s ass. Pivot looked too scared to question anything, and the rest of the men either tried to argue with them—and were quickly shut down—or just accepted their fate with a lot of grumbling.

The only person who had been spared the “Ladies of Sin” treatment had been Vienna. Which he had been ridiculously smug about to begin with.