Page 13 of Healed

But this was different. These weren’t faceless enemies. This was my home, or the corpse of it, and some of the men falling beneath Devil’s fists were men I had known since I was a child.

That one near the garage had once lifted me onto his shoulders during a rally because I couldn’t see over the crowd. The man Dante drove towards had stood beside my father’s coffin with tears in his eyes. Another had taught Damien how to clean a gun properly, slapping the back of his head every time he rushed the process. They had histories. Families. Names. They had watched me grow up.

These men chose their side. And it wasn’t yours, a voice inside my mind whispered to me.

And it was right.

These were men who had stood by my dad’s side and sworn an oath to protect the Riders. And then they had allowed Nico to poison us from the inside out, destroying us all. From the moment he took command, they had been willing to sacrifice the little girl they had helped raise and allowed him to abuse the woman she had become.

That was the thought that finally broke something open inside me.

They had watched. They had been complicit. They hadn’t done anything to save us.

Maybe some of them had been afraid. Maybe some had objected quietly behind closed doors. Maybe some had looked away because looking too closely would have meant doing something about it.

But not one of them had saved me.

Not one of them had saved my mother. Not one of them had stopped Nico from turning Harley’s club into a prison and a brothel, and a graveyard for any woman unlucky enough to be dragged through its doors.

“Gabriella, move!” I heard Rachel shriek a split second before two large arms wrapped around me, hauling my feet off the floor.

And then it was my own turn to scream as a bullet flew past my cheek and into the forehead of the person behind me.

“Get back to the car,” Dante told me, his voice low and ferocious.

“But—”

“No, buts. Not right now. Your head is all over the place, and I’m not dragging Vienna out of there just for him to find out I let you get yourself shot. Because then he’ll only go and try to get himself killed yet again, and the whole cycle will repeat. Just… go.”

I turned to glare at him, but the words didn’t come fast enough.

He glanced at me then, and whatever he saw in my face softened something in him. Not much, because Dante King softening in the middle of a battle would probably cause the world to tilt off its axis, but enough that his voice lowered.

“This is a lot,” he said. “I know it is. But you are doing yourself no favours by watching.”

I swallowed hard and looked back at the clubhouse. “It shouldn’t be hard. I should hate them enough for this to be easy. But this is my home.”

“It isn’t,” he replied simply. I looked at him then, and he shrugged his large shoulders in response.

“See her?” he asked, pointing to a laughing Rachel who was punching a man in the face. “She’s my home. Her and those kids. If my compound were to burn down tomorrow, I’d still have them. I’d still have my brothers. Home can’t be measured by concrete walls. Home is what you make it. And Vienna has been your home for a long time—just like you are his. And the sooner you both realise that and stop fighting the inevitable, the sooner I can go back to being the nasty, angry biker that no one likes to talk to instead of an agony aunt with terrible advice and cringe phrases.”

He grinned at me, and I could do nothing but let my mouth drop open in shock.

Who knew Dante had a soft side?

I was just about to say that very thing when an excited bundle of blonde and blood stormed over to us, muttering under her breath about her sore knuckles.

“That’s what happens when you use someone’s face as a punching bag, darling,” Dante said to her.

She rolled her eyes at him. “Are you two done with the heart-to-heart? Because while I appreciate the full-circle trauma tour, I’d quite like to get our idiot back before Nico decides to chop him into decorative pieces.”

“That’s up to Gabriella here,” he replied, and for a moment, just a moment, Rachel looked at me and her eyes softened.

And then she was back to her bitch self.

“Well, if she could make a decision a bit faster, that would be grand. We have men bleeding out for her.”

Despite everything, despite the gunfire and the fear and the way my entire past seemed to be crumbling around me, a strangled laugh forced its way up my throat. Rachel looked at me as though I had grown another head.