The fallout in the morning was immense.
First of all, Guilia headed into the kitchen early, to take stock of what the three Littles had done. The ice-cream freezer, which had been completely full, was empty. And there was one emptycarton of peach ice cream on the counter, a rebel spoon lying atop a note.
Pretty good flavor. Maybe some added cream next time?
Guilia laughed out loud. For all their naughtiness, Tay really was rather funny. The note was cheeky as hell, but they knew that, just as they knew that her peach ice cream was perfection—they’d referred to it as such on multiple occasions.
The kitchen phone rang, and it took Guilia a moment to work out what it was. No one called the kitchen usually; the big kitchen that Chef Connor ran, sure, but not the kitchen of her little Italian restaurant.
“Hello?”
It was Luna, one of the Ranch service submissives who often manned reception. “Ummm… Chef?”
“Si?”
“I think you’d best go up to the multi-purpose room on the second floor.”
It didn’t take long, and Guilia could hear the carnage before she saw it.
Littles and Middles and even some of the Rawhide Caterpillars were decimating her ice cream.
Half-empty cartons were everywhere, and Littles high on sugar were running around with ice cream smeared all over their faces. The whole place was in an absolute state of chaos. She had no idea how they’d gotten ice cream on the walls, instead of in their stomachs, but they’d managed it.
She met Derek’s eyes across the room and even he looked a little shell-shocked. This was a step above the rest. A prank taken to the extreme.
Holly and Sadie looked pretty miserable in a corner, sending panicked looks toward the group of Bigs who were entering the room to witness the carnage.
Tay, on the other hand, sat on a chair in the center of the room, carton in one hand, spoon in the other, eating away. Their feet were on the table, and it was that more than anything else that had Guilia determined to sort this out once and for all.
“Basta!” she said, her voice cutting through the noise. “Enough!”
There was a sudden silence as the Littles realized whose ice cream they had been eating.
“That was my entire stock of ice cream,” she announced to the room. “I had built it up over the last couple of months so that you all could enjoy it this summer.”
Tay’s grin of defiance dropped a bit.
“Master Derek, do you think that I should work to replace this stock?”
“I don’t think so, no,” he said.
One of the Littles burst into tears, and the rest of them sobered up as soon as they realized the consequences of their actions. This wasn’t just having ice cream for breakfast, this was disrespecting someone’s time and hard work.
And it meant no more ice cream all summer.
Guilia would almost certainly make more after a week or so, but a fortnight with no delicious ice cream would teach all of the Littles not to mess with her kitchen.
“Perhaps Sadie and Holly could be so kind as to clean up this room?” she suggested. “It seems unfair to ask the service submissives to do so, when they weren’t the ones to cause such disruption.”
Sadie and Holly looked like they wished the floor would swallow them up. When it failed to do so, they each replied meekly, “Yes, Chef.”
“What about me?” Tay jumped up, outraged that they had been left out of the punishments. Their green eyes flashed, and they looked toward Sadie and Holly. “I was the one who orchestrated this; it’s not fair that they get punished and not me.”
Guilia detected guilt in their voice and turned to look at Tay, whose chin was jutting out defiantly. “I never said you weren’t getting punished, Tay Martin.”
At the sound of their full name, their defiance evaporated and Tay wilted. Guilia wasn’t really one for punishments, but she’d clearly let Tay get away with small infractions for far too long.
Something had to change.
