Page 1 of Ruthless Grace

1

GIA

The arctic blast of the medical wing’s air conditioning hits my bare forearms like a slap.

Outside the high stone walls of the Santoro compound, the New Orleans night is thick enough to drown in: an eighty-eight-degree swamp of stagnant river air, heavy humidity, and the sweet, cloying scent of night-blooming jasmine. Inside our private ground-floor medical wing, it is fifty-eight degrees, smelling of industrial disinfectant, sterile stainless steel, and cold iodine.

I stand at the scrub sink, my feet planted wide on the damp rubber mat.

Five-foot-three on a generous day, running on three hours of dead-eyed sleep, two shots of Nonna’s dark chicory espresso, and pure, concentrated spite. Underneath my lab coat, I wear unisex size-medium scrubs. Faded green, boxy, and two sizes too big.

I buy them oversized on purpose. In a world where Cosa Nostra men price women by their hip-to-waist ratio and senior attending surgeons mistake a full bust for a lack of intellect, my scrubs are my camouflage.

They flatten my chest, erase my waist, and hide the plush, voluptuous hourglass figure my mother passed down to me before she died. The cotton boxiness forces every man in my orbit, whether he wears a stethoscope or carries a concealed Glock, to look at my eyes and my hands.

Nothing else is on the table.

I bend my head over the stainless-steel trough, hit the foot pedal with my heel, and let ice-cold water pour over my forearms.

Then I do the ritual.

I lift my hands, turn my palms toward my face, and roll my left wrist in a clean, three-degree circle. One. Two. Three. Then the right. One. Two. Three. The pre-scrub wrist-roll. The exact loosening motion every trauma surgeon does before taking a blade to skin or stepping into a blood-slick room. My body preps for conflict the exact same way it preps for surgery, because in my family, they are the exact same procedure.

My right thumb finds the ring on my hand, a gold band set with a deep, square-cut emerald. Three generations of Santoro women deep. It belonged to my mother, Lucia, before cancer stole her from us inch by inch. My thumb turns the stone twice against my knuckle. A habit. A tell.

I look up at the double-paned observation window that separates the scrub bay from the medical wing’s private waiting corridor.

Beyond the glass, the Santoro famiglia has assembled like an invading army.

Renzo, our Underboss, stands closest to the glass, smelling faintly of gun oil and sandalwood, his eyes scanning the corridor for threats that don’t exist. Beside him stands Marco, our youngest capo, flexing his fingers over the black ink drawn across his knuckles, his shorthand for extraction routes.

And then there is Nico.

My twin. My mirror. He leans casually against the doorframe in a dark Italian suit, Mama’s wedding cufflinks gleaming at his cuffs. He looks like the effortless diplomat, the family Consigliere who can charm a priest out of his collar. But I know him. I see the microscopic tightness in his jaw, the old Moscow shadow that only Mila ever manages to quiet.

Nico catches me watching him through the glass. He doesn’t smile. He just tilts his head a millimeter, our twin shorthand. You ready, Gi?

I give him a single, barely perceptible nod. I’m always ready, fratellino.

Behind them sit the women. Nonna Rosa, her knuckles swollen and shining, her fingers moving rhythmically over her rosary beads as she whispers Cajun-Creole prayers under her breath.

Beside her sits Izzy, Renzo’s fiancée, her computer-calloused fingers curled around a dark phone screen she keeps waking up, checking for a message from Sofia that hasn’t come. And Mila, who still hasn’t let Nico put a ring on her hand, her pale gray-green eyes quiet, holding herself with the straight, unbroken spine of a Bratva Pakhan’s daughter.

They are all waiting on one thing. On my hands.

No Santoro child is born in a public hospital. In Cosa Nostra, a child born to the Don is a target before she ever takes her first breath. My niece is a principessina of the Gulf Coast, and her first cry belongs inside these compound walls, protected by twelve-foot iron gates, three layers of armed enforcers, and her aunt’s sterile blades.

The automatic double doors of the medical wing’s surgical suite hiss open behind me.

“Dr. Santoro,” the scrub nurse calls out, her voice tight over her mask. “Donna Cassia’s contractions are ninety seconds apart. Fetal monitor is spiking.”

I shut off the water with my knee, snap on a pair of sterile size six-and-a-half gloves, and step backward through the doors into the clinical frost.

“Time to go to work,” I mutter.

In the center of the surgical suite, Cassia is gripping the side rails of the delivery bed, her knuckles bloodless. Her dark hair is damp with sweat, clinging to her temples, but her eyes—those sharp, forensic-accountant eyes that can track a million dollars through ten shell companies—are wide and fiercely focused.

Dante is at her side. The Don who can order an execution over espresso without raising his pulse is sweating through his dark linen shirt, holding his wife’s hand like it is the only anchor tethering him to the earth.