Page 12 of Ruthless Grace

He won’t look at his sister.

Walking three steps behind him is Nico. My future brother-in-law, the brilliant Consigliere who can dismantle a grand jury indictment over lunch, looks like he hasn’t slept since the trade was struck. His eyes are bloodshot, his hands shoved deep into his trousers pockets, his shoulders hunched with a dark, suffocating rage.

Beside Nico walks Dr. Giada Santoro.

My breath locks in my throat, my chest tightening so hard the charcoal wool of my vest feels suddenly too small.

She isn’t wearing her boxy, unisex green scrubs today. She isn’t hiding behind oversized cotton armor.

She wears a sleek, high-necked dress of dark plum silk that falls just below her knees. The cut is deceptively modest—long sleeves, zero cleavage, a high collar that wraps snugly around the pale column of her throat—but the silk clings to her body with every step she takes. It outlines the sharp, narrow cinch of her waist, the plush, voluptuous flare of her hips, and the heavy, proud curve of her bust.

Her dark, glossy hair is swept up into an intricate knot at the crown of her head, held by two antique tortoiseshell pins, leaving her long neck completely bare.

And on the third finger of her left hand, catching the crimson light of the cathedral, sits my ring, the one I sent to her bedroom yesterday morning, a four-carat, emerald-cut black diamond set in platinum.

She hasn’t taken it off. It sits on her finger like a hot brand, a public declaration to every Cosa Nostra boss in this cathedral that she belongs to the Valentino name tomorrow at the altar.

She walks with her chin high, her spine straight as a surgical blade, completely ignoring the whispering mobsters in the side pews.

She doesn’t look at Dante. She doesn’t look at Renzo or Marco walking perimeter behind her.

She walks alone, isolated in the center of her own family: a woman who has been traded by the brothers who swore to protect her, standing on the edge of the cliff without letting a single person see her shake.

The baptismal rite begins at the white marble font near the transept.

Father Angelo, small and ancient in his gold-embroidered vestments, chants the Latin prayers in a low, rhythmic monotone that echoes off the vaulted stone. Incense rises in thick, sweet clouds from the swinging thurible, veiling the altar in white smoke.

Nonna Rosa stands in the front pew, her fingers moving frantically over her rosary beads, her Creole whispers rustling like dry leaves. Beside her, Cassia holds newborn baby Lucia, wrapped in a christening gown of antique white lace old enough to have yellowed at the hem.

“Who stands as godmother to this child?” Father Angelo asks, his voice booming through the cavernous nave.

Gia steps forward.

She doesn’t hesitate. She steps up the two marble steps to the font, her silk dress rustling against the stone. She reaches out, her bare, steady hands lifting her newborn niece from Cassia’s arms with practiced, surgical reverence.

I lean heavier against my granite pillar, my eyes locked onto her profile.

She cradles the baby against her chest, her eyes softening into something so pure, so fiercely protective, it makes the blood roar in my ears. The cold, cynical trauma surgeon who negotiates contracts in black ink disappears, replaced by the woman who held her family’s bleeding hearts in her bare hands and refused to let them die.

Father Angelo lifts the silver shell, dipping it into the consecrated water.

“Lucia Rosa Santoro,” the priest intones, pouring the holy water over the infant’s dark hair, “ego te baptizo in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

Baby Lucia lets out a tiny, indignant squeak, her miniature fists flailing against the white lace.

Gia lets out a soft, breathless laugh, a sound so warm, so genuine, it cuts through the heavy gloom of the cathedral like lightning. She bends her head, pressing her lips gently against the baby’s wet forehead, whispering something private into her niece’s tiny ear.

My pulse slams against my ribs.

Inside my chest, the cold, calculated architecture of the Don cracks wide open.

I engineered this marriage to secure my berths, block Russo, and take the woman who has haunted my dark house since the day I buried my brother. I told myself it was strategy. I told myself it was geopolitics built around a debt.

I lied to myself.

Standing in the shadows of this sacred space, watching Giada Santoro hold that newborn child against her heart, a feral, unhinged vision tears through my brain, unbidden, terrifying, and absolute.

I don’t see Dante’s daughter in her arms.