Page 13 of Ruthless Grace

I see mine.

I see a child with her fierce, unbroken eyes and my blood, held against her chest in the quiet bedroom of my estate across the river. I see myself standing over her bed, stripped of my suit jacket, watching my wife nurse our heir while the rest of the world burns outside our gates.

The realization hits me like a physical blow.

I don’t just want her name on a legal paper. I don’t just want her body in my bed under a no-touch contract.

I want her soul. I want to build a fortress around her, destroy every man who ever made her feel like collateral, and spend the rest of my life earning the right to hear her laugh like that in my house.

Gia lifts her head from the baby’s cheek.

As if feeling the dark, suffocating weight of my thoughts across the length of the cathedral, her gaze sweeps away from the font, tracking past the burning candles, past the rows of Santoro soldiers, straight into the deep shadows of the rear aisle.

Her dark eyes lock dead-center onto mine.

Across thirty yards of incense and sacred space, the air between us turns to pure, high-voltage electricity.

She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t look away. Her thumb moves unconsciously, turning my four-carat black diamond ring against her finger, the exact same way she turns her mother’s emerald. One. Two. Three.

I don’t move a muscle. I stand motionless in the dark, my eyes holding hers, letting her see every drop of the possessive, relentless storm waiting for her across the river.

Look at me, doctor, I think, my jaw tightening until my molars ache. Look at the man who bought your life. Read the invoice. Because tomorrow at the altar, you take my name.

As the service concludes, the congregation spills out of the cathedral nave into the grand marble vestibule.

The Santoro family forms a tight, protective circle around Cassia and the baby, their enforcers scanning the arched exits for any sign of Russo scouts.

I step out of the pillar’s shadow and walk slowly toward the main doors, my leather soles echoing sharply against the tile.

The moment I clear the archway, the temperature in the vestibule drops to sub-zero.

Nonna Rosa turns first. The heart of the Santoro kitchen stops dead in her tracks, her rosary clutched in her withered hand. She looks at my charcoal suit, looks at the silver suture seam exposed on my forearm, and delivers a gaze so cold, so thick with Creole curse-magic, it would have dropped a lesser man to his knees.

Beside her, Cassia and Izzy shift their bodies, physically blocking my view of baby Lucia, their eyes flat and sharp as razors. A complete, united freeze-out from the Santoro women.

I don’t care about the women.

I stop five feet from the exit, my hands tucked loosely into my suit trousers, my eyes fixed on the three men flanking Gia like bodyguards.

Dante steps forward first. The Don of the Santoro famiglia is sweating, his linen collar damp, his face carved from stone. He looks at me standing in his family’s cathedral, and his right hand locks onto his father’s signet ring.

“You have nerve showing your face here, Valentino,” Dante says quietly, so it doesn’t carry to the parish priest nearby.

“I came to celebrate your daughter’s baptism, Dante,” I reply smoothly. “A gentleman pays his respects to his future Donna’s family.”

Nico steps up beside Dante, his chest heaving, his dark twin eyes burning with pure murder. “Stronzo,” Nico spits under his breath, his knuckles white where his hands are shoved in his pockets. “Get the fuck out of our church before I forget where we are.”

“Nico, calm down,” Renzo grunts from behind them, placing a scarred hand on Nico’s shoulder, though Renzo’s own eyes are fixed on my throat like he’s measuring the distance for a knife strike.

I ignore the brothers completely.

I look past Dante’s shoulder, meeting the dark, unreadable eyes of the woman standing between them.

Gia steps out from behind her brothers’ wall of charcoal wool. She carries her leather medical bag over her shoulder, her plum silk dress gleaming under the vestibule lanterns, my black diamond ring glittering on her left hand.

She looks at me with pure, uncounterfeit hostility: a dangerous composure that tells me she has already buried her grief and prepared her weapons for tomorrow.

“Dr. Santoro,” I say, tilting my head a fraction of an inch in a formal, dark acknowledgment.