Page 24 of Ruthless Grace

Dante flinches as if I’ve struck him across the face with an iron rod. The color drains completely from his lips. His arm drops to his side, heavy as dead weight. He stands frozen on the lawn, stripped of his right, as the entire underworld watches the Don of the Santoro family get dismissed by his own blood.

Nico steps out from behind the arbor hedges.

He doesn’t offer me a formal arm. He simply steps up beside my left shoulder, his tall frame blocking Dante from my view, and aligns his stride with mine.

Together, Nico and I walk down the brick steps onto the crushed-stone path.

The crunch of white gravel under my silk heels echoes through the silent garden. I keep my head held high, my posture straight as a surgical steel rod, looking neither left nor right at the rows of armed men watching the trade take place.

We reach the iron archway that marks the edge of the formal lawn, ten yards from where the aisle cuts between my parents’ graves.

I halt. I turn to my twin and gently lay my hand over his forearm.

Nico looks down at me, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitches near his ear. “Gia,” he says softly, his voice thick with unspent violence. “I can take you out through the rear gate right now. Fuck the treaty. Fuck Valentino.”

“No,” I say softly, meeting his dark eyes with absolute calm. “We play the hand on the table, Nico.”

I pull my hand back from his arm.

“The last steps are mine.”

Nico closes his eyes, swallowing hard, then nods once. He steps back to the edge of the lawn, leaving the stone path completely open.

I turn back toward the altar.

I am walking myself down the aisle.

No father to guide me. No Don brother to give me away. No man standing beside me to claim ownership of the steps I take.

I step onto the stone path, my ivory lace train dragging over the white gravel, passing directly between the slate markers of Salvatore and Lucia Santoro.

As I pass my mother’s grave, her voice echoes from the dark vault of my memory, the words she spoke from her sickbed years ago, holding my small hands in hers: No Santoro daughter, traded, ever.

I’m sorry, Mama, I think, my chest tightening with a sharp, searing ache that I refuse to let show on my face. He traded me. But he didn’t break me.

I reach the end of the path and step up onto the stone dais before my parents’ headstones.

Luca Valentino doesn’t blink.

He stands inches from me, his massive frame towering over mine, his cedar-and-leather scent washing over me in a suffocating wave. His dark eyes scan my face, taking in the cold iron in my posture, the pale pearls at my throat, and the absolute lack of fear in my eyes.

A dark, dangerous flare of admiration flashes deep within his gaze: something raw and feral. He realizes in this exact second that he hasn’t engineered the surrender of a timid mafia princess. He has handed a throne to a queen who intends to burn his kingdom down from the inside if he steps out of line.

Father Angelo opens his breviary, clearing his raspy throat as he begins the Latin rites, his old voice droning on about duty, honor, and holy matrimony under the eyes of God and Cosa Nostra.

I don’t hear a word of it. I keep my eyes locked on Luca’s.

When Father Angelo asks for the vows, Luca speaks first. His voice is a deep, velvet rasp, cool, absolute, and resonant as a funeral toll:

“I, Luca Valentino, take you, Giada Santoro, to be my wedded wife. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death parts us.”

He reaches out, taking my left hand in his scar-seamed palm. His skin is warm, calloused, and heavy with lethal authority. He slides the heavy platinum band onto my ring finger, his thumb pressing once against my knuckle with possessive, deliberate force.

It is my turn.

I feel the eyes of forty Santoros and thirty Valentinos burning into my back. I feel Dante’s suffocating guilt hovering near the rear gate. I feel Nico’s watchful rage.

I look Luca Valentino directly in his dark, merciless eyes. I don’t flinch. I don’t hesitate. My voice carries across the quiet garden, clean, steady, and sharp as a scalpel, without breaking once: