Page 25 of Ruthless Grace

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

I slide the matching platinum ring onto his long, scarred finger.

“I pronounce you husband and wife,” Father Angelo says softly, making the sign of the cross over our joined hands. “What God has joined, let no man put asunder.”

Luca steps forward. His broad frame blocks out the sweltering New Orleans sun, casting a long shadow over me. His hand comes up, cupping the back of my neck: his fingers warm, heavy, and startlingly steady against my bare skin. He tilts my chin upward, forcing my gaze up to meet his.

He lowers his mouth to mine.

I expected a cold transaction. I expected a public display of dominance meant to humiliate my brothers.

Instead, the moment his lips press against mine, time stops.

The ambient hum of the cicadas in the live oaks cuts out. The rustle of white gravel, the heavy breathing of forty armed men, the ticking of the watch on his wrist: all of it vanishes into absolute, deafening silence.

His mouth is hot, firm, and devastatingly slow. He doesn’t rush the claim. He takes my bottom lip between his own with a deep, intoxicating pressure that sends an electric current straight down my spine, shattering every drop of surgical composure I’ve spent a lifetime building.

My breath hitches in the back of my throat. I gasp against his mouth, and Luca takes the sound, his grip on the back of my neck tightening just enough to pull me flush against his rigid chest.

Through the heavy lace of my dress and the dark wool of his suit, I feel the violent, hammer-like thud of his heartbeat. It isn’t the steady, calculating pulse of a Don carrying out a trade. It is fast. Wild. Feral.

My hands, usually so steady with a blade, twitch against his lapels. I mean to push him back. I mean to remind him where we stand. But my fingers sink into the heavy silk of his suit jacket instead, clinging to him as the ground beneath my heels feels like it’s tilting into an abyss.

When he finally pulls back an inch, his thumb lingers against the angle of my jaw, his pad tracing the frantic pulse point leaping beneath my skin.

Luca’s dark eyes are wide, black pupils blown so dilated that the dark iris has completely swallowed the light. For a fraction of a second, the cold, impenetrable mask of Luca Valentino slips—and I see the terrifying, unhinged truth beneath it. He isn’t triumphant. He looks staggered. He looks like a man who just reached into a fire expecting ash and caught a living, burning lightning bolt.

And in that same, terrifying second, I realize the awful truth: I am just as crazy as he is. I don’t hate him because he bought me. I hate him because the moment his mouth touched mine, I didn’t want him to stop.

The first crack has split right through the middle of our war.

“Nobody gave you away today,” he whispers, his voice dropping an octave, rough and thick with a dark, weaponized edge that makes my skin prickle with heat.

I force my jaw to set, pulling my surgical spine back together piece by piece. I offer a small, razor-thin smile that doesn’t reach my eyes.

“The sun hasn’t set yet, Valentino,” I whisper back. “Don’t celebrate the capture before you’ve survived the siege.”

The ceremony ends, but there is no escape to his waiting car.

Before the trade can be sealed, Cosa Nostra demands its blood theater.

The wedding reception is set across the sweeping stone courtyard and main reception lawn of the Santoro compound. Round tables draped in black silk line the lawn under string lights strung between the antebellum columns. Waiters in white jackets weave through the crowd carrying silver trays of crystal champagne flutes and roasted lamb, but nobody is eating.

The air is thick with humidity, chicory, and lethal paranoia.

On the left side of the courtyard, the Santoro family has set up their perimeter. Dante stands near the marble fountain, holding an untouched glass of scotch, surrounded by Renzo, Marco, and twenty capos. His gaze is glued to me, heavy with a suffocating guilt he knows I will never relieve.

On the right side, the Valentino crew has effectively occupied enemy ground.

They haven’t dispersed. They haven’t relaxed. Silvano Moretti, the senior Valentino Old Guard Consigliere, a stone-faced man with iron-gray hair and eyes that have buried three Dons, stands at the head of a tight, disciplined wedge of six heavily armed enforcers. Among them is Fausto Carbone, Luca’s logistics and route specialist, his hands folded cleanly in front of his suit jacket, eyes scanning the high windows of the Santoro mansion.

They form an impenetrable, dark wall behind Luca. Even on Santoro soil, Valentino’s men move like an occupying army, letting every capo in New Orleans know that if a single bullet flies today, this compound will burn to the water line.

Luca stands beside me at the head table on the stone terrace, his left hand resting heavily over the curve of my waist. His palm is a brand against my silk dress, possessive and constant.

“Your Old Guard looks like they’re waiting for an execution,” I say quietly, sipping my sparkling water without looking up at him.

“They are,” Luca replies smoothly, his deep voice vibrating through his chest against my shoulder. “They’re waiting to see if your brother Nico decides to be stupid.”