Page 70 of Ruthless Grace

With a low, shattered sob, Gia breaks around me. Her internal walls pulse and clamp down in a violent, cascading wave of release that tears through her whole frame. The feeling of her orgasm crushing against my shaft drags me straight over the precipice behind her. I drive deep one last time, my teeth sinking into the curve of her shoulder to stifle my own sound as I empty myself inside her, a guttural roar tearing from my chest as the unspent tension of a lifetime finally detonates in the foyer.

For a long, suspended eternity, neither of us moves.

I remain pinned against her, my arms locked beneath her thighs, effortlessly holding her weight against the dark wood as our lungs work in unison gasps that bounce off the vaulted ceiling. Her dark hair is wild, clinging to the sweat on her neck, her forehead resting against my shoulder as she breathes me in.

Slowly, the frantic hammering of my pulse begins to settle into a deep, steady thrum. I press a slow, lingering kiss to the side of her neck, feeling the steady, vibrant beat of her pulse point against my lips.

“Are you broken, Dr. Santoro?” I murmur against her damp skin, a low, dark edge of wicked satisfaction bleeding back into my voice.

Gia lets out a soft, breathless laugh against my neck, her nails tracing a slow, lazy line down the back of my suit jacket.

“I am far from broken, Valentino,” she whispers back, her voice laced with that familiar, razor-sharp defiance that makes my heart pound all over again. “In fact... I believe I just put you in your place.”

I pull back slightly, looking down into her dark, unarmored eyes. The fear is gone. The ghost of my father’s house is dead. I look at my wife: healed, whole, and completely mine.

“You always do, cara,” I reply softly, my lips curving as I finally lower her feet back down to the herringbone floor, keeping my arm wrapped firmly around her waist as the quiet dark of the estate settles around us.

29

GIA

The quiet inside the master suite is dark and restorative, sealing out the concussive echoes of the foyer lockdown and the heat radiating off the river outside. Amber light from the hallway sconces spills through the unlatched double doors, casting long, liquid shadows across the dark velvet drapes and the polished mahogany floor.

I sit on the edge of the king-sized bed in my black silk robe, my medical kit open beside me on the mattress. Luca sits on the low leather ottoman between my knees, his broad-shouldered frame lowered so I can reach his face. His charcoal suit jacket is discarded over a chair, his tie loosened, the top two buttons of his dress shirt undone to reveal the dark hair at the base of his throat.

My fingers, steady and clinically precise, hold a pad of sterile gauze soaked in antiseptic. I press it gently against his lower lip, where Nico’s split-knuckled right hook opened a jagged, crimson seam during Nonna Rosa’s Sunday dinner.

Luca doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t pull back. He sits perfectly still, his hands resting heavily on my knees, his dark, unblinking eyes locked onto my face with an unarmored, quiet intensity that makes the pulse in my throat flutter.

“Hold still, Valentino,” I murmur. “If you keep jawing at me, the tissue won’t seal properly.”

A dark shadow of amusement touches his eyes, though he keeps his mouth still. “It’s a scratch, Dr. Santoro.”

“It’s a split laceration delivered by my twin brother,” I correct, wiping away a stray bead of dark blood before pressing a fresh piece of gauze against his chin. “You let him hit you. Silvano had his weapon drawn, and you stood there like an iron post and took a full-force blow to the jaw without throwing a guard.”

“I took what I owed,” Luca rasps, the sound traveling through my knees and straight up my spine. “Nico carried weeks of hell believing his sister was alone in the dark. If taking his right hand buys his silence and keeps your dignity intact, I’d let him break my jaw twice over.”

My hands pause over his face. The antiseptic pad hovers an inch from his lip as I look down into his dark, brutal features.

This is the most feared Don in New Orleans. But hours ago, he stood at Nonna’s table and let my family spill his blood rather than betray my medical privacy. And minutes ago, in the foyer downstairs, he held me against the oak paneling with a feral devotion that shattered every remaining wall between us.

“You’re an idiot, Luca,” I whisper, my thumb brushing lightly over the hard line of his cheekbone.

“I’m your husband,” he corrects, his large, calloused hand sliding up my thigh to cover mine, pressing my palm flat against his heart. The steady, powerful thud beneath his ribs beats with a fierce, rhythmic heat. “And I don’t give a damn about Santoro blood on my collar as long as you’re breathing.”

I finish dressing his lip with a thin strip of butterfly tape, closing my medical bag with a crisp, metallic snap. I slide off the bed, my silk robe whispering against my ankles as I cross the cool mahogany floor toward the writing desk sitting beneath the high, arched windows.

The surface of my writing desk is no longer just the quiet haven where I log my surgical hours and hospital schedules. Tonight, it is a command center.

Spread out across the dark mahogany are the port logistics manifests, mapping the routes Russo’s scouts probed along Magazine Street and the river bridge earlier today.

Luca steps up behind me, his boots making no sound against the floor. His broad chest grounds me from behind, his hands settling over my hips with a possessive warmth. He looks down at the desk, taking in the marked routes pressing against our river.

“Twice in one day,” Luca murmurs near my ear, his breath warm against my neck. “Russo is testing our perimeter.”

“Then the war isn’t coming, Luca,” I say softly. “It’s already at the river.”

“Let it come,” Luca growls, his grip tightening on my waist, his dark eyes fixing on my face in the window’s reflection. “I spent years preparing to burn the Russos to the ground. He won’t take a single brick of what is ours, cara.”