Page 78 of Ruthless Grace

Dante’s eyes soften just a fraction, the hard, defensive lines around his mouth giving way to an absolute, unshakeable recognition. His hand touches his signet ring, the ring of his father, before resting flat on the table.

“You really love her,” Dante says. It isn’t a question. It is a quiet, heavy statement that echoes off the gun racks. “You didn’t marry her to build a fence, Valentino. You married her because you couldn’t live without her.”

“I don’t breathe without her,” I growl, my voice dropping into a thick, gravelly baritone that vibrates straight from my chest. I meet Dante’s eyes, holding his gaze without a single shred of Don armor left between us. “I never have. Now let me tell you about the man who gave her route to Russo.”

I look across the table at Renzo, the silent Underboss who spent years carrying the crushing weight of an accusation he couldn’t defend against.

“Fausto sold Matteo’s route years ago,” I say. “He framed your family for it. Your hands are clean, Renzo. Your brothers didn’t kill Matteo.”

Renzo closes his eyes. He draws a long, slow breath through his nose, his broad shoulders dropping two inches as the invisible, decade-long anvil of Matteo’s ghost is finally lifted from his spine. He opens his eyes, meeting mine with a quiet, single nod of absolute, unspoken respect.

Nico steps around the corner of the table. He stops an inch from my shoulder, reaching out to place his massive, split-knuckled hand flat over my back.

“We get her back first, Luca,” Nico growls, his twin eyes burning with a wild, reciprocal fire. “And then you and I are going to tear Fausto Carbone apart piece by fucking piece.”

“He’s chained in a holding room waiting for you, Nico,” I reply softly, placing my hand over his. “Cognato.”

Cassia steps forward, holding two-month-old baby Lucia snugly against her shoulder. The baby lets out a soft, tiny snuffle in her sleep. Cassia’s sharp eyes look at Gia’s leather surgical bag on the steel table, then turn to meet mine.

“Gia delivered this baby with her bare hands in this house while Russo’s probes were bleeding the port,” Cassia says, her voice low, steel-edged, and carrying the unshakeable authority of the Santoro Donna. “She saved my daughter. She gave this house its miracle. You bring my sister-in-law back home, Luca. You bring her back to her family.”

Beside Nico, Mila places her quiet, slender hand flat against Nico’s lower back, offering her partner the silent, steady strength of a survivor who knows what it means to be held in the dark. She looks at me once, her eyes clear and unwavering, giving her quiet, unspoken blessing to the war.

“I have the grid!” Marco’s voice cuts through the room from the monitors.

Marco and Izzy lean over the main wall screen as Marco punches a command into his console, expanding a high-resolution satellite map across the display. Beside him, Izzy’s fingers fly over her keyboard, isolating the frequency trace.

“I intercepted the military frequency jammer signature Russo deployed on Magazine Street,” Izzy states, her technical tone rapid and precise. “That jammer requires a high-amp industrial generator to cycle. Fausto tried to steer our traces toward dead port staff, but Marco and I cross-referenced the current power grid draw along the lower river sector. There’s only one active facility with that power spike right now.”

Marco taps the glowing screen, highlighting a red pulsing vector at the edge of the shipping docks. “Berth 14,” Marco states. “The old Gulf import vault. An abandoned, rust-stained corrugated warehouse right on the water’s edge. Russo’s scouts just moved four unmarked vehicles into the rear yard.”

Before anyone can speak, heavy, slow footsteps rustle from the hallway behind Cassia.

Nonna Rosa steps through the archway into the armory.

She wears her black wool shawl over her shoulders, her silver hair pinned neatly, her rosary beads tangled around her left fingers. She looks at the gun racks, at the tactical rifles lying on the bench, and at the four Santoro men standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Don of the Valentino family.

She doesn’t cry out. She doesn’t tell them to put their weapons down.

Nonna Rosa walks directly up to me. She looks up into my wet, blood-stained face, her aged, lined eyes filled with an ancient, fierce maternal authority that has held this empire together.

She reaches into her apron pocket, pulls out a clean white linen cloth, and gently dabs the rain and blood from my split lip.

“A family that does not bleed for its women is no family at all,” Nonna Rosa says, her voice quiet, steady, and ringing like a church bell across the quiet armory. She looks at Dante, Renzo, Nico, and Marco, then turns her gaze back to me, pressing her palm against my cheek. “You are her husband, Luca. You are mine now. You go to that river, you tear that warehouse down to the dirt, and you bring my girl back to my table.”

“On my life, Nonna,” I whisper, my voice thick with a reverent, soul-deep promise.

“Leave nothing of Russo standing,” Nonna Rosa commands softly, making the sign of the cross over my forehead. “Now go.”

Dante turns toward the heavy steel weapons racks running along the western wall of the armory. Without saying another word, he reaches up and pulls down a tactical rifle, slapping a loaded magazine into the receiver well with a sharp, echoing CLACK.

Renzo follows immediately, racking the bolt of his weapon with practiced, silent mastery. Nico pulls a tactical vest over his chest, securing extra magazines into the front pouches, while Marco straps a sidearm holster to his thigh.

I step up to the rack beside Dante. I shed my drenched charcoal suit jacket, tossing it onto the floor, and pull a black tactical vest over my dress shirt. I reach for a heavy rifle, checking the optics and chambering a round with a single, unbroken flick of my wrist.

Five men stand side-by-side in the bright strip-lights of the armory, a single, unified war machine bound by marriage, cleared of past blood, and driven by a shared heart.

I pull back my wet left cuff and check Matteo’s watch.