Page 33 of Ruthless Grace

“Perhaps you’re right,” I murmur.

Fausto gives a smooth, deferential nod, picks up an empty folder, and steps back out into the hall, leaving me alone in the dark with my ledgers.

I didn’t sleep for a single second.

I spent four hours standing in the dark of my private office, my back pressed against the wood-paneled wall, listening to the quiet, peaceful rhythm of my wife’s breathing echoing through the cracked connecting door.

My dick is still sore. My jaw aches from grinding my teeth in the dark. And my mind is completely wrecked.

I pull back my cuff and glance down at Matteo’s watch. 7:32 AM. Which means the sun has been up for over an hour, and I am operating on zero sleep, three cups of black coffee, and a burning need to drag Giada Santoro out of bed and force her to acknowledge who owns this house.

I smooth down the lapels of my dark charcoal suit jacket, adjust my tie, and head down the grand marble staircase.

I expect to find her in the master suite, perhaps nursing a headache or brooding over her luggage. I expect a humbled, quiet hostage coming to terms with enemy territory.

Instead, as I reach the archway of the grand dining room, I stop dead in my tracks.

The floor-to-ceiling French windows are thrown wide open, letting the humid morning breeze roll over the long mahogany table. On the table sits a silver tray with a pot of dark chicory espresso, a plate of sliced figs, and a single porcelain cup steaming in the morning light.

At the far end of the twelve-foot table, sitting in the high-backed carved armchair reserved for the Don of the Valentino family, sits my wife.

She looks infuriatingly, outrageously well-rested.

Gia wears a tailored emerald silk blouse that clings to the soft curves of her bust, the top two buttons undone to reveal the pale golden skin at the base of her throat. Her dark hair is swept up in a loose twist, held in place not by a hairpin, but by a stainless steel surgical hemostat. A pair of locking steel clamps she pulled straight out of her medical bag.

She holds a slim digital tablet in her right hand, scanning surgical case files. At her elbow, her espresso cup steams like a border fence.

She doesn’t look up when my shadow falls across the threshold. Most men in Cosa Nostra rehearse their sentences before they sit across from me. She rolls her left wrist—that small, unconscious pre-scrub circle she makes before making surgical cuts—and turns the page of her report.

God help me, I want to drag her out of that chair just to see what face she makes when she loses control.

I step into the room, my polished leather shoes heavy against the dark floorboards. I walk straight down the length of the table, stopping two feet from her elbow, looming over her with every inch of my frame.

“You’re sitting in my chair, principessa,” I say, my voice a gravelly rasp that hasn’t recovered from the night before.

Gia doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t even glance up from her screen. She takes a slow, deliberate sip of her dark espresso, sets the china cup back on its saucer with a microscopic clink, and taps the tablet screen with her thumb.

“There are twelve chairs at this table, Luca,” she says. “Pick one.”

A dark, dangerous heat flashes straight through my chest.

“In my house, I sit at the head,” I say, leaning down until my face is inches from hers, my shadow completely swallowing her emerald silk. “And my guests wait to be served.”

Gia finally turns her head. Her amber-flecked eyes lock onto mine, clear, radiant, and entirely devoid of fear. There are no dark circles beneath her eyes. There is no tremor in her hands.

“I’m not a guest, Valentino,” she says, her voice razor-sharp. “I’m the woman who signed your contract. And if you think three hours of sleep and an unlatched door are going to make me tremble in your dining room, you severely underestimated the bloodline you bought.”

“You look remarkably well-rested for a woman who was held hostage in her own bed,” I growl.

“I sleep very well when I’m in control of my own pleasure, Valentino,” she replies, a tiny, razor-thin smile touching the corner of her lips. “You should try it sometime. Your eyes look like you spent the night wrestling a ghost.”

My jaw tightens so hard a muscle twitches near my ear.

She knows. She knows every single second of what happened behind that door. She knows she left the Don of New Orleans standing in the dark, ruined and stroking himself to the sound of her coming.

“Don’t push me, Gia,” I whisper, my hand coming down on the mahogany table beside her cup, my calloused knuckles white against the dark wood. “You wrote a contract with a lot of clauses. None of them protect you if I decide to break them.”

Gia turns her body slightly, leaning her spine against the carved velvet back of the Don’s chair. She looks up at me with pure, surgical steel.