Page 36 of Ruthless Grace

He sits there in dark wool, enduring the cold fury of my twin, the silent judgment of the women, and the suffocating guilt of my eldest brother. He takes every drop of hostility this room can throw at him and absorbs it like iron.

He’s a ruthless, calculating Don who backed my family into a corner and bought my name. But he isn’t a coward. He doesn’t hide behind his sentries, and he doesn’t break when he’s surrounded by men who want him dead.

By eight o’clock, dinner is over, and the heavy silence in the foyer feels like an unexploded charge.

Dante stands near the archway of his private study, his hand resting heavy against the doorframe. He looks gray with exhaustion. “The port shipments cleared the lower berths this afternoon,” Dante says to Luca, his tone stiff and formal. “Your logistics team has full access to the river vaults.”

“Fausto Carbone verified the routes an hour ago,” Luca replies smoothly, pulling on his dark leather gloves.

Dante hesitates, his jaw working as his eyes shift to me. Then he looks away.

I step past my brothers, my dark silk heels clicking softly on the marble foyer, and stop beside Luca.

Nico steps up to my shoulder, his massive frame blocking Luca’s path to the front door. My twin looks down at my husband, his dark eyes burning with unfiltered promise. “Sunday is over, Valentino,” Nico whispers, his voice dropping an octave into pure, lethal threat. “Take her back to your estate. But if she ever comes back here with a single mark on her skin, I won’t use a treaty to kill you.”

Luca meets my twin’s gaze without an ounce of hesitation. He doesn’t reach for a weapon. He doesn’t issue a counter-threat. He looks Nico straight in the eyes:

“Your sister writes her own rules, Santoro. Ask her yourself.”

Nico’s eyes flicker to mine. I give my twin a single, calm nod. Nico closes his eyes for a fraction of a second, his chest heaving with unspent rage, then steps back and clears the doorway.

Luca opens the heavy mahogany front door, stepping out onto the veranda where his armored sedan waits beneath the live oaks.

I step past him onto the flagstone steps on my own power, my chin held high as the New Orleans night air washes over us, thick with sweet jasmine and river brackishness. Luca falls into step beside me, his broad shadow sweeping over the stone.

“You enjoyed that, didn’t you, principessa?” he murmurs, his deep voice vibrating against the humid night.

“Every single minute, Valentino,” I reply. “You looked very handsome eating cold ragù under my twin’s death glare.”

A faint, dark ghost of a smile touches the corner of his lips—gone as fast as it appeared.

“Tell your Nonna the food was excellent,” he says quietly, holding open the door of the sedan for me.

I step inside, settling onto the dark leather seat. As the heavy door shuts, locking us into the quiet, private intimacy of his world, I realize something unsettling:

He survived my family’s table without dropping his armor once. And breaking Luca Valentino is going to take a lot more than cold gravy.

Midnight.

The Valentino master suite is quiet, draped in deep shadows save for the single amber halo of the bedside lamp.

I sit propped against the velvet headboard in a plain silk slip, my dark hair loose over my shoulders, my black diamond ring glittering on my left hand. On the nightstand beside me lies the master copy of our contract—pages of heavy cream parchment outlining the terms of our marriage.

Across the room, the double doors leading to his private office are pulled shut. The one-inch gap from our first night is gone—he closed it fully tonight before stepping into his bedroom.

He hasn’t tried to force his way in.

Since the night I turned on my wand, flooded this room in light, and gave myself an explosive climax while he stood unbuckled and ruined at the foot of my bed, Luca hasn’t crossed that threshold. He has never taken anything I didn’t let him take. His hands stop the second mine tell them to.

I look at the contract resting on the nightstand, but I don’t reach for a pen.

I don’t need to write case notes on paper to track what’s happening in this house. I keep the ledger in my head.

He sat at my father’s table surrounded by seven people who hate his bloodline, and he never once looked at the door. He took my brothers’ threats without issuing a single warning in return. And when we came home, he walked me to my door, stepped back, and left me my space without demanding an invoice.

Every rule I wrote into that contract was designed to build a wall between us. But as I stare at the dark wood of his door, I realize the truth.

The black ink built the wall. But his quiet, unexpected respect for it is what’s starting to tear it down.