Page 55 of Ruthless Grace

He stands up from the armchair in a single, terrifyingly smooth motion. The warm, unarmored man who held my hand through the biopsy needle vanishes, replaced instantly by the Don who commands an empire. His face turns to pure, carved granite, his dark eyes darkening to near-black.

He pulls his gun from his shoulder holster, checking the chamber with a sharp, mechanical clack.

“Lock the bedroom door behind me, Gia,” he says, his voice dropping into an icy, absolute register that makes the hair on my arms stand up. “Do not open it for anyone except me.”

“Luca—”

“Lock the door,” he repeats, stepping toward the threshold without looking back. “I’ll be back shortly.”

He slips out into the dark corridor. I hear the heavy oak door click shut, followed by the sound of his quick, silent footsteps vanishing down the hall.

The storm rages outside the leaded glass while I wait.

I sit on the edge of the mattress, my right hand covering my sore left chest, listening to the rain drum against the roof and the deafening silence of the estate.

A key scrapes. Then, the heavy brass latch turns.

The bedroom door swings open.

I freeze. The breath locks tight in my throat.

Luca steps across the threshold, and for three seconds, my surgeon’s mind forgets how to process what I’m looking at.

He looks like a demon that just crawled out of the mouth of hell. His white dress shirt is torn open at the left shoulder, plastered to his chest with rainwater, grease, and thick, wet crimson blood. Dark, drying gore is spattered across his neck, smudged over his jawline, and coating his forearms all the way down to his knuckles. The sharp, acrid smell of burnt gunpowder, copper, and wet wool floods the bedroom, instantly overpowering the scent of cedarwood.

He stands in the doorway, his broad chest heaving in ragged, shallow gulps, his hands trembling with residual, high-octane adrenaline. His dark eyes are wild, burning with a feral, lethal light that screams he just executed absolute, unholy slaughter.

He didn’t just repulse an ambush. He hunted down every single man who dared lay a hand on my car and tore them apart.

He takes one heavy step into the room, his wet leather boots leaving dark, pink-tinted tracks on the Persian rug. Then he stops, his gaze landing on me where I stand by the bed.

“Gia,” he rasps. His voice is a broken, ruined gravel, his vocal cords shredded from shouting over gunfire. He looks down at his blood-soaked hands, then steps back toward the door frame, his jaw clenching. “Don’t come near me. Don’t touch me. I’m covered in them.”

The fear in his voice isn’t for himself. It’s the terrifying, possessive terror that his violence will contaminate the woman he spent all evening protecting.

My heart hammers against my ribs. My pride, my caution, the ink of my contract, every single defense mechanism I built to keep this Don at bay dissolves into dust.

“I’ve spent my career elbow-deep in human blood, Valentino,” I say, my voice steady as steel as I step across the hardwood floor toward him, ignoring the dull ache in my left chest. “ You held my hand while a needle went into my chest tonight. Stand still and let me clean you.”

“Gia—”

I don’t let him finish. I reach out and grab his right wrist.

His skin is burning hot, vibrating with the violent pulse hammering beneath his calluses. He flinches, trying to pull back so he doesn’t smear Russo gore onto my plum silk blouse, but I tighten my grip, my fingers sinking into his muscle, and drag him across the bedroom toward my master ensuite.

I push open the heavy glass-paneled door of the bathroom. I reach into the walk-in glass shower, turn the heavy brass fixtures, and open the scalding water taps to full capacity.

A heavy, roaring cascade of water hits the dark slate tiles. Within seconds, billows of thick, white steam rise from the floor, filling the marble bathroom with a warm, suffocating mist that condensation-coats the mirrors and dampens the air.

I turn back to Luca. He stands in the middle of the room like a statue, rain and blood dripping from his hair onto the tile, his eyes locked on no one else with a raw, desperate hunger.

“Holster off,” I command softly.

I reach up, unbuckling the leather straps of his shoulder holster. I pull the heavy Sig Sauer from the hide, set it safely on the marble vanity, and drop the leather harness to the floor.

Then I peel off my bulky outer pressure tape and ice wrap, leaving only the clear, waterproof Tegaderm patch Dr. Vance sealed over the tiny two-millimeter puncture nick on my left breast. A minor entry compared to the surgical wounds I fix every day.

I reach for the front of Luca’s torn shirt. My fingers work their way down the ruined white cotton, unbuttoning the blood-soaked fabric button by button. Luca stays completely still, his hands hovering at his sides, his breath hitching every time my knuckles brush the burning skin of his stomach.