Page 77 of Ruthless Grace

I let the silence linger for two beats.

“If I had a three-inch scalpel in my right hand, Davide, I wouldn’t aim for your heart,” I continue softly. “I would drive the steel straight into your medial vascular bundle. You would lose three liters of arterial blood in twenty-two seconds. Your vision would tunnel into black in thirty seconds. And forty-two seconds after the cut, your brain would undergo irreversible hypoxic tissue death. Your guards wouldn’t even have time to pull a tourniquet before you were brain-dead on this wet concrete.”

Davide recoils from my chair as if my skin had turned to white-hot iron. He steps back two full paces, his chest heaving, his eyes wide as he stares at me.

I lift my bound hands behind my back, using the slack in the hemp rope to maneuver my left ring finger into the yellow glare of the floodlight.

Gleaming against my skin is the four-carat black diamond ring Luca sent to my bedroom the morning before our wedding. The dark stone catches the glare, reflecting an obsidian light that cuts through the warehouse gloom. I press my thumb flat against the cool platinum band, turning the ring against my knuckle, the exact somatic gesture Luca taught me.

“Luca Valentino isn’t coming to negotiate shipping permits with you,” I say, my tone dropping into an absolute, unshakeable conviction that freezes the blood in his veins. “He isn’t coming to trade berths. He is coming to erase your entire bloodline from the face of this earth.”

I lean forward against the coarse rope binding my chest, my dark eyes locked onto his terrified face.

“And he isn’t coming alone,” I add, my voice carrying the weight of two unified empires. “When you ambushed my car this morning, you didn’t just touch Luca Valentino’s wife. You touched Giada Santoro. My brothers are with him—all of them. You thought you captured a bargaining chip, Davide. You didn’t.”

I turn Luca’s black diamond ring one final time against my knuckle, feeling the solid weight of his promise anchored into my skin.

“You signed your own execution,” I whisper into the gloom. “Now listen closely. Because those V12 engines are going to shatter your front gates any second.”

Davide stands frozen in the yellow light, completely speechless. Outside the warehouse, a massive crack of thunder detonates across the river, shaking the steel walls to their foundation, and beneath the sound of the storm, the distant, roaring scream of five armored engines begins to tear through the dark.

32

LUCA

The heavy iron gates of the Santoro compound stand wide open in the downpour, swinging uselessly against their stone posts as Silvano pulls our sedan into the gravel staging yard.

I don’t wait for Silvano to open my door. I throw it open myself, stepping out into the cold, torrential rain.

My charcoal suit is ruined. The rain plasters my hair to my forehead and washes the drying crimson from my jaw, where Nico’s fist split my lip at Nonna Rosa’s dining table. On my left shoulder, slung by its dark leather strap, hangs Gia’s unzipped surgical bag. I hold it against my ribs with my left arm, keeping it shielded from the rain as if it were a fragile, breathing child.

The heavy cypress doors of the Santoro tactical armory, connected directly to the rear of the main house, part before I even reach the threshold.

Dante stands in the lit doorway, his massive frame silhouetted against the industrial strip-lights inside. He isn’t wearing his Don jacket. His white dress shirt is unbuttoned at the throat, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, exposing the thick training scars on his forearms.

Behind him, gathered around the central steel staging table, is the full heart of the Santoro house.

Renzo stands on the left, quietly wiping down the receiver of an assault rifle. Nico, pacing the concrete floor like a rabid animal, has his fists jammed deep into his pockets.

Marco leans over a bank of tactical monitors, his hands flying across a keyboard alongside Izzy, who is rapidly cross-referencing signal frequencies on a secondary laptop. Standing near the doorway to the main house is Mila, her quiet, steady presence anchored behind Nico. And near the warm light of the hallway stands Cassia Santoro, holding baby Lucia close against her chest in a soft wool blanket.

The air inside the room is thick with gun oil, fresh solvent, damp concrete, and the suffocating, terrifying tension of a family preparing to go to war for its miracle.

I step across the threshold. My wet boots leave dark, heavy footprints on the concrete floor.

I pull the strap of Gia’s bag off my shoulder. I walk straight up to the center table and place the leather surgical bag flat on the steel surface, directly over the unrolled street maps of the river district.

Nico stops pacing.

His dark, twin eyes lock onto the black leather bag sitting on the steel table. He steps forward, his breath hitching in a sharp, violent intake of air as he recognizes the familiar brass buckles and the stainless-steel scalpels scattered inside the open top.

“Her bag...” Nico whispers, his voice cracking with a raw, terrifying tremor. He looks up from the leather strap, his gaze trailing up my soaked suit jacket, taking in my split lip, my rain-drenched face, and my hands.

My hands are shaking.

Luca Valentino—the Don who sat at their family table for months without letting a single micro-expression betray his pulse—is standing in their armory with fine, uncontrollable motor tremors vibrating through his fingers.

Dante steps up to the opposite side of the table. The Don of the Santoro line looks at my face, then down at my trembling hands resting flat on the steel surface beside Gia’s bag.