Page 81 of Ruthless Grace

Outside the vault door, tactical bootfalls echo against the concrete floor, heavy, deliberate, and unhurried.

Through the thick steel seals of the doorframe, a thin line of gray smoke wisps around the upper lock housing, the distinct, acrid smell of a focused linear cutting strip eating through the steel deadbolt. A shower of white-hot sparks traces down the seam as the charge severs the lock mechanism without a structural blast.

Davide’s grip on my blouse tightens into a frantic, trembling spasm. His breath hitches in a high, terrified gasp as he sees the sparks cascading down the iron frame.

“He’s taking the lock...” Davide whispers, his voice cracking into pure panic. The silver barrel of his 9mm vibrates violently against the skin beneath my ear, the steel biting hard into my jaw. “He’s really breaking the fucking door!”

I don’t offer him a movie quip. I don’t give him a countdown.

I keep my spine rigid against the oak backrest, my chin lifted beneath the harsh yellow glare of the floodlight. Behind my back, my left thumb presses flat against the platinum band of my ring, turning the black diamond once, twice against my knuckle, anchoring my nervous system to the sensory memory of my husband’s hands.

Davide’s finger twitches erratically on the trigger pressed against my face, his whole body shaking behind my shoulder as he tries to hide behind my frame. “Stop!” he shrieks at the sparking frame, though no one inside the room has spoken. “Stay back or I swear to God I’ll shoot her!”

I fix my eyes on the sputtering seam of the door. I feel the cold metal of the gun against my skin, the terror radiating off the man holding me, and the suffocating stillness right before an entry.

I draw a steady, quiet breath through my nose, lock my jaw, and wait for the iron to give way.

34

LUCA

The linear cutting strip pops with a sharp, localized SNAP, shearing the heavy vault door’s steel deadbolts.

Before the sparks even hit the concrete, I drive my boot into the center of the iron panel, kicking the heavy door inward with a thunderous impact that sends it crashing onto the wet floorboards.

I step across the threshold the millisecond the iron falls.

Nico breaches beside me, his rifle coming up in a fluid, lethal arc. The air inside the holding room is fucking suffocating. Thick with the acrid bite of hot steel, ozone, and the copper stench of fresh blood leaking from the outer hallway.

My eyes bypass the room’s geometry. I don’t look at the rusted rafters, the yellow industrial floodlight, or the shorted electrical wires sputtering above.

My gaze locks dead-center onto the oak chair in the middle of the vault.

Gia sits bound beneath the light. Her black silk blouse is torn at the shoulder, her dark hair wild, her chin lifted with that maddening defiance. Her left cuff is matted with dark, dried blood. The cut from the car’s shattered glass.

Standing behind her chair, using my wife as a human shield, is Davide Russo.

The Russo heir has lost every fucking shred of composure. Sweat pours down his flushed face, his eyes wide, bloodshot, and frantic with the terror of a rat backed into a corner. His left hand is fisted tightly into the fabric of Gia’s blouse, jerking her back against his chest, while his right hand holds a silver-plated 9mm sidearm pressed hard against the soft skin beneath her left jaw.

Russo’s remaining guard, standing against the side wall, frantically attempts to raise his submachine gun.

Nico and I fire at the exact same millisecond.

BANG-BANG.

My heavy gun and Nico’s rifle discharge in unison. Two rounds tear through the guard’s chest and forehead, snapping his head backward and collapsing him into an instantaneous, lifeless heap against the concrete.

The report echoes off the iron walls, and the room falls into a suffocating, high-voltage stillness.

“STAY BACK!” Davide roars, his voice cracking into a high, pathetic shriek that bounces off the steel ceiling. He pulls Gia’s chair three inches back, hiding his body behind her shoulders, the silver barrel of his pistol digging violently into the skin beneath her ear. “I swear to God, Valentino, I’ll put a hollow-point through her neck! Step back or she dies right fucking here!”

My vision swims with red.

Thirty years of control. It all detonates in my bloodstream like raw fuel on a fire. My hands, locked around the textured grip of my pistol, tighten until the steel groans under my weight.

I take one slow, deliberate step forward, my boots crunching through the shattered mortar on the floor.

“Take your fucking hands off my wife,” I growl. My voice isn’t loud. It is a low, gravelly baritone so cold, so devoid of human mercy, that the air in the vault seems to freeze solid. “Take your hands off her now.”