Page 17 of Ruthless Grace

Instead, she walks in wearing midnight-black velvet.

It’s cut low across her collarbones, structured with corset boning that forces her posture straight, hugging her waist and hips in a way that feels like a direct, deliberate attack. It isn’t a dress meant to hide a woman. It’s built to make every man in the room lose his fucking mind. The dark fabric swallows the light from the chandelier, and against her pale skin, it’s so lethal I forget how to breathe.

Principessa, I tell myself, slamming the wall down before the panic takes over. She’s a trade. A debt settlement. Don’t look at her like she just took your pulse.

Except she didn’t buy this off a rack. She chose it. She looked at this dress, knew what it would do, and put it on anyway.

The discipline shatters. The name slips in the dark, unmapped corners of my brain: Giada.

On her left hand, the black diamond ring I sent to her room catches the candlelight. The two Texas capos sitting near the end of the table, here to witness the union for the Commission, stare at her like they’ve just seen a ghost. They aren’t looking at a traded sister. They’re looking at a woman who looks like she owns the place.

“My bride,” I say out loud, the words coming out rough and quiet before I can catch them.

The introduction hits the table like an iron weight. The Texas capos raise their glasses, nodding. Renzo lifts his wine.

“To the union,” Renzo says smoothly. “May it keep the port quiet.”

“Quiet,” I repeat, my eyes locked on Renzo’s plate, wondering how easy it would be to snap his neck right here in front of his brothers.

“She’s a little high-strung for shipping berths, isn’t she, Valentino?” a low-level capo sitting near the bottom of the table mutters. He’s an outer-ring guy Dante brought in to fill seats, and he’s swirling his wine with a slick, greasy grin, his eyes trailing down the line of Gia’s hip. “A surgeon across the table sounds like a headache. You want a girl who knows how to shut her mouth and look good on a boat.”

The dining room goes instantly, terrifyingly still.

Nico’s hand slams flat against the wood. Cassia stops mid-sip.

I don’t yell. I don’t raise my voice. I just set my knife down on the linen with a small, sharp clack, lean back in my chair, and look at him.

“Say that again,” I say, my voice dropping into that quiet, flat register that makes my own lieutenants sweat. “Out loud. In front of her family.”

The associate’s grin dies. He blinks, looking around the table, but nobody is helping him. Dante is staring straight ahead. Nico looks like he’s about to kill him if I don’t do it first.

“I—I was just making a joke, Don Valentino⁠—”

“You have thirty seconds,” I tell him, my eyes locked on his. “Get up, walk out those gates, and get the fuck out of New Orleans. If I see your face in this parish after midnight, I’m going to personally cut your tongue out and feed it to the dogs on my dock. Move.”

The guy’s chair scrapes hard against the floor as he scrambles up, spilling his wine across the cloth, and bolts out the side doors without looking back.

Silence drops over the room: thick, heavy, and absolute.

Gia doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t thank me. She just reaches for her water, takes a slow sip, and rolls her left wrist, that small pre-scrub circle she makes when she’s processing a messy trauma case. She’s treating my threat like a variable in an operation.

Beside me, the no-touch rule holds. My hands stay on the table. I don’t touch her waist, I don’t brush her arm, I don’t close the two inches of air between us. The restraint is fucking brutal, a physical ache in my chest, but I won’t give her brothers the satisfaction of seeing me break my own word.

When the dinner finally breaks up, I find her outside at the edge of the garden, standing near the iron gate that leads to the family graves.

A warm summer rain is starting to fall, thick with the smell of wet dirt, jasmine, and river water. I step up behind her, stopping short of touching her. I can feel the heat coming off her skin right through the velvet.

“You made a scene in there,” she says, her back still to me, staring out at the headstones.

“I set a boundary,” I say. “Big difference.”

She turns around slowly, her dark eyes cutting into mine under the yellow garden light. The black diamond on her finger shines in the damp air. She looks completely unbothered, wrapped in a dress she picked out specifically to poke at my temper.

“You think tossing a low-level capo out the door proves something, Luca?” she asks, her voice sharp as a scalpel. “You think because Dante signed a piece of paper, I belong to your inventory?”

“You’re wearing my ring,” I remind her, my jaw clenching as I fight the urge to grab her by the hips and pull her against me until she forgets her own name.

“I’m wearing a contract,” she snaps, taking a step toward me until I can smell that clean, unscented soap on her skin. “And my contract says you don’t fucking touch me. So keep your hands in your pockets, Valentino. You’re going to need them when we’re actually stuck under the same roof.”