Page 4 of Ruthless Grace

“Nice work, doctor,” he murmurs, his voice low enough that only I can hear.

“She had a nuchal cord,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck where my muscles are beginning to lock up. “Deceleration down to eighty-two. I had to unloop her manually.”

Nico turns his head, his eyes scanning my face with surgical precision. The twin shorthand activates instantly. He sees the microscopic tremor in my right hand, the lingering shadow of our father’s death in my gaze, and the bone-deep exhaustion weighing down my eyelids.

“You look like you need twenty-four hours of sleep, a hot bath, and a bottle of bourbon, Gi,” he says softly.

“I have clinic hours at Casa Lucia at eight,” I reply, rolling my wrist once to work out a knot in my forearm. “No time for bourbon.”

“You’re going to work yourself into a grave one of these days, sorella,” Nico mutters, though there is no real bite to it, only the fierce, protective frustration of a brother who knows I won’t listen. “Dante’s going to be insufferable now, you know that right? A daughter named Lucia. He’s going to double compound security just so no one breathes on her.”

“Good,” I say softly, watching Dante gently kiss the top of baby Lucia’s head. “She deserves a fortress.”

I push myself off the counter. “I’m going to scrub out and change. Tell Nonna I’ll be downstairs for breakfast.”

“Gi,” Nico calls out as I turn toward the exit.

I look back over my shoulder.

“Thank you,” he says, his sharp Consigliere mask dropping, leaving only the raw, unarmored affection of my twin. “For keeping our family safe.”

I give him a faint, tired half-smile. “It’s my job, Nico. It’s always my job.”

The ground-floor corridor outside the medical wing scrub bay is quiet in the small hours.

The harsh overhead lights in the hallway have been dimmed, casting long, pale shadows across the linoleum floor. The only sound is the distant, rhythmic hum of the compound’s generator and the quiet squeak of my rubber-soled clog shoes.

I walk past the secondary scrub basin toward the French glass doors that open onto the East Courtyard, the private, stone-walled garden that connects the medical wing to Mama’s rose garden.

I stop at the sink mounted beside the glass doors. My body is finally catching up to the adrenaline crash. My lower back aches, my shoulders are tight, and my right thumb joint is throbbing with a sharp, dull cramp, the early warning sign of surgical tendonitis.

I diagnosed it on myself in a scrub bay mirror and never put it in a chart. I tell my patients that the ones who wait are the ones I lose. I tell them that every single week. Then I go home and I don’t make the call.

I hit the knee pedal, hold my bare hands under the stream of cold water, and lather them with unscented antibacterial soap. I rub my palms together, working through the dried prep gel stuck beneath my fingernails, staring blankly at my reflection in the dark courtyard glass.

Lucia. My mother’s name is living in our house again. A new generation born into a war that devoured the old one.

I shake the excess water from my hands and pull a paper towel from the dispenser.

That is when the air in the corridor changes.

It isn’t a sound. It isn’t a shadow moving across the tile. It is a physical shift in atmospheric pressure: a sudden, suffocating prickle of heat that erupts along the back of my neck, raising every fine hair on my arms.

The exact feeling a prey animal gets a split second before the wolf steps out of the treeline.

My hands freeze against the paper towel.

Slowly, deliberately, I turn toward the glass courtyard doors.

Outside, the East Courtyard is shrouded in darkness. The midnight heat presses against the glass, and the sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine seeps through the iron frames.

Standing just beyond the threshold, framed against the dark stone archway of Mama’s garden, is a ghost.

Luca Valentino.

My breath catches in my throat, locking in my lungs like ice.

He stands completely alone. No soldiers. No enforcers. No show of force. Just six feet two of dark, tailored perfection, dressed in a charcoal three-piece suit with no tie, his hands resting in his pockets with an unhurried, terrifying stillness.