Page 45 of Ruthless Grace

I push the door open with enough force that it hits the leather stop with a muted thud.

The study smells of cedarwood, old paper, vintage scotch, and the faint, unmistakable metallic tang of gun oil. Luca is sitting behind his massive mahogany desk, stripped of his suit jacket. His white dress shirt is unbuttoned at the throat, his dark tie loosened, and his sleeves are rolled back in those exact, clean two-inch folds on his forearms: the posture he takes when he’s auditing shipping manifests, reviewing dock security, or signing execution warrants.

Beside his elbow sits a glass of amber liquid.

He doesn’t flinch when the door slams. He doesn’t reach for the weapon I know is mounted beneath the knee-well of his desk. He simply raises his head, his dark, unreadable eyes locking onto mine with a slow, infuriating composure that makes my blood run hot.

“You’re home late, Dr. Santoro,” he says. “I was beginning to think your shift at the clinic ran over.”

“My shift ended an hour ago,” I say, stepping across the Persian rug until I’m standing directly across from him. “I was delayed by some routine vehicle maintenance.”

I lift my right hand and drop the grease-smudged GPS unit directly onto the center of his pristine leather blotter.

It hits the mahogany with a metallic clack, sliding two inches before coming to rest beside his scotch glass.

Luca doesn’t look down at the device. He stays focused entirely on my face, his masseter muscle flexing once in his jaw, the only microscopic sign that his tactical mind is recalculating the room.

“Find something under your bumper?” he asks mildly.

“I drive myself so I don’t have one of your men breathing down my neck while I work,” I say, my voice razor-thin, dropped into the flat, clinical register I use when an attending physician tries to override my OR authority. “I am not a prisoner in your compound, Valentino, and I am certainly not an asset you get to tag like cargo.”

“I don’t treat you like cargo,” Luca corrects softly, leaning back in his leather chair and lacing his scar-seamed fingers over his stomach. “I treat you like my wife driving through territory where Russo’s men are currently testing our borders.”

“If you wanted to know where I was going, you could have asked,” I fire back, my eyes flashing. “I would have lied to your face with much less equipment.”

A faint, almost invisible curve touches the corner of his granite mouth. “I don’t care where you’ve been, Gia. I care where you are. And right now, you’re standing in my study, smelling like engine grease and fight.”

“Take it off my car.”

“No.”

“It’s already off my car,” I snap, pointing a grease-smudged finger at the black box between us. “And if I find another one under my frame tomorrow, husband, I’ll drain the brake fluid out of your car and leave the housing on your nightstand.”

Luca stares at me for three long seconds. The silence in the study stretches, taut as a suture line pulled to its breaking limit.

Then, slowly, deliberately, he pushes himself out of his chair.

He rises to his full height, his broad shoulders blocking out the amber halo of the desk lamp behind him. He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t display the loud, performative rage my brother Dante uses when his authority is questioned. Luca moves with the terrifying, unhurried grace of an apex predator that knows the room has no exits.

He rounds the edge of the mahogany desk.

I don’t step back. I stand my ground, my chin lifted, my left wrist executing a tight pre-scrub roll against my thigh.

He keeps coming until the toe of his leather oxford hits the front of my shoe. He invades my personal space until the heat radiating from his chest presses through my silk blouse, thick and suffocating. My back hits the edge of his mahogany desk, the hard wood digging into the small of my spine.

Luca plants his scar-seamed palms flat on the wood on either side of my hips, caging me between his arms.

The invisible line between us, the boundary we’ve been dancing around since our wedding night, holds like a wall of solid ice. But his physical proximity is a weapon of its own. He dips his head until his breath brushes the sensitive skin just below my ear, smelling of peat, bitter espresso, and dark heat.

“You think you’re untouchable, principessa?” he murmurs. “You think standing behind your boundaries makes you safe from me?”

“I think the only thing keeping your hands on that desk right now is your pride,” I say, my breath hitching despite my best efforts to keep my heart rate flat. “Cross the line. Touch me.”

Luca’s dark eyes darken to near-black. A muscle in his throat ripples as he swallows, his gaze dropping to the hard pulse hammering against the side of my neck, then tracing the curve of my lips.

“I don’t need to break my rules to win a war with you, Giada,” he whispers, the slip of my real name bleeding past his restraint before he catches it.

Slowly, without breaking eye contact, he reaches out. His hand doesn’t touch my skin. He hovers two millimeters above my hip, his fingers dipping into the shallow pocket of my trousers to slide out my encrypted phone.