Page 57 of Ruthless Grace

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

A sharp, high-pitched, piercing electronic alarm chime shatters the steam.

The noise cuts through the heavy roar of the shower spray, ringing loudly from the marble vanity outside the glass enclosure.

It’s my phone. Specifically, the strict, recurring post-biopsy ice wrap and anti-inflammatory medication chime Dr. Vance insisted I program into my device before leaving the brownstone.

The sudden, harsh noise hits the steamy enclosure like a bucket of ice water.

Luca stops instantly.

His thumb halts over my aching clitoris. His dark eyes snap open, the feral, fevered fog clearing in a fraction of a second, replaced by immediate, clinical awareness.

He looks at me, my chest heaving, my eyes wide and dazed, my body trembling on the edge of a cliff, and then looks toward the vanity where the phone continues to chime its medical alert.

He remembers where we are. He remembers a steel needle harvesting three tissue cores from my chest. He remembers Dr. Vance’s strict orders regarding my ice-pack rotation and the agonizing wait for pathology.

“The ice wrap,” Luca rasps, his voice a rough, heavy gravel as he slowly, carefully lowers my leg back to the slate floorboard.

He doesn’t step away entirely, but the possessive storm gives way to fierce, protective restraint. He keeps his arm wrapped gently around my waist, supporting my weight while his forehead comes to rest in the curve of my neck. His chest heaves against mine, his hard body still aching and rigid with unspent need, but he refuses to push further or risk my healing.

“Your rotation is up,” he whispers against my skin, his warm breath brushing my collarbone as he turns off the shower taps.

The roaring water dies down to a quiet trickle. Pink water swirls down the dark slate drain, carrying away the last traces of the war outside.

Luca reaches for a thick, dry bath sheet from the rack, wrapping it carefully around my shoulders, shielding my left chest wall from any draft. He steps out of the glass enclosure, grabs my phone from the vanity, and silences the alarm chime before reaching for my pain medication and a fresh gel ice wrap from the mini-cooler.

I stand in the steamy bathroom, wrapped in the heavy cotton towel, watching my husband.

He stands bare-chested in the dim light, water dripping from his dark hair, his hands steady as he prepares my medication. A man who just executed an ambush squad with ruthless violence, now handling my post-op care with reverent, unbroken gentleness.

I hold the towel tight against my ribs. My heart aches with a raw, blinding heat that has nothing to do with my biopsy dressing.

I should be afraid of him, I think, my fingers gripping the soft cotton fabric as he turns back to me with the ice wrap in his hand. I’m not. That’s what frightens me.

22

LUCA

The second hand of Matteo’s watch sweeps across its black dial, lagging behind the master clock on the wall of my study.

That lag was the margin between my brother reaching the security checkpoint off the river road and the fireball that turned his bones to ash. For years, I have lived inside it. Every contract I signed, every border I drew, every breath I took as Don of the Valentino famiglia was calibrated to a single objective: to make the other families bleed for every second of that delay.

I sit behind my mahogany desk in the dark, the amber glow of a single brass reading lamp cutting through the heavy New Orleans rain drumming against the leaded glass windows. My cuffs are rolled back, a cold mechanical ghost ticking at my wrist, tethering me to a war that was never supposed to end.

Then, my encrypted burner phone buzzes on the blotter.

It vibrates against the polished wood. I pick up the receiver, pressing the secure line.

“Don Valentino,” Dr. Arthur Vance’s voice comes through, dry and clinical. “I have the pathology report on your wife’s core needle biopsy.”

My grip on the handset tightens. “Give it to me.”

“I cannot discuss patient results with a third party, Don Luca,” Vance replies evenly. “Medical ethics apply. Put Dr. Santoro on the line, or bring this phone to her.”

I grind my teeth, the cold realization hitting me that in a medical crisis, my title carries zero weight against a senior oncologist protecting his patient’s rights.

“Wait,” I rasp.