Page 66 of Ruthless Grace

The examination room smells of sterile paper sheets, cold stainless steel, and the faint, chemical bite of isopropyl alcohol.

I sit upright on the edge of the examination table, my white paper gown rustling with the microscopic tremor of my own breath. Dr. Arthur Vance stands beside me, his blue latex-gloved fingers moving with the absolute, unhurried precision of a man who has spent thirty years mapping human anatomy.

He doesn’t look at my face. He doesn’t offer hollow, bedside-manner condolences or ask how I’m managing my new address across the river. He reads my body the way a master cartographer reads a contested border.

The door clicks open behind us. I don’t need to turn my head to feel the drop in atmospheric pressure, nor the sudden, crushing shift in gravity that announces his arrival.

Luca doesn’t wait in the corridor or stay with Moretti by the car. He never does. He steps into the tight clinical space, filling it instantly with the dark, authoritative weight of a man who treats every perimeter as his own. He wears his bespoke charcoal suit with the jacket unbuttoned, his broad shoulders eclipsing the fluorescent glare. His dark, unblinking eyes bypass Arthur entirely, locking dead-center onto the space where Arthur’s hands hover near my left chest.

“Lift your left arm slightly, Dr. Santoro,” Arthur murmurs, ignoring the sudden influx of mafia royalty with the professional arrogance of a doctor who has sewn up half the capos in Louisiana and fears none of them.

I lift my arm. The movement pulls the skin across my left chest: a clean, tight stretch over tissue that has spent weeks knitting back together under surgical tape and strict, enforced immobility. Arthur peels back the final strip of medical adhesive, his thumb pressing lightly at the perimeter of the tissue.

Beside me, Luca’s jaw hardens into a ridge of white-hot granite. A muscle twitches in his cheek: a sharp, micro-movement of pure protective tension. He closes the remaining distance in two long strides, coming to a halt directly beside the examination table. His scar-seamed hand comes up, resting with unyielding warmth against my right hip.

He doesn’t just steady me. He anchors me to the table, his fingers curling into the fabric of my skirt as if daring the air itself to touch me wrong.

“Any heat? Any throbbing when you lift your arm?” Luca asks. His voice is low, smooth as aged bourbon, vibrating with a dark, velvet intensity that makes Arthur look up with a dry, appraising lift of his brows.

“None, Don Valentino,” Arthur replies evenly, stripping off his first pair of gloves. “She healed like a textbook. Better than most. Her tissue management during the initial procedure was immaculate, and she followed every protocol to the letter.”

“Of course she did,” Luca murmurs, his gaze finally shifting down from Arthur to meet mine. The fierce, arctic edge in his eyes softens just enough to let the raw, consuming devotion underneath bleed through. He leans in closer, his broad chest nearly brushing my knee, and drops his voice into a private, gravelly hum meant only for me. “Bene, cara,” he breathes softly, Italian slipping out without his permission, rough and tender against my skin. “Vita mia... you carried this in the dark like a soldier. Let me see you.”

My breath catches. For weeks, this man has slept in the armchair beside our bed, waking at every restless shift, tracking my temperature, and memorizing the rhythm of my breathing with the desperate diligence of a man terrified of losing what he fought a war to keep.

Arthur reaches for a sterile gauze pad to wipe the last traces of surgical prep. He tosses the pad into the biohazard bin with a sharp thwack, pulls off his final gloves, and meets my eyes in the harsh fluorescent light. “The margin is clean. Fully healed, Dr. Santoro. No restrictions.”

No restrictions.

The words hang in the sterile air between us like a suspended guillotine blade.

For weeks, my recovery has been a fortress: an unassailable medical mandate that kept the war outside our doors and locked the mahogany door of my suite against a man whose patience was wearing down to raw nerve endings. Every time Luca looked at me across the dining table, every time his dark, unblinking gaze tracked my movements from across the room, I had a shield. I was a patient. I was recovering. I was off-limits.

Now, the chart is closed. The restrictions are gone.

“Thank you, Arthur,” I say, my voice steady, cool, and perfectly level as I slide off the examination table—Luca’s hand instantly shifting to cup my elbow, steadying me with a possessive care that infuriates and undoes me in equal measure—and reach for my black silk blouse.

“Take it easy for the next twenty-four hours anyway,” Arthur adds, a faint, knowing shadow touching the corners of his mouth as he watches Luca track my every movement like a hawk. “Even when the tissue is knit, the shock takes time to settle.”

“I know my own body, Arthur,” I reply, buttoning my cuffs with fingers that do not shake. “I know how tissue heals.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he mutters dryly, opening the exam room door for us.

When we step out into the private corridor, the double doors part to reveal the muggy Garden District heat and the matte-black flank of the car idling at the curb. Silvano Moretti stands beside the rear door, his dark suit jacket buttoned, his face carved from granite. He nods once as we approach, pulling the door open.

I slide into the leather back seat, and Luca follows immediately, the door sealing us inside a dark, air-conditioned vault of brushed mahogany, cedarwood, and the sharp scent of gun oil clinging to his suit.

As the car pulls out into afternoon traffic, Silvano glances into the rearview mirror, his voice cutting through the quiet hum of the engine. “Don Valentino. Security Detail Four logged two unmarked Chrysler sedans running parallel on Magazine Street. They matched the Russo plates from the port surveillance.”

Luca’s posture shifts instantly, the Don’s cold, lethal mask sliding back into place over his features. “Are they tailing?”

“Not directly,” Silvano replies. “Probing the perimeter. Checking routes toward the river bridge.”

“Double the rear escort,” Luca orders, his tone dropping an octave into pure velvet steel. “And make sure the estate gates are locked the second we return.”

He turns his head, his dark gaze finding mine. “It seems our absence didn’t fool Ettore Russo’s enforcers for long.”

A dry, bitter smile touches my lips.