Page 72 of Ruthless Grace

The master suite still smells of clean unscented soap, cedarwood, and the sweet, lingering heat of my wife’s skin against the silk sheets.

On the mahogany writing desk beneath the arched windows, the ink on the contract sits dry and bold across the parchment. The zero-contact mandate is obliterated, a thick slash cutting straight through it. Beside the ledger, Renzo’s ballistics logs and Matteo’s autopsy files lie unrolled. For the first time since my brother’s blood was washed off the asphalt, my estate is whole. Unified from the foundation to the slate roof.

I stand at the foot of the bed, slowly rolling my dress shirt sleeves up in exact, two-inch folds over my forearms. My household reads my weather by these sleeves. When the cuffs roll up, it means the Don is no longer managing from behind a desk. It means I am stepping into the field myself.

The mechanical second hand of Matteo’s watch sweeps past the twelve with a quiet, metronomic tick that has measured every dark hour of my reign.

Then the red strobe on the security console beside the door begins to flash.

It doesn’t ring. It hums: a high-frequency, electronic screech reserved exclusively for a Level-One breach of an armored convoy.

My hand freezes over my cuff.

Silvano Moretti’s voice comes through the encrypted wall speaker, stripped of all Old Guard composure, cracking with a raw, terrifying urgency I have never heard in thirty years of his service.

“Don Valentino,” Silvano rasps, his breath hitching. “Detail Three on the river approach just went black. GPS signal dropped off the grid three miles from the bridge. Radio link is completely dead.”

The air in the master suite turns to liquid nitrogen. The oxygen in my lungs vanishes.

Gia left the estate fifteen minutes ago for her first post-clearance surgical rotation at Casa Lucia. She was riding in the Maybach, protected by three inches of reinforced ballistic steel, escorted by my best capos in an armored trailing SUV.

“Where was her last ping?” I demand. My voice doesn’t rise. It drops an octave into a low, gravelly baritone so cold it rattles the glass in the windowpanes.

“The industrial corridor off the Magazine Street approach,” Silvano says. “I have Detail Four mobilizing from the gates now⁠—”

“Get in the car, Silvano,” I snap, my jaw locking into a ridge of white-hot granite as I reach into the mahogany nightstand, my fingers wrapping around the cold, textured grip of my custom gun. I rack the slide, chambering a heavy 9mm hollow-point round with a sharp, lethal clack. “You drive.”

The engine of my armored sedan roars like a wounded beast as Silvano tears out through the estate iron gates, the tires screaming against the damp asphalt of the river road. Rain has begun to fall across New Orleans, a humid Gulf downpour that slicks the streets and turns the morning light into a gray, oppressive smear.

I sit in the passenger seat, my eyes fixed on the live satellite telemetry screen mounted on the dash. The blue dot representing Gia’s phone signal isn’t moving. It’s frozen at the intersection of Magazine and the river approach, a dead industrial corridor lined by abandoned cotton warehouses and concrete shipping yards.

“Detail Three isn’t answering their backup frequencies,” Silvano mutters, his scarred hands gripping the steering wheel so hard the leather groans. “Fausto is running a trace from the port office, but the cell towers in that quadrant were jammed thirty seconds before the GPS dropped.”

Jammed.

A localized frequency jammer is not street-gang work. It is old-world tradecraft. High-end, military-grade equipment that costs six figures and requires exact clearance timing.

“Faster, Silvano,” I growl.

“We’re doing ninety, Don Luca⁠—”

“I said faster!”

We slide around the final corner of the industrial access road, the sedan’s tires throwing up a plume of river water, and the scene detonates before my eyes like a flashbang.

Gia’s matte-black car is caved against the heavy concrete barrier of the river bridge approach.

The front end is crushed, smoke billowing from the ruptured radiator in thick, acrid clouds. The trailing security SUV sits fifty yards back, its driver’s side door blown open, spiderwebbed bullet holes riddling the reinforced windshield.

Silvano slams on the brakes, the sedan skidding to a halt across two lanes. Before the car even stops rocking, I throw the door open and step out into the pouring rain.

The air smells of burnt cordite, scorched rubber, leaking radiator fluid, and raw, iron-rich blood.

My gun is drawn, held low against my thigh as I march toward the wrecked convoy, my boots splashing through deep puddles of blood-stained water. Detail Three’s driver lies slumped over the steering wheel of the escort car, executed with a single, precise contact shot to the temple. The two capos in the rear seat never even got their doors open. Their bodies are riddled with automatic fire, spent 9mm brass gleaming against the wet asphalt around the tires.

I don’t look at the dead men. I don’t care about the dead men.

I reach the car. The heavy, armored rear passenger door is hanging wide open.