Page 9 of Ruthless Grace

I am standing in the doorway with her chart in my hand, still young enough that nobody has thought to send me out. The air smells of withered jasmine, rubbing alcohol, and the sharp, metallic tang of late-stage cancer. Mama lies in the center of the four-poster bed, her skin translucent, weighed down to eighty pounds.

Dante, already broad through the shoulders, already being fitted for what was coming, and terrified, is on his knees beside her mattress, sobbing silently into her quilt.

Mama’s frail, paper-thin hand, bruised black from IV lines, reaches out and grips Dante’s wrist with a terrifying, dying strength. Her eyes, hollowed by pain, bore into her eldest son.

“I was taken like property, Dante,” Mama whispers, her voice a dry, rattling rasp. “Your father took me at gunpoint. I was brought into this house without a choice, no matter what it became after. Swear to me, Dante... swear on your soul... no Santoro daughter gets sold for peace. Not Gia. Not ever. Not the way I was.”

Dante buries his face in her blanket, weeping violently, his voice cracking against her skin. “I swear, Mama. I swear on my life. I’ll never sell her.”

The memory snaps back like a severed rubber band.

I stand in the center of Papa’s study, looking at the same boy who knelt by my mother’s bed.

Dante sits behind the desk, unable to hold my gaze. He swore to our dying mother that I would never be traded. And now I am watching him break it.

That realization doesn’t make me cry. It doesn’t make me scream. It settles behind my ribs as a cold, terrifying, absolute calm: the eerie, unshakeable stillness of a trauma surgeon who has realized the room is already lost and the only thing left to do is operate.

Before I can take a breath, Nico snaps.

“Cazzo!” Nico roars, the sound tearing from his throat like a wounded beast. He lunges forward, his palm slamming down on Dante’s desk with a thunderous crack that rattles the whiskey glasses. “Don’t you fucking phrase it like a strategy, Dante! Tell her what you did! Tell her you broke your fucking word to Mama!”

“Nico, sit the fuck down,” Renzo grunts from the bookshelf, his body tensing, ready to throw himself between my brothers if the room detonates.

“No! Fuck you, Renzo! Fuck all of you!” Nico screams, his face flushed red, turning his murderous rage on Dante. “He sold her! Our brother—our Don—just traded my twin to a Valentino to buy a fucking port truce!”

The study erupts into chaos.

Marco steps off the fireplace mantel, his hands coming out of his pockets. “Nico, calm down⁠—”

“I will burn New Orleans to the fucking ground!” Nico shrieks, reaching under his suit jacket, his hand locking onto the grip of his concealed weapon. “I will march into Russo’s territory, I will tear Chicago apart, and I will put a bullet through Luca Valentino’s skull right where he sits before I let any of you use my sister as debt collateral!”

“Nico, draw that gun in this room and I will put you through the wall,” Renzo growls, stepping forward, his massive frame blocking the desk.

Luca doesn’t move an inch. He doesn’t reach for his gun. He doesn’t even tilt his head. He sits in his leather chair like a king watching peasants riot, his eyes never leaving my face.

“Nico.”

My voice isn’t loud. It isn’t a scream. It is the razor-thin, ice-cold command I use when an artery spurts across an OR ceiling and an attending nurse loses her head.

Nico freezes. His chest heaves, his hand still locked on his gun, his bloodshot eyes snapping to mine.

I step into the center of the room, directly between my explosive twin and the enemy Don sitting in our chair.

I roll my wrists once: the pre-scrub circle, the physical anchor that brings us both back to reality.

Nico’s shoulders shudder. The wild, blind fury in his eyes cracks, exposing the raw, bleeding horror beneath.

“Gi,” Nico whispers, his voice breaking, sounding like the boy who held my hand when Mama died. “Don’t let them do this. Per favore, sorellina. I’ll get you out of the city. I’ll take you to Europe. I’ll⁠—”

“Tishe, fratellino,” I say softly, using the Russian word Mila taught me, stepping close enough to press my bare palm against his chest. I feel his heart hammering like a trapped bird beneath his linen shirt. “Quiet. Look at me.”

Nico looks at me.

“I am not a victim,” I say, holding his gaze until his grip loosens on his weapon. “And you are not going to ruin your life or burn this family down over a paper. You have a good thing going with Mila, Nico. I won’t be the one to destroy that after you brought her back from the dead.”

Nico swallows hard, his jaw working as tears shine in his eyes.

I turn around. Slowly. Deliberately.