Page 93 of Ruthless Grace

Tomorrow morning, I am not going to call Dante, and I am not going to run to Luca’s port office. Tomorrow morning, I am going to step across the river boundary, walk through the front doors of Casa Lucia Hospital on my own two feet, and inspect my empire.

And when I am ready, I will decide the terms of my own marriage.

40

LUCA

The silence inside my industrial port office at four in the morning smells of salt water, diesel exhaust, cold steel, and dry tobacco.

It is a stark, brutal contrast to the master suite I walked out of three hours ago. There are no silk drapes here, no polished cypress paneling, and no faint lingering traces of Gia’s floral soap clinging to the Egyptian cotton. There is only a reinforced steel desk, a faded Persian rug thrown over bare concrete, and a worn leather sofa sitting beneath floor-to-ceiling glass windows that look out over the dark, fog-heavy berths of the lower Mississippi River.

On the corner of my desk, Capo, the scarred, half-eared dock cat who has ruled these shipping piers longer than I have commanded the Valentino regime, licks sardine oil from a dented tin. He doesn’t look up as I sit back in my high-backed leather chair, his rhythmic purr the only sound breaking the hum of the air filtration unit.

The mechanical second hand of Matteo’s watch sweeps past the twelve with its unhurried, familiar tick.

That lag was my daily execution calendar. Now, it feels like an open wound.

I lean forward, waking the master security terminal on my desk.

The screen flashes to life, displaying sixteen live high-definition camera feeds from the estate perimeter, the courtyard, the vaulted foyers, and the master hallway. My thumb hovers over Camera 4, the interior feed covering the study corridor where I left her. I could click it. I could watch her step out onto the balcony. I could track every breath she takes, monitor who enters my gates, and verify that she hasn’t called her eldest brother to ignite a war.

My hand freezes over the mouse.

The house is yours. My detail stays on the outer perimeter, under orders to obey only you.

I swore those words to her face. If I use my surveillance architecture to spy on her now, I am just the same master manipulator hiding behind a different set of monitors. I am still holding the leash.

I close my jaw, drag the cursor to the top right corner of the window, and shut down the live estate feed entirely. The screen goes black, leaving only the logistics ledgers for Berth 14 illuminated in gray light.

I didn’t give her a choice so I could watch her make it from the shadows. I gave her total freedom. And standing in the dark without a single piece of leverage is the most terrifying thing I have ever done.

A double knock echoes against the reinforced steel door of the office.

“Enter,” I say without looking up from my shipping manifests.

The heavy door swings inward, and Consigliere Moretti steps across the threshold. His dark wool coat is damp from the river mist, his weathered face carved into deep, disapproving lines. Moretti is the oldest surviving man in the Valentino regime, a man who served my father Don Alberto for thirty years and helped me hold this empire together the night Matteo came home burned past recognition.

He stops three feet from my desk, his eyes sweeping over my unbuttoned linen shirt and the unmade leather sofa in the corner.

“The docks are talking, Don Luca,” Moretti begins. “Word reached the berth captains an hour ago. You walked out with the clothes on your back, surrendered the ancestral estate to a Santoro bride, and moved into a logistics office on the water.”

“The berth captains should concern themselves with container turnover at Berth 14,” I reply, my tone cool, flat, and sharp as surgical steel. “Not my living arrangements.”

“Optics matter, Luca,” Moretti snaps, stepping closer, his knuckles white where he grips the lapels of his coat. “In Cosa Nostra, a Don who gets turned out of his own house by a woman looks weak. Our Capos are asking if the Santoro alliance has cost you your spine. Salvatore Santoro’s daughter is sitting in your study while you sleep on a dock couch like an exiled soldier.”

I slowly lay my pen down on the desk. The silence in the room drops ten degrees. Capo the dock cat stops licking his tin, his yellow eyes fixing on Moretti.

I stand up, taking my time, unfolding my full height until I am towering over the older man. I don’t reach for the piece holstered beneath my left arm. I don’t raise my voice. I simply look into Moretti’s eyes with an ice-cold, unblinking freeze that has made men in this city drop to their knees.

“My wife commands the estate,” I say, my voice dropping into a quiet, court-order register that vibrates against the concrete walls. “Casa Lucia Hospital and the Valentino compound belong to Donna Giada Valentino. She holds total authority over those gates, those guards, and that land.”

Moretti’s jaw tightens, a muscle twitching near his ear. “Luca⁠—”

“If a single soldier in this regime fails to bow to her, if any man questions her command, or if a single Capo speaks her name with disrespect in the berth taverns,” I step around the desk, stopping six inches from his face, “I will personally put a bullet through his carotid artery and dump his body in the Mississippi before the tide turns.”

Moretti holds my gaze for three long, suspended seconds, searching my face for a crack, a hesitation, or a sign of madness. He finds none. He sees only a Don who has drawn an uncompromising, blood-bound line around his Queen.

“Do we have an understanding, Moretti?” I murmur softly.