Page 98 of Ruthless Grace

Then I turn toward the elevator—and I go to my Don.

42

LUCA

The heavy friction of leather soles echoes in the concrete corridor.

The reinforced steel port door swings open on its iron hinges.

Gia steps across the threshold.

The sterile, industrial air of my exile—diesel, salt water, and dry tobacco—is instantly obliterated by her scent: clean, intoxicating floral soap, rain, and the unmistakable, sharp ozone of surgical fire. She wears her dark wool coat draped over an emerald silk dress, her dark hair pinned up with a silver clip, her chin set at that royal angle I would recognize in the dark.

Under her arm, she carries the parchment master of our contract, taken from his desk. Clipped to her coat pocket is her fine-tip surgical pen.

On the corner of the desk, Capo the dock cat lifts his half-eared head, tracking her movement. He doesn’t move. He simply settles back down on his paws, as if recognizing that Donna Valentino has entered the room.

I freeze in my chair, my unbuttoned linen shirt open at my throat, my hands resting flat on my manifests. My blood surges, liquid fire rushing straight down to my groin as my cock swells stone-hard against the seam of my dark trousers.

Gia doesn’t wait for an invitation. She steps deep into my territory, her heels clicking against the concrete floor until she stops on the opposite side of my desk.

She looks at my unmade leather sofa in the corner, then brings her dark, unblinking gaze back to mine.

“You built an empire around my mother’s name, Luca,” she says quietly. Her voice doesn’t shake. “You deeded border land, allocated hundreds of millions to my surgical bays, and then you forged debt logs and engineered a fake Russo crisis. I didn’t come here to talk about Dante. I came here for the truth. Why, Luca? Why did you think a fake war and a forced marriage was the only way to get my attention?”

I look up at my wife, the question cutting straight through my chest, severing every remaining thread of my composure.

My jaw tightens. A cold, breathless tension fills the space between us, but I hold her gaze without a single micro-expression of defense.

“Did you call your brothers?” I ask softly.

“No,” Gia replies, her eyes searching my face with unyielding intensity. “But Dante came to me. He knows the truth, and I sent him home to his wife and daughter. I told him he doesn’t get to make choices for me ever again. Now answer me, Luca. Why?”

I don’t offer an excuse. I don’t hide behind strategy or mafia politics. I slowly stand up, walk around the edge of the steel desk, and stop two feet away from her.

“Because I was terrified of you,” I confess, the raw, ugly truth spilling straight out of my throat. “Look at you, Gia. You are a miracle. You are a trauma surgeon who saves lives with her bare hands, a woman of pure grace and unyielding pride. And what was I? A blood-soaked second son raised in a house built on grief, taught from childhood that I was a curse, that nothing good is ever given to a Valentino, and that any woman loved by my family ends up in a grave.”

I step closer, my scar-seamed hands trembling as I reach out, hovering inches from her waist without touching her.

“I have been hopelessly, helplessly in love with you since the first day I saw you,” I whisper, meeting her gaze without flinching. “I stood in the back of St. Louis Cathedral at your father’s funeral, watching you speak his eulogy without your voice trembling once, and I was ruined. I lived for Sundays. I spent every week counting the hours just so I could sit twelve chairs away from you, watch you roll your wrist before dinner, and listen to you breathe. I felt completely, utterly unworthy of stepping into your light.”

Gia’s breath hitches softly, her dark eyes widening as my confession fills the room.

“I built that trap because I was a coward,” I admit flatly, stripping myself of every shred of pride. “I was convinced that a woman like you would never look at a man like me unless I forced you into my world. I thought if I chained you to my empire, I could earn your respect before you ever saw how ruined I was for you.”

I drop slowly to my knees on the cold floor before her chair, placing my forehead flat against her waist, surrendering all authority, all leverage, and all control.

“I love you, Gia,” I rasp. “I love you more than my crown, more than my blood, and more than my life. If you give me a chance, I swear on Matteo’s memory that I will never let you down. I will never let you doubt yourself. I will support your dreams before you even speak them aloud. And if you want me to burn this empire to the ground and walk away from Cosa Nostra forever, I will do it today.”

The office falls into a suffocating, sacred silence.

Gia stands frozen above me. Slowly, her slender fingers slide into my damp hair, lifting my head until I am looking straight up into her eyes. There are no tears in her gaze: only a fierce, burning, surgical fire.

She reaches down, pulls the pages of heavy cream parchment from under her arm, and lays them flat on the desk behind her. She pulls her surgical pen from her coat, uncaps it, and brings the fine tip down onto the parchment.

With one slow, unhurried stroke, she draws a line straight through the walkout clause.

She caps the pen, sets it down, and looks down at the Don kneeling at her knees.