Page 40 of Ruthless Grace

I force my spine to lock straight, hiding the agony in my wrists as I step across the dark floorboards. “Emergency bypass,” I say, my voice raspy and dry from hours under OR air vents. “A drunk driver hit a pickup on Highway 90. I don’t check in with you when a kid is bleeding out on my table, Valentino.”

Luca doesn’t argue. He doesn’t pull Don rank or interrogate me about the three-car security tail shadowing my transport.

He simply stands up from the armchair.

He crosses the room without making a sound. He stops two inches from me, his cedar-and-leather scent completely overwhelming the sharp, sterile smell of hospital soap clinging to my skin.

I brace myself. I pull my cramping hands behind my back, my jaw setting into a hard line as I wait for him to assert his authority.

Instead, Luca reaches out. His calloused palm closes gently around my left wrist.

“Don’t,” I whisper, trying to yank my arm back.

Luca doesn’t let go. His grip is firm, iron-solid, but entirely devoid of cruelty. He wraps his other hand around my right wrist, feeling the sharp, violent tremor shaking through my fingers.

“Give me your hands,” he says. His voice isn’t a lecture, and it isn’t an order. It’s a low, velvet rasp that vibrates against my collarbone, dark and absolute.

“I don’t need help, Luca,” I snap, my voice cracking slightly despite my best efforts. “I just need to shower and sleep.”

“You can barely open your fingers,” he replies smoothly.

Before I can draw another breath to fight him, Luca hooks his large hand around the back of my waist, lifts me straight off my feet, and sits down in the velvet armchair, pulling me right onto his lap.

A gasp rips from my throat. “Luca⁠—”

“Sit still, principessa,” he murmurs, his dark voice heavy with a possessive command that makes my skin prickle with heat.

He doesn’t take more than I give him tonight. He shifts his heavy thighs beneath me, settling my weight firmly against his chest, holding me in place like a predator holding a captured songbird.

He reaches down with one hand, grabbing the cuff of my leather surgical boot. With quick, practiced twitches of his fingers, he unlaces the leather, pulls the boot off my foot, and lets it drop to the mahogany floorboards with a dull thud. He does the same to the other, tossing them aside, setting my bare feet against his knee.

I sit frozen on his lap, my heart hammering against my ribs. I’ve spent a lifetime being the miracle of the Santoro family. The daughter who stitches their soldiers at midnight, the sister who fixes their wounds, the caretaker who never gets to break down. Nobody has ever pulled me onto their lap. Nobody has ever taken off my boots.

Luca reaches to the small marble side table beside the armchair.

His fingers wrap around a heavy, amber glass jar. He unscrews the lid with a quiet click.

The sharp, soothing scent fills the space between us immediately. A rich, herbal blend of arnica, magnesium, and deep botanical oils. It isn’t sweet or floral. It smells dark, rich, and therapeutic.

“What is that?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper.

“It’s for your hands,” he says simply.

He offers no explanation. He doesn’t tell me where he found a jar of custom-blended salve, or how he knew what overworked muscles need. He just acts like a man who has spent days watching my thumb joint shake while I read files at his table, and decided he couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore.

Luca scoops a liberal measure of the thick, cool salve onto his palm. He sets the jar down, then wraps his broad, scar-seamed hand around my right wrist.

“Luca, I can do it myself⁠—”

“I said sit still,” he growls softly against my ear.

He presses his large thumb straight into the center of my palm.

A sharp, breathless cry escapes my lips. The pain is instantaneous. A deep, searing pressure hitting the knotted, locked muscle at the base of my thumb. My back arches against his chest, my head falling back against his broad shoulder as my eyes clamp shut.

“Breathe,” he commands quietly, his breath warm against my neck.

He doesn’t stop. He digs his thumb deeper, working in slow, heavy, circular grinds against the tight knot in my palm. The heat of his skin, combined with the cooling sting of the magnesium salve, sinks deep into my aching muscle, forcing the locked tendon to slowly yield under his palm.