Page 44 of Ruthless Grace

Gia sits up slowly, her hands trembling as she pulls her skirt down over her bare thighs. Her amber eyes are burning with a terrifying, apocalyptic fury that could incinerate the city.

“You bastard,” she whispers, her chest heaving. “You absolute, sadistic bastard.”

“I told you, principessa,” I say, walking over to the mahogany doors and pulling them open. “I don’t break my word. But anytime you want to rewrite your terms... you know where my room is.”

I step out into the dark west corridor, holding the door open for her.

Gia slides off the examination table, her legs shaking slightly as her heels hit the white tile. She adjusts her silk blouse, sweeps her dark hair over her shoulder, and walks past me into the corridor, her chin held high despite the flush on her skin.

I pull the heavy mahogany doors shut behind us, fitting the brass key into the lock and turning it until the deadbolt clicks home.

I look down at her in the dim light of the hallway.

“Get some sleep, wife,” I murmur. “Your three-car security tail leaves at five-thirty AM.”

She doesn’t say a word. She turns on her heel and walks away down the dark corridor, her silk dress rustling against her skin, leaving me alone in the dark.

My dick is throbbing so hard it aches. My jaw is locked tight.

I gave her cold steel. I gave her dark praise. And I left her ruined on the edge.

But as I watch her disappear into our bedroom, I know the terrifying truth:

I didn’t win this war tonight. I just lit the match.

17

GIA

The underside of a luxury sedan smells like heated oil, road dust, and cold steel.

I’m kneeling on the polished concrete floor of the Valentino estate garage, the hem of my cream silk blouse tucked securely into the waistband of my trousers, my palms resting flat against the cool chassis. Outside the open bay doors, the evening heat of New Orleans hangs thick and wet, heavy with the scent of river silt and bruised magnolia blossoms.

I don’t need a mechanic to tell me when something doesn’t belong on a machine. I am a trauma surgeon. My entire life is built on palpation: feeling through layers of tissue, muscle, and fascia to isolate the foreign body that shouldn’t be there.

When I reached into the rear wheel well of my dark gray sedan to check a loose tire lining, my fingers didn’t hit rubber or rust. They hit hard, industrial-grade plastic and an unforgiving neodymium magnet.

Clack.

I exert five pounds of leverage, twisting my wrist to break the magnetic seal. The housing comes free with a greasy snap.

I pull my arm out from under the bumper and sit back on my heels. Resting in the palm of my right hand—the hand that held my father’s autopsy report, the hand that stitched a Valentino enforcer’s arm in the holding bay—is a military-grade satellite tracking unit. A black, waterproof brick no larger than a deck of cards, smudged with lithium grease.

A tracker.

My pulse doesn’t spike with fear. It hardens into a cold, surgical line.

I refuse to be chauffeured around like a helpless Cosa Nostra trophy. Driving my own car is the single non-negotiable line of my daily independence: the space between saving lives in my OR and returning to the iron gates of this estate. Luca knew better than to force an armed soldier into my passenger seat, so he settled for an invisible tail SUV that lingers three car lengths behind me on St. Charles Avenue.

I knew about the tail team. I knew how to shake them whenever I needed twenty minutes of unmonitored air: a sharp turn through a hospital ambulance bay, a quick dive down a French Quarter alley. But this isn’t a tail car. This is geofencing.

This is my husband putting a leash on my wheel well because he knows I’m smart enough to slip his men.

I stand up, wiping a smear of dark grease from my thumb onto my palm, and grip the black housing so tight the plastic edges dig into my skin. I don’t go upstairs to change. I don’t wash my hands.

I turn on my heel and stride down the vaulted stone corridor toward the east wing.

The heavy oak doors of Luca’s study are closed, but a sliver of warm amber light spills across the dark herringbone floorboards. I don’t knock. Knocking is for guests, and I didn’t marry Luca to ask permission to enter my own house.