Page 1 of Hunted to the Altar (Caputo Crime Family #3)

O ne Year Prior

Samuel Caputo

Caputo Villa, Italy

The Caputo Villa stood like a sentinel of vengeance on the edge of the Tuscan hills, its shadow stretching over the countryside as the sun dipped below the horizon.

Beneath its sprawling beauty, the villa’s secrets festered.

Deep in the bowels of the earth, through tunnels steeped in damp rot and decay, was the underground prison—a pit for the damned.

Darrius Williams had been there for nearly a year.

He was the kind of man who would’ve been a danger to what was mine. A woman like Nina Torres, Dr. Mya’s friend, for example, was the perfect prey for him, and he couldn’t breathe in the same world as her.

They had dragged him here like the wretch he was, stripping him of his arrogance and his pretensions of power.

Now, the man who once carried himself with bravado was nothing but skin and bone, his body a withered husk barely clinging to life.

His descent into madness had started long before tonight.

Isolation, starvation, and the gnawing knowledge of what awaited him had broken him down day by day, leaving him raw and empty.

And still, it wasn’t enough. Not for what he’d done.

The door to the chamber groaned open, its hinges screaming in protest as I stepped inside. The torchlight flickered, casting jagged shadows against the stone walls. The stench hit me immediately—sour sweat, unwashed filth, and the faint, metallic tang of blood.

Darrius was curled in the far corner of the pit, his body pressed against the damp stone as though he could meld into it and disappear.

His skin, sallow and stretched tight over his bones, was marred with sores and bruises.

His hair hung in greasy clumps, matted to his skull. He looked more corpse than man.

“Get up,” I snarled, my voice low and cold.

He didn’t move.

“Samuel.” Sebastian’s voice cut through the air behind me.

He stood in the doorway, his tall frame silhouetted against the flickering light.

There was no trace of warmth in his expression, no hint of mercy.

Riccardo, Don Sebastian's alter ego’s edge was there, coiling beneath the surface, waiting to lash out. “He can’t hear you. He’s too far gone.”

“Not far enough,” I replied.

I descended the steps into the pit, the slick stones making each step deliberate.

The closer I got, the stronger the stench became.

Darrius flinched as my boots splashed through the shallow muck, his gaunt face tilting up just enough for me to see the whites of his eyes.

They were wide with terror, darting from me to the darkened corners of the chamber as though something worse might emerge.

“You’re still alive.” My words were more statement than question, my tone laced with a disdain that mirrored the disgust curling in my gut. “Pity.”

I crouched in front of him, close enough to see the dried blood caking his cracked lips and the yellowed scabs dotting his arms. He smelled of decay, like something rotting from the inside out.

“Do you know why you’re here?” I asked, tilting my head.

Darrius whimpered, the sound thin and reedy. His mouth opened, his cracked tongue darting out to wet his lips, but no words came.

“I said, do you know why you’re here?” My voice was sharper this time, echoing off the walls like the crack of a whip.

He nodded frantically, his body trembling with the effort.

I sneered. Of course, he wouldn’t say what he’d done aloud. A serial killer who not only kidnapped and raped women, but also killed young girls. His surviving niece was more traumatized than I’d ever seen. But I let him off the hook.

“Good,” I said, standing. “Because tonight will be your last night breathing the same air as us.”

Two guards entered, their heavy boots thudding against the stone as they moved to grab him. Darrius shrieked at their touch, his voice ragged and desperate. His body convulsed, his skeletal frame buckling under the slightest pressure.

“Please,” he croaked, the word barely audible. “Please…mercy…”

But the guards have no mercy for an abuser like him. They yanked him to his feet, his bare toes scraping against the stone as they dragged him out of the pit. His legs buckled to the floor uselessly beneath him, the muscles too atrophied to hold his weight.

Torches lined the walls, their flickering flames illuminating the instruments of pain arranged meticulously on a long table. A rack stood at the center of the room, its wooden frame worn smooth by years of use .

At the far end of the chamber, seated on a high-backed chair carved from dark mahogany, was Don Sebastian Caputo. He sat like a king presiding over his court, his expression unreadable, his hands resting lightly on the arms of the chair.

“Bring him forward,” Silas, Don Caputo’s brother commanded, his voice smooth and authoritative.

He looked much healthier than last I saw. His brother punished him for some slight. We all should've seen the Don’s descent into madness. The guards obeyed Silas, dragging Darrius toward the rack. His feet dragged across the floor, leaving streaks of filth in his wake.

The tools waited on a table nearby: a vise, pliers, and a branding iron heating over glowing coals. Each one had been chosen with care, inspired by the grim ingenuity of Italy’s history.

“You think this is enough?” Riccardo’s voice was a low growl, slipping through Don Sebastian’s lips like a blade. “After what he did?”

“No,” I replied, my voice steady as I reached for the branding iron. “But I’d like to give the Don a ‘thank you’ for allowing me to warm him up.”

The metal glowed orange, its heat radiating against my skin. I pressed it to his chest, the scent of burning flesh filling the air as he howled in torment.

By the time I was done, he was a broken heap of flesh and bone, his body trembling with the effort of every shallow breath.

“Bring him to the gallows,” Don Sebastian said, his tone calm but final.

The courtyard was silent as the famiglia gathered beneath the rising sun. Darrius was dragged to the wooden platform, his legs trailing uselessly behind him.

“This is what happens to those who betray the famiglia,” Silas said, his voice low and steady. “This is what happens when you hurt what’s ours.”

The lever was pulled.

Darrius’s body fell, the snap of his neck echoing like a gunshot.

I didn’t stay to watch the men disperse. The minute it was over, my phone buzzed in my pocket. The message on the screen made my blood turn to ice:

Your girl Nina is gone. A call was placed from a smart pair of glasses to Dr. Mya from The Stables.

Gone. I couldn’t even wrap my head around those words. Ever since I dove into Eden and Dr. Mya’s background, I’d found pictures of Nina. She was Dr. Mya’s friend, an addiction I’d kept secret. Someone I kept tabs on, but never approached.

For a moment, my hand trembled—just once—as if my body betrayed the storm inside me. My knees nearly faltered, a wave of nausea cresting in my gut. Not from weakness. From the realization that if I had lost her... I might never be whole again.

I could’ve checked on her. She’d been searching for Dr. Mya for so long. She looked in the seediest of places. Nina hadn’t stopped looking for her friend. She was relentless in her pursuit.

Now, it seemed as if she’d finally asked questions somewhere she shouldn’t have.

I left as soon as I could. I didn’t bother saying goodbye to the famiglia . Within the hour, I was on a plane back to the States, my mind a cyclone of rage and fear.

Nina didn’t belong to anyone else.

She was mine—my obsession, my purpose.

It wasn’t just the way she existed in stillness, always cautious, always listening.

It was the silence in her eyes when she moved through the world like she didn’t belong to it.

The way she flinched at kindness, never expecting it to last. I watched her from afar—through cracked doorways, broken locks, and shadows.

She didn’t know how much of herself she’d already given me, piece by piece, just by surviving in that silence I’d come to crave.

I could still smell her—lavender and rain, soft and fleeting.

Her voice echoed in my ears, that fragile whisper when she first said my name like it meant something.

I remembered the first time I touched her wrist, how she flinched like I was on fire and her skin burned into mine.

That memory lived in me now, more real than breathing.

Whoever had taken her would regret it.

They didn’t know what I was capable of, but they were about to learn.

Because I wasn’t just going to find her.

I was going to hunt them down, one by one, until there was nothing left but blood and ash.