Page 31 of Hunted to the Altar (Caputo Crime Family #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

N ina

The fire crackled behind the grate, but its warmth never reached me. It was a distant thing, more memory than heat, flickering faintly against the silence that had taken up residence in this house.

I sat in the wheelchair Samuel ordered for me, though I suspected he found it offensive to look at. I hadn't moved from this spot in two hours, maybe three. Not since the cramping began.

A cold cup of coffee sat on the table beside me, untouched.

My hands rested in my lap, still. The scars on my wrists were pale now, nearly healed, but still angry-looking when they caught the firelight. Faint reminders of another kind of captivity.

And yet, they paled in comparison to the one he left when he pulled the trigger.

He’d only shot one knee. Just the right. One deliberate, precision-crafted punishment. Enough to stop me from running. Enough to make me crawl, if I ever dared again.

It wasn’t about killing me.

It never had been. It was about keeping me right here—docile, cowed, his. And now, inside me, something else stirred. Something that hadn’t asked to be here. Something I hadn’t chosen.

A pregnancy neither of us had planned, but both knew about.

A child conceived without consent.

His child.

Another wave of nausea twisted through my gut, tighter this time. I gritted my teeth and pressed a palm against my abdomen.

It had been like this for days. Cramping. Spotting. Unease that wasn’t just hormonal—it was instinct.

Something was wrong.

The sound of footsteps—hard, measured—cut across the hallway floor, steady as judgment.

Samuel.

I didn’t turn to look at him as he entered the room. I didn’t have to. His presence was a pressure system all on its own.

He wore black, as usual. His shirt collar was open. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows. He looked like power and violence and barely concealed obsession.

His eyes met mine immediately, sharp and searching.

"You didn’t eat," he said.

"I wasn’t hungry."

Samuel didn’t like that answer.

"You’re not just eating for yourself anymore," he said, stepping closer. "You need to take care of?—"

"Don’t you dare," I cut in, my voice sharper than I intended. "Don’t you dare act like you care about the thing inside me when you put a bullet in the body carrying it. "

A flicker of something moved across his face—regret, guilt, pride? With him, it was always hard to tell.

"You were going to run," he said quietly, crouching in front of me, bracing his hands on the armrests of the chair. His face was too close to mine. His presence wrapped around me like rope. "You’d already decided to leave. You gave me no choice."

"You had a choice," I hissed. "And you chose violence. Again."

"I chose survival."

"No," I whispered, the emotion building in my throat like rising bile. "You chose control."

We were so close I could see the flecks of steel in his blue eyes, the faint scar above his brow. I hated how familiar he was to me now. How much of my life was carved into the lines of his face.

His eyes dropped to my abdomen. Then back to my face.

"You’re still carrying my child," he said.

The pressure in my gut spiked like lightning.

"Not for long," I said under my breath, though I wasn’t sure if I meant it as a threat or a prophecy.

He stood, and for a moment, I saw him struggle. Just for a breath, his face cracked. But then the mask fell back into place.

"You’re mine, Nina," he said.

And then he left.

Just like that.

The second the door closed, I doubled over.

Another cramp. Deeper. Hungrier.

I inhaled sharply, pressing my palm to the place where life was supposed to be blooming.

But it didn’t feel like blooming anymore.

It felt like dying.

I shifted, trying to ease the pain—and that’s when I felt it.

A gush of heat. Wet. Wrong.

My breath caught in my throat .

Slowly, trembling, I reached down between my legs. My hand came back slick with blood.

Dark. Viscous. Already beginning to clot.

"No," I whispered.

Another wave hit me—full-bodied, like my organs were turning to molten iron.

I screamed.

The chair jolted as I gripped the wheels and tried to push myself across the room, but the pain was blinding.

I didn’t make it far.

The rug snagged one of the wheels. My body tipped. I didn’t even have the strength to brace myself as I fell forward and crumpled to the cold marble.

Blood smeared across the floor beneath me.

Not a trickle.

Not a smear.

A pool.

I tried to crawl toward the bathroom. Each movement cost more breath than I had. Each inch was a war.

I was leaving a red trail behind me. Like an animal crawling off to die.

Another contraction hit, and this time it felt like my insides were being torn apart.

I screamed again, raw, hoarse, inhuman.

Then I heard it–

The sound of boots pounding down the hallway.

"NINA!"

Samuel.

The door flew open.

"NINA!"

I tried to lift my head, but the room spun violently. The blood was sticky against my cheek.

Then his hands were on me—hot, shaking, frantic .

He gathered me into his arms, lifting me like I weighed nothing. My head lolled against his chest.

I heard his heartbeat. Fast. Terrified.

"Hold on," he whispered, kissing my forehead. "Hold on, tesero , please."

I couldn’t speak.

I couldn’t breathe.

The last thing I saw before the world blacked out was his blood-covered hands clutched around me.

Voices swirled around me.

Barking. Orders. Metal clattering.

Something cool pressed against my arm—an IV needle, I thought dimly, but it barely registered. My body was no longer mine. It was shutting down.

I felt hands moving fast, cutting off my clothes. Cloth gave way to shears. My blood was on the tile. On the shears. On them.

“She's crashing.”

“Keep pressure here.”

The voices didn’t belong to anyone I knew. Everything was white noise. Distant. Like I was watching from behind glass.

I couldn’t feel the pain anymore.

Only absence.

Samuel’s voice cut through the chaos. It sounded frayed. Fractured.

“Is the baby?—?”

A pause.

“Nothing we could have done.” Some soothed.

Whispers surrounded me as I heard another unfamiliar voice say, “This was destined to happen.”

A woman said. “There’s wasn’t anything you could do. ”

A raise voice broke above the crescendo of sound. “Chromosomal Abnormality!”

“Just focus on her,” the doctor snapped. “If we don’t stabilize her now, we’ll lose them both.”

Them.

The word spun in my skull.

Me.

And the child.

Our fates, now blurred into one.

I felt myself being lifted. Onto a gurney. Rolled down halls. Through doorways. Voices echoing against ceilings. Lights blinding overhead.

Then darkness took me again.

The pain didn’t return all at once. It crept in. Crawling up my spine, a series of dull aches and tugs that bloomed into sharper edges.

I opened my eyes to fluorescent light.

Bleach.

Machines beeping in a low, rhythmic lull.

It smelled like death.

The hospital room was too clean. The sheets too white. The silence too loud.

I didn’t need to reach for my belly to know.

But I did anyway.

My hand drifted under the blanket, to the soft swell that had marked the last few weeks.

Flat.

My stomach was flat.

Empty.

The sob that came out of me was almost silent—like it had been waiting. It curled into my throat and cracked as it spilled out, my body too weak to even cry properly.

But the grief was enormous.

My baby was gone .

And so was whatever hope I’d had.

I turned my head slowly. The movement hurt.

Samuel was in the corner of the room.

Still in the same shirt. Wrinkled. Stained with my blood. His jacket was draped over the back of the chair. His tie was on the floor, abandoned. His hands were clasped between his knees. His head was bowed. He hadn’t moved in what looked like hours.

I almost wished he would cry.

But of course he didn’t.

Samuel didn’t cry.

He bled through other people.

I looked away, the tears silently falling down my cheeks into the pillow.

There was nothing to say.

I didn’t want his voice.

I didn’t want his comfort.

I didn’t want him.

He didn’t realize I was awake until the nurse came in, her footsteps soft against the tile.

“She’s awake.”

Samuel jolted up like someone had punched him in the chest. He crossed the room in two long strides and stopped by the edge of my bed.

"Nina," he said, voice gravel and ruin.

I kept staring at the ceiling.

"I need to—" he started, but the nurse cut him off.

“Not now.”

The nurse checked my vitals. Adjusted the IV. Asked me how I felt.

I didn’t answer.

Not because I couldn’t. Because I wouldn’t.

Samuel waited until we were alone again. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly .

I turned my face away.

“I never meant for this to happen.”

Another silence.

“I just wanted you safe.”

My voice, when it came, surprised both of us. “You shot me.”

His breath hitched.

“You pulled a gun on me knowing I was carrying your child. And you still squeezed the trigger.”

“I didn’t know what else to do?—”

“You could have missed,” I barked. “You could have aimed for the floor. You could have aimed for the ground. You chose my knee.”

The quiet that followed wasn’t peaceful. It was the kind that settles before a bomb.

He ran a hand down his face. I watched him through narrowed eyes.

He looked older.

Tired.

Not the smooth, in-control man who ruled with cold calculation.

Just a man who had ruined something so completely he didn’t know where to stand anymore.

“I thought I could hold it all together,” he said finally. “If I kept you close. If I made sure no one could take you.”

“You were the one who took everything.”

He dropped to his knees beside the bed.

“Say it again,” he said. “Say whatever you need to say. Just—don’t go.”

The silence filled again. Thicker this time. My throat felt tight, like I was choking on all the grief that hadn’t found words yet.

He reached for my hand, hesitated.

Then didn’t touch me.

“I know I don’t deserve forgiveness. ”

“You don’t.”

His nod was slow. Like he had rehearsed this ending in his mind already. “But if I could go back and undo it—if I could take the pain from you and wear it myself—I would.”

He looked up then, and for the first time, I saw him for what he truly was.

Not untouchable.

Not a god.

Just a man.

A man who had taken something sacred and crushed it in his fist.

I didn’t know if I hated him more for what he did, or for meaning it when he said he wouldn’t survive without me.

“You killed the only thing I had left to believe in,” I said softly.

Samuel closed his eyes. “I know.”

And somehow, that made it worse.

He stayed.

That night, when the lights dimmed and the nurse slipped out of the room, he didn’t move from the chair beside my bed.

He didn’t try to touch me again.

Didn’t try to speak.

Just sat there.

Watching.

Waiting.

I stared at the ceiling, wondering if I’d ever feel anything again. Wondering what came after the kind of loss that scraped you raw inside.

I didn’t have answers.

Only pain.

And the man who caused it, silently breaking beside me.