Page 35 of Hunted to the Altar (Caputo Crime Family #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

S amuel

The silence in the penthouse isn’t peaceful. It’s oppressive.

It clings to the walls, to the air, to every inch of space between Nina and me like smoke after a fire.

The kind that doesn't dissipate—it stains. I haven’t slept in three days.

Not really. My body lies down, my eyes close, but rest doesn’t come.

Not when I know what I’ve done. Not when I see the way she won’t look at me, like I’m a ghost she’s not ready to forgive for still haunting the room.

She doesn’t speak unless she has to. She doesn’t scream or cry or throw things.

She’s just... distant. Professional. Like I’m a stranger she’s being polite to.

She thanks me when I pass her a fork. She closes doors softly so I don’t hear.

She avoids the mirrors and barely leaves her room.

She used to like walking barefoot, but the wheelchair hinders her movements.

Now she floats through the rooms like she’s not tethered to this world at all .

I watch her now, from across the open floor plan.

She’s curled up in the corner chair—her favorite, because it overlooks the city and gets the late-afternoon sun.

There’s a blanket around her shoulders she hasn’t taken off in hours.

A book rests on her lap, spine cracked, pages unmoving.

She hasn’t turned one in over an hour. Her fingers just hold it like something to anchor her, because everything else is gone.

My chest aches. No, it implodes. Piece by jagged piece.

I did this.

I did this to her.

And no matter how many times I try to rewrite it in my head, the facts stay the same. I cornered her. Controlled her. Pushed her past her limits. Took everything she didn’t offer and called it love.

She lost the baby because of me.

My child. My legacy. The future I never thought I deserved, and then tried to trap like it was a prize. Gone.

I wanted to be a father. God, I wanted it. But not like this. Not born of fear. Not tethered to violence and shame. I saw her stomach soften, her eyes change. I imagined cradling something we created—something innocent. Something that hadn’t learned to be afraid yet.

And then I ruined it. With my temper. With my control. With the monster I swore I wasn’t, bleeding out of my skin every time I touched her without listening.

I told myself I was her savior. That I was protecting her from the men who’d hurt her before, from the past that stalked her shadow. I told myself I was better than them. That what I felt for her was different—stronger, purer.

But I was never her shield. I was the blade she didn’t see coming.

I became the very thing I swore I would destroy. The chains, the silence, the fear—I wore them like armor and called it devotion. I invaded her peace and pretended it was protection .

There’s no redemption arc that can bring that baby back.

There’s no apology that can unscar a womb. No vow that can unshatter a woman.

All I can do is watch her and know that somewhere inside her body, a life once fluttered. A flicker of hope that might have looked like me or her or both, breathing possibility into a future I poisoned with my need to possess.

And I killed it with my love.

Because it wasn’t love. Not really. Not the kind that nurtures. It was hunger. Obsession. The kind that hollows out everything it touches, until nothing beautiful can survive in its wake.

And now I’m left with the truth: I was never her protector. I was her storm.

That morning, I woke before the sun, the weight of what I hadn’t said crushing the breath from my chest. I stood in the kitchen like a stranger, trying to remember how she used to take her tea—how long to steep it, how much honey.

I burned the first round of toast. The second batch came out fine, but my hands shook as I buttered the slices.

I made her breakfast—eggs the way she used to like them, soft with a bit of sea salt, toast, and her tea. Not coffee. She once told me tea calmed her nerves. God knows she had none left to calm.

She rolled in without a word. Her gaze slid over the plate like it was a test she didn’t care to grade. She sat across from me at the island, the distance between us feeling wider than the ocean. She picked up her fork, took three bites. Slow, mechanical. She drank the tea but didn’t meet my eyes.

"You remembered," she said finally, setting the cup down. Her voice wasn’t warm. It wasn’t cruel. Just... tired.

"I remember everything about you," I answered.

She rolled back from the island in her chair, picked up the plate with a quiet determination, and wheeled herself to the sink.

With slow, deliberate motions, she rinsed it.

Then, without a word or glance in my direction, she maneuvered around the counter and left the room, the soft hum of her wheels echoing like a reprimand I’d earned a thousand times over.

It was worse than screaming. Worse than anything. Because I could feel her pulling farther and farther out to sea, and I had no rope to reach her.

I sat in that empty kitchen for over an hour, listening to the silence she'd left behind. It was deafening.

That same evening, after she rolled away from the breakfast table, after I sat stewing in my own regret for hours, I found myself outside her door. Not the master bedroom—the guest room. Where she slept now. If she slept at all.

I raised my hand to knock. Lowered it. Raised it again. Lowered it.

Eventually, I just sat.

Back against the wall, legs stretched out. The hallway was dim, lit only by the soft glow of a lamp down by the stairs. I rested my head back and stared at the ceiling. My throat ached with words I’d never had the courage to say before.

"I don’t know if you can hear me. I don’t know if you care. But I need to say this."

Silence.

I continued.

"I’m sorry, Nina. Not the cheap kind. Not the kind that comes with expectations. I mean it. I’m sorry I caged you. That I took your choices. That I made your survival about me."

My voice cracked. I swallowed it down like glass.

"You were never the problem. I was. I loved you in a way that burned. And then I blamed you for the smoke."

Still silence. But I kept going.

"You have no reason to forgive me. None. I wouldn’t. If you walked out right now, I wouldn’t stop you. Hell, I’d drive you myself if that’s what you needed. "

My head fell back against the wall.

"But I want to be better. I don’t want to be the reason you flinch. I don’t want to be the shadow in your memories. I want to be someone you can breathe beside."

Something shifted behind the door.

A soft rustle. Then a click.

The door opened.

Nina sat in her wheelchair, dressed in sweatpants and one of my old hoodies. Her eyes were rimmed red but dry, and her arms crossed over her chest like a barrier she dared me to try and cross.

She angled her chair forward just slightly, positioning herself in the doorway, and looked down at me.

"Words are easy, Samuel."

I nodded. "I know."

"You want to prove you’ve changed? Start by giving me my freedom."

I swallowed hard. "Then that’s what I’ll do."

She watched me, weighing my words, judging them against the endless days and nights I had caged her with good intentions sharpened into chains.

Right there, in the muted light of the hallway, I pulled out my phone and started disabling everything. Locks, trackers, cameras. She sat silent, a witness to my dismantling.

I slid a black credit card across the floor to her wheels.

"No limits. No conditions."

Her hands hovered over it but she didn’t pick it up. Not yet.

I spent the next hour showing her. Passwords. Alarm codes. Elevator access. One by one. Laying every piece of control at her feet.

She didn’t speak. But her eyes tracked every movement, cataloguing them.

Finally, she rolled forward, picked up the card, and tucked it into her hoodie pocket like a soldier pocketing a weapon .

Her throat bobbed once.

"And if I leave?" she asked, her voice sharp enough to gut me.

"Then you leave," I said. “I’d follow you.”

I meant it. Even if it killed me.

She turned away, wheeling herself back to her room. The soft click of her door shutting behind her felt like a tomb sealing.

I sat there, alone, in the growing dark, staring at the cold marble, my hands limp against my knees. I stayed until the sun bled into the sky again.

When she came out later, I watched as she methodically packed a bag. Slow. Deliberate. Every movement a goodbye she didn’t say out loud.

I didn’t stop her.

I didn’t beg.

She rolled to the elevator, pressed the button, and waited. The doors slid open with a mechanical hiss.

I stood there, heart splintering into dust, and did nothing.

She wheeled herself forward, crossed the threshold?—

And then, just before the doors shut, she reversed.

Her voice, when it came, was a rasp, torn from something raw. "Don’t make me regret trusting you."

Then she turned and rolled back into the penthouse, leaving the bag abandoned in front of the elevator.

I sank to my knees.

Not for show. Not for pity.

But because I finally understood what it meant to love someone more than you needed to keep them.

I pressed my forehead against the cold floor and let the guilt swallow me whole.

Somewhere in the haze of that night, desperation clawed its way up my throat. I fumbled for my phone with shaking hands and dialed a number I hadn’t called in years.

Don Sebastian answered on the second ring .

"Samuel," he said, voice sharp and suspicious.

"Don," I rasped, barely holding it together. "Please...I need your help."

There was a beat of silence. Then, wariness. "What have you done?"

"I—I broke her," I confessed, voice cracking wide open. "I destroyed the only good thing I ever had. She won't talk to me. She shouldn't even look at me."

Another pause, colder this time.

"Marcello tried to tell you," Sebastian said, his voice colder than ice.

"I know," I choked out. "I know."

The tears burned hot in my eyes but I didn’t wipe them away. I let them fall, let them baptize the stone floor I wasn't worthy to kneel on.

"Please," I begged, desperation cracking me open. "Send Dr. Mya. Bring her here. She's the only one who ever reached her before. Maybe... maybe she can reach her again."

There was a heavy silence on the other end, one that vibrated with more knowledge than I was ready for.

"You think I don't know what's been happening under my roof?" Sebastian said at last, voice sharp and merciless. "Marcello’s been reporting to me daily since I put him on punishment. I've known every bruise, every silence, every damn breath you’ve stolen from that girl."

I swallowed hard, the truth slicing deeper than any blade.

"I'm not asking for myself," I whispered, voice breaking apart. "I'm asking for her. She deserves someone fighting for her the right way."

"Dr. Mya is my wife," Sebastian said quietly, dangerously. "And Nina’s best friend, even if they barely speak now. You don't deserve either of their mercy."

"I know," I rasped. "Please."

Another pause—then finally, a grudging exhale .

"Mya will be on a flight within the hour," he said. "For Nina. Not for you."

"Thank you," I breathed, hollow and broken but alive enough to keep bleeding for the chance.

That night, I didn’t sleep.

I sat outside her door, blanketless, pillowless, a sentinel of my own making.

The door didn’t open.

But it didn’t close all the way, either.

A crack of hope in a house still heavy with ghosts.

It wasn’t forgiveness.

But it was a start.

And I would bleed for every inch I had to crawl, just to earn my way back to her.