Page 36 of Hunted to the Altar (Caputo Crime Family #3)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

N ina

The sound of suitcase wheels scraping tile wasn’t usually threatening. But today, it echoed like a promise of violence.

I didn’t have to guess who it was. Mya never traveled light, and she never came quietly.

I was sitting just past the main living room, tucked between the edge of the floor-to-ceiling windows and the hallway leading to the bedrooms. It had become my spot—the one place where the sunlight still reached me but the shadows couldn’t quite cling.

The wheelchair sat at a slight angle, my legs tucked under the knitted blanket that had once belonged to Samuel's mother, now my armor.

The elevator pinged. I wheeled myself forward a little, careful of the polished marble that still made the chair slide faster than I liked. The burn in my shoulders reminded me I hadn’t slept well—again. Too many memories. Too many ghosts whispering in the walls .

The doors opened.

Dr. Mya Caputo, elegant and fuming, stepped into the penthouse with a carry-on in one hand and hell in her eyes. Her curls were pulled back into a silk wrap, her stilettos clicked like gunshots against the marble, and the second she saw me, something shattered behind her perfectly lined eyes.

She didn’t ask how I was.

She didn’t greet me.

We hadn’t really spoken since before everything exploded.

The last conversation we had was weird, clipped.

I was already slipping into something I couldn’t name, and she was too far away to pull me back.

When the trafficking happened, the silence between us turned into a canyon neither of us knew how to cross.

But here she was. Storming in like she’d never left, like I was still hers to protect. And something in my chest cracked.

She dropped her bag, crossed the room, and dropped to her knees beside my wheelchair.

“Oh, baby,” she whispered, taking my face in her hands. “What did he do to you?”

I flinched—not from her touch, but from the kindness. I wasn’t used to kindness anymore. Not when it came without strings. Not when it didn’t come wrapped in guilt.

“I’m fine,” I said. Flat. Practiced. Empty.

Her eyes narrowed. She turned her head like a bloodhound catching scent.

"Where is he?"

“Mya—”

“Don’t ‘Mya’ me.” She stood so fast the air shifted.

Her heels spun her around like gunfire on marble, echoing with vengeance.

Samuel was already in the room, standing stiff behind the couch, half-shadowed by the sheer curtains filtering in sunlight.

He must’ve heard the elevator. He must’ve known it was her.

And he still stood there like a man waiting for judgment.

She pointed a manicured nail right at him.

“You think I flew all this way to sit quietly? I’m staying a month.

A month, Samuel Caputo. I’ll be in this penthouse every day, in every room, making sure this woman gets the care she needs.

Mentally. Spiritually. You lost your chance to handle her heart. Now it’s my turn.”

She stormed across the living room, fury in every step. Samuel didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. As if he knew exactly what he deserved.

He looked like he hadn’t slept. He hadn’t shaved. He hadn’t healed.

Good.

“You got five seconds,” Mya snapped, heels stomping closer, “to explain to me why the woman you swore—swore to me—you’d protect looks like she’s been surviving you.”

Samuel didn’t speak.

Not even when she shoved him.

Not when she slapped him.

Not when she balled her fist and drove it into his jaw.

He just stood there. Took it. Like he wanted it. Like he needed it.

I watched the red bloom on his cheek, watched his head snap to the side. He didn’t even raise a hand.

Mya leaned in, and though her voice was a whisper, I caught the fury in her words.

“You lay another hand on her, and I swear to every Caputo Saint and Sinner, I will inject you with something so chemically engineered you won’t even remember how to unzip your pants.

” She smiled coldly. “I’ve got a little formula in the lab.

The Don let me test it on a few of his enemies.

I call it velvet rage. Soft on the outside, irreversible on the inside.

One prick, and you’re neutered in more ways than one. ”

He didn’t respond. Didn’t flinch.

That silence? That was the beginning of penance.

“Mya,” I said, wheeling closer. “Stop.”

She turned to me, panting. Her chest heaved. Her knuckles were red.

“I had to,” she said, voice cracking. “Someone had to.”

“I know,” I whispered. “But I need something else now.”

Mya stepped back, her eyes still spitting fire, but she nodded. Slowly. Reluctantly.

She retreated to the couch like a lion backing off its prey. Watching. Ready to pounce again if needed.

I turned to Samuel.

“Your turn.”

He looked at me like I was salvation. Like he wanted to drop to his knees and beg.

But I didn’t want him begging.

I wanted him broken.

“I’ve been waiting,” I said. “Now show me.”

He walked to the living room table. Picked up a manila envelope. Brought it to me.

“I signed over everything,” he said hoarsely. “The penthouse. The offshore accounts. The art collection. Even the club. All of it. It’s yours. If you want to burn it to the ground, I’ll light the match.”

I stared at him.

“Why?”

“Because power is the only thing I ever used to keep you. And now I have to give it up to prove I don’t need it to love you.”

He knelt beside me then, not dramatically, not for effect. Just lowered himself like his body couldn’t hold the weight anymore.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about the night I hurt you,” he whispered.

“If I could, I would walk away from it all, but that won’t keep you safe.

So, I’ll change–for you. I want you to know I’m seeing someone.

One of Dr. Mya’s therapist friend’s since apparently it’s a conflict of interest for her to see me. Twice a week. No excuses.”

I didn’t look at Mya, but I saw the shift in her out of the corner of my eye.

“You’re doing all this for me?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m doing this because I want to be the kind of man who deserves you. Even if I never get you back.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was sacred.

I stared down at the envelope. My fingers brushed the corner. I felt the pulse in my wrists quicken, the old instincts telling me to pull away, to retreat, to protect.

But I didn’t.

Mya stood up and came to my side.

“You don’t have to forgive him,” she murmured, so low only I could hear. “You don’t have to do anything except what feels right to you.”

I nodded, but my heart was a war drum inside my chest.

Samuel was still kneeling. Still silent. Still waiting. His hands were flat against the floor now, shoulders caved inward like he’d finally collapsed under the weight of his own guilt. The man who once towered over me now looked like he could barely breathe in my presence.

“I opened the envelope.”

He flinched when I said it aloud. Like hearing me speak at all was both a mercy and a punishment.

“Everything is here. Signed. Dated. Notarized.” My voice was quiet. “You really gave it all away.”

“I did,” he said, his voice raw. “I thought it would hurt. But the only thing that hurts is knowing I still don’t deserve to be this close to you.”

I looked down at him. At the hollow version of a man who once ruled rooms with a glance. He was trembling now, jaw clenched, eyes glassy but unblinking .

“I came into your life like a storm,” he said, finally lifting his head.

“I told myself I was saving you, but all I did was replace one cage with another. I confused obsession for love. Dominance for protection. I tried to brand you with my name, like it meant you were safe, when really I was just erasing your own.”

“Why are you saying this now?” I asked, my fingers tightening around the envelope. “Why now, after everything?”

“Because you still have the power to destroy me,” he said.

“And if that’s what you need, I’ll let you.

If you need to hate me, I’ll take every ounce of it.

But if there’s anything left—if there’s one breath in your body that doesn’t flinch when I speak—then I’m begging you.

Not to forgive me. Not yet. But to stay my wife. ”

He bowed fully now, forehead pressing to the floor like a man on an altar, like I was the saint and the executioner all at once.

“I love you,” he whispered into the tile. “In the quiet. In the pain. In the undoing. And I will spend every breath I have left trying to be worthy of that name again. Your husband.”

Silence filled the space between us, thick and sharp. Mya didn’t move. She stood still like the walls were watching, like even the house held its breath.

I didn’t know what part of me cracked first. Maybe it was the way his hands stayed splayed on the floor like he’d lay there forever if I didn’t speak. Maybe it was the voice in my chest that said, just once, that survival didn’t have to mean solitude.

I dropped the envelope to the table beside me. Rolled forward.

“Lift your head,” I said.

He did. Slowly. Carefully. Like I might break him with a word.

“Tell me one more time.”

“I love you,” he said, broken and bare.

“And you’re mine? ”

“In every way I know how to be,” he whispered.

I reached out, placed my palm against his cheek—the same cheek Mya had slapped—and I let him feel it. My hand. My heat. My choice.

But he shook his head.

“No,” he rasped. “Not until you say so. You have to choose it. You have to choose me. And if you won’t—if you can’t—then end it.”

My fingers twitched.

“End it?”

His hands shook, but his voice was steel. “If you walk away—if you tell me there’s nothing left—I’ll do it myself.”

My breath hitched.

He reached behind him, slowly, reverently, and pulled the blade from the waistband of his pants. He laid it across his palms and stared at it. Then looked at me.

“I'll do it, Nina. I swear to God. I won’t live another day pretending this shell of me deserves breath while you’re forced to carry what I did. I’d rather bleed out at your feet than continue in this world without you.”

The room stopped breathing. Mya froze behind me. My own pulse screamed in my ears.

“You’d kill yourself?” I whispered.

“If it gives you peace. If it gives you justice. Yes.”

He held the blade out—not toward me this time, but toward himself. One firm shake away from digging it into his own ribs.

“I deserve death for the things I said. For the way I stripped you down, stole your voice, shattered your trust.” His voice cracked.

“But if you let me live... if you give me one more chance—I will never raise my voice again. I will never take another step without asking what you need first. I will never, ever treat you like you belong to me. Because you don’t. I belong to you.”

He dropped the knife to the floor with a clatter. Then he lowered himself until his face was pressed to the cold marble beneath my wheels.

“You are my queen,” he said, the words broken and holy. “My sun, my god, my redemption. I will bow every day until you believe I am worth standing beside. But if you don’t—if you walk away—I will not survive it. And I won’t try to.”

I looked down at him. At the hollow version of the man who once ruled empires and now begged to simply stay mine.

And I bent, shaking, heart racing, and pulled him up with trembling hands.

“I don’t need your death,” I said, voice trembling. “I need your life. Laid down. Rebuilt. Brick by bloody brick. I want you to live with the memory of what you almost lost. And every day you wake up, you remember that you live because I let you.”

He nodded against my palm, his eyes burning.

“I swear to you, Nina. I will be your calm. Your protection. Your safe place. Not your warden. Not your cage. Just your man. If you’ll have me.”

“I’m not whole,” I said. “But if I choose to love you again, it won’t be because you begged. It’ll be because I saw you on your knees, and I still wanted to rise with you.”

His throat worked, but no words came.

“I won’t promise forever,” I continued. “But I’ll promise today.”

He nodded, eyes closing.

And when I leaned forward, brushing my lips to his forehead, I felt him shatter quietly in my hands.

It was the first time in a long time that loving him felt like mine.

And for the first time, he didn’t try to take it?—

He just received it.