Page 4 of Hunted to the Altar
The weight of his words settled over me like a vice. Failure wasn’t an option. Not this time.
Movement from the monitors brought me back to the present. My little bunny was at the small table in her kitchen, her hands rubbing her head with a mug sitting in front of her. She looked down, staring into its contents, her expression distant. Her fingers traced the rim of the cup. Small, delicate movements that seemed absentminded but carried the weight of someone lost in thought. I hated seeing her like that, trapped in her own mind. But I loved it, too. Loved the way she tried so hard to hold herself together when the cracks were so visible. She was raw and real in a way I hadn’t encountered before. Fragile, yet fiercely clinging to her independence.
This wasn’t about silencing her anymore. Not entirely. She was a liability, yes. But she was also something more. She was a challenge. A puzzle. Something fragile I wanted to break and rebuild with my own hands. Her vulnerability called to me like a siren’s song, but it wasn’t pity that drove me. It was the desire to own her completely, to strip away the layers she hid behind, until all that remained was her submission to me.
How did I end up here? A question I asked myself more often than I cared to admit.
Sebastian had plucked me from obscurity. A skinny, angry kid hacking government databases for sport and revenge. My mother was long gone, my father a ghost who haunted the bottom of a whiskey bottle. I’d been on my own since fifteen, surviving off stolen credit cards and my ability to disappear into the digital ether.
“You’re wasted potential,”Sebastian had said the day he found me.“You’re clever, but you’re reckless. With the right guidance, you could be unstoppable. Or, you could rot in prison for the next twenty years. Your choice.”
Sebastian found me young, angry, brilliant, invisible, and silent until Don Caputo offered me a choice: rot in prison or join the famiglia.
He became the father I’d never had. Stern. Unforgiving. Powerful. I craved it. Under him, I became the invisible hand. The one behind the curtain. The ghost who rewrote reality from a keyboard.
But loyalty came with a price. Sebastian didn’t forgive mistakes, and he didn’t forget them either. I’d earned my place in the family through blood and sweat, but I knew it could all be taken away with a single failure. Nina was my test, my chance to prove I was still worth the risk he’d taken on me all those years ago.
Her lips moved as she muttered to herself, so I zoomed in. She didn’t know she was already mine. Not yet. She was almost hypnotic. In her own world, completely unaware that I was watching, cataloging every detail.
She wasn’t like the women I usually encountered in the famiglia’s circles—polished, calculating, and always playing an angle. Nina was raw and unguarded, and it made her irresistible.
And that made her the perfect prey. Breaking her would be like carving my name into her soul, leaving a mark no one else could erase.
My thoughts darkened, taking a sinister turn, as they often did with her. I didn’t just want to silence her. I wanted to consume her, to claim her in a way that left no doubt she was mine. The image of her swollen with my child invaded my thoughts, a fire that burned too hot. She would carry my legacy. My mark. Her fight would fade. Her surrender would be complete.
I leaned back in my chair, running a hand through my hair as I tried to rein in the intensity of my thoughts. Obsession was dangerous. But for Nina, I’d risk it.
“You’re wasting your time,” a voice behind me said.
Marcello Caputo—the family’s priest and my cousin. He stepped into the room like a ghost, his dark cassock blending into the shadows. Marcello had a knack for appearing uninvited, though I suspected he knew better than to question why I was watching her.
“This isn’t about time,” I said without looking at him.
“No? Then what is it about? Because it doesn’t look like you’re hunting her. It looks like you’re protecting her.”
My jaw tightened. Marcello had always been too perceptive for his own good.
“She’s a threat to the family,” I said, my tone clipped. “She’s being watched by more than just me.”
Marcello stepped closer, the faint smell of incense clinging to him. “And you think making her your obsession will keep her safe?”
I turned to him then, my lips curling into a smirk that didn’t reach my eyes. “She is safe. Because I’m the one watching her, if it were anyone else, she’d already be dead.”
Marcello’s expression didn’t shift, but there was something in his eyes—pity, maybe—that made my stomach churn.
“Be careful, Samuel,” he said. “You’re not invincible. And she’s not a possession.”
I watched him leave, his footsteps silent, his presence lingering like a warning. He didn’t understand. My little bunny wasn’t just a fixation.
The next day,I waited outside her apartment building. Not in plain sight, of course. I wasn’t stupid. I’d parked a block away, leaning against the hood of my car, a cigarette dangling from my lips. I didn’t smoke often, but the sharp burn of it grounded me, kept me from going inside and dragging her out myself.
She emerged a little after eight, bundled in a coat too thin for the January chill. Her curls were pinned back, and she clutched a tote bag like it was a shield. I watched as she hurried down the steps, her eyes darting left and right, meeting no one’s gaze for more than a second. She was nervous. Skittish. Prey.
I stubbed out the cigarette and followed her.
She didn’t notice me, not at first. She was too busy trying to lose herself in the crowd. But I was good at this. I’d been tailing people long before I’d learned to hack into their lives. I stayed close enough to keep her in sight but far enough to blend into the sea of faces around us.
Her destination was predictable: the trauma center where she volunteered. It was a small, unassuming building, tucked between a laundromat and a pawnshop. She hesitated at the door, glancing over her shoulder. My heart kicked up.Did she sense me?
