Chapter 153. The Leaked Photo

The air on the balcony was a blade of cold, clean Alpine wind. Sabatine braced his hands on the concrete railing, the chill seeping through his palms, grounding him. He focused on the view—the neat, distant geometry of Geneva, the pewter sheen of the lake, the bruised purple of the receding storm clouds. He tried to force his mind into a similar, ordered state. Mission complete. Objectives secured. Principal safe. The old debriefing mantra.

But the mantra was ash. The principal was the problem. The principal had kissed him with a desperation that had rewritten Sabatine’s genetic code. The principal was now standing twenty feet behind him, a silent, magnetic field of unresolved chaos.

He heard the soft slide of the balcony door. He didn’t turn. The presence beside him was not Anton; it was Leon, a solid, quiet bulk against the morning.

“The doctors are here,” Leon said, his voice low. “For the check-up.”

Sabatine nodded, still not looking. “He should go first.”

“He won’t. He’s waiting for you.”

Of course he was. Another silent standoff. Another excruciating dance. Sabatine pushed off the railing, his body aching in places he’d forgotten could ache. He followed Leon back inside.

The doctors were a brisk, efficient man and woman from a discreet private clinic. They worked in the apartment’s two bedrooms. Sabatine submitted to the examination in a kind of numb autopilot. Bruises, minor lacerations, elevated heart rate, signs of acute stress and sleep deprivation. Nothing a few days of rest wouldn’t cure. The physical diagnosis was simple.

The doctor, a kind-eyed older man, finished wrapping a bandage around a shallow cut on Sabatine’s forearm. “You should try to rest, Monsieur. Your body has been through a war.”

You have no idea, Sabatine thought.

When he emerged, Anton was already done, standing again by the window. He’d changed into the soft grey sweater, and it made him look softer, younger, more approachable. It was a lie. He was a live wire. Jessica was on her phone, her voice a low, urgent murmur. Leon was at the dining table, meticulously cleaning his sidearm, a ritual of normalcy in the surreal calm.

Sabatine’s burner phone, which he’d left charging on a side table, vibrated with a specific, urgent pattern. It was Rico Nadir’s alert signal.

A cold trickle of dread, different from the emotional turmoil, dripped down his spine. He grabbed the phone and opened the secure messaging app.

The message was just a link, followed by three words from Rico: They’ve got visual.

Sabatine clicked the link. It led to a gossip site he’d never heard of, but the headline was in screaming 72-point font:

CAUGHT IN THE ACT! Rogers & His “Bodyguard” Exit Secret Love Nest Elevator!

Below it was a photograph.

It was grainy, taken from a distance, likely with a long lens or a drone. The lighting was the eerie, flat grey of dawn. It showed a private elevator door, mirrored and sleek, in what was unmistakably the opulent foyer of the Villa Meridian’s penthouse level. The doors were sliding shut, but not before capturing two figures stepping out.

Himself. And Anton.

They were both still in their torn, dark tactical gear. They were caught mid-stride, shoulders almost touching. But it was their faces that told the damning story. The photo had captured them not in action, but in the breathless, shattered aftermath of the kiss. Sabatine’s head was slightly turned toward Anton, his expression one of stunned, vulnerable awe. Anton’s profile was tilted down, his eyes half-lidded, his mouth soft and utterly, devastatingly sated. The raw intimacy in that single, stolen frame was more explicit than any clinch. It was a snapshot of a private universe being born.

The photo was timestamped 05:47 a.m.—less than an hour after they’d taken the elevator to the penthouse. A drone. It had to have been a drone, braving the tail end of the storm, positioned for a view of that private foyer. Evelyn’s people? Marcus’s? Or just a paparazzi vulture who’d gotten lucky while hovering for shots of the police activity?

It didn’t matter. It was out.

Sabatine’s blood turned to ice. He looked up, meeting Anton’s eyes across the room. He must have paled, because Anton’s expression shifted from tense to alarmed. He strode over.

“What is it?”

Wordlessly, Sabatine handed him the phone.

Anton’s face went through a rapid transformation as he scrolled: confusion, dawning horror, then a cold, hardening fury. His knuckles whitened around the device. “A drone. Over private airspace. This is illegal surveillance.”

“It’s irrelevant,” Jessica said, ending her call and joining them, her face grim. She had clearly just been informed. “It’s out. It’s already spreading. It’s not just the photo, Anton. Look at the feed.”

She took the phone and navigated to a major news network. Roland Cross was already on screen, live from a London studio, the leaked photo displayed prominently over his shoulder. He looked like a grave, disappointed prophet.

“…and now we see the true nature of this ‘partnership,’” Cross was intoning, his voice dripping with sanctimonious sorrow. “This isn’t about corporate espionage or heroics. This is a tawdry, personal scandal dressed up in tactical gear. This image, taken just hours after their theatrical press conference, shows Mr. Rogers and Mr. Stalker exiting a private elevator in the very villa where a catastrophic cyber-attack was allegedly thwarted. What were they doing there? Why were they alone on a sealed residential floor while Swiss authorities secured the crime scene below?”

He leaned forward, his eyes piercing the camera. “It raises serious questions about the official narrative. Was this a genuine investigation, or a carefully orchestrated cover for a illicit liaison? Did personal entanglements cloud judgement, or worse, facilitate the initial theft? The security of nations cannot hinge on the bedroom dramas of billionaires and their hired help.”

The insinuation was masterful, diabolical. He was reframing their victory as a sordid affair, their evidence as pillow talk, their integrity as lust. He was using the truth of their desire to poison every other truth they had fought for.

The phone in Jessica’s hand began to buzz incessantly with calls from news desks. On the television screen, social media feeds scrolled alongside Cross’s face, a torrent of reaction.

“OMG THEY WERE IN THE ELEVATOR TOGETHER.”

“So it’s true. He really did fall for his bodyguard.”

“This is so hot but also Roland Cross has a point… is this a national security issue?”

“They saved Geneva! Who cares if they’re banging?!”

“Rogers is compromised. That photo says it all.”

Anton snatched the phone back and threw it onto the sofa as if it were a venomous snake. He turned to the window, his back a rigid line of fury. Sabatine could see the muscle in his jaw working, a tiny, frantic pulse.

Sabatine felt the walls closing in again, but this time it was different. This wasn’t the panic of exposure; it was the cold, sinking dread of seeing something pure and fragile thrown into a septic tank. Their kiss—that private, world-ending moment—had been stolen, pixelated, and turned into a weapon to bludgeon their credibility, to undo everything they’d just sacrificed for.

“We issue a statement,” Jessica said, her legal mind racing. “We acknowledge the photograph is an invasion of privacy. We state that you were conducting a final sweep of the premises for evidence, which is true. We do not address the nature of your relationship. We maintain a united, professional front.”

“They won’t believe it,” Sabatine said, his voice hollow. He gestured to the frozen image on the TV. “No one looks like that after ‘conducting a sweep.’” The raw truth of it shamed him, even as it thrilled some buried, defiant part of his soul.

“It doesn’t matter if they believe it,” Jessica countered. “It’s the official line. We stick to it. We sue the outlet that published it for invasion of privacy. We move the conversation back to Evelyn, to Marcus, to Volkov.”

“And what about us?” The question came from Anton. He hadn’t turned around. His voice was dangerously quiet.

Jessica paused. “What about you?”

“What about the fact that it is true?” Anton finally turned, and his eyes were blazing, not with anger at the leak, but with a defiant, terrifying pride. “What about the fact that I don’t want to issue a statement calling it a ‘sweep’? That I am sick to death of hiding, of letting people like Roland Cross define what is respectable and what is a ‘tawdry scandal’?”

Sabatine’s breath caught. “Anton, don’t.”

“Why?” Anton took a step towards him, ignoring Jessica and Leon. “Why should we let him use this? Why should we be ashamed? That photo…” He gestured violently at the screen. “That photo is the first true thing the world has seen in this whole fucking mess! It’s the only thing that matters!”

“It will destroy you,” Sabatine whispered, the words agony. “Your company, your reputation… everything you built.”

“I told you in the elevator,” Anton said, his gaze locking onto Sabatine’s, holding him there in front of everyone. “Let it burn. I meant it.”

Jessica closed her eyes for a brief second, bracing for the impact. When she opened them, her expression was resigned, already shifting from containment to management of a new, more volatile reality. “If that is your position, Anton, then we need a different strategy entirely. A pre-emptive one.”

Leon, from the table, spoke without looking up from his pistol. “The world already thinks it knows. Denying it now makes you look weak and deceitful. Claiming it… makes you human. And unpredictable. It’s a harder target to hit.”

Sabatine looked from Anton’s defiant, love-struck face to Jessica’s calculating one, to Leon’s pragmatic one. The leaked photo was a grenade. Roland Cross had pulled the pin. They could try to stuff it back in with lies, or they could throw it back as a declaration of war.

Anton’s eyes were on him, waiting. The question wasn’t for Jessica or Leon. It was for him. Are you with me? Even here, in the glare?

Sabatine thought of the ghost he’d been, the half-life of penance. He thought of the kiss, the terrifying, glorious rightness of it. He thought of Anton’s whisper: You are the most solid, most real thing I have ever touched.

The ghost was gone. Incinerated in the elevator. All that was left was this man, and the billionaire who loved him, and a stolen photograph that told the truth.

He gave Anton a single, slow nod.

A fierce, triumphant light ignited in Anton’s eyes. He turned to Jessica. “Draft a statement. Not from the company. From me. Personal. We’re not suing. We’re not explaining. We’re acknowledging. And then,” he said, a ruthless, beautiful smile touching his lips, “we’re going to buy that fucking drone photo and make it the cover of our authorised biography.”

The aftershock was over. The war for the truth of their hearts had just begun.

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