Chapter 195. Sabatine the Protector

The darkness in the Hotel President’s lobby was absolute, a living, breathing entity of terror. Reinhart’s parting whisper—the wolf is already inside the shepherd’s pen—echoed in Sabatine’s skull, a taunt and a condemnation. Every instinct screamed to run, to blast through the police cordon and race towards the Vert de Gris, towards Anton.

But he couldn't. The darkness was a weapon Reinhart had handed him. In the void, the panicked herd was on the cusp of stampeding again. A single wrong sound, a misinterpreted touch, and the fragile calm would shatter into a massacre. He was the only point of control in the chaos. If he abandoned them, he’d be leaving a bloodbath in his wake, and the resulting scandal would destroy Anton’s credibility as thoroughly as any bullet.

The protector’s duty was a cage of his own making.

He took a deep, centering breath, forcing the image of Anton—vulnerable, trusting, alone—into a locked compartment of his mind. He had a room to secure first.

“Listen to me!” he roared into the blackness, his voice leveraging the acoustics of the marble hall. “My name is Sabatine Stalker. I am head of security for Anton Rogers. The power has been deliberately cut. This is a coordinated attack to cause panic. If you panic, you die. If you follow my instructions, you live.”

He pulled a small, high-lumen tactical flashlight from his pocket, not turning it on yet. “I am going to turn on a light. Do not look directly at it. Do not move. I am identifying a secure location. When I give the command, you will move, slowly and in order. Anyone who runs will be considered hostile.”

He clicked the flashlight on, aiming the beam at the ceiling, creating a diffuse, ghostly illumination. Three hundred pale, frightened faces looked back at him from the floor. He saw oil magnates, tech CEOs, ambassadors, all reduced to the same primal fear. He saw their security details, weapons half-drawn, eyes wild, looking for a target.

He swung the beam towards a pair of large, ornate doors off the main lobby. “The Grand Ballroom. It has no external windows, one primary entrance. We are moving there. You!” He pointed the beam at a burly man in a suit who was clearly private security for a Scandinavian delegation. “You and your team. On your feet. You are my point. Clear that room, secure the entrance.”

The man, startled by the direct command, hesitated for a second, then nodded. In a crisis, people crave authority. Sabatine was offering it.

“The rest of you, on my mark, you will stand and walk, calmly, towards the light my team is holding at the ballroom door. If you have medical training, identify yourself now.”

A shaky voice from the crowd called out, “I’m a doctor.”

“You’re with me. Everyone else, move!”

It was like herding cats made of crystal and ego, but the alternative—chaos—was worse. The initial group of security men moved with purpose, pushing open the ballroom doors and sweeping inside with their own lights. Sabatine stood like a lighthouse keeper, his beam cutting the dark, his voice a relentless, calming metronome.

“Keep moving. Steady. Help your neighbour. No shoving.”

He grabbed the doctor—a pale, bespectacled German man—and pointed to the delegate still on the floor, the one who had screamed. “See him. Have him move into the ballroom carefully.”

Slowly, in a trembling, silent river, the powerful of the world shuffled out of the lobby and into the windowless ballroom. Sabatine was the last one in. He pulled the heavy doors shut. The room was vast, dark, and now filled with the sound of three hundred people trying not to hyperventilate.

He found the head of hotel security, a man named Laurent, who was gripping a radio that emitted only static. “The internal comms are jammed. The landlines are dead. Our cell signals are being blocked.”

“Override panels for the door locks and fire systems,” Sabatine demanded.

Laurent led him to a discreet wall panel behind the stage. Sabatine used the flashlight to examine it. It was a modern digital system, but it had a manual mechanical override for emergencies—a heavy, old-fashioned steel bar that would drop physical bolts into the floor and ceiling. He engaged in it. The sound of thick steel slamming home was immensely satisfying. The Grand Ballroom was now a vault.

“They’ll try to override it from the main security office,” Laurent said, fearful in his voice.

“Where is the main office?”

“Third floor, east wing.”

Sabatine handed him the flashlight. “Keep this. Shine it on the doors. If anyone tries to come through who isn't me or someone you know for certain is hotel security, you shout. This room is now a no-entry zone. Understood?”

He didn't wait for an answer. He turned to the crowd, his silhouette large against the beam of the flashlight Laurent now held shakily on the doors.

“You are safe in this room,” he announced, his voice carrying. “The doors are physically barred. No one is getting in. But we are not passive. We are a resource. I need every former military, police, or intelligence personnel in this room to identify themselves to Mr. Laurent now. We are forming an internal security detail.”

Hands went up, tentative at first, then more. Out of three hundred, two dozen men and a few women came forward. They were scared, but they were professionals. He gave them quick orders: organize the crowd into sections, identify anyone with medical issues, confiscate any firearms from the private details—to be held, not seized, to prevent accidental discharges in the dark.

He created order from terror. He gave the terrified a task, a purpose. He was no longer just a bodyguard; he was the commanding officer of a besieged garrison.

Only when the room was as secure and organized as it could be did he allow himself to think of the true objective. He found a quiet corner, away from the hushed voices and crying children of delegates.

He activated the sub-dermal comms unit, a failsafe Leon had implanted that didn't rely on standard networks. “Leon. Status. I’m locked down with the delegates at the President. Reinhart was here. She’s gone. She indicated the primary hit was at Anton’s location.”

Static, then Leon’s voice, strained and distant. “I’m… en route to the Vert de Gris. Swiss police intercepted me. Had to… persuade them. Maya is tracking. The safe house systems show a lockdown, but the internal biometric logs are… weird. Showing Anton moving within the building, but the patterns don’t match his escort schedule.”

Sabatine’s blood ran cold. The wolf inside the pen. A compromised guard, or a team already in place, moving Anton under duress, making it look normal on the logs.

“I can’t get to you,” Sabatine said, the words tasting like ash. “I’m pinned here. Three hundred high-value hostages. If I leave and this room is breached…”

“I know,” Leon cut in, his voice grim with understanding. “You’re doing your job. I’ll do mine. Hold the fort, Sabe.”

The line went silent.

Sabatine leaned his head back against the cold wall, closing his eyes in the dark. The protector’s dilemma was complete. His principal was in mortal danger, and he was babysitting a ballroom of billionaires. The right tactical move was to hold the secure position, to deny the enemy a secondary, catastrophic victory. The right human move was to abandon everything and run to the man he loved.

He thought of Anton’s face as he was led away. The trust. The unspoken I’ll find you.

He couldn't leave. Not just because of the duty, but because Anton would never forgive him if he caused the deaths of hundreds to save one. Even if that one was himself.

He was Sabatine Stalker, protector. And sometimes, protection meant making the brutal choice to defend the many, even when your heart was screaming to save the one. He had to trust Leon. He had to trust that the fortress he had built in this ballroom—of order, of barricaded doors, of steadied nerves—was the most important battlefield right now.

He pushed off the wall and walked back into the murmuring crowd. A young tech CEO from California approached him, her face streaked with tears but her jaw set. “What can I do to help?”

He looked at her, then at the other faces turning towards him in the gloom. They were no longer just liabilities. They were his garrison.

“Get me a list of everyone in this room with cybersecurity expertise,” he said, a new idea forming. “We may not be able to fight our way out. But we might be able to think our way through. We’re going to find out who cut the power, and we’re going to turn the lights back on.”

He was trapped. But he was not defeated. The protector had a room to hold, and a man to save from afar. And he would use every weapon he had—including the collective brainpower of the most powerful tech minds on the planet—to do both.

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