Chapter 197: Through the Labyrinth of Lies

The polished marble floors and crystalline chandeliers of the Geneva banking district were a world away. Here, beneath the city’s glittering skin, the air was a cold, damp fist that clenched around Anton Rogers and Sabatine Stalker with every desperate breath. The only light was the jittering beam from Sabatine’s tactical flashlight, carving slices of reality out of the oppressive dark: moss-slick walls, rusting pipes that groaned like living things, and endless forks in a concrete labyrinth.

Anton’s world had been reduced to the pounding of his own heart, the scuff of his ruined Italian loafers on grime, and the solid, relentless presence of Sabatine just ahead of him. The man moved with a predatory silence Anton could never emulate, a ghost in a bespoke suit that was now torn at the shoulder, stained with dirt and a smudge of blood that wasn't his.

“Left here,” Sabatine murmured, his voice a low rasp that didn’t echo so much as get swallowed by the tunnels. “Then a hard right after fifty meters. There’s a service lift that hasn’t been on the grid since the seventies.”

Anton obeyed, his mind a cacophony of fury and fear. The image was burned onto his retinas: Evelyn Voss, his CFO, his father’s protégé, the woman he’d trusted with the keys to his kingdom, standing in his Geneva penthouse office not an hour ago. But she hadn’t been alone. Marcus, his own half-brother, stood beside her, holding the sleek silver case containing the stolen “Aegis” prototype. The case Anton had hired Sabatine to find. The betrayal had been a physical blow, but the words were worse.

“You built a fortress, Anton, but you forgot to check the foundations. We’re not stealing from you. We’re claiming what’s ours. A little blackmail fund, rewritten with your own unhackable key. The world’s elites will pay anything to keep their secrets secret.”

And then Sabatine had burst in, not as the accused traitor Anton had been warned about, but as a force of chaotic salvation. A brief, violent struggle. A shot that went wide, shattering a ten-thousand-dollar vase. Evelyn’s scream. And Sabatine’s hand, iron-strong, gripping Anton’s arm. “Now. Unless you want to be the billionaire found dead next to his own stolen tech.”

So they ran. Down the private elevator, through the basement boiler room, and into this dripping, primordial gut.

“You knew,” Anton gasped, the words ripping from him as they paused at an intersection. The air tasted of iron and decay. “You knew it was Evelyn. Before the evidence was planted on you. You knew.”

Sabatine didn’t turn, his profile sharp in the flashlight’s backscatter. “I suspected. The financial trails were too clean for an outsider. They led to your circle, not into it. But suspicion isn’t proof. And the proof they fabricated against me was… convincing.”

“You should have told me.” The statement was less an accusation and more a raw admission of hurt. Trust vs. Control. The theme of their entire fraught, electric relationship. He’d hired Sabatine for his discretion, his brilliance, his detached professionalism. He hadn’t hired him to become the only solid ground in an earthquake.

Finally, Sabatine glanced back, his eyes reflecting the dim light. In them, Anton saw the same exhaustion, the same trauma that had drawn him to the man—a fellow prisoner of a painful past. “Tell you what? That your right hand and your only family were conspiring to dismantle everything you’d built? Without irrefutable evidence, you would have had me removed. Or worse, you would have confronted them and gotten yourself killed sooner. My job was to protect you, Anton. Even from the truth, until it couldn’t hurt you.”

“I’ll protect you even if it breaks me.” The unspoken vow hung in the damp air between them.

Anton leaned against the cold wall, the fight draining momentarily, replaced by a profound isolation. His wealth, his power, his name—it all meant nothing here. It had, in fact, built the cage he was now trapped in. “My father… he always said vulnerability was a currency for the weak. A liability.”

Sabatine moved then, closing the short distance. He didn’t touch Anton, but his presence was a tangible warmth. “Your father was betrayed by a business partner, right? So he taught you walls. I get it. But a wall that keeps everything out also keeps you in. Alone.” He paused, his own guilt etching lines around his mouth. “I know about alone.”

The confession was a key, turning in a lock deep within Anton. Sabatine’s past—the disavowed mission, the civilian deaths he carried like a second skeleton—was a shadow he’d only glimpsed. Now, in this shared desperation, it felt like a mirror.

“This is my fault,” Anton whispered, the words almost inaudible over the distant drip of water. “I cut Marcus out. I was cold, exacting. I treated the company as the only family that mattered. I gave Evelyn everything but my trust, and she repaid me by wanting to own it all.”

Sabatine’s hand came up, then, not to grab, but to rest gently on Anton’s arm. The contact was electric, a live wire in the damp dark. “This is the fault of greedy, malicious people. You built something extraordinary, and they wanted to steal it. You are not responsible for their choices.” His thumb moved, a barely-there stroke on the soaked silk of Anton’s shirt. “Your choices are what come next.”

The simple touch, the absolution, shattered something. Anton’s breath hitched. It wasn’t a sob—he hadn’t sobbed since he was twelve—but it was a crack in the perfect, disciplined facade. He covered Sabatine’s hand with his own, anchoring himself. The textures were all wrong here: grime, cold, fear. But the connection was the most real thing he’d ever felt.

“They’ll have people at every exit. The police, private security they own… my own security,” Anton said, the practicalities forcing their way back in.

“I know,” Sabatine said, a ghost of his usual, stubborn smirk touching his lips. “That’s why we’re not using an exit. We’re using an entrance.”

He turned, pulling Anton gently forward. They moved deeper, the tunnel beginning to slope upward. Sabatine’s focus was absolute, his head cocked, listening to sounds Anton couldn’t decipher. This was his world: shadows, strategy, survival. Anton, the billionaire who commanded boardrooms and markets, was utterly out of his element, and the helplessness was strangely freeing. He had no choice but to trust.

“Rico,” Sabatine said abruptly, as they climbed a short, rusted ladder. “My old contact. He’s… compromised. But he left a backdoor in the city’s old surveillance network. A blind spot. He knew I’d need it one day.” The admission was pained. “He’s the one who ‘found’ the evidence against me. They have leverage on him, too.”

Partners in crime, Anton thought wildly. That’s what they were now. Not just billionaire and investigator. Not just client and protector. Fugitives. Bound by more than contract.

They reached a heavy, riveted door, oxidized green. Sabatine shouldered it open with a grating shriek that made Anton wince. Beyond was a narrow catwalk overlooking a vast, subterranean chamber—an old, decommissioned hydroelectric control room. Giant, dormant machinery loomed like fossilized dinosaurs. But on the far side, a single, modern door glowed with a soft exit sign.

“There,” Sabatine pointed. “Leads up to a private garage in the old town. I have a vehicle there. Untraceable.”

Hope, sharp and dangerous, pierced Anton’s chest. He followed Sabatine onto the catwalk, the metal grid ringing softly under their weight. They were halfway across when the door behind them slammed open.

Light flooded in, silhouetting two bulky figures. No police uniforms. Private contractors. Marcus’s, no doubt.

“Stop! Rogers!” one shouted.

Sabatine didn’t stop. He grabbed Anton and shoved him forward. “Run! Don’t look back!”

A shot rang out, explosively loud in the cavernous space, pinging off a girder above them. Anton ran, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He heard the scuffle behind him—the brutal, efficient sound of hand-to-hand combat. A grunt of pain. A choked-off cry.

He reached the far door, fumbling for the handle. He turned, against Sabatine’s orders.

Sabatine was a whirlwind of motion, disarming one man with a vicious twist of his wrist, sending the clattering weapon skittering over the edge into the abyss below. The second man lunged. Sabatine used his momentum, throwing him against the catwalk railing. It shook with the impact.

“Sabe!” Anton yelled.

Sabatine broke free, sprinting toward him. He was almost there when the first man, rising again, pulled a second gun.

Time distilled.

Anton saw the man aim.

He saw Sabatine’s eyes meet his,wide with warning.

He acted not as a billionaire,but as a man.

He threw the heavy door open wide,creating a shield, and reached out, grabbing Sabatine’s outstretched hand, yanking him across the threshold with a force born of sheer terror.

The gun fired.

Sabatine slammed into him, and they tumbled into the concrete stairwell beyond the door as the bullet sparked against the doorframe where Sabatine’s head had been a millisecond before.

Anton scrambled to his knees. Sabatine was already up, slamming the door shut and jamming a metal bar through the handle. He slumped against it, breathing hard, a fresh tear in his jacket.

“You’re hit,” Anton said, seeing the darker patch on his side.

Sabatine looked down, patting it. “Grazed. Already clotting. It’s nothing.” He looked up at Anton, his chest heaving. In the dim emergency light of the stairwell, his face was all stark angles and shadows, but his eyes were blazing. “You looked back. I told you not to look back.”

“You’re welcome,” Anton breathed, the adrenaline making him lightheaded.

A beat of silence stretched, thick with everything unsaid. The gunfire, the chase, the mortal danger—it had stripped away the final layers of pretense. Here, in this cold, grey space, they were just two men, wanted and wounded, with nothing left but each other.

Sabatine pushed off the door. He didn’t speak. He simply closed the distance, his hands coming up to frame Anton’s face, his gaze searching, urgent. Anton’s own control, the discipline he’d worn like armor, crumbled to dust. He met him halfway.

The kiss was nothing like Anton had imagined in stolen, guilty moments. It wasn’t a seduction. It was a collision. A claiming. It tasted of sweat, fear, and the metallic tang of the tunnels. Sabatine’s lips were chapped, his stubble rough, and it was utterly perfect. It was an anchor, a rebellion, a silent scream against the lies waiting for them above. It was the first purely honest thing to happen to Anton Rogers in a decade.

When they broke apart, foreheads resting together, the world had recalibrated.

“The vehicle’s upstairs,” Sabatine whispered, his voice ragged. “Then we finish this. Together.”

Anton nodded, his throat tight. The fury was still there, the fear a cold companion. But beneath it, forged in the fire of their escape, was something new and unbreakable. A partnership. A promise.

Together, they turned and began to climb the stairs, leaving the shadows of the labyrinth behind, and stepping into the uncertain dawn.

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