Chapter 238: The Knife Turn

The descent from the rooftop was a haze of pain and grim finality. Each step down the rusty ladder sent a fresh, white-hot jolt through Sabatine’s shot leg. The wound in his thigh was a pulsing, bloody mouth, but the deeper ache was in his soul—the cold, satisfied void where his fury had burned. Kaine was broken, not dead. A ghost made into a crippled, weeping man. It was a more fitting end.

He emerged from the attic into the grand upper hallway, leaning heavily against the ornate wallpaper. The sounds from outside were different now—the authoritative shouts of police, the static crackle of official radios, the rumble of heavy vehicles on the gravel drive. The siege was over; the clean-up had begun.

He needed to get to Anton. He needed to see his face, to feel the solid proof that they had survived the long night, that the ‘after’ was more than a dying man’s fantasy.

He was limping toward the main staircase when a door to his left—a linen closet, inconspicuous and panelled to match the wall—swung silently open.

Elias Kaine stood in the doorway.

He was a ghastly apparition. His face was a mask of blood from his shattered nose, his right arm hung limp and useless at his side, the shoulder of his dark sweater stained a deeper black where Sabatine’s screwdriver had found its mark. But in his left hand, held in a reverse grip with the blade running along his forearm, was a long, slender stiletto knife. His eyes, pale and fever-bright with pain and hatred, were fixed on Sabatine with an intensity that was almost religious.

He hadn’t crawled to the roof hatch. He’d had a second, secret escape route from the roof—a drop to a lower balcony, a hidden door. Of course he did. He was a man who built his life on redundant exits.

“No… more… stories,” Kaine rasped, each word a painful expulsion of breath. Blood flecked his lips. “Just you… and me. A simple… knife.”

He was beyond strategy, beyond narrative. The final, elegant contingencies were gone. This was raw, animal survival. A wounded predator making one last lunge.

Sabatine was exhausted, wounded, off-balance. His pistol was tucked in his belt, but drawing it would take a second he didn’t have. Kaine was already moving, a lurching, unbalanced charge, the knife a silver blur aimed for Sabatine’s throat.

There was no time for fancy footwork, for disarms. Sabatine did the only thing he could. He turned his body, presenting his left arm—the one not holding his weight against the wall—as a shield.

The stiletto, designed for piercing, not slashing, still tore a deep, burning furrow from his elbow to his wrist. It sliced through muscle, grating against bone. Blood welled instantly, a hot sheet of crimson soaking his sleeve.

Sabatine barely flinched.

The pain was a distant, secondary signal. His world had narrowed to the man in front of him, to the knife, to the absolute, non-negotiable truth that this ended now. Anton was downstairs. The cabin by the lake awaited. He would not let this ghost steal one more second of their future.

As Kaine, over-extended from the thrust, tried to recover, Sabatine moved.

He didn’t grab the knife. He didn’t try to block. He stepped into Kaine, inside his guard, ignoring the blade. He drove the hardened point of his own elbow—his right elbow, on his good side—upward in a brutal, short strike under Kaine’s chin.

The impact snapped Kaine’s head back with a wet crack. He staggered, his one good hand losing its grip on the knife. It clattered to the polished floor.

Sabatine didn’t let him fall. He grabbed the front of Kaine’s blood-soaked sweater with his own bleeding left hand, feeling the fabric grow slick, and yanked him forward. At the same time, he brought his knee up—not into his groin, but into the already-shattered ruin of his right shoulder.

Kaine screamed, a high, broken sound that echoed in the grand hallway. The agony was unimaginable, short-circuiting every thought, every instinct except for the need to escape the pain.

Sabatine used that moment of pure, animal retreat. He pivoted, using Kaine’s own stumbling momentum, and slammed him face-first into the nearest wall—a vast, gilt-framed mirror.

The glass exploded. Shards rained down around them, twinkling like malignant stars. Kaine slumped against the wall, leaving a bloody smear on the damask wallpaper, then slid to the floor amidst the glittering wreckage. He lay there, semi-conscious, moaning softly, his body a map of catastrophic failure.

Sabatine stood over him, breathing heavily, his left arm dripping a steady patter of blood onto the broken glass. The knife turn was complete. Kaine had struck with his last, desperate weapon, and Sabatine had absorbed the blow and turned it into the final, shattering counter.

He looked down at his arm. The cut was deep, ugly. He’d need stitches. A lot of them. But it was a clean wound. It would heal.

He bent, wincing as his leg protested, and picked up Kaine’s stiletto from the floor. He looked at the fine, deadly blade, then at the broken man weeping in a pile of glass.

He tossed the knife out a shattered window. It vanished into the mist.

He then drew his pistol from his belt. Not to shoot. He ejected the magazine, cleared the chamber, and threw the pieces in opposite directions. The hallway was now a scene of violence, but not one caused by a gun. It would tell its own story.

He turned away from Kaine and limped toward the grand staircase. Each step was agony, a symphony of pain from his leg and his arm. But he moved with purpose.

He found Anton halfway up the stairs, supported by Leon, their faces pale with a new kind of terror—the terror of hearing the crash, the scream, the silence.

Anton’s eyes went to Sabatine’s bloody arm, then to his face. “Sabe…”

“It’s over,” Sabatine said, his voice rough but calm. “He’s upstairs. In the hall. He’s done.”

He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. The finality in his tone said everything.

Anton pulled away from Leon and closed the distance between them, his own injuries forgotten. He reached for Sabatine’s bleeding arm, his touch impossibly gentle. “Your arm… your leg…”

“I’ll live,” Sabatine said, and for the first time, he truly believed it. He covered Anton’s hand with his own, their blood mingling. “We both will.”

The sound of heavy, booted footsteps echoed from the foyer below. Swiss police in tactical gear swarmed into the house, their weapons sweeping the room.

Sabatine didn’t raise his hands. He simply stood there, holding Anton’s hand, a tableau of battered, bloody survival.

An officer approached, his expression stern, his eyes taking in the blood, the wounds, the two men clinging to each other. “Identify yourselves.”

Anton spoke, his CEO voice returning, frayed but authoritative. “I am Anton Rogers. This is Sabatine Stalker, my head of security. The man responsible for the events of this night, Elias Kaine, is upstairs, incapacitated. We require immediate medical attention.”

The officer’s eyes widened slightly at the name ‘Rogers.’ The media storm had clearly broken. He barked orders into his radio, calling for medics.

As the police secured the scene and paramedics rushed in, Sabatine and Anton were helped down the stairs and onto waiting stretchers in the grand foyer. They were placed side by side.

As a medic began to apply pressure to Sabatine’s arm, Anton reached across the gap between the stretchers, his fingers finding Sabatine’s.

“The knife…” Anton whispered, his eyes searching Sabatine’s. “He cut you.”

Sabatine looked at their joined hands, then back at Anton. A faint, exhausted smile touched his lips. “He tried,” he said simply. “It was the last thing he’ll ever try.”

And as the medics worked and the police bustled around them, they lay there in the shattered opulence of the Rothschild mansion, holding on, their bloodied hands a promise written in the only ink that mattered. The long night was over. The dawn, however painful, was theirs.

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