Chapter 240: The Final Shot

The sterile, white world of the Geneva clinic was a universe away from the damp stone and blood of the Rothschild estate. Sabatine swam up through layers of thick, chemical sleep, each ascent met with a fresh wave of pain—a deep, throbbing ache in his leg, a sharp, fiery protest from the sutured gash on his arm. He opened his eyes to a ceiling of acoustic tiles and the soft, steady beep of a heart monitor. His heart.

He turned his head, a stiff, painful movement. In the chair beside his bed, illuminated by the grey afternoon light filtering through slatted blinds, sat Anton.

He was asleep, his head tipped back against the wall. He was clean, dressed in borrowed sweatpants and a plain t-shirt that looked too big on him. His face was a landscape of healing violence—a purple bruise bloomed across his cheekbone, his split lip was swollen, and the bandage on his neck was stark white against his skin. But he was here. He was breathing, his chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm that synced, somehow, with the beep of the monitor.

A profound, almost painful wave of relief washed over Sabatine, so potent it brought a stinging heat to his eyes. He had seen Anton loaded into an ambulance, pale and still. The terror of that separation, after everything, had been a quiet, cold poison in his veins even through the surgery.

He must have made a sound, a shift in breathing, because Anton’s eyes fluttered open. They found Sabatine’s immediately, the grey irises clouded with sleep, then clearing into sharp, focused awareness.

“You’re awake,” Anton whispered, his voice rough. He leaned forward, wincing slightly, and his hand found Sabatine’s on the crisp hospital sheet. His touch was warm, solid, real.

“You’re here,” Sabatine rasped, his own voice unrecognizable. “They took you…”

“I came back,” Anton said simply, his thumb stroking the back of Sabatine’s hand. “They had him cornered in the cellar. He saw me… and he gave up.” A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I think my being alive was the one variable his story couldn’t accommodate.”

Sabatine closed his eyes for a second, absorbing that. Anton had faced Kaine down, alone and wounded, and had won without firing a shot. It was the most Anton Rogers thing he could imagine.

“The police… the press?” Sabatine asked, the practical part of his mind struggling to engage.

“Contained, for now,” Anton said. “Jessica is a force of nature. She’s in a war room in London with a team of lawyers and PR people. Rico and Leon gave their statements—heavily edited. The official story is a complex corporate espionage and kidnapping plot, masterminded by Elias Kaine, a known mercenary, with the help of my rogue CFO and brother. We were victims who managed a daring escape and assisted in the apprehension. The… messier details are being sanitized.”

“And Kaine?”

Anton’s expression darkened. “In a high-security military hospital under armed guard. Multiple surgeries ahead of him. Jessica is ensuring the Swiss authorities understand the depth of his crimes, the international scope. He’ll never see the outside of a supermax cell.” He squeezed Sabatine’s hand. “It’s over, Sabe. Really over.”

Sabatine nodded slowly, letting the reality settle. The ghost was captured, not vanished. The consortium’s European commander was in chains. The prototype… He looked at Anton.

“The real one was recovered from the vault rubble,” Anton said, anticipating him. “Badly damaged, but not irreparable. The technical data is secure. Rogers Industries will build it, and this time, we’ll do it right. No shadows.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, the beep of the monitor the only sound. The adrenaline was gone. The fear was gone. All that was left was the aftermath, and each other.

“The cabin,” Sabatine murmured, his eyes drifting closed again. “The lake.”

“Soon,” Anton promised, his voice thick with emotion. “Just as soon as they let us out of these damn beds.”

---

The next two days were a blur of painkillers, police interviews conducted in hushed tones in the hospital room, and the quiet, constant presence of Anton, who had refused a room of his own. He slept in the chair, ate when the nurses forced him, and was just… there. An anchor.

On the third morning, Sabatine was deemed stable enough for a short, supervised walk. A nurse helped him into a wheelchair, taking at his protests. Anton walked slowly beside him, a cane in his hand, as they were taken to a small, enclosed courtyard garden on the clinic’s ground floor.

The air was cold and clean, smelling of wet earth and the last of the autumn roses. The sky was a flat, featureless grey. It was peaceful.

They were alone for the first time since the rooftop, since the cellar. The police guard was at the garden’s entrance, out of earshot.

Sabatine looked at Anton, really looked, taking in the new lines of pain and exhaustion around his eyes, the way he held his body to protect his injured side. “You should be resting in a bed, not following me around.”

“Where else would I be?” Anton asked softly, settling on a stone bench beside the wheelchair. He reached out, his fingers tracing the edge of the bandage on Sabatine’s arm. “This is where I belong.”

The simple truth of it settled between them, warmer than the weak sunlight. Sabatine covered Anton’s hand with his own. He didn’t have words for what he felt. It was too big, too raw.

The garden’s tranquility was shattered by the sudden, frantic chirping of the police guard’s radio. A burst of static, then a voice, tight with alarm. “…code red at secure medical wing… subject Kaine… armed… repeat, subject is armed and has taken a hostage…”

Sabatine’s blood turned to ice. Anton froze, his grip on Sabatine’s hand tightening to the point of pain.

How? The man had a destroyed shoulder, and was under constant guard…

But Kaine was a ghost. Ghosts didn’t follow rules.

The guard at the entrance drew his weapon, his face grim. “You two, inside! Now!”

But before they could move, a figure appeared at the far end of the courtyard, emerging from a service door that should have been locked.

Elias Kaine.

He was a nightmare parody of himself. He wore a hospital gown stained with fresh blood, his right arm was immobilized in a crude sling, and he moved with a lurching, staggering gait, leaving a smeared trail of red on the flagstones. But in his left hand, held with terrifying steadiness, was a scalpel, its blade pressed against the throat of a terrified young nurse in scrubs. His pale eyes, feverish and wild with pain and a last, desperate insanity, scanned the courtyard and landed on them.

The police guard aimed his weapon. “Release her! Drop the weapon!”

Kaine ignored him. His gaze was fixed on Anton. A bloody, broken smile stretched his lips. “No… quiet end… in a cell,” he rasped, each word a struggle. “You… you don’t get… to win. The story… ends with me.”

He was going to kill the nurse. Then he was going to come for Anton, or die trying. He had nothing left but the desire to corrupt the ending one final time.

The guard was hesitating, the hostage in the line of fire.

Sabatine’s mind, slowed by drugs and injury, snapped into a hyper-clarity he’d thought was burned out forever. He saw the angles. The distance. The shaking hand of the guard. The lethal certainty in Kaine’s eyes. Anton, sitting exposed on the bench.

He was in a wheelchair. He had no weapon. His own body was a collection of screaming wounds.

But he had one shot. The one he’d taken from the dead guard in the bank, tucked into the waistband of his hospital pants, concealed under the blanket on his lap. A final, foolish precaution Jessica had smuggled in.

He moved.

With a grunt of agony, he shoved himself up and out of the wheelchair, his wounded leg buckling. He caught himself on the armrest, his right hand diving under the blanket. His fingers closed around the familiar, cold polymer of the pistol grip.

Kaine’s eyes flicked to him, a flicker of surprise, then contempt. He shifted the scalpel, the blade biting into the nurse’s skin. A trickle of blood ran down her neck.

“Worldbreaker…” Kaine sneered, the word a wet, bloody sigh. “Finish… your masterpiece.”

Sabatine didn’t hesitate. He didn’t aim for an arm, a leg. He didn’t try to negotiate. He saw the future in Kaine’s eyes—the nurse dead, Anton at risk, the never-ending chase. He saw the cabin by the lake dissolving into mist.

He raised the pistol, his left arm screaming in protest, his vision swimming. He had one bullet. He had one chance.

He fired.

The shot was a single, sharp crack in the quiet garden.

The bullet took Elias Kaine in the center of his forehead. A small, neat hole. The back of his skull exploded in a puff of red mist against the grey stone wall behind him.

The contempt, the madness, the sheer calculating intelligence—it all vanished from his pale eyes, replaced by an empty, final surprise. He stood for a second, a macabre statue, then his knees buckled. He collapsed, the scalpel falling from his lifeless fingers, clattering on the stone. The nurse stumbled away, screaming, clutching her bleeding neck.

Silence, absolute and profound, descended for one heartbeat. Then chaos erupted—shouts, running feet, the nurse sobbing.

Sabatine’s leg gave way completely. He dropped to his knees on the cold flagstones, the spent pistol falling from his numb fingers. He was aware of Anton rushing to him, of hands grabbing him, of voices yelling. But all he could see was Kaine’s body, sprawled and finally, irrevocably still.

The consortium’s European commander was dead. Not vanished, not captured. Dead. By his hand.

The final shot had been fired. Not in a dramatic standoff on a rooftop, but in a sterile hospital garden, to protect a hostage, to protect Anton, to protect their fragile, hard-won future.

As darkness edged into his vision, the last thing he felt was Anton’s arms around him, holding him up, holding him together, and Anton’s voice, fierce and loving in his ear. “It’s done, Sabe. It’s over. I’ve got you.”

And for the first time since a silver envelope had arrived in Zurich, Sabatine believed it.

—