Chapter 274. The Final Cleanup

The news didn't break with a bang, but with a series of quiet, bureaucratic clicks. It arrived not on the front pages, but in secure, encrypted briefings and tersely worded press releases from three separate European agencies. It was the sound of a door, long left ajar on a room full of ghosts, being finally, firmly shut.

Anton read the Interpol synopsis first, forwarded by a discreet contact in Brussels. Simultaneous, coordinated raids in Rotterdam, Minsk, and a nondescript industrial estate outside Naples. Arrests of seventeen individuals with ties to shell companies linked to Evelyn Voss and Marcus Vale’s wider network. The seizure of servers, encrypted ledgers, and a significant cache of zero-day exploits—digital weapons that had never been used, now neutralized.

It was the Rotterdam address that made Sabatine, reading over his shoulder, let out a soft, humourless puff of air. “The strip-mall office,” she murmured. “The one that launched the blitz. I gave them the coordinates.”

Leon’s follow-up report, dense with technical jargon and palpable satisfaction, confirmed it. The forensic trail from Sabatine’s counter-assault had been a gift-wrapped roadmap. The National Crime Agency, working with Europol, had followed the digital breadcrumbs straight to the physical doors. The splinter group, embittered and incompetent, had been so focused on their failed attack they’d left their own backdoors wide open.

“They were kids, mostly,” Leon said over a secure video call later that day, his face filling the screen in Anton’s study. “Genius-level coders with the emotional intelligence of a potato. Hired guns who’d done piecework for Evelyn’s procurement team. When the money dried up and the big players went to ground, they tried to go into business for themselves with the tools they’d skimmed.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Didn’t even know how to properly anonymize their coffee orders, let alone a DDoS attack. Amateurs.”

Sabatine, leaning against Anton’s desk, crossed her arms. “The tools they had were still dangerous.”

“And now they’re in an evidence locker in The Hague,”Leon said, a grim smile touching his lips. “Along with their anime figurine collections and a truly shocking amount of energy drink cans. It’s over, boss. The last loose thread. Snapped.”

The word hung in the air. Over.

There were no dramatic standoffs, no final confrontations in Geneva villas. This was the unglamorous, essential work of justice: warrants, dawn raids, the clatter of handcuffs, the methodical tagging of evidence. It was the pulling of weeds, root and stem, from a garden they had nearly lost.

Anton felt the truth of it settle into his bones, a weight lifting he had grown so accustomed to carrying he’d forgotten its presence. The constant, low-grade hum of vigilance that had been the soundtrack to his life since his father’s betrayal—the suspicion of partners, the parsing of every deal for hidden knives—simply… stopped. The silence it left behind was not empty, but full. It was the space where peace could finally grow.

In the days that followed, a new quiet descended upon Rogers Industries. It wasn’t the tense quiet of secrets, but the productive quiet of an engine running smoothly, without grit in the gears. The new board, a coalition of integrity that had seemed like a risky experiment, now felt like the only natural order. The Stalker-Wing hummed with proactive projects, not defensive scrambles.

At the townhouse, the change was subtler but more profound. Sabatine stopped doing perimeter checks before bed. She left her secure tablet in her study overnight. The sharp, assessing glance she’d sometimes give a crowded street or a new face softened into simple observation.

One evening, a week after the raids, they were in the garden. The Moroccan lanterns were lit again, but this time there was no heater, just the soft warmth of a lingering summer night. They sat on the bench, her feet in his lap, a shared bottle of wine between them.

“It feels strange,” Sabatine said, gazing up at the first stars. “Not waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Is it strange?”he asked, kneading the arch of her foot with his thumb.

She considered.“It’s like… after a long war, when the ceasefire holds. You wake up and for a second, you can’t remember why you’re not afraid. Then you do remember, and the remembering itself is a kind of joy.” She looked at him. “It’s peace, Anton. Actual peace. I’m not sure I’ve ever had it before.”

He understood. His own peace had always been conditional, predicated on control, on walls. This was different. This was peace born not from the absence of threat, but from the proven strength to meet it, together, and from the systemic dismantling of the very machines that created threats.

The final cleanup was more than just arrests. It was a cleansing. The last remnants of the organization that had stolen from him, betrayed him, and tried to destroy what he loved were now in cages or scattered to the winds, their tools broken. The conspiracy that had begun with a stolen prototype in a London high-rise had ended in a Dutch strip-mall, not with a noble sacrifice, but with a pathetic whimper.

It was a fitting end, Anton thought. Not epic, but definitive. The way true evil often dies—not in a blaze of glory, but in the humiliating glare of fluorescent lights, outmatched and outclassed by ordinary, persistent good.

He poured them both the last of the wine. “To the quiet,” he said, raising his glass.

She clinked hers against it,a soft, sweet sound in the night. “To the quiet,” she agreed. “And to the people who fought for it.”

They drank. The wine was rich and deep. The garden was still. The city beyond their walls was just a distant, friendly murmur. The war was over. The work remained—the joyful work of building their foundation, planning their wedding, living their lives. But the shadow that had dogged their every step, the spectre of the past, was gone.

As they sat in the lantern light, Sabatine’s ring glinting softly, Anton knew this was the final, blessed stage of their journey. They had survived the fire. They had healed the scars. And now, they had swept away the last of the ashes. What remained was clean, open ground. And they would build something magnificent upon it, in the profound, beautiful, and finally permanent peace.

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