Chapter 60. The Way You Hold a Memory

The door to the suite exploded inward.

Not with a slow, deliberate turn of the knob, but with a splintering crash that sent shards of dark wood skittering across the polished floor. Anton stood framed in the wreckage, his chest heaving, his face a mask of ashen fury. In his arms, half-dragged, half-supported, was Sabatine. A vivid crimson bloom stained the shoulder of Sabe’s dark jacket, and a trail of blood, stark against the pale hall carpet, marked their frantic path from the elevator.

“What the hell happened?” Anton’s voice was a low, shaking whip-crack. He kicked the shattered door shut behind them with a force that rattled the frame, then lowered Sabe onto the plush sofa, his movements a violent kind of gentleness.

Sabe winced as he hit the cushions, his right arm hanging useless. “Sniper. In the Paquis. Rico’s dead.”

“Rico’s—?” Anton cut himself off, the fury in his eyes momentarily eclipsed by a horrified understanding. He was already moving, yanking open a concealed panel in the suite’s wet bar to reveal a sophisticated medical kit. “They were aiming for you.”

It wasn’t a question.

“They were,” Sabe confirmed, his voice tight with pain. He watched as Anton tore open a packet of hemostatic gauze with his teeth, his hands, usually so steady in a boardroom, now trembling with a terrifying, focused energy.

“Take the jacket off,” Anton commanded, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Sabe tried to shrug it off with his good arm, but the movement pulled at the wound, and a hiss escaped his clenched teeth. Anton was there in an instant, his hands surprisingly deft as he helped ease the blood-soaked fabric away from the injury. The bullet had torn a furrow across the top of his shoulder—a deep, ugly graze that wept blood steadily. It was a whisper from a killing shot. A few inches to the left, and the round would have severed his subclavian artery. He would have bled out on that grimy café floor.

Anton’s breath hitched as he saw the raw wound. The fury returned, hotter and brighter. He pressed the gauze firmly against the bleeding flesh, his other hand gripping Sabe’s bare, uninjured shoulder, holding him still.

“You walked into a trap,” Anton accused, his voice raw. “You knew it was a possibility, and you went alone. You do this… this maddening, infuriating thing where you treat me like I’m made of glass. You shield me, you hide the worst of it, you lock me in gilded rooms while you walk into sniper’s alleys.” His fingers dug into Sabe’s skin, not to hurt, but to anchor himself. “You protect me like I’m fragile.”

The words hung in the air, charged with all the pain of the aborted kiss, the lonely hotel room, the terrifying chasm of the ‘almost’. It was the core of their conflict, laid bare amidst the scent of blood and antiseptic.

Sabe looked up at him. The professional mask, the operative’s cool detachment, was gone. In its place was a weariness so profound it seemed to reach into his bones. The pain from the wound was nothing compared to the ache that cracked open in his chest.

His reply, when it came, was so quiet it was almost lost in the hum of the city beyond the window. It was not a defense. It was a confession.

“No, Anton.”

He reached up with his good hand, covering Anton’s where it gripped his shoulder. His touch was cold, his fingers smeared with his own blood.

“I don’t protect you like you’re fragile.”

He met Anton’s blazing gaze, his own eyes, dark pools of remembered horror and a love that terrified him more than any sniper.

“I protect you,” he whispered, the words aching and true, “like I’ve already lost you once.”

The fight went out of Anton all at once. The fury, the fear, the frustration—it drained away, leaving him hollow, suspended by the raw vulnerability in Sabe’s voice. He could only stare, the gauze forgotten in his hand.

“What?” The word was a breath.

Sabe’s gaze was distant, turned inward. “In that hangar. In Aosta. After the storm.” He swallowed hard. “When I walked away from you. When I said ‘not now’. I walked to the other side of that plane, and I… I let myself imagine it. For one second. I let myself picture a world where I had lost you. Where Evelyn had won, or Marcus, or just… fate. Where I had to stand over a grave instead of standing across from you, wanting you so much it felt like dying.”

He looked down at their joined hands, his thumb stroking a faint, clean patch on Anton’s knuckles. “And it was… catastrophic. It wasn’t a professional failure. It wasn’t guilt. It had an ending. The end of every good and possible thing left in my life. It was a silence I knew I would never survive.”

He looked up, and the full, unshielded force of his fear was finally, fully visible. “So, no. I don’t think you’re fragile. I think you are the strongest, most resilient man I have ever known. But I have felt what it is to imagine a world without you in it. And that… that memory is a ghost that sits on my shoulder every second of every day. It’s why I walk into the alley first. It’s why I check for snipers. It’s why the thought of you in danger makes me so desperate I can’t think straight.”

He took a shaky breath. “I protect you like a man who has already been to your funeral, Anton. And I will burn the whole world down before I have to go back.”

The silence that followed was absolute. The only sound was the faint, wet drip of blood onto the sofa’s expensive fabric.

Anton looked at the man before him—not the bodyguard, not the operative, but the man. He saw the wound, the exhaustion, the blood on his hands. But more than that, he saw the terrifying, absolute truth of his confession. It wasn’t about duty. It wasn’t about penance. It was about a love so profound that its hypothetical loss had already carved a canyon of grief inside him.

He had been so wrong. So arrogantly, completely wrong.

He wasn’t a liability. He was a universe Sabe was terrified of losing.

Slowly, gently, Anton resumed his work, cleaning the wound with a tenderness that belied the violence of their entrance. He applied a fresh bandage, his touch firm yet reverent. When he was done, he didn’t move away. He stayed crouched before Sabe, his hands resting on his knees.

“You haven’t lost me,” Anton said, his voice low and steady, a vow spoken into the space between them. “And you’re not going to.”

He reached out, his fingers gently tracing the line of Sabe’s jaw, wiping away a smudge of blood and city grime. It was the touch Sabe had aborted in the hangar, finally completed.

“But you don’t get to carry this alone anymore. Your ghosts are my ghosts now. Your battles are my battles. If someone is trying to kill you, they are trying to kill a part of me. Do you understand that?”

Sabe leaned into the touch, his eyes closing for a brief moment. The fortress walls, built from guilt and a lifetime of loss, did not just crumble; they dissolved into dust. There was no ‘almost’ left. There was only this.

“I understand,” he whispered.

“Good.” Anton’s thumb stroked his cheekbone. “Now, we have a name. A third player. An assassin. And a villa to break into.” A grim, determined light ignited in his grey eyes. “But we do it together. No more locked doors. No more walking into alleys alone.”

Sabe opened his eyes and nodded. The fear was still there, the ghost of loss would always be there. But it was no longer a tyrant ruling his every move. It was a shared burden.

“Together,” he agreed.

And in the wreckage of the door, surrounded by the evidence of violence and the scent of blood, they finally found their unshakeable ground. Not in a kiss, but in a vow forged in the memory of a loss that never was, and a future they would now defend as one.

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