Chapter 38 Eleanor's POV
My hands won’t stop shaking as I try to open the first-aid kit. The plastic clip is stubborn, slippery. It’s not fear making them tremble. It’s adrenaline, my mind reeling from what I know. Alec was here and alive. this couldn't be real.
He sits on the edge of the bed, a dark shape framed by the open blue shutters. Smaller, maybe, but not less. The Alexander Sterling I knew was sharp angles and tailored suits. This man is battered, his hair wild and sticking up, dark stubble rough on his jaw. One arm rests protectively over his ribs.
But his eyes—oh, his eyes. The same pale blue, piercing, alive.
“It’s not nothing,” I say again, louder than I mean to, in the quiet room. Finally, the kit opens.
Antiseptic, gauze, tape. Simple. Ollie’s voice echoes in my head: “Clean wounds stay alive wounds.”
“Ellie.” His voice is a low rasp. It sends a shiver down my spine—memory colliding with impossible reality.
“Don’t,” I say, cutting him off.
I can’t handle words yet. Words belong to stories, and the story is that he was zipped into a body bag on a Swiss mountainside. Words are lies. This—the blood soaking through his shirt—is real. “Take off the jacket and the shirt.”
He hesitates, then obeys, wincing as he pulls the layers away. My breath catches.
A six-inch gash runs along his lower ribs. Stitched with crude black thread, like it came from a sewing kit. The skin around it is red, hot to the touch even from a distance.
Infection is already setting in.
“Who did this?” I ask, pouring antiseptic onto a gauze pad. The sharp, clean smell cuts through the haze.
“An old man who gardens,” he says, as if that explains everything. He doesn’t flinch as I clean the wound, but I see the tension in his jaw.
“He pulled me out. Saved my life. Gave me a new one.”
I worked in silence for a full minute. Dabbing, cleaning, checking. The stitching is sloppy but holding.
The tissue beneath? A mess. “You need antibiotics. Real medical care.”
“Later. Ollie. Where—”
His focus never wavers. The world could end, and he’d still prioritize the mission. I’m an asset again. It stings, but it’s true. We all are.
“Menton,” I say, pressing a fresh pad to the wound. His skin is warm, solid under my fingers. Alive. “A flat above a closed bakery. He’s watching the fallout.” I don’t look up.
“The leaks are everywhere. Fleming’s been questioned. The Senator’s polling collapsed. Protests. It’s a wildfire.”
“Good.” One word, grim and satisfied.
“And they’re hunting you. The photo. The men on the train.”
“You know about the train?” I finish the bandage and sit back on my heels, meeting his gaze.
“I know Ollie left a message in our dead drop. ‘The hedge needs trimming.’ I figured the rest.” His eyes scan my face—my exhaustion, my tension.
“You did what you had to do.”
“Ollie took care of them. In the luggage car.” The memory floods back—the café car, the ticking clock, fourteen minutes of thinking he was dead.
He reaches out, calloused fingers brushing my cheek. So gentle it nearly breaks me. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice thick.
“For making you believe it. It was the only way.”
A hot tear slips down my face, tracing a path through the grime on his thumb. “It hurt,” I whisper. “It felt like dying.”
He pulls me close, careful of his side. I rest my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat—steady, strong. We stay like that, holding on to the simple, staggering fact that we’re both still here.
Then he shifts, cupping my shoulder to look at me. The tenderness fades, replaced by the commander’s gaze. “We can’t stay.
This room was a signal. If I found it, they will too.”
“Ollie said the same. He wanted to sweep it first. I had to come alone.”
“You shouldn’t have.” He wasn't blaming me . Just speaking the truth.
“We leave. Now. To Ollie. Can you reach him safely?”
I nod, pulling the burner phone from my bag. A coded sequence of missed calls: all clear, but exfil required.
I send it.
While we wait for a reply, the questions I’ve buried rise up. “The explosion. How?”
“Shaped charge on the mountainside. They weren’t burying us.
They were erasing us. Killian—Vain’s man—shoved me into a maintenance shaft seconds before the main building blew. He didn’t make it.” Alec’s voice is flat, steady. “They used his body. My ring.”
“So the world thinks Alexander Sterling is…”
“A closed file.
A tragedy. Collateral damage in a reclusive billionaire’s house fire.” A feral smile touches his lips. “It’s an advantage. They’re not looking for a dead man.”
The phone vibrates. A map coordinate. A time. Ninety minutes from now.
A fishing cove east of Menton.
“Ollie,” I say, showing him the screen.
He reads it, memorizes it in a heartbeat. “We split up. You go first. I’ll take a different route, watch your six.
If it’s clean, I meet you there.”
The old fear surges—the one that’s lived in my bones since childhood. “No. Not again. We just found each other.”
His expression softens. “This is how we stay alive, Ellie.
This is the work. I’ll be the shadow at your back. Nothing more. But if they’re waiting, you’re the bait—and I’m the surprise.” His fingers trace my cheek again, brief but sure. “It’s the only way.”
He’s right.
I know he is. Ollie taught me: Never travel together when you’re prey. But the thought of separating now—after finding him—feels like tearing open a wound that just started to heal.
“Okay,” I say, my voice rough with resolve.
I gather my things.
He pulls the ruined shirt and jacket back on, hiding the wound, hiding the ghost once more. At the door, I pause.
“Alec”
He turns.
“Don’t be gone for long.”
This time, the smile reaches his eyes—a spark in the blue. “I’m just getting started,” he says.
I step out into the lamplit street, toward the harbor. The night is warm, scented with salt and blooming jasmine. I feel his absence like a chill—but beneath the fear, something else rises. A fierce, burning joy.
He’s alive.
The game isn’t over.
It’s just changed.
For the first time since I saw that black body bag on the screen, my heart was settled.
It anticipated the beginning ahead.