Chapter 145: What Do You Really Want?
For a nerd to get into a relationship, it really was absurdly difficult.
Dinner. Wine. Even clearing the apartment of roommates for two entire nights.
And the result?
One disagreement, instant breakup.
It was brutal.
Ethan had originally been a little worried about Leonard.
After all, the whole Penny situation had barely passed, and then came Leslie immediately afterward. Two consecutive failures like that should've hit pretty hard.
At the very least, he should've been depressed.
But when Ethan returned to the apartment and saw Leonard sitting on the couch, things didn't seem nearly as catastrophic as expected.
Sure, Leonard looked disappointed.
But nowhere near devastated.
At least—not remotely as miserable as after the failed date with Penny.
Ethan had just been about to offer a few comforting words when Sheldon beat him to it.
"Leonard."
His tone was perfectly calm.
"I have good news. You are about to feel much happier."
Leonard frowned. "What good news?"
Sheldon answered seriously:
"There are only nine months left until the next Comic-Con."
The room went silent for a second.
Then Leonard actually grinned.
"Oh. Right."
He nodded, visibly brightening.
"That is good news."
Ethan: "…?"
That was it?
That fixed him?
A convention nine months away had enough power to instantly heal heartbreak?
At that moment, Ethan silently made a promise to himself—
No matter what, he was going to Comic-Con with these people someday.
He needed to personally witness this "ultimate faith" sustaining the souls of engineering nerds.
A new week began, and John returned to the clinic.
He informed Ethan that Santino's remaining men had all been dealt with.
Ethan looked surprised.
"That fast?"
It honestly seemed unbelievable.
If someone was truly determined to disappear—change identities, move cities, cut ties—it really shouldn't have been that hard.
The world was huge.
Actually…
No.
The world was huge enough that hiding should've been easy.
Ethan kept pressing John for details until he finally understood the logic behind it.
The method was actually very simple.
Raise the bounty.
If one hundred thousand dollars wasn't enough, make it two hundred thousand.
If two hundred thousand still wasn't enough, raise it to five hundred thousand.
Once the bounty became large enough for the entire underground world to become "interested," things tended to resolve themselves quickly.
The underworld had its own rhythm and ecosystem.
Some people saw a walking half-million dollars and immediately dragged the target away.
Others preferred staking out the target quietly, waiting for the next bounty increase before acting—
Though that came with the risk of someone else claiming the kill first.
And then there were the "smart" ones.
They captured targets alive, imprisoned them, and waited for the price to rise further.
Of course, that approach carried greater risk.
If the target escaped, all you lost was time.
But if another hunter discovered the hiding place…
Both the target and the captor would be eliminated without anyone batting an eye.
After all, everyone was there for money.
And employers often preferred efficient results.
So once those previously insignificant Santino associates suddenly had five-hundred-thousand-dollar price tags attached to them…
…the game ended very quickly.
John only stayed in New York for a few days before leaving again.
Apparently, this time he was heading to the Czech Republic to "handle something."
Watching him leave, Ethan found himself wondering—
Did this assassin still technically count as retired anymore?
Because from the outside, it looked like the man was constantly at war.
Today was Eleanor Harrington's follow-up appointment.
Strictly speaking, there was no medical reason for it to happen this soon.
Her illness wasn't immediately life-threatening, and according to Ethan's original expectations, the normal treatment schedule should've involved waiting two to three weeks after the first session.
That time was meant to allow the healing effects to fully fade before beginning the next round.
But the first treatment had exceeded Eleanor's expectations by an enormous margin.
The recovery had been too fast.
The results too obvious.
She had practically insisted on receiving the next treatment as soon as possible.
Of course, she had also made it clear that if Ethan considered the frequency excessive, she would accept being refused.
In the end, Ethan scheduled the follow-up exactly one week later.
Today, she arrived even earlier than before.
Twenty minutes early.
Outside the clinic, the same four bodyguards stood silently in place, positioned almost identically to last time.
The examination went quickly.
The results were even better than before.
Pulmonary arterial pressure continued to decline steadily, while the strain on her right ventricle showed no signs of rebounding.
"You're recovering extremely well," Ethan said while reviewing the data.
"Honestly, your body is still in the recovery phase. The effects of the previous treatment are still actively working."
"Theoretically, we could delay this session further."
Eleanor looked at him without immediately nodding.
"But from my perspective…"
she said slowly,
"…I don't want to waste a single window where progress is possible."
"I understand." Ethan nodded.
"As a patient, once you finally see genuine hope for recovery, wanting to resolve everything as quickly as possible is perfectly normal."
He paused, then added:
"But the treatment schedule still follows medical advice."
Eleanor nodded.
"Understood, Doctor."
"I promise from now on, we do things your way."
The treatment began quickly and ended just as quickly.
Ethan cleaned the table and shut off the equipment.
After resting for a short while, Eleanor's condition stabilized again.
She looked at him expectantly, clearly waiting for the next instruction.
Ethan sat back down.
"Come back again in one week," he said.
"By next week, at this same time, you should be fully cured."
"So…" Eleanor confirmed carefully, "one more session next week, and I'll be completely healthy? No more follow-ups?"
"Yes," Ethan answered.
"Assuming nothing unexpected happens."
She frowned slightly, as if suddenly remembering something.
"Then why does Mr. Whitmore still need regular follow-up visits?"
Ethan explained the unique nature of Alzheimer's disease and the limits of what he could currently provide.
After this period of adjustment and experimentation, old James Whitmore had finally reached a stable condition—
One visit every four weeks was now enough to slow his neuronal degeneration to a rate even lower than normal aging.
A large part of that improvement came from the growth of Ethan's Holy Light abilities.
Eleanor listened quietly.
Then, after a pause, she suddenly asked:
"Then why don't you make me come back regularly too?"
"…What?"
Ethan genuinely didn't understand at first.
"What I mean is…"
Eleanor met his gaze directly.
"If you intentionally controlled the treatment pace so that I needed to return periodically…"
"…then from a business perspective, wouldn't that benefit you more?"
"And besides you, nobody would ever know."
Ethan frowned slightly.
"If I can cure something completely," he asked in return, "why would I deliberately drag it out?"
Eleanor studied his expression carefully, as if confirming a judgment she'd been testing internally.
A few moments later, she nodded.
"Perhaps my thinking was too immature."
Her voice softened.
"After all… nobody can guarantee they'll never get sick again in the future."
"Under normal circumstances," Ethan replied, "at least for the foreseeable future, you probably won't."
"That's something I've observed recently."
"After treatment, the body remains in an excellent state for quite a long time."
"Of course, assuming you maintain a healthy schedule and diet."
Eleanor didn't respond.
She simply looked at him quietly, lost in thought.
After finishing his notes, Ethan signaled that the session was over.
But Eleanor didn't leave.
"May I sit in the waiting area for a while?"
She asked it naturally.
"I'd like to make sure there aren't any delayed side effects."
"Of course," Ethan nodded.
Eleanor walked out and sat beside the window in the waiting area.
Her coat rested neatly over the back of her chair, while the sleeves of her white shirt were rolled up to her elbows, exposing the clean lines of her wrists.
She neither checked her phone nor reviewed documents.
She simply sat there quietly, observing the clinic.
Very quickly, she realized something.
This place was nothing like the "birthplace of miracles" she had imagined.
There was no chaos.
No emergency-room urgency.
No bargaining.
No negotiation.
Patients entered carrying anxiety, then left wearing exhausted relief.
An elderly man repeatedly asked the doctor to confirm that his pain was really gone.
A child who had been cured got lifted into the air by delighted parents.
None of them seemed to understand just how much they had truly been healed.
None of them realized that many of the things happening here should have been medically impossible.
Inside the examination room, Ethan looked like nothing more than an ordinary doctor.
Yet in the entire clinic, only she and Helen truly understood—
He was mass-producing miracles in the most ordinary way imaginable.
And in that moment, Eleanor realized something unsettling.
She couldn't understand what this doctor actually wanted.
Then she left.
Ethan barely even noticed when she left.
Helen, meanwhile, had been quietly watching the waiting room the entire time.
When Ethan finally stepped out of the treatment room, she casually mentioned:
"She stayed there for two hours before leaving."
Ethan simply nodded.
Then Helen brought up something else.
"Donnie Caan missed his follow-up appointment."
Donnie Caan was one of Bobby Axelrod's employees.
A pancreatic cancer patient who had already visited the clinic twice.
His recovery wasn't particularly fast, but it had remained consistently stable.
Theoretically, one or two more sessions would have restored him completely.
At first, neither Ethan nor Helen thought much of the missed appointment.
People got delayed.
Traffic happened.
This was New York.
But morning passed into noon.
Then afternoon.
And he never arrived.
Helen called his phone.
It was powered off.
She then contacted Wendy Rhoades.
Wendy herself seemed confused.
"I can't reach him either. Sorry, the company is currently… handling some urgent internal matters."
The call ended quickly.
It wasn't until the following morning that the truth finally arrived.
Donnie Caan had died in a car accident the previous morning while driving to the clinic.
The hospital had only notified his emergency contact—his same-sex partner.
The company didn't learn about it until later that evening, and Helen received confirmation the next morning.
After hearing the news, Ethan said nothing at first.
He stood beside the clinic window, watching traffic pass outside in silence for a very long time.
"You never know when an accident is coming," he finally said quietly.
For once, Helen didn't try to comfort him.
A long while later, she simply murmured:
"…Yeah."
"An accident."
But before news of Donnie Caan's death ever reached the clinic…
Axe Capital had already descended into genuine chaos.
The first sign was the withdrawal of capital.
A week earlier, the risk management department had sent what initially looked like an utterly routine internal email:
[Certain long-term institutional clients, due to adjustments in overall portfolio allocation, have reduced the proportion of funds allocated to Axe Capital.]
Bobby Axelrod had barely glanced at it.
He received emails like that almost every week.
But only minutes later, a second one arrived.
Then a third.
A fourth.
The wording varied. The reasons all sounded reasonable.
But every message pointed toward the same conclusion—
Money was leaving Axe Capital.
There was no panic.
No one questioned performance.
No investors issued complaints or demands.
The institutions were simply withdrawing their capital in an extraordinarily quiet, polite, almost gentle manner.
By this morning, the numbers had become impossible to ignore.
Compared to the previous week, Axe Capital's assets under management had shrunk by more than one-third.
Bobby made several calls.
Each person offered explanations.
But every explanation ultimately explained nothing at all.
Because the withdrawal itself was the explanation.
By now, Bobby had already started realizing that this likely had something to do with those "requests" Hall had relayed earlier—
Requests Bobby had chosen not to comply with.
And things didn't stop there.
Alongside the capital outflow, another problem began quietly spreading.
A research report appeared in the "recommended reading" sections of several major financial publications.
The author came from an Ivy League-affiliated think tank.
The tone was neutral.
The structure meticulous.
Even the title sounded academic:
[Market Reaction Mechanisms and Moral Hazard During Catastrophic Events]
The article never directly mentioned Bobby Axelrod even once.
But one entire chapter carefully analyzed—
How a certain "genius trader" had positioned himself through derivatives immediately after 9/11, earning enormous profits during a period of extreme public panic.
The scale of those profits was described as:
"Tens of billions of dollars."
And the implication was unmistakable—
Those gains became the foundational capital that later built Axe Capital.
One line from the article was quoted repeatedly:
[Market behavior may be legal, but it is not always innocent.]
After reading the chapter, Bobby simply closed the page.
There had been nothing illegal in what he'd done.
But someone clearly wanted to remind the world—
That legality and morality were not the same thing.
Soon afterward, more media outlets began discussing "disaster profiteering."
Columnists referred vaguely to "symbolic figures of that era."
Even politicians began making carefully indirect comments during interviews:
[We need to think carefully about what kind of people represent our financial system.]
Nobody said Bobby's name.
But everybody knew exactly who they meant.
He had become…
Unpresentable.
Just when Bobby thought things had probably reached their limit, the notices from the banks arrived.
Leverage limits: reduced.
Reason:
[Prudent reassessment of overall exposure risk.]
Margin requirements: increased.
Explanation:
[Updated guidance from the compliance department.]
Even the market makers had quietly changed their attitudes.
Responses became slower.
Quotes became tighter.
Things that once took a single phone call now required multiple approvals and layers of confirmation.
Every reason sounded perfectly legitimate.
Every explanation was impossible to argue against.
Then came the news of Donnie Caan's car accident.
And strangely enough, Bobby's first reaction wasn't shock.
It was confirmation.
A cold, quiet certainty settling into place.
He finally understood something—
The people targeting him had no bottom line.
They would use anything.
So when Hall eventually sent over an agreement…
Bobby read it carefully.
The document listed several "cooperative recommendations."
One clause even proposed bringing in a "consultant" to participate in certain decisions.
Bobby stared at the papers for a very long time.
And in the end—
He signed.