Chapter 11: Traces of a Ghost

The lull inside Anton's London penthouse was tangible, thick and dense as wet concrete. Outside, beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city was an eternally expanding galaxy of light, but inside, the only light was the blue cool radiance of Sabatine's laptop and the single, muted spotlight shining above the kitchen island where Anton toiled, grinding coffee beans in deliberate, metronomic clicks. The snapping of the beans was a tick-tock marking the seconds of their standoff.

For three days, they'd danced around each other in this cage of glass and steel. Professional, clinical, and beautifully distant. The accusation that hung between them was a ghost that neither would discuss outright. I think you're the leak. The words of Anton had carved out an abyss, and Sabatine had moved to the far side of its depths, his face a mask of carefully neutral indifference, his words limited to brusque, factual assertions.

Anton topped the Chemex with hot water, the rich, perfumy bloom of the coffee hardly breaking the silence. He watched Sabatine, slumped over his machine, fingers flying across the keyboard. The same black henley and jeans he'd worn for two days, his hair a dirty bird's nest he kept running his hands through. He was a lesson in concentrating to the point of being in a trance, a surreal counterpoint to Anton's own insincere, fashion-perfect tidiness in a three-piece suit. The suit was his armor; the chaos was Sabatine's.

"Progress?" Anton said, his voice forced into loudness in the silence. He set down two mugs of black coffee, placing one on the side of the laptop.

Sabatine did not look up. "The cryptography on the CFO's ghost server is military strength. Stronger than military strength. It's. elegant." A hint of professional admiration seasoned his words. "But everyone gets lax. They borrow a module, a line of code, a. signature.".

He reclined at last, his eyes bloodshot from constant gazing, rubbing them. "And I discovered it. A proxy login, six layers hidden beneath the obfuscation. The thief was smart, but they made a mistake once. They accessed the schematics using a remote terminal and didn't even purge the access log entirely. They just tried to cover it up."

Anton's heart pounded in his chest. This was the first real break, the first string to pull on. "Where? Who?"

Sabatine took a sip of the coffee, and for an instant, his lids fluttered closed. It was the first unguarded smile Anton had ever witnessed on him in days, one moment of relaxation into ordinary joy. The glimpse sent an unwelcome, protective twinge through Anton's chest.

"Geneva," Sabatine repeated, eyes once again on the screen, all business. "The access point was routed through a private, secure line that was registered in a shell corporation." It had taken him most of the night to penetrate the corporate shield. He indicated a line of code and its corresponding registry document on his screen. "The shell is held by a holding company called 'Aethelred Holdings.'"

The last name caught him hard. Anton's hold on his mug went white-knuckled, fine porcelain like it would break in his hands. The air was expelled from his chest with a soft, tense hiss.

Sabatine watched the reaction. His own body braced, his analyst's mind instinctively registering the micro-expressions of shock and increasing horror on Anton's face. "You know it," he said, his toneless voice.

"My father. He used it for family trusts. For. for him," Anton gasped. The words were glass in his throat. "Aethelred, that was my mother's maiden name,"

He didn't need to say the name. Sabatine's fingers were already dancing on the keyboard, accessing personnel records, cross-referencing the facts. The response flashed on the screen an instant later, a stark, irrefutable fact in black and white.

Primary Beneficiary and Director: Marcus Vale.

A photograph dominated the screen. A younger man, Anton's same sharply defined bone structure and dark hair, but while Anton's eyes had been like flint work to a high sheen, Marcus's shone with a feral, almost vicious allure. The estranged half-brother. The excluded one, publicly disowned and banished from the Rogers kingdom following a series of disastrous, on-the-border-of-fraudulent investments.

"Marcus," Anton whispered, the name an oath.

The earth had shifted on its axis. The boardroom, Evelyn Voss's accusatory stares, the menacing letters in the mail—all receded, replaced by the far more profound, far more intimate poison of family betrayal. This was no corporate espionage; it was a blood feud.

"He's in Geneva," Sabatine stated, his tone low and insistent. He browsed flight itineraries, charge card receipts—a computer ghost momentarily brought to life and bled. "He charged a suite at the Hôtel d'Angleterre two days ago on an Aethelred corporate card. He's there now."

Anton moved away from the screen, stiffly to the window. He stood and looked at the London lights, but he wasn't seeing them. He was seeing a memory: himself at fifteen, Marcus at thirteen, riding their bikes along the lake shore at the family place in Geneva. Marcus, grinning, always behind, always pushing too hard to catch up. The venom that followed had been a creeping poison.

"He was always saying he'd get his comeuppance," Anton said, his voice uninflected. "He told me that my dad loved the company more than he loved either of us, but that I was the only one dumb enough to notice it. I figured he was just. bitter."

“He’s not just bitter, Anton. He’s dangerous,” Sabatine said, rising from his chair. The movement was fluid, predatory. The PI was gone, replaced by the intelligence operative. “He didn’t just steal a prototype. He orchestrated this entire thing to frame you, or to break you. The leak to the press, the evidence planted in my files… It was him. Or someone working for him.”

He moved over to position himself next to Anton, not so close as to be intrusive but a firm, unmoving figure in the background. "We must go. Now. Before he relocates the prototype or escapes again."

Anton finally turned to confront him. The impassive mask of the billionaire was gone. Replaced by raw unvarnished pain. The betrayal was a personal evisceration, leaving him disturbingly vulnerable. "Why?" The question was bare of ornament, a child's plea for sense in an unreasonable world. "The money… he has trust funds. He's not poor. Why would he try to ruin everything?"

Sabatine watched him. For the first time since the accusation, they did not have a wall separating them, only mutual, bitter reality of the moment. "There are some people, Anton. They do not want money. They want to watch things burn. Particularly things built by the people who have hurt them."

The logic was cold, ruthless, and rang perfectly true. Anton nodded once, firm, the CEO reasserting himself atop the wounded brother. "Alright. We leave." He produced his phone. "I'll have the plane prepared. We'll depart in two hours."

While Anton gave commands in low, commanding voices to his pilot, Sabatine drifted back to his computer. His mind was already racing at high speed, plotting courses, assessing danger. But half of him still stood by the window, watching the crack lines spread across Anton Rogers's well-crafted tranquility. He had been hired to find a thief, but he had uncovered a ghost from Anton's past, an open wound never healed.

And as he watched Anton, shoulders squared with a new, fierce determination, Sabatine felt the sharp points of his own responsibility soften. This was not just work anymore. Protecting Anton was not just a job anymore. The necessity of keeping this man safe from the snake in his own bed was suddenly, terribly, personal.

An hour on, they were crouched in the back of a tinted-windowed Range Rover, slicing through early morning darkness towards a private airport. The city gave way to industrial estates and then to undulating countryside. Inside the vehicle, the silence had changed. It was no longer confrontational, but charged, an unspoken agreement hammered out in the heat of discovery about one another.

Anton snapped it, his own voice little more than a whisper. "I blamed you." He did not look at Sabatine, but rather kept his gaze ahead down the black road. "I was. the proof."

"It was supposed to make you doubt me," Sabatine finished, his tone absent of accusation. "It was a good strategy. Create doubt, isolate you. Make you question the one person who could actually find out the truth.".

"It worked," Anton admitted, the words clearly hurting him. He finally rolled his head, and in the dim light of the dashboard, his eyes were dark, sincere pools. "I am… sorry, Sabatine."

The use of his full name, the raw apology—it was better than Sabatine had dared to hope. The rest of his own combat-haunted fury dissolved. "Call me Sabe," he whispered. "My friends do."

A flash of profound gratitude spread over Anton's face, so fleeting Sabe could have imagined it. But he hadn't.

"Sabe," Anton repeated, practicing the words. He nodded, ever so slightly. "When we land in Geneva, what do we do? Do we bring in the locals?"

No, Sabe answered immediately, his head going into operational mode. "Marcus will have witnesses. Police, corporate security—everyone's penetrable. This is just between us. We follow his schedule, we plant the prototype at the location, and we take him out. It's the only way to get the truth before he disappears."

"Take him out," Anton whispered, the idea appalling and inevitable. He leaned back in the seat. "He won't go quietly.".

"See," Sabe answered. His hand resting on his knee tightened into a loose fist. "That's why you've got me."

The unsaid message hung there. For protection. For the things you can't, or won't, do yourself.

They arrived at the airfield, where the Rogers Industries Gulfstream stood beneath the lights of the hangars, sleek birds of prey ready to take to the skies. Anton paused on the stairs, looking back over his shoulder at Sabe following some little ways behind, one duffel bag draped across his shoulder.

"He's my brother, Sabe," Anton said, his voice barely audible over the whine of the auxiliary power unit. "Whatever may or may not be… I have to be the one to speak to him first."

Sabe met his gaze and did not flinch. He knew the conflict there—the CEO's ferocity pitted against the brother's residual honor. He knew duty and family, even a damaged one, better than most. His own was a ghost that pursued him wherever he went.

"Your time will come," Sabe promised, his voice low and steady. "But the moment I believe you're in danger, that's it. The discussion is finished. First on my mind is your safety. Not the prototype, not the company. You."

The promise was absolute. It wasn't the words of an employee. It was the promise of a protector.

Anton ruffled his face with a lingering moment, and then once nodded brusquely before turning and disappearing inside the cabin.

Sabe took a deep breath of the cold, gas-scented air before he followed. As he sat back in the plush leather chair across from Anton, the engines of the jet revving to life, he knew the game had irretrievably changed. The specter in the machine had a name and a face. The thief was no longer a faceless man in his inner circle; he was the golden cage brother, reaching out of the past to topple it all.

And Sabe, the remorseful loner who'd taken on this mission for redemption, had his assignment irretrievably altered now. He was no longer pursuing a traitor. He was guarding a heart he'd promised not to touch, stepping firmly into a blaze that had smouldered for a decade. As the jet thundered down the runway and shot into the scarred, predawn sky, he swore to himself in silence.

He would get his truth for Anton. And shield him.

Even if it meant crossing the last of his own, precious rules.

----