Chapter 115: The Voice in the Static

The newfound intimacy was a sanctuary. In the days that followed the kiss in the glass office, a subtle but profound shift settled over the penthouse. The air felt lighter, the quiet less brittle. They moved around each other with a new, unspoken harmony—a touch on the shoulder as one passed, a shared glance over the morning coffee that wasn’t spiced milk, a silent exchange of strength. The war was still there, the Milan trap being set, but it felt like a shared burden now, not a wall between them.

It made the violation all the more profound.

It happened on a Tuesday afternoon. Anton was in a virtual board meeting, his voice a controlled, persuasive murmur from behind the closed door of the study. Sabatine was in the living area, running diagnostics on a new, ultra-secure communication device Leon had smuggled to him—a “burner” that made other burners look like postcards.

The device, a matte black slab no larger than a credit card, vibrated with an incoming call. No number displayed. Just a string of garbled characters that resolved, for a nanosecond, into a familiar Macau area code before dissolving into static.

Sabatine’s operational instincts screamed. This was a line only Leon and a handful of ghosts from his past should have. He answered, putting it on speaker but holding it close, his body tensing.

At first, there was only the sound of distant, distorted traffic, like hearing a city through water. Then a voice. It was electronically altered, a flat, genderless drone, but the cadence was unnervingly calm, almost conversational.

“Sabatine Stalker. Or do you prefer ‘Sabe’ now? The pet name of a billionaire is such a curious thing.”

Ice water flooded Sabatine’s veins. He said nothing, his mind racing, tracing the signal, hunting for a lock. It was bouncing, a ghost call.

“We’ve been admiring your work,” the voice continued. “The Singapore extraction was elegant. Turning Finch was… predictably sentimental of Rogers. And this new Milan project. A honeypot. We do enjoy a sweet trap.”

They knew. Everything.

“What do you want?” Sabatine’s voice was as flat as the modulated one on the other end.

“A simple choice,” the voice replied. “You are a resourceful man. A survivor. You have survived your own failures, your family’s rejection, the mud and the blood. Anton Rogers is not a survivor. He is a monument. And monuments are made to be toppled.”

The traffic noise in the background shifted, becoming the hollow roar of an underground space. A parking garage? A tunnel.

“Leave him,” the voice said, the command devoid of threat, stating a simple fact. “Walk away tonight. Disappear back into the shadows where you belong. Or…”

A pause, filled with the ghostly roar.

“Or you will share his fate. And his fate, Mr. Stalker, is not a quiet retirement. It is a dismantling. A public un-making. And it will be… messy. For both of you. The ‘Butcher of Belgrade’ chained to the ‘Failing Tycoon’—a poetic finale, don’t you think?”

Fear, cold and slick, coiled in Sabatine’s chest, tightening around his heart. It wasn’t fear for himself. He’d faced death. This was worse. It was the fear of the promised chaos, the targeted, precise destruction of everything Anton was. The fear of being the weapon used to achieve it. Share his fate.

“You think a scare call will work?” Sabatine forced a derisive tone.

“This is not a scary call,” the voice replied, its monotone somehow conveying a smile. “This is a courtesy. A recognition of your professional competence. You have forty-eight hours. Be gone. Or become part of the exhibit.”

The line went dead. Not a click, but a fade into absolute, empty silence.

Sabatine stood frozen, the black slab cold in his hand. The living room, with its curated art and serene lines, felt like a diorama in a museum of a life that was already over. The voice hadn’t just threatened Anton; it had dissected their entire operation, their relationship, Sabatine’s deepest wounds. It was a demonstration of total penetration.

His first, overwhelming instinct was to go to Anton. To burst into the study, cut the board meeting, and tell him everything. To combine their intellects, their resources, to fight this new, intimate threat.

But he stopped himself, his hand on the cool glass of the study door.

Share his fate.

If he told Anton, what would Anton do? The man who had purged an entire building’s security over a perceived violation. The man whose love was a silent, terrifying force. He would escalate. He would launch a full-scale, visible war against a ghost. He would make himself an even bigger target. He would, in his furious need to protect, play directly into Silas’s hands.

The voice hadn’t just threatened Anton; it had expertly isolated Sabatine. It had presented him with a choice that was no choice at all: abandon the man he loved to save him from a worse fate, or stay and become the catalyst for his destruction.

If he left, Anton would be wrecked. The trust they’d built would be shattered, leaving him alone, grieving, and infinitely more vulnerable. The fortress would have a gaping hole where its heart used to be.

If he stayed and told him, Anton would become a lightning rod for a catastrophic attack.

A third, terrible option whispered in the static left in the call’s wake: stay, and don’t tell him. Carry the threat alone. Try to deflect the coming blow without Anton knowing, to maneuver in the shadows while Anton continued to work in the light. To become the silent shield, once more. The ghost in the machine of Anton’s life, fighting a ghost.

It was the operative’s choice. The solitary burden. The very thing he thought he’d left behind in the snow.

He heard Anton’s voice through the door, wrapping up the meeting with confident authority. The sound was a physical ache. That voice, that mind, that heart—they were the target. And he, Sabatine, was both the guardian and the potential trigger.

He slid the black communicator into his pocket, the weight of it like a stone. He walked away from the study door, back to the window. The city sprawled, indifferent. Somewhere in its concrete veins, a voice in the static had just drawn a line in the sand.

He didn’t tell Anton.

The decision settled into him, heavy and sick. He would stay. But he would become the watchman on the darkened tower, seeing the threat approach while the king slept. He would use every dirty, back-alley skill he possessed. He would reach out to Leon, to Rico, to the ghosts of his past. He would trace the call, find the throat that produced that modulated voice, and silence it before its forty-eight hours were up.

And if he failed… if the attack came… he would put his body between Anton and the blow. It was the only calculus that made sense. It was the brutal, loving math of a soldier who had finally found something worth dying for, and was now being asked to prove it by leaving, or by orchestrating a secret, solitary war.

The fear in his chest didn’t uncoil. It crystallized into a cold, diamond-hard resolve. The call had changed everything. The fragile peace of the glass office was over. The war was no longer about companies or prototypes. It was a duel for Anton Rogers’ soul. And Sabatine, the ghost, the anchor, the lover, would fight it in the shadows, where he was born, even if it meant walking those shadows alone.

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