Chapter 121: The Calculated Risk

The new discipline was a brittle shell. Anton and Sabatine moved through the penthouse like meticulously calibrated instruments, their interactions reduced to crisp, operational necessities. The shared glances now cut away quickly. The casual proximity was gone. They were a CEO and his security director, nothing more. The visible current was forced into hiding, but its absence was its own kind of tell—a coldness where there had been heat, a formality where there had been unspoken understanding.

It was this very chill that Jessica Chen finally confronted.

She cornered Anton in his study after Sabatine had left for a covert meeting with one of Leon’s contacts—a risk, but a necessary one to chase the Thorne money trail. Anton was staring at a live feed of the Stuttgart stock exchange, his face a mask of concentration that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“We need to talk about him,” Jessica said, closing the door softly behind her. No preamble. They were long past that.

Anton didn’t turn from the screen. “Who?”

“Don’t,” she sighed, leaning against the door. “Anton, look at me.”

He swivelled his chair slowly. His expression was calm, expectant. The perfect CEO. “What about Mr. Stalker?”

“He’s not ‘Mr. Stalker’ to you,” Jessica stated, her dark eyes missing nothing. “He’s Sabatine. And you are putting him in more danger every day he stays here, at your side, looking at you the way he does.”

“The way he looks at me is professional,” Anton replied, the lie smooth as glass.

“It stopped being professional the moment he pushed you away from a sniper’s bullet in Geneva,” Jessica shot back, her voice low and urgent. “And it became something else entirely in the weeks after. I’ve seen it. Everyone has. The tension in that boardroom wasn’t just about Thorne. It was about the two of you trying not to combust in front of the old guard.” She took a step forward. “You’re making him a beacon, Anton. Silas and Thorne… they don’t just want your company. They want to break you. And you are handing them the perfect lever. A man you clearly love, who is visibly, obviously, your greatest vulnerability. You’re keeping him in the crosshairs.”

Anton’s mask didn’t slip. He regarded her with an unnerving stillness. “Your concern is noted, Jessica. And your assessment of the tactical situation is, as always, accurate.”

“Then send him away!” she pleaded, a rare crack in her own professional facade. “For his sake. Let him do his work from a safe house, through cut-outs. Don’t make him sleep down the hall from you. Don’t make him the first thing you look for in a room.”

Finally, Anton moved. He stood up, walking to the window, his back to her. The sky was a flat, iron grey. “Where would he go?” he asked, his voice quiet now, all pretence gone. “What ‘safe house’ exists that Silas and his old knight couldn’t find if they truly wanted to? He’s a ghost, Jessica. And they found him. They called him on a line only ghosts use. They threatened him specifically, by name, to get to me.”

He turned then, and the look in his eyes stole her breath. It wasn’t defiance, or anger. It was a profound, weary acceptance. “He’s already in danger. The moment he took my case, the moment he stood between me and my brother’s greed, he stepped into the crosshairs. Keeping him close isn’t what put him there. I did.”

The raw guilt in his admission was staggering. Jessica had seen Anton carry the weight of empires, of his father’s legacy, of a thousand high-stakes decisions. She had never seen him bear the weight of endangering someone he loved.

“So your solution is to keep him closer?” she asked, her voice softening with dawning horror. “To make the target bigger?”

“My solution,” Anton said, walking back to his desk, his gaze intense, “is to be the fortress. If he is in danger because of me, then the only way to mitigate that danger is to make the place where he stands the most heavily defended ground on earth. To know every threat, to anticipate every move, to control the battlefield so completely that any shot aimed at him has to go through me first.” He leaned forward, his hands flat on the polished wood. “Sending him away doesn’t protect him. It just means I can’t see the bullet coming. It means I’m relying on his skill alone, in an unknown environment, against an enemy with limitless resources. Here, with me, he has my resources. He has my intelligence. He has me.”

Jessica listened, her mind reeling. It wasn’t sentimentality. It wasn’t reckless passion. It was a cold, brutal, strategic calculation. Anton was treating Sabatine’s safety as the central objective of the entire war. Not the company, not his legacy, not even his own survival. Sabatine’s safety. Everything else—Stuttgart, the board, Silas, Thorne—was a variable in that equation.

“You’re gambling everything on your ability to protect him,” she whispered.

“I’m not gambling,” Anton corrected, his voice absolute. “I am allocating all available assets to a non-negotiable priority. The company can be rebuilt. Fortunes can be remade. He…” Anton’s voice finally cracked, just a hair. “He cannot be replaced.”

The truth was there, in his eyes, laid bare. Jessica saw it finally, not as a worrisome vulnerability, but as the core strategic driver of every move Anton had made since Geneva. The purges, the traps, the relentless focus—it wasn’t just about winning. It was about creating a perimeter around Sabatine Stalker.

She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature. She had thought Anton was being led by his heart into a tactical blunder. She now saw he was following his heart with the precision of a master tactician, and that was infinitely more dangerous. For the enemy, and for Anton himself.

“And if you fail?” she asked, the question hanging in the air like a blade.

Anton didn’t look away. “Then I will have failed in the only thing that ever truly mattered. And the rest of it—the company, the legacy—will be ashes anyway. So there is no scenario where I send him away. He stays. With me. We win together, or we burn together. There is no other play on the board.”

Jessica stood in silence, absorbing the absolute finality of his words. The worried chief of staff wanted to argue, to list the risks, the exposures. The woman who had seen Anton through eight years of triumph and tragedy understood that this was beyond persuasion. This was bedrock.

She nodded slowly, accepting the new, terrifying reality. “Then we make this ground impenetrable,” she said, her own voice shifting into the cool, efficient tone of a senior officer accepting a mission. “I’ll re-route all non-essential communications. I’ll personally vet any staff who come within two levels of this penthouse. The Stuttgart bid will be flawless. We will give Thorne and Silas no openings, no distractions from their primary objective.”

A ghost of a smile, the first real one she’d seen in days, touched Anton’s lips. “Thank you, Jessica.”

“Don’t thank me,” she said, turning to leave. “Just win. For both your sakes.”

She left him standing in the study, the master of a universe he had just re-ordered around a single, silent, dangerous star. Jessica walked back to her own office, her mind already racing with new protocols, new layers of security. The worry was still there, a knot in her stomach. But it was now fused with a grim respect. Anton Rogers wasn’t losing himself in a love affair. He was waging one. And Jessica Chen, loyal to the last, would now wage it with him. The calculated risk was the only play. And they would see it through, to victory, or to ashes.

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