Chapter 170. The Night of Confession

The return to the world above was a sensory assault. The bunker’s sterile, controlled hum was replaced by the wet growl of London traffic, the smear of neon against low, bruised clouds, the press of damp, sooty air. They didn’t go to the corporate tower, nor to the violated estate. Anton directed the convoy to a place Sabatine didn’t know existed: a small, unlisted penthouse perched atop a converted Victorian warehouse in Shoreditch. It wasn’t a fortress; it was a hideaway. The walls were exposed brick, the windows vast and untreated, looking out over the city’s chaotic, twinkling sprawl. It felt like a treehouse in the canopy of a mechanical forest.

Leon secured the perimeter with a silent efficiency that spoke of pre-arrangement. Jessica departed with a weary nod, her work shifting from crisis management to the long, grinding process of legal reconstruction. For the first time in what felt like years, they were alone. Not in a safe-house, not in a command centre, but in a space that held no purpose other than shelter.

The penthouse was sparsely furnished, almost unlived-in. There was a deep sofa facing the windows, a kitchenette of concrete and stainless steel, a door leading presumably to a bedroom. A single abstract painting, a swirl of dark blues and charcoal, hung on one brick wall. It felt like Anton—stark, modern, with a hidden, turbulent depth.

Sabatine stood at the window, watching the pinpricks of light in the distance, the endless movement that now seemed both alien and mundane. The adrenaline that had sustained him was gone, leaving a hollowed-out fatigue so profound it felt like his bones were made of lead. But beneath the fatigue, a quieter, more persistent ache throbbed: the aftermath of the lie. The brilliant, necessary deception of ‘Chimera’ had worked, but it had left a film on his soul. He had manipulated the truth itself. Where did that leave a man who had built his shattered identity on uncovering it?

He heard Anton move behind him, the soft click of a glass being set on the concrete sill. Anton stood beside him, close but not touching, holding a tumbler of amber whisky. He offered it. Sabatine took it, their fingers brushing. The contact was a spark in the quiet.

“To survive,” Anton murmured, clinking his own glass lightly against Sabatine’s.

They drank. The whisky was peat-smoke and honey, burning a path of warmth through the cold numbness inside Sabatine. They stood in silence, looking at their city, the empire Anton had just saved, the battlefield they had just left.

“It doesn’t feel like winning,” Sabatine said finally, his voice rough.

“No,” Anton agreed. “It feels like surviving a plane crash. You’re grateful to be alive, but everything hurts, and the landscape is forever changed.”

Sabatine took another swallow, letting the heat spread. “I keep thinking about the lie. How perfect it was. How easily we built it together.” He turned his head to look at Anton. “Does that scare you?”

Anton met his gaze, his eyes reflecting the city’s glow. “What scares me is that there was ever a time I thought I could live without you.” He said it plainly, without artifice. He set his glass down and turned fully towards Sabatine. “The lie was a tool. A weapon we forged together. It doesn’t define us. This defines us.”

He took Sabatine’s glass from his limp fingers and set it aside. Then he took Sabatine’s face in his hands. His touch was not desperate, not possessive, but reverent. He looked at him as if studying a masterpiece in a ruined gallery, seeing the cracks and the glory with equal clarity.

“In the bunker, before we sprung the trap, I told you I loved you,” Anton said, his voice low, each word measured and heavy with intent. “I said it because I was afraid it might be our last chance. But I need you to hear it again. Now. When there are no drones, no ticking clocks, no one listening. When it’s just a man in a quiet room, stripped of every title, every defence, every strategy.”

His thumbs stroked Sabatine’s cheekbones, a slow, grounding rhythm. “I love you, Sabatine. Not as a CEO loves a valuable asset. Not as a strategist loves a brilliant tool. Not even as a man in a crisis loves his anchor.” His voice broke, just a fraction, raw with a vulnerability that was more terrifying than any boardroom confrontation. “I love you as a man who has seen the blueprint of his own soul and found it empty without you in it.”

Sabatine’s breath hitched. He tried to look away, but Anton’s gaze held him, unwavering.

“I love the guilt you carry because it made you the most fiercely principled man I’ve ever known. I love the shadows in your eyes because they make the light in them so much brighter when it comes. I love your mind—your relentless, brilliant, terrifying mind—that can build a lie to save a truth. I love the feel of your hand in mine. I love the sound of your voice when you’re tired. I love you.”

He leaned forward, resting his forehead against Sabatine’s. “I am telling you this not as a shield against the world, not as the next move in a game. I am telling you this because it is the truest thing I have ever known. More true than any stock price, any contract, any legacy. You are my truth. And I am done pretending otherwise.”

The confession was an avalanche, but a silent one, burying Sabatine not in debris, but in a profound, warming clarity. It wasn’t a declaration of passion; it was an offering of a naked soul. Anton Rogers, the billionaire, the titan, the fortress, was gone. In his place was just Anton—terrified, brave, hopelessly in love, and offering everything he had left.

Sabatine felt the last of his own defences, the walls he’d built around the damaged, unworthy core of himself, crumble to dust. They hadn’t been torn down by force, but dissolved by the sheer, overwhelming sincerity of this love.

Tears, hot and sudden, spilled from his eyes, tracing paths through Anton’s fingers on his cheeks. He wasn’t crying from sadness, or from relief. He was crying from the sheer, staggering weight of being seen, and loved, so completely.

He brought his own hands up, covering Anton’s, holding them to his face. He couldn’t speak. The words were a tangled knot in his throat. So he showed him.

He turned his head and pressed a kiss to Anton’s palm, a soft, lingering press of lips against the life line. Then another to the inside of his wrist, where his pulse beat a frantic, living rhythm. He poured every ounce of his own tangled, fearful, glorious feeling into those silent kisses—his awe, his gratitude, his own burgeoning, terrifying love.

He finally found his voice, a shattered whisper against Anton’s skin. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be… loved. Not like this.”

Anton’s breath was a warm caress against his temple. “You don’t have to know how. You just have to be. And let me love you. That’s all I’ll ever ask.”

Sabatine looked up then, their faces inches apart. In the dim light from the city, he saw his own tears reflected in Anton’s eyes. He saw hope, fear, and absolute certainty. This was it. The final surrender. Not to an enemy, but to a future.

“I love you too,” he whispered. The words were new, clumsy on his tongue, but they rang with a truth that shook him to his core. “It terrifies me. But it’s the only thing that doesn’t feel like a lie.”

A sob, or maybe a laugh of pure joy, escaped Anton. He pulled Sabatine into a crushing embrace, his face buried in the crook of Sabatine’s neck. Sabatine held him just as tightly, his own tears soaking into Anton’s shirt. They stood there, wrapped around each other in the middle of the quiet room, two shipwrecked survivors who had finally, miraculously, found the same shore.

The night of confession deepened around them, the city’s endless noise a distant symphony. There were no more strategies to plot, no enemies to outmaneuver. There was only this: the solid, breathing reality of each other, the whispered words hanging in the air between them, and the vast, unknown future stretching out before them—a future they would now face not as billionaire and bodyguard, not as partners in crime, but simply, irrevocably, as Anton and Sabatine. Two men, stripped bare of everything but the truth of their love, finally home.

—--