Chapter 173. Jessica the Mediator

The tentative peace was held for a day. They moved through the penthouse like careful tenants in a museum, learning the new geography of ‘together.’ Anton worked from a sleek laptop at the dining table, fielding a relentless stream of calls about the corporate recovery. Sabatine reviewed security protocols with Leon via secure chat, his focus a welcome anchor. They shared meals in near-silence, the clink of cutlery loud in the space between words that hadn’t yet been found.

The hush was progressing, but it was fragile. Sabatine could feel the old, familiar walls trying to reassemble themselves, brick by anxious brick. He watched Anton on a video call, his CEO mask flawlessly in place—confident, sharp, in control. It was a version of Anton he knew, but one that now felt like a performance happening behind glass. The man who had wept in his arms, who had whispered truths in the dark, seemed miles away.

On the second morning, Jessica arrived. She brought no briefcases, no tablets bristling with crises. She brought a paper bag from a patisserie, the smell of butter and almonds cutting through the penthouse’s sterile air.

“A ceasefire breakfast,” she announced, her tone deliberately light. She set out pastries and poured coffee for three. Anton watched her with wary gratitude. Sabatine simply nodded, taking the seat she indicated.

They ate for a few minutes, the only sound the rustle of paper and the distant whine of a city street cleaner. Jessica, ever the strategist, waited for the caffeine to work before she began.

“The board is pacified, for now,” she said, wiping powdered sugar from her fingers. “The narrative is firmly ‘rogue actors foiled by resilient leadership.’ Your joint press conference, when you’re ready, will cement it.” She looked between them, her sharp eyes missing nothing. “But before we manage the world’s perception, we need to manage our own. This…” she gestured with a croissant vaguely at the space between them, “…tension isn’t a sustainable corporate asset.”

Anton’s jaw tightened. “We’re fine, Jessica.”

“You’re not,” she said bluntly, but not unkindly. She turned her gaze to Sabatine. “You’re thinking in circles. The fear, the unworthiness, the ‘plan’ that didn’t account for this. You’re auditing your own emotions like a hostile balance sheet.”

Sabatine stiffened. He hated how easily she saw through him. “It’s what I know.”

“I know.” She leaned forward. “So stop looking at the ledger. Look at the asset.” She nodded towards Anton. “Not the CEO. Not the billionaire. The man. When you walked back in here yesterday, after your… constitutional. What did you see in his face? Before he put the mask back on.”

Sabatine didn’t want to answer. He stared at his coffee.

“Tell me,” Jessica pressed, her voice gentle but unyielding. “Not what you think he felt. What you saw.”

The memory was vivid, painful. Anton at the window, the rigid line of his back, the way he’d turned—the carefully controlled face that couldn’t hide the relief in his eyes, so profound it had been almost like pain.

“He was… relieved,” Sabatine said quietly. “That I came back.”

“And?” Jessica prompted.

“And… hurt. That I left.”

“Go deeper. You’re a trained observer. What else?”

Sabatine closed his eyes, calling up the image. The grey light on Anton’s face. The slight tremble in his hand as he’d poured the coffee. The way his eyes had searched Sabatine’s, not with accusation, but with a kind of desperate hope.

“He looked…” The word felt too small, too inadequate. “He looked like I was the only real thing in the room.”

The sentence hung in the air. Anton made a soft, involuntary sound across the table.

Jessica nodded slowly, a satisfied, sad smile touching her lips. “There. That’s the data point you’re ignoring in your audit.” She turned to Anton. “And you. When he says things like that, what happens?”

Anton’s throat worked. He looked at Sabatine, his mask gone, utterly exposed. “The world goes quiet,” he said, his voice raw. “The numbers, the noise, the threats… it all fades. There’s just him. And it’s the only peace I’ve ever known.”

The confession, spoken aloud in the cool morning light, was devastating. Sabatine felt the truth of it like a physical wave. He’d seen that look—in the elevator, on the terrace, in the bunker after the kiss. A look of singular, absolute focus. He’d interpreted it as intensity, as desire, as strategic need. He’d never allowed himself to believe it was what Jessica said: Anton looking at the only real thing in his constructed world.

“Your fear is valid, Sabatine,” Jessica said, pulling his attention back. “Love is a vulnerability. It’s a strategic nightmare. But you’re analysing it like an enemy formation. You’re cataloguing the risks—the potential for betrayal, for loss, for failure. But you’re not weighing the intelligence he’s giving you.” She pointed at Anton. “He is telling you, in every look, every withheld demand, every moment of patience, that you are his ground truth. In a life built on sand, you are the bedrock he’s chosen. That isn’t a liability. That’s the most powerful intelligence you will ever have.”

She sat back, folding her hands. “My job is to mediate between my client and the world. Right now, I’m mediating between the two of you and your own defenses. He,” she nodded at Anton, “is afraid to need you too much, to scare you away. You,” her eyes pinned Sabatine, “are afraid to be needed at all, because to be needed is to be responsible for someone else’s peace. And you don’t trust yourself with that.”

It was a brutal, flawless diagnosis. Sabatine felt flayed open. Anton looked similarly stunned.

“The solution isn’t to stop being afraid,” Jessica continued. “It’s to change the mission parameters. The mission is no longer individual survival. The mission is the preservation of this… this ‘real thing’ you are to each other. You guard it. You defend it. You make tactical decisions for its benefit. Together. That’s a mission your particular skill sets are, ironically, perfectly suited for.”

She finished her coffee and stood, gathering the pastry debris. “You have a security briefing in one hour, Anton. Sabatine, Leon needs you to verify the new biometric protocols for the Zurich office.” She smoothed her jacket. “Do your jobs. But do them with this new intelligence in mind. Look at each other. Really look. See what the other person sees. The rest is just… paperwork.”

She let herself out, leaving a silence that was profoundly different from the one she’d entered.

Sabatine slowly raised his eyes to meet Anton’s. He tried to see what Jessica had described. He looked past the handsome face, the tired eyes, the mantle of power. He looked for the man in the reflection. And he saw it—the slight, unconscious leaning forward, the openness in his gaze that was reserved for no one else, the way the very air around Anton seemed to still when their eyes met. It was the look of a man who had found his north star after a lifetime in the dark.

“Is it true?” Sabatine whispered. “Am I… that? The real thing?”

Anton stood, rounding the table. He didn’t touch him. He just stood close, letting Sabatine look his fill. “You are the only thing that has ever felt completely, unquestionably real to me,” he said, each word a vow. “Everything else is negotiable. You are not.”

The fear in Sabatine didn’t vanish. But it shifted. It was no longer a fear of the feeling itself, but a fierce, protective fear for this truth. Jessica was right. This was a thing to be guarded. A mission.

He reached out, his hand hesitating for a second before he cupped Anton’s jaw. The skin was warm, the stubble rough under his palm. Anton’s eyes fluttered closed at the touch, a sigh escaping him. It was the sound of a man coming home.

“Okay,” Sabatine said, the word a promise, an acceptance of the new mission parameters. “Then we protect it.”

He wasn’t sure how. He didn’t have the manuals for guarding a heart, especially his own. But he had the intelligence now. He knew what he was protecting. And for a man like Sabatine Stalker, a clear objective was everything.

The mediator had left. But she’d given them the only map they needed: each other’s eyes. And for now, in the quiet after the pastries were gone, that was enough to begin.

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