Chapter 19: Evelyn's Visit

The cell was a poured-concrete cube in a form, with nothing but a cold, bolted-hard bunk against the wall and a stainless-steel commode. There was no air, and what there was was cold and stagnant, and it carried the slight, institutional odor of bleach and hopelessness. Sabe sat on the bunk's edge, back to the wall, cuffed hands in his lap. He had been in holding for eight hours. The initial, freezing shock had worn off, leaving a brittle, grinding lucidity.

They'd built the perfect cage. Fingerprints, emails, money. It was intended to convince a judge, a jury, and the world. It was intended to annihilate him, to make him question his own sanity. But clinging to the one, unbreakable boulder of Anton's belief—I believe you—had kept him from being swept under by the floodwaters of forged evidence.

The steel door grated and clanged with a sound of raw, absolute power as the lock yielded. The door swung open, but it wasn't a guard rolling in a tray of food or Inspector Deschamps for further interrogation.

It was Evelyn Voss.

She stood in the doorway, immaculately dressed in charcoal sheath business attire, one pearl strand about her neck. She had emerged from a boardroom, not a police holding cell. Her expression was a courteous, nearly maternal look of concern, a facade so perfectly built it was more intimidating than any growl.

"Sabatine," she answered, a smooth, educated alto. "May I come in?"

He did not speak, just looked at her, all his senses screaming on high alert. This was the puppet master, the man who had orchestrated his downfall, venturing into the lion's den to rubberneck, not boast, but negotiate. It was an act of egregious hubris.

She stepped in, and the guard closed the door behind her, leaving them isolated in the small room. The room felt to close in, the air thick with her designer cologne, a floral poison that dominated the smell of bleach.

"This is a pretty uncomfortable spot they've put you in," she began, sweeping the cell with a faint distaste. "So brutally. unnecessary."

Sabe remained silent, his eyes on her. He would not give her the pleasure of a response.

She sighed, a soft weary sound. "I'll be brief, Sabatine. This doesn't have to be your fate. Concrete and steel. A trial that will drag your name, and the name of your poor family, through the mud for decades. A conviction that will see you die in a place like this."

She took a fragile step forward. "It can all vanish."

His first urge was to attack, to loop his cuff's chain around that pearl-encircled throat and shut out the breath until the momentary fear in her eyes turned into real terror. He stood locked.

"The evidence is convincing, I'll admit it," she continued, a sly, conspiratorial grin playing on her lips. "But instances like this… they're tricky. Witnesses forget. Evidence is… rethought. A fiscal audit can reveal hidden accounts, track the actual flow of money. All you have to do is apply the correct squeeze to the correct quarters. Your indictment could be gone by morning."

She was offering him the impossible. A get-out-of-jail-free card from the female who'd placed him there. The audacity was stunning.

"And the price?" Sabe's voice was a dry whisper, the first sound he'd made since she'd come in.

Her smile increased, pleased he was getting with the program. "Simplicity itself. You disappear. You signed an advance-formatted confession of irresponsible conduct, a gruesome mistake which was the product of the trauma of your service in the military.". You resign as head of Rogers Industries. Tonight, you leave Geneva on a private plane to wherever you desire, with a. Let's call it a severance package. A generous one. Enough to live well, in quiet, away from all of this." She swept her hand loosely across the cell, the case, Anton. "You leave this room a free man, and this entire sordid affair is over. Neatly."

It was corporate art. They had their fall guy. A confession that explained the fire without the conspiracy. Anton would be left with a ruined company and the bitter knowledge that the man he trusted had betrayed him after all. And Sabe would have the public ignominy for eternity, but in luxury, bought-off exile.

He nearly admired the finesse of it.

"And Anton?" Sabe asked, his gaze unwavering.

A flicker of impatience for an instant passed over Evelyn's face, immediately suppressed. "Anton is a survivor. He will rebuild. He will move on. That is what he does. Your continued existence as a… cause célèbre… only prolongs his suffering and the company's instability. Your disappearance is the kindest thing you can do for him now."

The kindest thing. The bald-faced fabrication, so condescending, finally shattered the icy hold of his dominance.

A humorless, low guff was emitted from him. It wasn't laughter. It was the slamming of a door.

"You think I'm on the market," he told her, talking slowly and steadily now, all hoarseness gone. "You always have. You look at every individual and you see a price. You purchased Marcus's bitterness. You tried to buy my silence. You think Anton buys loyalty." He braced his elbows on his knees, chains on his cuffs clinking softly. "But you don't get it. You can't get it."

Evelyn's gracious dignity did not shatter, but it narrowed, as if a porcelain mask had been drawn in. "This has nothing to do with understanding, Sabatine. This is pragmatism. This is your only way of escape."

"No," he replied, the adjective flat and affirmative. "It's not.".

He glared her in the face, and for the first time, he let her see the unmoving core of him, the piece that had survived the desert, the shame, the guilt. The piece that Anton had seen.

"I am not going," he said to her. "You can keep your money and your private aircraft. You can shove your confession up your tailpipe. I am not your henchman."

He knew the calculation, the rapid reassessment. She had expected desperation, greed, or at least rational self-preservation. She had not expected this. this unbending principle.

She smiled, slowly, coldly curving her lips. This was nothing at all like the previous expressions. This was her face, the predator emerging from the corporate mask. It was a smile of true, almost grateful expectation.

"I assumed you would say that," she said, her voice a soft, venomous purr. "Stubbornness. Muddled sense of honour. It was what made you so useful as a tool, and so consistent a hindrance."

She stepped back towards the door, her work done. The offer lay on the floor. The war continued.

"It's a pity," she continued, reaching out with her hand to summon the guard. "It could have been so tidy. But some people simply will not learn the hard way." Her eyes glinted with cold laughter. "You chose to stay with Anton when there was that fire. A very romantic decision, don't you think? Now you'll die with him."

The door burst open behind her.

"He's next, you know," she said to him, lingering in the doorway and delivering her final, farewell blow with icy, surgical accuracy. "With you safely stashed away here, he's all alone. Vulnerable. Marcus is really enjoying it. He has such… imaginative ideas about his big brother."

And then she was gone. The door slammed shut behind her, the lock turning over with a sound of sinister finality.

The silence she had left was deeper than ever before, now tainted with the threat she had uttered. He's next.

Sabe's denial hadn't just sealed his own fate; it had placed a bull's-eye on Anton's back. By staying behind and resisting, he had put them on notice. They would have to act against Anton himself, and they would do it now, while his sole protector languished in jail.

He had thought the cell was his prison. He realized now it was a cage also designed to keep him from the man he had vowed to protect. Evelyn had not been offering him a place; she had been testing the last remaining wall. And he had just promised her that he was immovable.

He had made his choice. And his smile had informed her that she was ready for it.

Sabe bowed his head, the weight of his choice bearing down on him. He was trapped, powerless, and he had just likely just sentenced Anton to death.

But as the scent of her perfume finally faded, overpowered once more by the smell of concrete and desperation, a fresh, bitter resolve descended upon him. He had set his mind. He would not run. He would not confess.

Somewhere, somehow, out of this prison of concrete, he had to succeed. For the first time, his need was not redemption, or accountability, or truth.

It was for Anton.

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