Chapter 23: A Call in the Rain

The globe was now a prison of screens. Red-tinged bleeding stock tickers. Scream news feeds wailing about his company's demise. Legal briefs outlining his fiduciary downfall. Anton sat in the cold Carouge safe house, the ghost CEO uttering any sound above a whisper over the ruins of his empire.

His order to investigate the evidence had been the final straw. The board had insisted on a decision: denounce Sabatine Stalker in public and initiate severance proceedings by tomorrow at 08:00, or they would vote him out. His attorneys had made the same request, their voices fatigued with desperation. The evidence was too strong, the pressure too great. It was professional and fiscal suicide to oppose it.

And yet, the two lists still lingered before his screen. The ugly truths. The brittle trust.

He had pursued every rational avenue. He had double-checked the financial thread, only to have his own forensic auditor confirm its horrific accuracy. He had tried to follow the "known espionage broker," only to find the online presence had vanished as certainly as a breath on a storm. The print was, incontestably, Sabe's.

The perfect case.

Rain began streaming down the window, distorting the picture of the dismal courtyard into a watery impressionist of his own desolation. He was standing on the edge of the cliff. The world awaited him to make the logical, the sane, the necessary choice.

Sanity was a taste of betrayal. Rationality was a taste of deceit.

His own phone, a low-budget, encrypted burner, was placed on the table beside his computer. He still had one last, irrational, possibly catastrophic act. He had purchased the number from an informant so deniable that he was nigh onto mythic. A number whose use, if he went through with it, would irretrievably bind him to a fugitive in the eyes of all European law enforcement.

He took the phone. The plastic was cold and smooth in his hand. His thumb lay on the call button. This was crazy. This was the act of a man who lost not just his company, but his sanity.

He pressed it.

The ringtone was a muffled, unearthly beep in the quiet room. One. Two. He imagined it ringing in some damp underpass, in a man's pocket who was now a ghost. Each ring brought him nearer to voicemail, to emptiness, to nothing.

There was a click. No hello. Only the hard, wary sound of breathing and the distant, empty patter of rain on the opposite side.

Anton's breath held. He was here.

"Me," Anton rasped, his voice rough from a sleeplessness that transcended tiredness.

A silence. Then, a lone, tentative word. "Anton."

The sound of his name, without its usual professional intonation, laced with fatigue and a world of constraint, shocked him. It was the one from the elevator, from the safe house floor. Not the operative, the man.

"They're giving me till morning," Anton blurted, the words tumbling out in a frantic, agonized tumble. "The board. My lawyers. The whole world.". They've got the proof. The emails. The money. The print. It's. It's airtight." He was pleading, though he didn't know for what. "I've got sixty seconds before this call most likely gets me thrown in jail and lose everything I ever built. So for the love of God, Sabatine. Look at me in the eye through the phone and say something. Did you do it?

"

The silence on the other end was complete, broken only by the patter of rain. The silence of a man weighing his last, best move. Anton could feel the edge beneath his feet. This was it. The final confirmation. The last cold shove into nothing.

Then Sabe talked. His voice was slow, deep, and contained a deep, gnawing tiredness. There was no defiance. No anger. Only a simple, crushing certainty.

"You already know it."

They were not words of confession. They were words of absolution. Challenge. Key.

The sixty-second deadline melted away. The hysterical hacking headlines, the panicked board members, the pile of proof—something flashed dimly, far away, as if through a thick fog. In the icy emptiness of his own mind, Anton knew with cold, horror-stricken clarity.

He did know.

He knew it in Sabe's body memory, shielding him from the glass. He knew it in Sabe's naked shudder of admission over his family. He knew it in his unshakable determination when he'd rejected Evelyn's deal. He knew it in the glance Sabe had shared with him just before the kiss that never happened—not with calculation, but with a terrifying, uncertain hope.

The evidence was a lie told by skillful weavers. But the truth was a feeling, a convergence of moments burned into his heart. He had known the truth from the server room fire. He had just been too afraid to say so, too conditioned in a lifetime of exchange allegiances to accept it.

"The evidence is flawless," Anton whispered, not as an accusation, but as a shared horrified realization.

"Only a lie is that perfect," Sabe's voice came back, as soft as the rain. "The truth is always dirty. It's… human."

Humans. The word was a dagger through the heart of Anton's entire life. He had built a universe upon the inhuman—upon unbreakable code, upon unbreakable logic, upon unerring control. And it was this battered, idealistic, maddeningly human man who was showing him what was real.

"They'll kill you, Anton," Sabe continued, his voice taking on a new, desperate edge. "They've already done it. This phone call. You can't be linked to me. Get out. Deny me. Save what you can."

It was the same selflessness that had caused him to reach for the glass. The same one that had caused him to turn down the bargain. He was always trying to take the shock, to serve as the buffer.

“No,” Anton said, the word final and absolute. The decision was made. The cliff edge was no longer a threat; it was a vantage point. “I’m not hanging up. And I’m not denouncing you.”

The rain on Sabe’s end seemed to lessen, or perhaps Anton was just listening harder.

"They're not after the company, Sabe," Anton said, the pieces fitting into a fresh, terrifying pattern. "This is too big. Too neat. Who are they?"

A long, reflective silence. He could sense Sabe weighing the risk of telling him, of drawing him deeper into the mire.

"Rico found me," Sabe said at last, the name of a grenade hurled into the conversation. "In my cell."

Anton's blood ran cold. Rico Nadir. The name in Sabe's file. The partner on the failed mission.

"He said I was being framed. But not by Marcus and Evelyn." Sabe's voice dropped to a whisper. "He said the encrypted emails… They have the signature of our old friends. Section Seven.".

The name was nothing to Anton, and yet everything. It had the tone of nameless, institutional power. The kind that didn't follow corporate codes. The kind that could not be fought with boardroom strategies or attorneys.

"Why?" Anton breathed.

"The prototype. Its applications… They're a ghost's wet dream. They wanted it. They're washing the operation, and I'm the grime." He hesitated. "Anton, listen to me. They're watching you. They'll be on your case the moment you disobey. This call… it's a line."

"Then have them watch," Anton growled, an unholy rage coming over him. This was no longer a case of something stolen. This was a case of a fundamental corruption of justice. This was a case of the man on the receiving end of this phone. "Where are you?"

“London,” Sabe said after a hesitation. “I have a thread. A financial trail Rico gave me. It points to Singapore. An account called ‘Janus Holdings.’ It’s the buyer.”

A thread. A single, fragile strand leading out of the labyrinth.

“I’ll find it,” Anton vowed, the CEO in him seizing on a tangible objective, a problem to be solved. “I’ll tear the financial world apart to find Janus Holdings.”

No, Sabe's voice was acid, immediate. "You can't. They'll be following you. You're Anton Rogers. Everything you do is news. This has to be done in secret. By me."

He was right. Anton's power was also his prison. He was a beacon. Sabe was in the shadows.

"Then what do I do?" Anton asked, the urgency of his predicament weighing down on him once again.

"Survive," Sabe instructed him, his tone soft again. "Play their game. Give the board what they want. Put some distance between yourself and them. Keep yourself safe. Let me walk the thread. Let me be the ghost."

It was the hardest command Anton had ever been given. To do nothing. To step back. To publicly betray the man he now knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be innocent.

"I can't…" Anton started, the protest strangling in his throat.

"You have to," Sabe overruled him, his voice leaving no question. "It's the only way that the two of us survive this. It's the only way I can see what I need to do."

The rain had all but stopped on Anton's side. The storm now howled inside him, a maelstrom mix of fear, anger, and a chilling, thrilling certainty.

"Okay," Anton sighed, the words a concession and a deal.

And another silence came, but it was lighter. The silence of a road already traveled.

"I must go," Sabe said, his voice fading as though he was already vanishing back into the specter that he must become.

"Sabe," Anton said, his voice thick with an emotion he was not ready to name. "Live."

A final, soft sound, a tiny sigh. "You too, Anton."

The line went dead.

Anton walked back and forth in the vacant safe house, the burner phone clutched still in his hand. The evidence was still on his screen. The board was still waiting for him. The world was still begging for his capitulation.

But he was no longer coming. He had chosen. He had chosen the sullied, human reality over the perfect, lovely fiction.

He would play their game. He would publicly condemn Sabatine Stalker. He would don the mask of the betrayed CEO.

And behind the scenes, he would engage in a secret war, waiting for a ghost to call again.

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