Chapter 250: The Ring in His Pocket

The weight was ridiculous.

Objectively, it was a few ounces of platinum and carbon. A gram, perhaps two. But with each passing day, it began to possess a different weight. It began to possess a vibration. It began to exist, in a very real sense, in opposition to Anton's own. Because, of course, with each morning, Anton placed it in the inner breast pocket of his coat, it began to possess a value of a different magnitude. It began to possess a heaviness, a magnitude, of a different order. It was, in short, a burden. It was,

It was purchased in Geneva, the day after Sabatine had gotten clearance from her physicians to travel. While she slept, encased in the penthouse blankets like a soldier reprieved from battle, Anton had slipped out into the night. He had not gone to a celebrated jeweler on the Rue du Rhône. There, his face would be recognizable, his purchase noted. Rather, it was to a private, appointment-only craftsman in the Old Town. Recommended by a Swiss banker who did not ask questions. “Make it beautiful,” was his instruction. Beautiful was his own creation, rendered in haste, in a hotel notepad, during those quiet hours of terror at the villa: two interlocking loops of materials—one brushed platinum, one dark, matte tungsten—that twisted continuously from beginning to end. It was set, not in a diamond, but in a black sapphire—a square-cut stone, opaque, dark, containing light only at its edges. A stone of resilience, of strength that was interlocking, of love that was not found in diamond light, but in depth.

It was, he realized, a piece of armour. And a question.

But in London, in the ring on his finger, a part of him still remembered. The ring warmed against his skin as he sat in the boardroom presenting his vision of a transparent management structure at Rogers & Co. Through difficult legal sessions as they finalized the plea bargain and formally severed all connections. Through the tricky business of incorporating Sabatine as the newly appointed Head of Integrated Security.

The box had to be kept secret. His biggest secret. It was almost apropos that the one he kept best was one of hope.

“You’re doing it again,” the voice of Sabatine interrupted the thrumming noise of the Mayfair townhouse’s study. She stood in the doorway, leaning on the doorframe and dressed in dark jeans and a simple black sweater: finally free of the sling, though a trace of tentative stiffness remained in her movements.

Anton raised his eyes from the glowing reports on his desk. “What am I doing?”

“And that thing where you spaced and your hand automatically goes to your chest.” She pushed away from the doorframe and entered the room, her movement still mindful and efficient. “Like you’re feeling for your phantom wallet. Or your hidden gun.”

A trembling, nervous shiver went through him. It had always been a scalpel with which she approached him. “Just the lingering paranoia of a man who recently found that his entire inner circle had been for sale. Old habits,” he made himself smile.

She walked around the desk to stand beside his chair. She reached out to place a firm hand on his shoulder. “The security audit of the new R&D building has finished. It’s a fortress. Your paranoia has been meticulously institutionalized.”

His hand covered hers, and he turned his head to plant a kiss on her knuckles. “Our paranoia.”

“Our paranoia,” she allowed, a glimmer of softness in her eyes that still left him winded. “Still. You should rest. The board will survive without you for one night. Even I’ve punched out.”

He should. But the box weighed more in her presence, the thrum of his own intent. Now, he wondered. Here, in his own study, surrounded by the lingering presences of his father’s stern face and his own driven past?

No. It was all wrong. This room was a monument to the man he used to be. The proposal, the question he longed to ask, was a part of the man he was becoming, with her.

“You’re right,” he said, standing up. He shifted his jacket to settle the box inside. “I have been distracted. Forgive me.”

She studied him, her eyes focusing on his face. “It’s not just the company, Anton. There’s. something bothering you. The message in the package? My people are analyzing it even now. It’s a phantom, a lot of proxies in between. That takes some time.”

The package. The next shadow. Nothing in it but a lone line of code:

    //Axiom_Test_2.1: Integrity check failed.

    A reference to the name of the development project for the stolen prototype. A taunt. A message that someone out there knew too much. That someone had taken it as a challenge. Anton saw only a threat to the future he had carved out in his heart.

“It’s not the package,” he said, and this was mostly true. He pulled her into a hug, trying not to hurt her shoulder, and held her there, taking deep breaths of her shampoo—something clean and green-smelling in a roomful of leather and old paper. “It’s just. gratitude. Overwhelming gratitude. A desperate need to hit the next part right.”

She relaxed into him, her head resting effortlessly under his chin. "There isn’t any instruction manual for this stuff. We’re making the play as we learn," he said.

"I know." He kissed her hair. "That's what terrifies and exhilarates me."

Later, as they shared a meal in the modern kitchen of the townhouse, a world away from the suffocating formalness of the previous meals, Anton found himself observing her. He observed how she passionately discussed the efficacy of encryption protocols with the same fire she had displayed during their spaghetti dinner debate about how to properly twirl the noodle. He observed how a thin, concerned crease appeared between her eyebrows whenever she thought he wasn’t noticing, a reminder of the scars from her past that hadn’t yet been entirely erased.

Every instant felt like ‘the right moment.’ Yet, each also seemed unfinished. A proposal over pasta? Too earthy for the disaster they’d just escaped. In a sleek and minimal living room environment? Too cold, too clinical.

A moment of theirs and theirs alone. Not Anton Rogers, billionaire, or Sabatine Stalker, ex-operative. But of Anton and Sabe. The man and the woman who found each other amidst the rubble.

The opportunity came, unexpectedly, three days later. Sabatine was starting to get restless and irritable enough to complain of missing the river when Anton cancelled his afternoon appointment and commandeered his rarely-used motor yacht: a slick sixty-foot vessel of teak and white steel from its berth in Chelsea, and told her to pack a coat. They drifted through the water slowly, the purr of the engines a muffled soundtrack for the view of the cityscape that was revealed before them in the soft, pearl-like light of the London afternoon. “It’s private down there,” Wolfe said.

    

     “It’s neutral ground,” Ecklund said.

    

     “It’s us,” Wolfe said.

    

   As they went underneath the famous Tower Bridge, the iconic shape a testimony to the passing ages, the hand plucked at the pocket on Anton's jacket. It was warm with the touch of his own flesh. His heart pounded wildly against the cage of his ribs. Sabatine was at the bow, the wind playing on the edges of her dark hair, pulled back into a neat, functional knot. Her eyes were on the Shard, its spire of glass cutting through the low clouds, a monument to the new London, where his past lay. Her profile was thoughtful, beautiful in its simplicity. “Now,” said the voice. 

“Here. With the city that tried to break you both, both of you, as my witness.” He took a step forward, the box hot against his palm inside his pocket. His mouth was open. Her phone buzzed loudly in the otherwise calm surroundings of the deck. Sabatine flinched, and the instant broke apart. She took the device from her pocket, and her face smoothed into intense focus as she read the screen. “It’s my deputy,” she said tightly. 

“They’ve tracked one of the proxies on the encrypted package. It's a server cluster registered to a shell company. connected to a former business associate of your father's in Dubai. One we thought was neutralized.” 

The romantic moment disappeared in the chill of threat that they had known all along. The shadow of the conspiracy stretched out to reach for them even in this place, on the water. Anton’s hand came out of his pocket as if of its own accord, the unasked question dissolving into ash on his tongue. 

The ‘right moment’ was not this. Not while the ghosts were still clanking their chains. He saw the struggle on her face, the temptation by the secret, the obligation to protect, struggling with what he wanted: to preserve this fleeting, peaceful moment. “We should head back,” she said, a tinge of regret in her voice. 

“This could be something.” He nodded, his mask of billionaire slipping effortlessly back into place, shielding himself against the overwhelming despair. “Of course. Duty calls.” However, just as he turned to tell the captain, a hand grasped his wrist. The grip was powerful. Sabatine looked first at the telephone in her other hand and then at his face. In her eyes, a certain knowledge shone. She noted the aborted gesture, the momentary hope that had been reflected on his face a split second earlier. She stepped into him, her phone momentarily forgotten. 

She kissed him, firmly and briefly, a warding off of the gathering shadows. “This isn’t over,” she whispered against his lips, a promise of more than the case. “This is just the intermission.” He believed her. He had to. That night, when eventually I found myself back in the townhouse, Anton was standing in front of his bedroom safe. He held the blue box in his hand for a very long time, gazing at it fixedly. 

The ring in it was not a representation of a victory achieved but of the war that they had decided to fight side by side indefinitely. The “right time” was not that of calmness and the absence of danger but of them in the midst of the tempest, making their choice again and again. In this spirit of new-found resolve, the box was placed not back into the pocket of the jacket for the next day but into the safe instead. He will wait—not for the darkness to fade away because that might never happen. He will wait for the moment when the decision, the question, will no longer feel like the light that escapes the darkness but the light that shines inside the darkness. 

He pushed the door closed on the safe, the lock clicking softly shut. This ring, packaged away in its box, had not been a forgotten promise, but an awaiting one. And it was within the awaiting that Anton began to discover a strength—that strength to live a life that merited the question, until the time finally came to ask it.

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