Chapter 27: Anton's Confession

The Rogers Industries building in Geneva was a mausoleum wrapped in steel and glass. Anton walked its hushed corridors, a ghost in his own house. The very atmosphere appeared to hum with a universal, silent shame. He could see it in the sidestepped glances of his employees, in the over-effusive, formal hellos from executives who'd laughed along with him late into the morning hours with a bottle of scotch. They'd heard it. They'd read the testimony. They were expecting his downfall.

He'd done his part. He had made the statement his board demanded—a brusque, corporate condemnation of Sabatine Stalker, stating they were "shocked and deeply disappointed" and vowing total cooperation with the authorities. Every word had been as trying as swallowing glass. He had publicly condemned the man who'd saved his life, the man he trusted, to remain in the fortress. It was the most craven thing he'd ever done, and the necessity of it was a poison in his bloodstream.

But the melodrama wasn't over. To sell the ruse, he had to be the beleaguered CEO, expunging the last traces of the traitor's existence with vengeance. And that required one more, final, definitive showdown.

He saw Evelyn Voss in her corner office, an office of stunning vista and merciless efficiency. She sat behind her desk, reading a financial report, looking as impeccably dressed as ever. The sight of her, the genius of this abomination, sitting at the center of his kingdom, put a fresh burst of fury into him.

He entered without being noticed, shutting the door quietly. The snap was as final as a gunshot.

"Evelyn."

She looked up, a professional smile stitched onto her lips. It never reached her eyes. "Anton. I was reviewing Q3 projections. The market reaction has been. significant, but not lethal. The Stalker scenario, while damaging, has given us a clear-cut villain. We can bounce back.".

The Stalker story," Anton echoed, his tone ominously low. He strode to the window, gazing down at the city he used to think he controlled. "A tidy story. Nicely wrapped. The fallen soldier, the ruthless mercenary."

He turned to face her, his fists buried in his back pockets. "I have been considering it. Something. The weakness in each ideal tale."

Evelyn's smile grew strained. "Oh?

"It's the lack of mess," Anton said, moving closer to her desk. "Lack of a single loose thread. The money trail is a work of art. The emails are perfectly damning. The fingerprint… a godsend from the gods of prosecution." He moved in, placing his palms on her shiny desk. "It's too tidy, Evelyn. And the only people I can think of who can do that kind of tidiness are you… and I."

Her mask slipped for a moment, and for a second, the icy, calculating killer underneath peeped out. The smile reappeared but harder this time. "Accusing me of something, Anton?"

"I'm not accusing. I'm making a statement." His voice was low, every word a hammer to the eardrum. "You did it. You and my brother. You stole the prototype. You framed Sabatine. You're attempting to kill my company.".

Evelyn did not refute it. She did not even wince. She leaned back in her chair and let out a soft, genuine chuckle. It was the most chilling sound Anton had ever heard.

Oh, Anton. You always saw the board, but not the game." She smiled sourly, a mockery of pity on her lips. "Bully the company? Why would I want to kill the golden goose? I'm building a new, more profitable future. One free of your. emotional complications."

"A future you control.".

A future in which it survives," she retorted, her eyes glinting. "You were driving it into the ground with your perfectionism, your paranoia. This 'Aegis' program was a bottomless pit of R&D. It had to be. monetized. Leverage."

"Leveraged by selling it to our rivals? By burning our own assets to the ground?

"By making it the foundation of a consolidation!" she snapped, her poise finally cracking to reveal the hot fanatical zeal beneath. "A merger that will establish Rogers Industries as the unchallenged leader in world security for the next century! What I've arranged isn't ruin, Anton. It's a corporate renaissance. You were just too blinded, too bound to your father's bygone legacy, to perceive it."

The audacity of it, the sheer magnitude, gargantuan, of her betrayal, left him breathless. She did not consider herself a thief, but a savior.

"And what of Sabatine?" Anton asked, voice neutral. "Collateral damage in your renaissance?"

A useful tool," she shrugged indifferently. "His past made him the ideal pressure valve. When the bomb went off, he was supposed to take the brunt. And he did. Nicely."

Anton's facade began to crack. "You burned a man alive to cover your own hides.".

"Innocent?" Evelyn laughed, her voice cold and raucous. She opened one of the drawers in her desk and pulled out a single sheet of paper, shoving it across the smooth surface to him. "Take a close look at the 'innocent' man's setup. At the financial approval for the project's external security audit. The one that contracted him."

A cold fear ran up Anton's spine. He looked down at the paper. It was a plain internal form, authorizing the discretionary fund for investigation of the initial security breaches. At the bottom, was a signature. Bright. Indisputable.

His own.

"I brought him in," Anton protested. "You know that."

"But you never asked how he was paid, did you?" Evelyn's smile was a razor cut. "First transfer, the retainer that officially brought Sabatine Stalker onto the Rogers Industries books… was funneled through the same discretionary account used for… sensitive expenditures. An account whose checks are, by your own doing, automatically signed by the CEO and CFO for any expense over fifty thousand." She touched the paper. "Your name is on his hiring documents, Anton.".

And the same signature, the prosecution's financial chronology proved, is on the transfer that made a deposit of two million euros into his Cayman account as payment for the stolen prototype.

The room was spinning. He stared at his own signature. It was real. He had signed dozens of such documents. A normal approval.

"It's a forgery," he breathed, the sureness drained from his voice. "Is it?" Evelyn purred. "The bank holds the digital approval. The timing couldn't be better. It puts you right at the center of the conspiracy. The genius, mercurial CEO, in a desperate bid to rescue his insolvent firm, who employs a disgraced operative to steal his own technology for a profitable, illicit sale.". When the transaction went bad, the operative would be the one to take the fall, and you'd have a meltdown in public. She crept forward, her tone dropping to a venomous whisper. "He's not entirely in error, see. Your signature is on the transfer papers of the project.

You are implicated.

You simply did not know it."

The trap was so much deeper than he ever could have imagined. They hadn't just framed Sabe. They had tied a strand of the noose around his own neck. The psychiatric evaluation, the history of his breakdown—it was all built on this foundation. He had been party to his own destruction right from the beginning.

He felt the walls of his stronghold, the stronghold for which he had labored a lifetime, not just creaking, but sliding open to disclose that they had been built by his enemies all along.

He stood up straight, the paper flapping loosely off his fingers. The fight was leached out of him, replaced by an enormous, shattering clearness. He was beaten. Outmaneuvered.

Without hesitation, he turned and departed from her office. Her triumphant stare pursued him, but he did not see it. He was already on his way out.

He did not return to his own office. He walked out of the building, into the cold Geneva air. He entered his car and told the driver to drive him to the airport. He had one last assignment.

In the soundproofed cabin of the moving car, he grabbed the encrypted burner. His hands were shaking. He punched in the number burned into his brain.

It rang. Once. Twice.

"Anton?" Sabe's voice was immediate, anxious. He must have been holding the phone. The sound of his name, the blunt, unadorned concern in that voice, cracked him. The dam that locked his guilt, his fear, his utter failure, burst. "She was right," he stuttered, the words harsh and moist. "Evelyn. She… she explained it to me. My signature. It's on the transfer. The one that paid you. The one they're going to use as evidence." He drew in a shivering breath, the confession squeezing itself out of him. "I didn't know, Sabe. I swear to God, I didn't know what I was signing. It was a routine fund authorization. But it's there.".

My name.

It's on the document that hired you, and it's on the document that sentenced you.

He was sobbing now, big, wracking sobs that racked his entire body. The illustrious Anton Rogers, brought to his knees by his own signature. "I'm so sorry. I led you right into this. I am responsible for you being in that cell. I am the defect. Not in the evidence… in me."

There was a silence so long and so heavy on the other end of the line. Anton braced for the recrimination, the anger, the righteous fury.

It didn't come.

When Sabe finally spoke, his voice was firm. A rock in Anton's broken world. "Anton. Listen to me. Did you write the emails?"

"What? No, of course not—"

"Did you place your own signature on the thermite charge?"

"No!"

"Did you hijack the prototype and sell it to Janus Holdings?"

"No!"

"That makes you a victim, too," Sabe said, his tone leaving no room for debate. "They used your system against you. They used your trust, your protocols. That doesn't condemn you. It condemns them for cleverness. And it makes us even."

"Even?" Anton gasped, amazed.

You accused me when the facts were against me," said Sabe, smiling. "Now I know the facts are against you. And I don't think so for a moment."

The blunt, unyielding faith in those words was a rope thrown into a storm. It was a forgiveness he did not deserve, but one he clung to with all his strength.

"'Aegis Zero,'" Anton said, his voice stronger, mopping his face with his palm. "The mission. It's not just the prototype. It's a takeover. They're using it to devalue the business so that some of the board will be able to acquire it."

"I know," Sabe replied. "I have a video. Evelyn and Marcus. They recognize the client."

Who?" Anton snapped, the CEO in him grasping for the quarry.

Sabe's answer was a solitary, chilling word that locked his darkest, most profound fear away.

"Rogers."

Anton's eyes slammed shut. The final piece. The mole was within. His name, his name, being used to analyze him.

"Where are you?" Sabe inquired in all business now.

"Coming to the jet.".

"Good. Don't go to London. It's a trap. They're waiting for you. There's a private airfield just outside Basel. 'Luxwing Aviation.' I'll pick you up there."

"How? The police… Interpol…"

"Leave that with me," Sabe said, his voice set in a grim resolve. "Just be there. We will finish this together."

The line went dead.

Anton sat in the silence of the car, the ghost of his tears still echoing in his chest. He had shared his greatest shame, and in place of rejection, he had been given a partnership. A union.

He looked out over the rolling city. He had lost his business. He had lost his name. He was a fugitive in all but name.

But as the vehicle sped towards the airport, towards the hidden airfield and the man who had believed in him against reason, Anton Rogers felt, for the first time since the blaze, a glimmer of something that was very like hope. 

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