Chapter 273. A Threat Resurfaces

Peace was a living thing. It hummed in the walls of the townhouse, in the easy rhythm of their shared mornings, in the sprawling, hopeful blueprints of the Keystone Foundation spread across the dining table. It was a peace hard-won and fiercely guarded, and for a few, golden weeks, it felt absolute.

Then, at 3:14 a.m. on a Tuesday, the peace bled out in the silent, spectral light of a security monitor.

Anton woke to the empty space beside him in bed. This wasn’t unusual; Sabatine was a light sleeper, often drawn to the nocturnal quiet of the living room or her study. But the quality of the silence was wrong. It was a focused, electric silence, the kind that precedes a strike.

He found her in her study, not at her desk, but standing before the large, wall-mounted monitor that usually displayed a rotating, serene feed of security checkpoints and system health. Now, it was a dynamic map of London’s digital arteries, overlaid with frantic, pulsing vectors of crimson light converging on a single, blinking node: the Rogers Industries main server cluster.

She was motionless, clad in one of his old t-shirts and sweatpants, her hair a dark cloud around her pale, intent face. Her fingers flew over a secondary tablet in her hands, a silent, deadly ballet. The only sound was the faint, rapid tap of her stylus and the low hum of the machines.

Anton’s blood ran cold. He knew that look. It was the Sabatine of Geneva, of back alleys and encrypted ghosts. The Sabatine who lived in the kill zone.

“Sabe?” he whispered, not wanting to break her concentration.

Her eyes didn’t leave the screen. “Go back to bed.” Her voice was flat, devoid of its usual warmth, pared down to pure operational efficiency. “It’s a probe. A persistent one. I’m handling it.”

He didn’t move. He watched as a crimson tendril on the map lunged towards the node, only to be met by a swift, blossoming shield of cool blue that engulfed and dissolved it. Another came from a different vector, then another. Each was intercepted, annihilated by a countermeasure that seemed to anticipate its path. It was like watching a master fencer dispatch clumsy, over-eager opponents without breaking a sweat.

But the attackers were numerous. The map swarmed with red. It was a coordinated, multi-pronged assault.

“Who?” he asked, the single word tight.

“Signature’s sloppy. Aggressive. Not a nation-state. Not the Dubai crew—too blunt.” Her brow furrowed slightly as she keyed in a rapid sequence. “This is… angrier. Desperate. A splinter. The last gasp of someone who didn’t get a slice of Evelyn’s pie and is throwing a tantrum with the scraps they stole.”

A final consortium splinter group. The dregs of the corruption they’d rooted out, embittered and lashing out. Not a strategic play, but a vindictive one. An attempt to mar the perfection, to prove their peace was fragile.

Anton felt a surge of the old, cold fury. Not fear for the data—he had absolute faith in her—but a visceral rage that this shadow dared to touch their light, especially now.

On the screen, the red pulses intensified, converging into a solid, throbbing mass aimed at the core firewall. It was a brute-force blitz, a digital battering ram.

Sabatine’s lips thinned. She set the tablet down on the console and placed both hands on the physical keyboard below the monitor. Her posture shifted, settled. This was no longer a defensive counter-punch; this was the beginning of an offensive.

“Alright,” she murmured, not to him, but to the faceless attackers on the other side of the world. “You want to play?”

Her fingers became a blur. Lines of code, green against black, streamed across a tertiary screen. On the main map, the cool blue shield didn’t just hold. It expanded. It reached out, not to block, but to trace. The blue light shot back along the crimson vectors, following them to their source with terrifying, elegant speed.

Anton watched, mesmerized. This was her genius, her art. Not just building walls, but crafting homing beacons out of the enemy’s own aggression.

One by one, the red pulses on the map winked out, not at the server node, but at their points of origin—IP addresses in unregulated data havens, hijacked servers in Eastern Europe, a laughably vulnerable network in a strip-mall office outside Rotterdam. As each source was identified and neutralized, Sabatine tagged it with a digital marker, a forensic breadcrumb for her team to follow up at dawn.

The main assault, the battering ram, hit the firewall. The node on the map flared white for an instant. Anton’s breath caught.

Sabatine didn’t flinch. She typed one final, decisive command and hit enter.

The white flare was swallowed by an overwhelming surge of blue. The crimson mass didn’t just dissipate; it was erased, scrubbed from the digital landscape as if it had never been. The map cleared, returning to its serene state of green checkpoints and dormant systems. The entire, furious battle had lasted four minutes and seventeen seconds.

Silence reclaimed the room, deeper than before. The only evidence of the war was the rapid rise and fall of Sabatine’s shoulders. She slowly lifted her hands from the keyboard, flexing her fingers. She stared at the peaceful map for a long moment, then let out a slow, controlled breath.

“It’s done,” she said, her voice returning from its operational flatness, now edged with a weary steel. “They’re routed. Locked out. Their tools are now mine. Leon will have a list of addresses to raid with the NCA by breakfast.” She finally turned to look at him.

Her eyes were the same fierce, clear green, but in the monitor’s glow, he saw the aftermath: not fear, but a profound, simmering resentment. This was the shadow of their past, reaching for them on the cusp of their future. It was a reminder that their peace would always be an active verb, not a passive state.

He crossed the room and took her hands. They were cold. He chafed them gently between his. “You were breathtaking,” he said, his voice thick with awe and anger.

A faint, tired smile touched her lips. “Just another Tuesday.”

“No,”he insisted, pulling her into his arms. He held her tightly, feeling the adrenaline still humming through her frame. “It was an affront. And you obliterated it.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, her body gradually relaxing into his. “They were small,” she murmured. “Petty. But it… it smeared the night. Our night.”

He understood. The violation wasn’t in the threat, which she’d handled with contemptuous ease, but in the timing. In the intrusion into their sanctuary, into the sacred space of their shared life.

He tilted her chin up, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Listen to me. They didn’t touch us. They didn’t even come close. You didn’t just protect the servers, Sabatine. You protected us. And you did it without leaving this room, without a single shot fired.” He kissed her forehead. “That’s the future you’re building. Not one without threats, but one where the threats are so hopelessly outmatched they’re just… noise.”

She searched his eyes, finding not anxiety, but a fierce, unwavering pride. The resentment in her own gaze softened, replaced by a renewed determination. The attack had not weakened their peace; it had underscored its strength. They had been tested, in the deepest hour of the night, and she had prevailed so utterly it was almost anticlimactic.

“Come back to bed,” he said softly. “The sun will be up soon. We have a foundation to launch.”

She nodded, allowing him to lead her away from the glowing screens. The threat had resurged, a pathetic, final gasp from a dying beast. And Sabatine Stalker, soon-to-be Sabatine Rogers, had reminded it why it was dying. Not with fury, but with a calm, devastating competence that was the true hallmark of their hard-won peace. The digital breach was over. Their life, their future, was just beginning.

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