Chapter 285. Midnight Escape

The ball was a birdcage of gold and secrets. Then Anton Rogers stood at its center, a statue wrought from Italian wool and frozen pride, nodding toward some senator’s wife while his own blood pulsed with abandon in his veins. Through the crowded ballroom, in a hundred reflected champagne glasses and dark rain-smeared windows, he followed Sabatine.

Sabe was doing his thing as well, leaning against a marble column at the edge of the exit. He was a shadow in his elegantly tailored tux. To anyone else, he might have looked bored out of his mind, distant. But Anton knew his code. See the faint clenched jaw, the drumming on his thumb and first finger. He was calculating exits, danger. He was a live wire, sparking with tension while maintaining his smooth facade. He locked eyes with Anton through the sea of glittering faces. One heartbeat, one signal. Now.

"Excuse me," murmured Anton to the circle surrounding him, his smile a honed, disarming device. He cruised through the crowd, a shark slicing through a school of oblivious fish, leaving an unconscious path. The scent of perfume and, worse, cash, lingered over the air. He passed by Evelyn Voss's vacant chair, a chilling reminder of the treachery that had come close to ruining him. He passed by Marcus, his adopted brother, now under house arrest, scowling in the corner under the vigilant surveillance of a bodyguard provided by Anton. The player agents were present, lingering on the perimeters of the bash intended to mark Rogers Industries' glorious, sullied rebirth.

“He reached Sabatine’s side without breaking his stride. His shoulder grazed Sabe’s momentarily as he passed, a fleeting touch that could have been accidental. One word, whispered into the space between them.” “Garage.”

Without a second look, Sabatine pushed off from the column. They didn’t walk out together. That was the procedure. Anton descended the grand staircase, nodding blandly at the security chief he himself had hired. Sabatine vanished into a service corridor, a route he'd planned three days ago. Different paths, one desperate point of convergence.

The din of the gala receded into a dull murmur as Anton bullied his way through a thick ‘Private’ door and into the Gothic cellar depths of the historic hotel. The atmosphere rapidly cooled, electric with the smell of gasoline and damp. His patent leather oxfords clattered wildly on the stained concrete, a staccato beat syncing with his erratic pulse. Control. It was a fortress he had spent decades constructing: financial, physical, psychological. And now he was fleeing through this damp cellar like a common thief, his every cell fixated on the one man he would be meeting in the alleyways ahead. The man who proved the one weak spot in his carefully constructed walls—the only fissure he felt a perverse hunger for rather than fear.

A figure emerged from behind a concrete pillar. Sabatine. 

     In the low, functional light, the well-cut tuxedo was a disguise about to come off. His eyes were pools of reflected exit sign red.

“Any tails?” “His voice was low and business-like, but his eyes raked Anton with the intensity of possession.”

    “Just more of the same,” he growled

“No, I don’t see any,” Anton stated matter-of-factly, all CEO and businesslike. However, his hand moved as if with a will of its own, caressing the back of Sabatine's knuckles with his fingertips. A silent admission: I am not in control here and here and here. Not with you.

Sabatine’s harsh features eased infinitesimally. The corner of his mouth kicked up in a whisper of a smile, and his rough palm flipped, his calloused flesh meeting Anton’s smooth skin in a flash of sensation, his

In the far corner of the garage, away from the rows of gleaming Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, sat their escape. Not one of Anton's stealthy vehicles, but a car from a bygone age—a 1967 Jaguar E-Type, British Racing Green. Sleek, low, and indefensibly conspicuous. It had been Sabatine's plan. "No one will think to look for a billionaire behind the wheel of a vintage plaything. They’ll be searching for the darkened SUV. This is a lark. An indulgence."

It was the first purely whimsical, entirely irrational thing Anton agreed to in the past ten years.

"I'm driving," Sabatine already had his door open.

A protest caught in his throat. Of course he’d come by car. This happened to Sabe’s escape plan, not his. Anton got into the passenger seat, the cool leather crackling with wax and age. Then the door closed with the deep resonance of sound that surrounded them all snug and private in walnut and metal.

Sabatine turned the key. The engine roared into action, its raw, ravenous growl resonating deep in its body, deep in Anton's spine. It was nothing at all like his electric vehicles. This was living, hunting machinery.

“Seatbelt,” Sabatine said, not looking at him, his hands already moving over the gear stick, his profile sharp and intent in the dashboard light.

Anton obliged, the click echoing loudly in the close space. As Anton pulled the strap across his chest, Sabatine released the clutch, and the Jaguar surged forward, tires squealing in protest against the concrete. They rocketed out of the garage exit, blowing past the ramp that was supposed to handle delivery traffic, and fishtailing into the slick, empty service route that ran behind the hotel.

The London rain laced down in a soft drizzle. Neon and sodium vapor paint streaked the night. "Come on," Sabatine urged the car, pushing it hard through the winding back roads of Mayfair, out of the lights. Wipers slapped a staccato beat. Anton watched him. Watched the way his strong, scarred hands gripped the wheel, the easy, natural authority. I watched the way his face concentrated, the way his nostrils flared slightly with each smooth downshift. It was a different world when Sabatine moved in it, when he acted instead of analyzed, when he lived instead of stood apart.

The tension that had been his constant companion for so long—a wire strung from the boardroom to the bedroom—had begun to vibrate at a new pitch. The tension was still present, but it was shifting, changing, actually melting from a cool, fear-based chill into a warm, liquid, adrenaline-charged flood.

“We’re clear,” he said after a silence of about five minutes, his eyes darted between the road and the rearview mirror. “Rico confirms no pursuit. Only the paparazzi are still waiting out front.”

Anton released the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. The city lights gave way to the dimmer treetops of a park. “He’s probably aware of the tail,” Sabatine said nonchalantly and took his foot off the gas pedal. “And now he’s driving like he’s on a Sunday cruise,” he added with amusement. They were on a road lined with trees and heading west.

“Where are we going?” Anton asked, his voice unfamiliar to his ears—not commanding, but inquiring. He no longer controlled the agenda.

“Nowhere,” Sabatine said, a faint, almost wild smile flickering on his lips for the first time.

     “Anywhere,” Sabatine replied, a faint

He reached out, his hand leaving the gear stick to find Anton’s knee. The shock of his touch, even through the fine wool of his trousers, was almost electric. It was a statement, an anchor point. Anton placed his own hand over Sabe’s, pressing it down. The gesture loosened him more completely than the escape had.

They drove for a while without saying anything, the only noise was the humming of the engine and the sound of the rain. Outside, the world just blended into the darkness of the hedges and the passing streetlights.

“I couldn’t breathe in there,” Anton finally said, the words torn from him. “All those people. Their congratulations. Their pity. Their calculations. It was just… noise. The same noise that has been there my whole life.” His eyes traced the profile of Sabatine’s face. “Until you. You’re the only silence that isn’t empty.”

Sabatine's grasp on his knee squeezed harder. He didn't spout platitudes. He never had. "They want a part of the monument, Anton. The monument. They do not know the man behind it is trying to break it down tonight to escape."

“I’m not cracking them,” Anton whispered, his eyes fixed on the rain that slid across the windshield in rivulets. “I’m leaving them behind. For a few hours.”

“That’s a start,” Sabe spoke softly.

He made an abrupt turn, turning onto a narrow, unmarked road that led to a vista point from which one could see, in the distant haze, the glittering sprawl of London. He switched off the engine. The silence was almost absolute, broken only by the sounds of rain on the canvas roof and the ticking pulse of the cooling engine.

The darkness wrapped around them, thick and velvety. The city, a galaxy of artificial stars, sparkled far below, the world they had left behind.

In the sudden silence, the space between them was palpable, an almost fragile quality to it. But Anton turned in his chair. Sabatine was already looking at him, his eyes black as the night, but the heat of his gaze was warm to the touch.

‘This is reckless,’ whispered Anton, leaning in. The statement was not judgment, but benediction.

“I know,” Sabatine whispered, closing the final inch.

The kiss was not like the others. It did not come near the desperate, clawing clash of their first, in a safehouse in Geneva, fear and anger pounding through them both. It did not come near the tentative, awkward discoveries of the weeks of recovery that had followed. This was something more. This was a crash of voluntary exposedness. Anton’s hands rose to Sabatine’s face, his thumbs exploring the square set of his jaw, the scrape of his stubble. Sabatine’s fingers dug into Anton’s preciously styled hair, spoiling it completely, pulling hard on him with a low, rumbling growl.

It was champagne and rain and the peculiar, irreducible taste of Sabe—that was coffee, and toughness, and a trace of metal. It was a kiss that promised garage doors and shared cartridges and loyalty wrested from the very flames of deceit. Anton, who dominated billions, submitted utterly to its chaos. He let himself be devoured by it, let himself unravel, his strict training melting before the rush of raw, unbridled pleasure.

Finally, when they reluctantly separated foreheads pressed together, ragged gasps for air in a closed space, their world constricted itself down to the steam-covered windows of the classic Jaguar car.

“They'll be looking for us,” Anton said, his voice gruff.

“Let them look,” he answered, his lips grazing Anton’s with the last word. “The great Anton Rogers has disappeared. Let them think you’ve been kidnapped. Or worse.” His grin was wicked. “It’ll be good for the mystery.”

A laugh, genuine and startling, burst from Anton's chest. It felt foreign and wonderful. "You’re a terrible influence, Sabatine Stalker," he said.

“You hired me for my bad judgment and questionable past,” Sabe reminded him, taking a tiny nibble out of his lower lip. “Might as well get your money’s worth.” They just sat there, tangled in the darkness, listening to the rain. The distant lights of the city flashed like the pulse of a dying star. In that stolen car, parked on that unknown hill, they weren’t a billionaire and a bodyguard, a CEO and a former spy. They were just two men, trying to escape from the ghosts of what they’d left behind and the future that loomed ahead, finding a brief, flawless peace where the scars intersected. "We can't stay here all night," 

Sabatine finally stirred, reluctantly unwinding from his entanglements. "Even my bad judgment has its limitations." He turned on the ignition, and the roar burst the stillness. "I know a place. There are no five-star suites. There are no hotel staff. Just a roof and a bed."

 Anton leaned back in his chair, his hair disheveled, tie askew, but most importantly, his soul feeling somehow, incrementally, lighter. "As long as the lock on the door is sound,” he said, the ghost of his former controlled smile playing briefly on his lips. "I wouldn’t want any more midnight escapes tonight. I just want morning."

Sabatine stared back at him, his eyes sparkling in the dashboard light. A promise. A vow. “Just morning,” he agreed. 

He put the Jaguar in gear, and they glided back into the night, leaving the sparkling enclosure of London in the distance, the two of them merged as shadows, fleeing not from anything now, but towards—that unscripted horizon, in the car which now, for the first time, felt like the start of something.

—---