Chapter 32: Paper Ghosts

The chaos at Rogers Tower was a distant, digital thunderstorm. Inside the Soho studio, the air was still and tense, charged with the silence of waiting. The smoke was in the air; now, they needed the fire to catch.

Eleanor Shaw had not responded. The sixty-minute window for the video had come and gone, leaving behind a void of unknowing. Had she believed it? Had she dismissed it as a sophisticated hoax? Was she even now on the phone with Evelyn, betraying their desperate gambit?

The uncertainty was a slow-acting acid on Anton’s nerves. He was a man of action, of decisive moves and immediate consequences. This passive waiting, this reliance on the conscience of a woman he only knew in boardrooms, was a special kind of torture.

Sabe, on the other hand, had moved beyond. The storm's maker was now hunting in the storm's wake. As Anton paced, Sabe was a statue of concentration, his face bathed in the cool light of the screens, threading his way through a maze of financial data.

"The two million euros they planted on me," Sabe said. His voice was a low hum in the quiet. It was a mistake.

“A necessary one, from their perspective. They needed a tangible financial link. But to create it, they had to use a real pathway. They couldn’t just invent money from nothing.” Sabe’s fingers danced across the keyboard, pulling up complex schematic diagrams of transactions. “They routed it through a series of shell companies in Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. But the initial transfer, the one that authorized the movement of funds into the cascade, came from a private bank in Zurich. The account was under the name ‘Orpheus Investments.’”

He called up the registry. Orpheus Investments was a ghost, a name on a digital certificate with no physical address, no listed directors.

"A cul-de-sac," Anton said, the gleam of hope that had flared so briefly extinguished just that fast.

“For most people,” Sabe replied, a hint of that cold, professional edge returning to his voice. “But ghosts leave traces. They have to pay registration fees, file annual returns—even if those returns are blank. They exist in the system.” He began cross-referencing the registration number of Orpheus with other corporate entities in the Swiss federal database. “It’s like a family tree of lies. You find one cousin, you can find the rest.”

Anton watched, fascinated and unnerved. This was the underbelly of his world-the dark, sticky web that existed beneath the clean lines of his balance sheets. He was into mergers and acquisitions; Sabe was currently performing corporate archaeology in a graveyard of lies.

After an hour of silent, intense work, Sabe leaned back. “Got it. Orpheus Investments is a wholly-owned subsidiary of ‘Aethelred Holdings.’”

Anton's blood ran cold. "Marcus."

“It’s not just his trust fund,” Sabe said, his eyes gleaming with the thrill of the hunt. “He’s been busy. Aethelred has fingers in a dozen pies. Most are dormant, but two others show recent, significant activity.” He highlighted two more names: ‘Chimera Solutions’ and ‘Sphinx Capital.’ “Chimera received payments from Janus Holdings. Sphinx made the initial ‘consultancy f*e’ payment to the shell that hired the hitman.”

He had done it. He had connected the financial DNA: the bitter brother, the anonymous buyer, the attempted assassination-all were linked in a series of paper ghosts orchestrated by Marcus.

“We have him,” Anton breathed, a vicious satisfaction cutting through his anxiety. “This is the proof. This ties Marcus directly to the theft and the murder plot.”

“It’s a thread,” Sabe corrected, even the pragmatist. “A strong one. But it’s still just data. We need to pull on it. We need to find the physical location of these entities. A bank box, an office, a server. Something we can present to the authorities that can’t be explained away.”

He began plotting the information onto a digital map of Zurich’s financial district, cross-referencing the banks associated with each shell company. “The central clearing house for all three is the Privatbank am See. It’s where the strings all converge.”

He stood, the movement stiff. He began checking his weapon, movements economically and practiced. “I need to go to Zurich. I can social-engineer my way into their archives, find a physical signature, a document with a wet ink signature, something.”

“No,” Anton said. The word was out of his mouth before he could stop it.

Sabe paused, looking at him. “It’s the next logical step, Anton. This is what I do.”

“I know what you do,” Anton shot back, his own frustration and fear boiling over. “You walk into the lion’s den alone. You get shot, or stabbed, or arrested, and I’m left here in this bloody room, staring at screens, waiting for a call that never comes!” He ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t do it again, Sabe. I can’t be the… the damsel in distress in a tailored suit, waiting for you to haul me out of another fire.”

The analogy was silly, but it was visceral and honest. Helpless in the server room, terrified in the safe house, humiliated on the bridge-he'd been an object in his own survival, a prize to be guarded. He was done with it.

Sabe watched him, her face impassive. "It's too dangerous for you. You're Anton Rogers. Every camera in that bank is going to flag your face.

“Then we find a way around the cameras,” Anton insisted, stepping closer. “You’re the ghost. Teach me to be one. But I’m not staying here. This is my company. My brother. My fight.” He gestured at the screens, at the web of deceit Sabe had untangled. “You found the paper trail. But I speak the language. I know how these bankers think, how they hide things in plain sight. You might find a document; I can find the person who filed it. We’re stronger together. You said it yourself.”

He was calling in their pact, throwing Sabe’s words back at him. He saw the struggle in Sabe’s eyes—operative’s instinct for a clean, solo mission warring with the partner’s understanding.

“If you’re recognized…” Sabe started, his voice straining.

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Anton interrupted. “But I am not a liability to be managed. I am an asset. Use me.”

The silence stretched. Sabe's gaze swept over him, taking in the determined set of his jaw, the fire in his eyes that had been absent for too long. He was seeing not the broken CEO, but the man who'd built an empire. A man who refused to be a spectator in his own story any longer.

Finally, Sabe nodded slowly, reluctantly. “Alright.” It was a concession but also a test. “But you do exactly as I say. No arguments. Your life and mine will depend on your ability to follow orders. Not as a CEO. As an operative. Understood?”

“Understood,” Anton said, the word feeling like a promotion.

The next hour was a whirlwind of transformation. Sabe became a drill instructor. He produced a bag of civilian clothes—a dark, nondescript jacket, a plain baseball cap, and a pair of glasses with non-prescription lenses.

He had Anton practice walking across the room, over and over, critiquing his gait, the set of his shoulders. He showed him how to keep his face angled away from overhead cameras, how to use the brim of the cap to cast a shadow.

“Your voice,” Sabe said next. “It’s too commanding. Too crisp. Mumble. Don’t articulate. You’re tired, you’re bored.

It was humbling. It was exhilarating. Anton was being stripped of the very identifiers of his power—his posture, his voice, his bearing—and rebuilt as someone invisible. He was learning the grammar of the shadows.

Finally, Sabe handed him a small, wireless earpiece. “This is our lifeline. I’ll be in your ear the entire time. You hear my instruction, you obey it. Instantly. No hesitation.”

Anton fitted the device. Sabe's voice, when it came through, was a quiet, intimate presence in his head. “Test. Do you read me?”

"Loud and clear," Anton murmured, the words feeling alien with his new, less exacting rhythm.

Sabe gave him one last, appraising look. The man in front of him was a pale shadow of Anton Rogers. The suit was gone, replaced by generic clothing. The arrogant posture was replaced by a weary slouch. The piercing gaze was hidden behind glass and shadow.

"Good," Sabe said, a flicker of something that might have been approved in his eyes. "The paper ghosts led us to Zurich. Now, we go and give them a voice.

They stepped out of the studio and into the London night, two ghosts. One was a natural creature of the dark, a predator returning to his element. The other was a novice, a king learning to be a pauper, his heart hammering with a fear that for the first time was fused with fierce, defiant agency. He wasn't being protected anymore. He was going to war.

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