Chapter 46: The Drive

The lull in the safehouse was no longer heavy; it was dead. A corpse laid out between them, cold and stiff. Sabe’s words—Maybe if you trusted people before hiring them to spy for you, you wouldn’t be here—hung in the air, not as an accusation, but as a final, clinical diagnosis. The truth, once spoken, had rendered further conversation obsolete.

Sabe rose from his lean against the wall, all economy of motion, a man unencumbered by attachment to the one across the room from him. He didn't glance at Anton. He gathered his go-bag-the one containing his guns, his money, his false identities-the implements of a ghost. He ejected the magazine of his pistol with a soft, metallic click that could wake the dead, then jammed it back into his waistband.

He was leaving.

The realization was a cold spike through Anton’s heart. This wasn’t a tactical withdrawal. This was a severance.

"Sabe," Anton said, his tone husky, the word a begging and an apology mashed into one.

Sabe didn’t acknowledge it. He walked to the door, his back a wall of finality. He paused, his hand on the knob, and for a terrifying second, Anton thought he would speak, and would offer some thread to cling to.

He didn't. Instead, he merely opened the door and stepped out in the hallway, closing it with a soft but defining click.

The sound was the locking of a tomb.

A whole minute, Anton stood paralyzed, crashing down on him. He had done it. He had taken the one solid thing in his disintegrating world and smashed it to pieces with his own fear. The image of Sabe's scarred back seared itself in his brain-a testament to survival, to pain he couldn't comprehend, and he'd thrown it in his face as evidence of betrayal.

That anger, which had fired his accusation, was gone, replaced by a sickening, hollow shame. Sabe was right. He was the common denominator. His father’s emotional neglect, Marcus’s bitterness, Evelyn’s greed-he had let them define his world, until he saw a traitor in every shadow, especially the one cast by the man who had stood in front of the bullets.

He wasn't following Sabe because he doubted him; the horrifying, clarifying truth was the exact opposite. He was following because Sabe's absence felt like a limb being torn off. The fear wasn't of a conspiracy but of the silence-of a future bereft of that steadying presence, of eyes like storms that saw through his facades, fierce and unyielding in their loyalty, which he had spurned so recklessly.

He was scared of losing him.

The thought propelled him into motion. He grabbed his own jacket, a cheap, anonymous thing, and shoved his feet into his shoes. He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have a weapon. He had only a desperate, clawing need to take back the words that had driven Sabe away.

He burst out of the safehouse and into the dimly lit corridor. It was empty. He took the stairs two at a time, his heart hammering, emerging into the cool, damp night of Shoreditch. The street was alive with the sounds of a London evening—distant traffic, laughter from a pub, the bass thump from a passing car. Life, indifferent to his personal cataclysm.

He scanned the street, his breath misting in the air. Then he saw him. A lone figure, a silhouette of contained purpose, already a block away, turning a corner.

Anton ran.

He wasn't a runner. He was a man who took cars and private jets. His lungs burned, his shoes slapping clumsily against the pavement. He weaved through groups of students and late-night shoppers, his eyes locked on the distant, receding form.

Sabe strode on, his great, long legs covering the ground with an easy, fluid cadence, like a river flowing toward the sea. He didn’t look back. He didn’t hesitate at intersections. A force of nature, and Anton was a leaf trying to catch the wind.

He’s gone for good. He will disappear, and you will never lay eyes on him again. The thought was a shot of pure adrenaline. Anton pushed harder, his side cramping.

He followed Sabe out of the trendy streets and into a darker, more industrial area where warehouses loomed like sleeping giants and chain-link fences lined the streets. The sounds of the city fell away until the hum of a distant generator and the scuttle of something in an alley took over.

Sabe stopped suddenly, melting into the deep shadow of a railway arch. Anton skidded to a halt, panting, his hands on his knees. He’d lost sight of him.

Panic seized him. “Sabe!” he called out, his voice carrying unnaturally in the cavernous space.

No answer.

Then, a form wrenched itself free from the gloom. Sabe was standing before him, his face bathed in the sickly orange light of a sodium vapor lamp. No anger lay there. No resentment. Just profound, worn exhaustion.

"Why are you here, Anton?" he asked. His voice was flat. The emotion was gone-even the icy contempt from before. This was worse. This was emptiness.

“I… I had to,” Anton panted, straightening up, his chest heaving. “I was wrong. Sabe, I was so, so wrong.”

“You've said that before,” Sabe replied. “After you accused me of being the leak. The words are starting to lose their meaning.”

“This is different,” Anton insisted, taking a step forward. Sabe didn’t retreat, but his stillness was a barrier. “That was about the job. This… this was about you. About me. I saw your back, I saw that scar, and all I could think was… here is more proof of the world’s cruelty. Another reason not to trust. I used your pain as a weapon against you. It was the most cowardly thing I have ever done.”

He was trembling, the cold and the emotion wracking his body. "You were right about everything. My father, Marcus, Evelyn… they broke my trust. But I'm the one who built the prison and threw away the key. I'm the one who can't see a gift without looking for the price tag."

Sabe watched him, his expression unreadable. The wind whistled through the arch, a lonely sound.

"I'm not following you because I think you're in with Marcus," Anton said, the truth finally fully unlocked. "I'm following you because the thought of you walking away feels like dying. I'm afraid of losing you."

The confession hung in the cold air, raw and unvarnished. It was the most vulnerable he had ever been, laid bare of his wealth, his title, his defenses. He was just a man, in a dirty street, begging another man not to leave him alone in the dark.

Sabe's mask of indifference finally cracked. A flicker of pain crossed his features. He looked away, into the deeper shadows of the arch, as though the directness of Anton's plea was too much to bear.

“You can’t just… say things like that, Anton,” he said in his hoarse tone. “Not after what you have said back there.

“I know,” Anton whispered. “But it’s the truth. The only one I have left.”

Sabe was silent for a long time, the internal war visible in the tight line of his shoulders. The drive to leave, to retreat into the safety of solitude, was a powerful, familiar current. The pull to stay, to believe in this broken man's broken apology, was a terrifying, uncharted sea.

Finally, he exhaled, his breath a long, slow sound, the white plume hanging in the air between them. He turned his head, his eyes locking with Anton's. The tempest was there, back, more contained this time, tinted by a resigned, desperate hope.

“You run noisily,” he said, the faintest ghost of a smile touching his lips. “You'd be dead in a minute in a real pursuit.”

The tension shattered. It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t a full reconciliation. But it was a thread. A chance.

A small, fractured sound escaped Anton—half a sob, half a laugh. “I’ll be working on that.

Sabe gave one short, abrupt nod. He didn’t move closer, but neither did he walk away. He stood his ground and allowed Anton space, silence, and cold night.

The drive that had propelled Sabe out of the safehouse, the anger, the regret, the need to flee, met a stronger, more desperate drive from Anton: the need to connect, the need to atone.

Standing there under the railway arch, two flawed, shattered men in the heart of the sleeping city. The war wasn't over. The enemies were still out there. But for now, the immediate battle was won. He hadn't lost him. Not yet.

“Come on,” Sabe said quietly, turning back the way they had come. “It’s cold. And we have a company to save.”

He didn't offer his hand, didn't put an arm around him. But he walked beside him, their footsteps echoing in the quiet street, a slow steady rhythm back towards the light, back towards the fight. Together.

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