Chapter 57. Rico’s Shadow

The hush in the suite had transformed. It was no longer a barren wasteland of unspoken rejection, but a charged, fragile thing, humming with the echo of Sabe’s confession. It’s… everything.

The words hung between them, a bridge built over a chasm of fear and duty. Neither moved. The air was thick with the weight of what came next, the terrifying, exhilarating step into the unknown. The plan for the villa, the stolen prototype, Evelyn’s betrayal—it had all receded into a dull roar, background static to the pounding of two hearts syncopating in the dim light.

Sabe’s gaze was locked on Anton’s, his professional armor gone, leaving behind a raw vulnerability that was more disarming than any show of strength. He had handed Anton the detonator to his carefully controlled world.

Anton took a single, half-step forward. It was all the invitation the universe seemed to need.

A sharp, insistent buzz shattered the moment.

It was a cheap, disposable sound, utterly alien in the refined quiet of the suite. It came from Sabe’s jacket, draped over a chair where he’d performed his security sweep. The spell broken, Sabe flinched, his eyes squeezing shut for a fraction of a second in a mixture of frustration and reawakened vigilance. The moment was gone, replaced by the grim reality of their situation.

He crossed the room and retrieved the burner phone, the one with the encrypted app he used only for the most sensitive contacts. The screen glowed with a single, terse message from an anonymous number. But Sabe didn’t need a name. The cadence, the cold efficiency, was as familiar as a ghost.

> The old place. One hour. Come alone. I have what you need. Not both of you.

Anton watched the color drain from Sabe’s face. “What is it?”

Sabe didn’t answer immediately. His thumb hovered over the screen, his mind racing through the implications. Rico Nadir. His old colleague, his tether to a past he’d tried to bury. The man who had been with him in Bakhmar, who had seen the op go to hell, who knew the exact weight of the blood on Sabe’s hands. Rico, who was now supposedly embedded deep within the very intelligence circles Evelyn was likely leveraging.

“It’s a contact,” Sabe said, his voice carefully neutral again, the walls hastily reassembled. “He has information on the villa.”

“And he wants you to come alone,” Anton stated. It wasn’t a question.

“Standard protocol. Rico… operates in the grey. He doesn’t trust anyone he hasn’t vetted himself.”

“And you trust him?” Anton’s gaze was piercing, seeing right through the professional jargon.

Sabe’s hesitation was all the answer Anton needed. “I trust that his self-interest aligns with ours in this. He hates the people Evelyn is dealing with. They’re muscling in on his… business.”

He began to move, a flurry of purposeful action, strapping a compact pistol to his ankle, slipping two extra magazines into his pockets, checking the knife in its sheath at the small of his back. He was transforming back into the operative, the soldier, burying the man who had just whispered everything.

“I’ll be back in two hours,” he said, pulling on a dark, nondescript jacket. “Do not leave this room. Do not answer the door. Do not use the phone. The hotel is secure, but outside these walls, we’re exposed.”

He was at the door when Anton spoke again, his voice quiet but firm. “Sabe.”

Sabe paused, his hand on the ornate brass doorknob.

“If it’s a trap…”

“It’s always a trap,” Sabe replied without turning around. “The trick is knowing how to spring it on your own terms.”

He left, the door closing with a soft, final click.

Anton was alone. The suite, which had felt like a sanctuary moments before, now felt like a gilded cage. The ghost of their almost-kiss lingered in the air, a sweet, painful torment. He paced the length of the room, his mind churning. Rico. The name was a shadow in Sabe’s history, a piece of the puzzle he’d never been given. He’d seen the file, of course—the broad strokes of the Bakhmar incident, the dishonorable discharge. But the man, the friend, the colleague… that was a blank space.

Driven by a restless, gnawing anxiety, he found himself standing by Sabe’s discarded jacket. The burner phone lay on the floor beside it, must have fallen from the pocket. A cold dread trickled down his spine. Sabe, the meticulous professional, never made mistakes like that. He was unarmed, cut off from his one secure line of communication.

Anton bent and picked it up. The screen was black, inert. He had no password, no way to access it. But as his fingers brushed against the cold plastic, the device vibrated once, and the screen lit up. A new message. The lock screen preview showed the first few words.

> Don’t be a fool, Sabe. You know what they’ll do if they get their hands on him. He’s a liability. A pretty one, but still—

The preview text ended there.

A liability. A pretty one.

The words were a physical blow, knocking the air from his lungs. He. There was no question who Rico meant. He was a liability. A distraction. The very thing Sabe had feared he was.

His hands were trembling. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew it was a violation of a trust that was already paper-thin. But the need to know, to understand the shadow that had just called Sabe away, was a compulsion he couldn’t fight.

He stared at the phone, his mind working. Sabe was a creature of habit, for all his adaptability. The password wouldn’t be random. He thought of the things Sabe held close, the things that defined him outside the violence and the guilt. He thought of the way Sabe had once, off-handedly, mentioned the name of his first dog, a scruffy terrier he’d had as a boy, the only thing he’d loved without complication before his life went to hell.

With a feeling of profound self-loathing, Anton typed in the name: Buster.

The screen unlocked.

He felt like a voyeur, a thief in the temple of Sabe’s most private self. The messaging app was open. He saw the full thread with Rico.

Rico: The old place. One hour. Come alone. I have what you need. Not both of you.

Rico:The blueprints. Security schedules. Everything. But it’s hot. My neck is on the line.

Rico:Don’t be a fool, Sabe. You know what they’ll do if they get their hands on him. He’s a liability. A pretty one, but still a civilian. They’ll break him in five minutes and use him to break you. You can’t afford that kind of weakness. Not again.

Not again.

The words were a shard of ice in Anton’s heart. He was a repetition of a past failure. A new variable in an old, tragic equation.

He scrolled up, his heart hammering against his ribs. Past logistics, past coded phrases. And then he saw it. A message from weeks ago, just after Sabe had taken the job.

Rico: Rogers? You’re diving into that snake pit? After Bakhmar, I’d have thought you’d learned your lesson about getting close to principals.

Sabe:It’s a job.

Rico:Is it? Or is it a penance? Don’t confuse the two. Guilt makes you sloppy. And sloppy people get killed. Remember that.

Anton dropped the phone as if it had burned him. It clattered onto the polished wood floor. The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the frantic thudding of his own heart.

Penance. Sloppy. Weakness. Liability.

Rico’s words painted a devastating picture. Sabe wasn’t just protecting him out of duty, or even out of the burgeoning feeling they had almost acted upon. He was protecting him as an act of atonement for a past failure. Anton was given a second chance, a mission to be completed without the collateral damage of the last one. His feelings, his confession in the hangar, his raw need—all of it was just noise, a complication in Sabe’s quest for redemption.

The beautiful, fragile thing that had bloomed between them in the suite now felt like a lie, a byproduct of shared trauma and a soldier’s savior complex.

He walked back to the window, wrapping his arms around himself. The city of Geneva glittered below, a chessboard of power and secrets. He was a pawn, and he had just forgotten his place. He had thought his vulnerability was strength. He had thought his confession was courage.

But Rico’s shadow had fallen over them, and in its cold, brutal light, Anton saw the truth. He had a job. A penance. A liability.

And the most terrifying thought of all was that Sabe, in some deep, wounded part of himself, might believe it too.

He left the phone on the floor, a silent testament to his violation. When Sabe returned, he would know. The last, tenuous thread of trust between them would be severed. And as Anton stood in the silent, opulent suite, he realized that prospect was far more frightening than anything waiting for them at the Villa du Lac.

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