Chapter 91: Preparing for War

The stillness in Anton’s London penthouse was dense, a physical entity pressing against the floor-to-ceiling windows that usually offered a glittering, dominion-over-all view of the city. Tonight, the glass was an inky black mirror, reflecting a scene of quiet, focused desperation.

In the center of the living area, a low table had been cleared of its usual art books and architectural models. Now, it held a spread of cold, purposeful objects. Sabatine stood before it, a study that contained violence. The soft, charcoal-gray sweater he’d worn earlier was gone, replaced by a form-fitting, black tactical undershirt. Over it, he methodically secured a lightweight, polymer-mesh vest, not the bulky Kevlar of his military past, but something sleeker, designed for urban shadows rather than open battlefields. Each click of a buckle, each tug to adjust a strap, was precise, ritualistic.

Anton watched from the doorway of his study, a crystal tumbler of untouched whiskey in his hand. He saw the way Sabatine’s muscles moved under the dark material, the old scars—a pale knot on his shoulder blade, a slash along his ribs—standing out like a map of a history Anton was only beginning to decipher. This was not the man who had kissed him with a bruising tenderness just hours ago, nor the sharp-tongued investigator who’d deconstructed his security protocols with amused disdain. This was the ghost of ‘Stalker’, the operative, emerging from the deep, haunted waters of his past.

The air between them hummed with a tension that had nothing to do with the impending confrontation in Geneva. It was the friction of two worlds, two methodologies, colliding.

Sabatine picked up a matte-black communicator, checking its charge. “Evelyn’s last financial pivot routed through a shell corporation in Liechtenstein,” he said, his voice clinical, detached. “The digital footprint is a work of art. But the physical hand-off… that’s always the flaw. Marcus is too theatrical to just send a file. He’ll want to gloat. To have the chip, to hold it in his hand while he watches you squirm.”

“He always valued presentation over practicality,” Anton replied, his tone equally flat. He set the glass down with a soft clink on a side table and moved to a sleek, modernist cabinet disguised as a wall panel. He keyed in a biometric code. The door slid open with a whisper, revealing not the fine vintages a guest might expect, but a shallow vault lined in grey foam.

Nestled inside were items of a different kind of value. Forged passports. Blocks of untraceable currency. And a small, elegant device that looked like a platinum pen.

Anton lifted it out. It was cool and heavier than it appeared. He twisted the cap—a perfect, seamless motion—and the subtle, hidden lens at the tip activated with a nearly imperceptible violet gleam. A recorder. A transmitter. A weapon of its own kind, from his world of silk and secrets.

“He’ll have the place swept for signals,” Sabatine said without looking up, securing a thin, ceramic blade in a sheath at his ankle. “Anything active, anything corporate-issue, they’ll find.”

“This isn't a corporate-issue,” Anton said, a faint, hard edge of pride in his voice. “It was a gift from a Saudi prince who preferred his negotiations… memorialized. The housing is a platinum alloy that mimics ambient temperature. It broadcasts on a frequency that piggybacks on civilian satellite radio signals. It’s essentially invisible.”

Sabatine finally turned, his gaze sweeping over Anton in his custom, midnight-blue suit, over the platinum pen now being calmly slotted into the inner breast pocket. A flicker of something—frustration, fear—passed through his storm-grey eyes. “You plan to walk in there wired.”

“I plan to walk out with a confession,” Anton corrected, his jaw tight. “This is how it’s done. Not with a blade in the dark, but with evidence. With the truth that breaks empires in boardrooms, not in blood.”

“This isn’t a boardroom!” The words snapped out, sharp as a gunshot, shattering the clinical calm. Sabatine took a step forward, the tactical gear making him look broader, more dangerous. “This is a villa at the end of a mountain road, owned by a man who has nothing left to lose, guarded by people I trained, Anton. People like me. They won’t be looking for your pen. They’ll be looking for the exit wound. They’ll be measuring the drop from the cliff.”

The raw concern, veiled as professional assessment, hit Anton like a physical blow. He was used to fear—the cold, rational fear of market crashes and hostile takeovers. This was different. This was hot, personal, and it was mirrored in the tightness of his own chest. He walked toward Sabatine until only the table of gear lay between them.

“I know what Marcus is. I know what Evelyn has become. But I also know that if we go in there as you are…” Anton gestured at the vest, the tools of violent intervention. “…then we are playing their game. We become criminals in a firefight. I need him exposed. I need the world to see the rot, so when I cut it out, the company survives.”

Sabatine’s hands gripped the edge of the table, knuckles white. “Your company. Always the company.”

“Not just the company!” Anton’s control slipped, his voice rising. “You. If this goes loud and messy, the first thing they’ll do is throw every piece of your past at the wall. ‘Butcher of Belgrade’ won’t just be Marcus’s taunt; it’ll be an Interpol headline. A clean, recorded confession from him is your shield as much as my revenge.”

They stared at each other across the arsenal, the chasm of their experiences yawning wide. Sabatine saw the logic, the brilliant, strategic mind already ten moves ahead on the legal and corporate board. But he also saw the naive, terrifying gamble of it. Truth was a weak god in a gunfight.

He pushed off the table and closed the final distance, standing so close Anton could see the flecks of silver in his eyes, smell the faint, clean scent of gun oil on his skin. “You are not a soldier,” Sabatine said, the words low, each one weighted. “You are not a spy. Your weapons are contracts and whispers. Out there, in that villa, they are nothing. Worse than nothing. They are a distraction. They will get you killed.”

He reached out, not to the pen in Anton’s pocket, but to his shoulders, his grip firm, almost painful. “So when we are through that door, you will let me lead. You will stay in the angles I create for you. You will not be a hero. Your only job is to survive long enough to get your damn confession.” His voice dropped to a rough, urgent whisper. “Stay behind me.”

The command hung in the air, an echo of a hundred missions, a lifetime of being the shield, the sacrifice. It was born from care, from a duty that had become hopelessly entangled with something far deeper. But to Anton, it was also a cage. It was the echo of every bodyguard, every security directive that had walled him off from the world. It was the final, unacceptable barrier between him and the man he loved.

A slow, dangerous calm settled over Anton. He didn’t shrug off the grip. He leaned into it, his own gaze turning arctic, the authority of a man who commanded billions settling around him like a mantle.

“No.”

The single syllable was quiet, absolute.

Sabatine blinked, thrown. “Anton—”

“You heard me.” Anton’s voice was steel now, the kind used in skyscrapers and bridges. “You have spent your life taking bullets for principles, for orders, for strangers. You have defined yourself by what stands in front of you.” He brought a hand up, covering Sabatine’s where it gripped his shoulder. “I have spent my life building something that stands behind me. An empire. A legacy. It was a fortress, and it was empty.”

He took a breath, the admission costly. “You are not part of what stands behind me, Sabatine. You are beside me. Or you are nowhere.” His thumb stroked over Sabatine’s knuckles, a shocking contrast to the hardness in his eyes. “So I will not ‘stay behind you’. I will use your angles. I will heed your warnings. I will rely on your skill as you will rely on my strategy. But we walk through that door together. Not as a bodyguard and his principal. Not as a billionaire and his hired blade.”

He paused, letting the words sink into the charged space between them. “We go as partners. Or we do not go at all.”

Sabatine stared at him, the operative’s calculations warring with the man’s awe. He was asking for a parity that defied every protocol, every instinct that screamed protect, isolate, sacrifice. He was demanding a shared vulnerability that was more terrifying than any sniper’s sight.

The silence stretched, filled only with the distant hum of the city thirty stories below. Slowly, Sabatine’s grip relaxed. The fierce, protective anger in his eyes didn’t fade, but it melded with a dawning, profound respect. He gave one slow, curt nod.

“Alright.” The word was a concession, and a promise. “Together.” Then, the ghost of his old smirk touched his lips. “But if you get shot because you were adjusting your pocket square for the camera, I will never forgive you.”

A tight, genuine smile broke through Anton’s stern expression. “Noted.”

He stepped back, the moment of raw tension evolving into a focused calm. He finished his preparations, sliding the pen into place, checking his own, simpler earpiece that would link to Sabatine’s comms.

Sabatine returned to his task, but the energy had shifted. The ritual was no longer one of solitary descent into a dark role. It was synchronization. He handed Anton a small, flat device. “Subdermal tracker. Press it just below the clavicle. If we get separated… if the signal goes dark… It has a ninety-six-hour battery. It’s my line to you.”

Anton took it without hesitation, pressing it to his skin as instructed, wincing only slightly at the pinch. It was an act of supreme trust, allowing himself to be tagged, to be made findable.

Finally, Sabatine shrugged on a tailored, black wool overcoat that concealed the vest and the subtle tools of his trade. He looked, suddenly, like a devastatingly sharp businessman, perhaps a venture capitalist with a dangerous edge. Anton did the same, his own coat a masterpiece of austere tailoring.

They stood before the elevator, two figures of shadow and sophistication, ready to step into a gilded trap. The city’s lights sprawled beneath them, a kingdom Anton was risking everything to save.

Sabatine looked at him, a final, searching glance. “Remember,” he said, the command softened. “The confession is the goal. But the only objective that matters is walking back into this elevator tonight. Both of us.”

Anton met his gaze, the weight of their shared fear, their shared resolve, settling into something solid. “We will.”

The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, a portal from their fragile, newfound alliance into the waiting darkness. Sabatine entered first, his body instinctively positioning to cover the opening. Anton followed, not behind him, but shoulder-to-shoulder.

As the doors closed, sealing them in the descending capsule, Anton’s hand found Sabatine’s. A brief, fierce squeeze in the dim light. A pact written not in blood or contracts, but in the silent, desperate language of a love forged in fire, now being tempered in the cold shadow of war.

The descent had begun.

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