Chapter 95: The Poisoned Chalice

The world had narrowed to the bitter taste of betrayal and the sterile white gleam of the villa’s west wing study. Marcus’s theatrical dining room felt a lifetime away. Here, in a space that smelled of lemony polish and old paper, the velvet gloves were off.

Anton stood before a wall of glass overlooking the now-dark valley, his reflection a ghost over the abyss. The shock of Sabatine’s revelation—the ghost in the code, the buried sin—had been subsumed by a colder, more familiar emotion: tactical fury. The pieces were still falling, but they were no longer falling on him. He was catching them, analyzing their weight and their sharp edges.

Sabatine had been escorted, not gently, to a nearby sitting room under the watch of one of Marcus’s humorless security men. A gilded cage, for now. Anton had demanded it, a performance of distrust that felt like swallowing glass. “I need to speak to my CFO. Alone.” The look in Sabatine’s eyes as he was led away—a mixture of understanding and a profound, weary hurt—would haunt Anton longer than any of Marcus’s taunts.

The door clicked open. He didn’t turn. He knew the rhythm of her steps, the faint, expensive scent of her perfume—Fracas, bold and floral. Once, it had signalled unwavering competence. Now it was the smell of the knife in his back.

“You always did have the best views, Anton,” Evelyn Voss said, her voice smooth as aged brandy. She came to stand beside him, not too close, a fellow executive admiring the portfolio. “Though this one feels a little… terminal.”

He finally turned his head. She had shed the silver dinner dress for a tailored ivory trouser suit, power dressing even at the end of the world. Her face was composed, but her eyes held a feverish glitter. This was her moment, the culmination of a thousand patient calculations.

“Was it the money, Evelyn?” he asked, his tone conversational, almost bored. “Or was it just the thrill of being smarter than the man who signed your checks?”

She smiled, a thin, professional curve of her lips. “The money was always excellent. But you’re right. It was a chess game. You built a beautiful, intricate machine, Anton. But you never realized the most critical component was the one you took for granted. The one that balanced the books, smoothed the edges, whispered in the right ears. You saw a tool. I saw a fulcrum.”

“And with the right leverage, you decided to move the world.” He shifted, facing her fully. “Selling Cerberus to R&D, funneling it through Marcus’s contacts. Letting it become the heart of Aegis. Then orchestrating the theft, framing Sabatine… it’s a lot of moving parts. Prone to error.”

“Only if you lack discipline.” She moved to a sideboard where a cut-crystal decanter of amber liquid sat. She poured two glasses, brought one to him. He didn’t take it. She shrugged, sipped from the other. “Marcus provided the passion, the familial access. I provided the precision. Our mutual friend, Mr. Silas… provided the endgame. A quiet assimilation of a weakened Rogers Industries into his portfolio. Neat, clean, profitable.”

“And Sabatine? Where does he fit in your neat, clean equation?”

Her eyes lit up. This was the pivot she’d been waiting for. “The tragic variable. The unforeseen catalyst. Or… the golden opportunity.” She set her glass down with a soft click. “His presence complicated things, yes. But it also presented a unique form of leverage. On you.”

Anton went very still. “Go on.”

“You have feelings for him.” She said it as a clinical fact, dissecting a balance sheet. “It’s your one true vulnerability. A glaring weakness in otherwise impeccable armor. Marcus wanted to use it to torment you. I see a more efficient path.”

She walked to the sleek steel desk, opened a drawer, and withdrew a single sheet of heavy, watermarked paper. She slid it across the surface toward him. “This is a transfer of controlling interest in Rogers Industries to a holding company I control. Sign it. Tonight. Public announcement in the morning citing personal reasons, a desire to pursue other ventures. You walk away with a generous, pre-negotiated severance. Your reputation, aside from a lapse in romantic judgment, remains intact.”

Anton didn’t look at the paper. “And in return?”

“In return,” she said, leaning forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “I clear Sabatine’s name. The evidence implicating him in the theft vanishes. The ‘Cerberus’ files are permanently scrubbed. I even have a narrative prepared: a rogue element within intelligence, long since dealt with, sold the code. Sabatine Stalker is revealed as a whistleblower, a hero who uncovered the corruption at the heart of his own tragic past and bravely brought it to light. He’s not the Butcher or the thief. He’s the victim who fought back. With the right media spin, he could be a martyr. You could give him that.”

The offer hung in the air, sleek and poisonous. It was a masterpiece of manipulation, targeting the one thing he wanted more than his empire: Sabatine’s salvation. It acknowledged his love not to honour it, but to weaponize it.

For a fleeting second, Anton let himself imagine it. Walking away from the crushing weight of the legacy. Seeing the hunted shadow lift from Sabatine’s eyes, replaced by something like peace. A life, perhaps together, unburdened by the ghosts of code and corpses.

Then his mind, trained to find the flaw in every contract, the trap in every term, dissected it.

He saw the lie instantly.

It wasn’t in her words, but in their architecture. The offer was too clean, too complete. It assumed a level of control over narratives and enemies that even she didn’t possess.

He took a step toward the desk, finally picking up the paper. He scanned the dense legalese, not reading the terms, but feeling its intent. A mockery.

“You can’t clear his name,” Anton stated, his voice flat and certain. He looked up, pinning her with a gaze that had made seasoned board members flinch. “Because you don’t control the narrative. Your silent partner, Silas, does. And men like him don’t create martyrs. They create loose ends.”

A flicker in her eye. A tiny, almost imperceptible tightening at the corner of her mouth.

He pressed on. “Even if you wanted to, the ‘Cerberus’ story is a chain that leads back to you. To your procurement, your cover-ups. To scrub Sabatine clean, you’d have to expose your own role. You’d never do that. This…” he tossed the paper back onto the desk, “…is a stalling tactic. You get my signature, you get immediate, legal control of my company. And then what? You deliver Sabatine to Silas as a bonus? A conveniently silenced witness who ‘fled justice’? Or do you just let Marcus’s ‘leaked evidence’ proceed on schedule, making me both a fool and a traitor who signed his empire away for a lie?”

Evelyn’s composure cracked, just a hairline fracture. The polished mask slipped, revealing the frantic, cornered animal beneath. “You’re paranoid.”

“I’m alive,” he corrected. “And I know you, Evelyn. You’re offering me a fantasy because reality has soured. Something’s gone wrong with Silas’s plan. Marcus is a liability. Sabatine is a variable you didn’t account for. And I…” he allowed a cold, ruthless smile, “…am not breaking. This offer isn’t a deal. It’s a confession of desperation.”

She stared at him, the feverish glitter in her eyes hardening into something like hatred. The professional respect was gone, burned away by the raw truth he’d uttered.

“You love him enough to let him burn, then?” she spat, all pretense of camaraderie gone. “You’ll cling to your sinking empire and watch him be crucified? The man you love?” She hurled the word like an accusation.

Anton felt it land, a direct hit to the raw, unprotected centre of him. But he didn’t flinch. The vulnerability was real, but it was no longer a weakness she could leverage. It was the core of his new strength.

“I love him enough to know that a lie won’t save him,” Anton said, his voice low and fierce. “I love him enough to fight the real enemy, not sign a pretty treaty with the devil who holds his leash. You’re offering me a gilded cage for him. I’m going to burn the whole damn menagerie down.”

He saw the moment she realized the game had changed. He wasn’t the betrayed CEO trying to salvage assets. He was something else—a man with nothing left to lose but the one thing that mattered, and therefore more dangerous than any boardroom foe.

The door to the study burst open. Marcus stood there, his face flushed, the earlier veneer of hostliness completely gone. “Enough whispering,” he snarled. “The clock is ticking. Our friend is getting impatient.” He glared at Anton. “Have you chosen, brother? Your company, or your pet ghost?”

Anton looked from Marcus’s manic face to Evelyn’s stony, furious one. He straightened his cuffs, a gesture of pure, defiant habit.

“I choose,” Anton said, “neither.”

He walked past them both, toward the door, his stride certain. The poisoned chalice sat untouched on the steel desk. The real battle wasn’t in this room of lies. It was down the hall, in a gilded sitting room, with a wounded man who was both the problem and the only solution. He had to get to Sabatine. They had to face the truth, together, before Silas’s clock ran out.

Evelyn’s voice, cold and final, followed him out. “You’re choosing a corpse, Anton. I hope you enjoy the company.”

He didn’t look back. The die was cast. The game was no longer Evelyn’s. It was his. And he was playing for keeps.

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