Part 4 — During the dance, a woman shielded me and told me that I was being targeted — within seconds, her face lost its color

That night, all the city’s lights seemed to go out at once.

“Do not touch my sister,” I said.

“The safe code.”

“First let me hear her voice.”

There was silence for several seconds. Then from far away I heard the frightened breathing of my sister, Nina.

“Luka, do not come!”

The call ended.

Elene took the phone from me.

“You cannot go alone.”

“I am not planning to go alone.”

We quickly checked the recordings from the cameras remaining in the surveillance room. Marcus had taken Nina out of the hotel, but he had not put her in his car. They went toward the old harbor, where my father’s abandoned warehouse stood.

I had known that warehouse since childhood.

There, my father first showed me the sea at night and told me that you cannot command the waves, but you can know when the storm is coming.

“Let us call the police,” Elene said.

“My head of security will get there before the police.”

“Then we have another way.”

She transferred the recording and the bank documents to a small memory device. Then she called one number.

“Lawyer Ira, I have sent you everything. If there is no call from me in ten minutes, send it to the prosecutor’s office.”

There was such calm in her voice that for the first time that night, fear moved slightly away from me.

The old harbor looked empty at one o’clock at night. Rain struck the steel roof. One car stood by the warehouse door, its rear window broken.

We went inside.

Nina was sitting on a chair, her hands tied, but she was not bleeding. Marcus stood behind her, with a gun.

“Put the weapon down, Luka.”

I slowly bent down and placed the weapon on the floor.

“Now let my sister go.”

“First the safe code.”

“The safe no longer exists.”

Marcus smiled.

“You were always proud. Your father was the same. That is why he died.”

I already knew these words from him, but for the first time I heard them as if a stranger were saying them. Elene turned on a small device. Marcus’s voice, recorded several hours earlier, rang out throughout the warehouse.

“Luka will reach the elevator. He will not come out alive.”

Marcus froze.

“What does this mean?” Nina asked quietly.

“Nothing,” he answered.

“That is your voice,” I said.

“A voice can be forged.”

Elene turned on a second recording. This time my father’s voice sounded.

“If Luka is hearing this, tell him the truth. Nina is my daughter, but I transferred the company’s shares to her because I knew they would blame Luka for my murder. I wanted at least one of my children to have the right to choose.”

Nina’s eyes filled with tears.

“Did Father know that he would die?”

“He knew that they would betray him,” Elene answered.

Marcus put the gun to Nina’s temple.

“Enough of this theater.”

Sirens sounded outside.

Marcus looked toward me.

“The police cannot prove anything.”

“They have already proved it,” I said.

The red light of a hidden camera blinked in the corner of the warehouse. Elene had turned it on back at the hotel. Now the entire conversation was being sent live to an investigator.

Marcus’s hand dropped.

At that moment Nina pushed the chair aside and fell onto the floor. Elene jumped forward, and I crashed into Marcus. The gun slid across the wet concrete.

Within a few seconds, police officers rushed in.

Marcus tried to escape.

The door was already locked.

His lawyer came in the morning, but after listening to the recordings, he said only one sentence:

“I can no longer defend you in this case.”

Marcus did not look toward me.

For the first time, he was left alone.

The following days became tangled in calls, interrogations, and documents. It emerged that Marcus had been supplying my father’s opponents with routes, contracts, and the family’s movement schedules for years. My father’s death had not been an accident. The brakes of his car had been deliberately damaged.

The hardest moment in court came when Marcus was made to hear his own voice.

The recording was turned on.

“Luka will reach the elevator. He will not come out alive.”

Silence fell over the courtroom.

Marcus raised his head.

“I would not say that.”

The judge answered calmly:

“But you did say it.”

Marcus heard his words for the first time the way others heard them. His face fell apart. I could no longer bear watching him.

After the trial, I returned alone to the old harbor warehouse.

There I found only dust, rusty chains, and the empty chair on which Nina had sat that night. On the floor I noticed a small copper medallion. I wanted to return it to Elene, but she shook her head.

“Now it belongs to you.”

“Why?”

“Because you, too, finally understood when the storm was coming.”

Three months passed.

Nina became the head of the company, but every day at nine in the morning she came to me at the small bakery we opened on Harbor Street. She checked the accounting reports, while I brewed coffee.

In the first weeks, it was difficult for both of us to remain silent.

One morning Nina put a sheet of paper on the table. A ship drawn childishly was on it. A large sun was drawn above it, and two people stood below.

“This is us,” she told me.

“I know.”

“The sea is calm here.”

“This time we will be calm too.”

Elene came twice a week. She no longer wore an evening dress, no longer had blood on her arm, and no longer hid that in fact she no longer needed to stay with me.

One evening my phone rang again.

It was Marcus’s number.

For several seconds I looked at the screen.

Then I answered.

His voice was tired and hoarse.

“Luka, you can change your statement. Everything could end differently.”

“It has already ended.”

“Your father loved you too. I should not have destroyed the family.”

“You did not destroy the family, Marcus. You simply sold what had never been yours.”

“I need help.”

“I am no longer the person who will bear the consequences of your actions.”

I ended the call.

This time I felt no regret.

Only silence.

On the first snow of winter, I opened the bakery door early in the morning. The street was being covered in white. I attached Nina’s drawing beside the window, and Elene placed fresh coffee on the table.

The copper medallion hung around my neck. It had grown warm from my body, and the date engraved on the old ship was almost no longer visible.

It was snowing outside.

This time the storm was no longer coming.

I was already standing on the shore.