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

At the moment when an unfamiliar woman placed her hand on my chest, all the doors of the hall locked simultaneously, and I realized that this was not only an attack.

“Put your hand around my waist and smile,” she told me.

In the marble hall of a New York hotel, around two hundred wealthy guests were drinking champagne. The crystals hanging from the chandeliers glittered as if the world outside did not concern these people at all. But I knew that every eye was fixed on me.

For some, the surname Moretti meant fear; for others, money; and for others, power. For me, it was simply the heavy burden left by my father.

The woman pressed her fingers hard into my shoulder.

“Mr. Moretti,” my head of security, Marcus Vale, said tensely.

“Dance as if you love me,” she told me quietly without changing her smile. “Someone is aiming at you.”

There was no fear in her voice. Only irritation.

“What are you saying?”

“Do not look toward the windows.”

But I had already seen it. A red dot was slowly moving across my shirt. From my stomach toward my chest. Then toward my throat.

The woman turned me around to the rhythm of the music.

“Now, Mr. Moretti.”

The orchestra was playing a waltz. I placed one hand in hers and put the other around her waist.

“I do not take orders well.”

“You will practice while staying alive.”

We began to turn. The red dot flashed past my cheek.

“Again,” she told me.

“You dance terribly.”

“I am trying to make it harder for you to shoot me.”

For a moment, a smile flickered in her gray eyes.

Then the window exploded.

A scream erupted in the hall. A table overturned, glasses shattered on the floor, and the woman grabbed me by the neck so that we could pull back behind a marble column. A shard of glass struck my arm. Hot blood ran toward my wrist.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“At this moment, the person because of whom you still have a pulse.”

The second shot shook the ceiling.

“Do not take out your weapon,” she grabbed my wrist.

“You are holding me rather freely.”

“And you are thinking about death rather freely.”

The security staff began leading the guests toward the private elevators. Then the woman looked across the hall. Several men dressed in hotel uniforms were coming against the flow of people. They were not running. They were searching.

“The shot was only the first part,” she told me.

I understood what she meant. Panic was taking people to the same exit. And my people were going straight into a trap.

“This way,” the woman extended her hand to me.

“Why should I trust you?”

“You have three seconds to decide whether your pride is more valuable than a funeral.”

“Marcus!” I shouted. “Look after my sister. Do not follow me.”

“Sir, this is not reasonable!”

“That is an order.”

We rushed into the kitchen. The stoves hissed quietly, while trays of desserts lay untouched. The woman took off her high-heeled shoes.

“Now you are taking off your shoes?”

“I prefer surviving barefoot to dying elegantly.”

She pulled a small communication device from the fold of her dress. With a black hairpin, she touched the locked mechanism of the service door.

“You are not hotel security.”

“No.”

“Do you work in government service?”

“If I had patience, perhaps.”

A banging on a door sounded in the distance.

We rushed into the freight elevator. The door closed, and for the first time I was able to look at her properly. Her dress was torn at the knee, a thin line of blood ran down her arm, but only irritation was written on her face.

“Name,” I said.

“No.”

“That was not a request.”

She raised her chin and took a small copper medallion from her pocket. An unfamiliar ship and one date were engraved on its surface. Just then the elevator stopped, heavy footsteps approached from outside, and the woman placed the medallion in my hand…

The medallion was cold, but in my hand it seemed to beat alive.

“Where did you find this?” I asked.

“On your family’s ship.”

“There should not be so many secrets on my ship.”

“That is exactly why they are shooting at you.”

The elevator door trembled. The woman quickly whispered to me:

“When it opens, run left. Whoever enters does not intend to kill you. They want to take you somewhere.”

“What is your name?”

“Elene.”

She had told me her name for the first time.

The door opened. Two men attacked us, but Elene drove her elbow into one’s throat and her knee into the other’s stomach. I slammed a third against the wall and pulled a small listening device from his ear.

“These people are from my security,” I said.

“No. Someone in your security works for them.”

We went out into the hotel’s underground passage. It was raining outside. A black car was waiting for us, but Elene did not even look toward it.

“Do not get into that car.”

“Why?”

She pointed to a small piece of paper stuck to the window. My name was written on it, and underneath it: “Transfer completed.”

My stomach tightened.

Elene held out a phone to me.

“Call that number.”

“Who?”

“The person who was informed of your father’s death twelve years ago.”

She dialed the number. The call rang only once.

Then Elene listened, and her face changed.

“What happened?”

She slowly lowered the phone.

“It was your father’s voice…”

Elene’s words were almost lost in the noise of the rain, but I still heard them clearly.

“My father died twelve years ago.”

“I know.”

“Then how did you hear his voice?”

Elene led me to a concrete column in the underground parking lot. A small metal door was hidden there. She pressed the medallion against the lock, and the door opened. Inside was an old surveillance room, where monitors and recording devices stood under the dust.

“This hotel was built by your family’s company,” she told me. “Your father secretly met people here. Before his death, he left me one recording and told me to open it only when an attack against you began.”

“You knew my father?”

“I was in his security.”

“You are the woman my father had in his security?”

“I was twenty-two then, and no one in your family believed that a woman noticed danger.”

She turned on the old device. My father appeared on the screen. He was tired, with a bloodstain on his shirt, but his voice sounded firm.

“Luka, if you are seeing this, it means that after me they have targeted you too. Do not trust Marcus Vale. He has been serving my killers for eleven years.”

The air froze.

“This is fabricated,” I said.

Elene turned on another recording. Marcus appeared near the back exit of the same hotel. He was handing a folder to an unfamiliar man and saying:

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

Only the sound of my own breathing could be heard in my ears.

I picked up the phone and called Marcus.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I am returning home.”

Elene stopped me with her eyes.

“Good,” Marcus answered. “Do not worry about your sister’s safety. I am already going to her.”

I ended the call.

“My sister is with him,” I said.

“Then we have no time left.”

Elene took bank documents from her bag. They stated that the controlling stake in the Moretti maritime company was not in my name. It had secretly been transferred to a person whose existence I had never known about.

“To whom?” I asked.

Elene handed me the last sheet.

“To your sister.”

My phone rang again. Marcus’s number was on the screen, but the voice I heard next was not my sister’s.

“Luka,” an unfamiliar man said, “if you want your sister to remain alive, you must open your father’s safe today…”