Because of the uniform with my family emblem, Emma was almost killed, but Artem stopped smiling when he watched the video

That night, blood was written on the marble floor of my house, while the emblem belonging to my family name was embroidered on her torn uniform.

Marko brought her inside at fifteen minutes past midnight. Outside, the rain struck the tall windows as if someone were breaking not a door, but the whole house. Emma’s head hung unconscious on Marko’s shoulder. Blood ran from the corner of her lip and fell in drops onto the silver coat of arms embroidered on the chest of her uniform.

The smell of wet wool, medicine, and candle wax hung in the corridor. Near the stairs my sister Lucia had hung an old towel, with a small copper key tied to its middle. She used to say that something human should still be visible in this house. That night I noticed for the first time that my family’s coat of arms was engraved on the key.

“She is still breathing,” Marko said. “But barely.”

The doctor knelt on the floor and searched for Emma’s pulse. I knelt beside him. This woman had worked in my house for fourteen months, but I knew almost nothing about her. She came early in the morning, cleaned the floors, polished the furniture, arranged the towels into exactly identical stacks, and silently disappeared into the service corridor whenever guests arrived.

She had never once said that she was tired.

This silence troubled me.

“Emma, can you hear me?” I asked.

Her swollen eyelids barely opened.

“Who attacked you?”

She tried to breathe, but pain contorted her face.

“He had… a snake tattoo.”

Marko raised his head.

“On his wrist?”

Emma tensed slightly and nodded.

“Did he say a name?” I asked.

Her cracked lips barely formed the word:

“Kolesnik.”

Silence fell over the hall. Only the sound of rain could be heard, and the glass medicine vials touched one another inside the doctor’s open bag.

“This was not a robbery,” Marko said. “They knew whom she worked for.”

I went to the window. Kyiv’s wet streets glittered below. They had taken Emma’s wallet and phone, but money had not been the main reason. Two men had been waiting four blocks away. She gave them the money immediately. Then one of them saw the emblem on her uniform and asked whether she worked for Kovalenko.

They were sending me a message.

And the message had been written in blood.

“Lock the house,” I told Marko. “Let no one come in and no one leave.”

“Dominik, are we calling the police?” Lucia asked.

“First we will take her to the hospital urgently.”

Emma moved her fingers. I carefully took her hand.

“Because of me… don’t make it more complicated.”

This woman, whose face could barely be recognized, was still thinking about not becoming a burden to someone else.

“Now everything is because of you, Emma,” I said calmly. “And no one can change that.”

At that moment my phone came to life. It was an unknown number. A photograph of Emma appeared on the screen: she was lying in the rain beside a brick wall. Beneath it was one sentence: “Next time we will leave her where you cannot find her.”

Marko looked over my shoulder.

“Give me the order.”

“No.”

“No?”

“They want me to get angry. They want this to look not like an attack, but like a war between families.”

I forwarded the picture to the lawyer, and then to a man who could obtain city camera recordings faster than anyone else. Eight minutes later the video arrived. An alley. Rain. Two attackers. A car stopped at the edge of the street.

Marko enlarged the image and suddenly fell silent.

“That car is parked in our garage.”

“Mine?”

“No.”

He showed me the number.

It was Artem’s car—my cousin’s, who had managed security matters at my company for the last six months.

Lucia’s face went pale.

“Dominik, Artem was here this evening.”

The ambulance siren stopped at the gate. I was looking at the screen, and for the first time I felt that the enemy was not standing only in the street.

Then Emma opened her eyes again.

“The bag…” she whispered.

“What bag?”

Marko brought the wet bag. Inside, beneath a changed shirt, there was a small recorder.

Emma spoke so weakly, as though she were buying each word with blood.

“When I saw the car… I turned it on.”

I pressed the recorder’s button. First the sound of rain was heard. Then a man’s calm voice.

“Hit her carefully. I need her alive. Dominik must receive a message.”

Lucia covered her mouth with her hand.

Everyone recognized the voice.

Marko looked toward me, and I held my finger on the next sound after the recording until it played to the end…

I held the recorder in my hand, but no one in the room was breathing. Artem’s voice sounded again on the recording.

“Do not damage the emblem. He must know exactly whom they touched.”

“You cannot mistake that voice,” Marko said.

“Artem was here,” Lucia added quietly.

The ambulance workers placed Emma on a stretcher. She did not let go of my hand.

“Trust… no one,” she whispered.

“You think only about recovering now.”

On the way to the hospital, the lawyer called me. He said Artem had already requested the right to temporarily manage the company and had filed a statement against me, as if the attack had been arranged on my orders.

At that same moment the police brought a search warrant for the house.

Artem was also standing at the gate. There was concern on his face, but his eyes were too calm.

“Dominik, someone set all this up against me,” he said.

I raised the recorder.

“Then let us listen to it together in court.”

His jaw tightened.

“The recording means nothing here.”

“You have not heard it to the end yet.”

I was searching for an additional file when an unknown message arrived on my phone. It contained only one photograph: a hospital corridor where Emma was being carried on a stretcher.

Beneath the photograph it said: “If you play the recording, the next victim will be from your family…”

That same night, at two in the morning, we were sitting in a small conference room at the hospital. Drops of rain ran down the windows, while Emma’s recorder, my phone, and lawyer Elena’s open folder lay on the table. Emma had not yet come out of surgery. Lucia stood in the corridor and checked the time every few minutes.

Artem entered the room together with the police officers. He no longer had the calm face with which he had spoken to me at the gate.

“I came myself to explain everything,” he said.

“Sit down,” I told him.

“Dominik, you do not know what is happening. Kolesnik’s people stole my car.”

Elena took one sheet of paper from the folder.

“No one stole the car. The cameras showed that you yourself took it out at nine forty-two in the evening.”

Artem looked toward me.

“That is not enough.”

“We also have a recording,” I said.

Marko turned on the device.

The sound of rain filled the room. Then Artem’s voice, clear and unhurried:

“Hit her carefully. I need her alive. Dominik must receive a message.”

The color drained from Artem’s face.

“It is fabricated.”

The recording continued.

“Do not damage the emblem. Let him think Kolesnik did it.”

The police officer pushed Artem’s hands behind his back.

“I did not say such a thing,” he shouted.

“You do not recognize your own voice?” Lucia asked from the doorway.

Artem looked toward her, and for the first time I saw that he was truly afraid.

Elena unfolded a second document. It was a financial audit for the last six months. Artem had transferred money from the company accounts to fictitious firms and then paid Kolesnik’s people. His plan was simple: first an attack on me had to be arranged, and then evidence had to be created against me so that the board of directors would strip me of my authority.

“You are a member of my family,” I said.

“You took everything from us!” he shouted. “After my father, all of this was supposed to be mine!”

“You lost everything yourself when you had Emma beaten.”

Artem lowered his head. The police officers led him out of the room.

At that moment the doctor entered.

“The operation went well. Her condition is serious, but stable.”

Lucia exhaled for the first time.

But I thought that the greatest danger was over.

Then Elena showed me a new message on her phone. It had been sent from the court’s electronic mail and had a document attached that Artem had not yet seen.

“Dominik, this is not a case about an attack,” she said. “It says that all the company’s assets will be frozen tomorrow morning and an investigation will begin against you.”

I read the last line on the screen: “The main witness in the case is already in our hands.”

I looked toward Emma’s room.

And at that moment I understood that someone still thought she could be silenced forever…