Chapter 1 - The Call at 11:47 P.M.
The second Emily Vale pressed the phone to her ear, her hand began to shake.
“Emily... don’t turn around.”
The man’s voice on the other end was barely a whisper, but it was enough to make the muscles between her shoulders lock.
Emily sat frozen in a leather chair inside the forty-second-floor executive office of Moretti Holdings.
Her pale pink blouse was wrinkled after sixteen hours of work.
Her employee badge still hung from the lanyard around her neck.
On the desk in front of her was a black file she had never been authorized to see.
And directly behind her stood Victor Moretti.
Tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in a black suit that looked as if it had never known a wrinkle, Victor planted one hand on the desk and leaned down until Emily could feel the warmth of his breath near her temple.
Two massive men stood behind him, silent as statues.
No one was blocking the door.
That was worse.
It meant Victor did not believe she could leave.
He glanced at the phone in her hand.
“Who’s calling?”
Emily swallowed.
“My mother.”
Victor tilted his head.
He did not smile.
“You don’t have a mother.”
Emily’s heart missed a beat.
She had never told him that.
The voice on the phone continued.
“The man standing beside you knows who I am.”
Emily tightened her grip on the phone.
“Who are you?”
Victor’s eyes immediately locked onto hers.
Something in the room changed.
The caller went silent for two seconds.
Then he said, “Your brother.”
Emily nearly dropped the phone.
“My brother died eight years ago.”
“I know that’s what they told you.”
Victor held out his hand.
“Give me the phone.”
Emily pressed herself deeper into the chair.
“No.”
One of the guards took a step forward.
Victor lifted one finger.
The guard stopped.
Victor kept his eyes on Emily.
“Listen to me very carefully. If the man on that phone says his name is Daniel, hang up immediately.”
Emily’s throat tightened.
She had never said Daniel’s name.
“How do you know?”
For the first time since she entered the office, Victor’s calm expression cracked.
Only for a second.
But Emily saw it.
Fear.
Victor Moretti, the man board members whispered about after meetings and competitors refused to cross in public, was afraid of whoever was calling her.
Daniel’s voice came through again.
“Emily, there’s a black file on the desk in front of you.”
She looked down.
There was.
“The last page.”
Emily pulled the folder toward herself.
Victor grabbed her wrist.
“Don’t open it.”
His fingers were firm but not crushing.
That detail bothered her more than force would have.
She looked up at him.
“Why?”
“Because once you read that page, everything changes.”
“For who?”
Victor said nothing.
Emily ripped her hand free and turned the pages.
Contracts.
Bank accounts.
Companies she had never heard of.
A list of secret payments marked with initials instead of names.
Then she reached the final page.
Emily stopped breathing.
It was a photograph.
She was eight years old, standing in front of the little white house where she remembered learning to ride a bicycle.
Her mother, Sarah, stood on the left.
Her father, Elias, stood on the right.
Daniel, fourteen, was half visible near the porch.
And behind them stood Victor.
Much younger.
But unmistakably Victor.
Emily slowly lifted her eyes.
“You knew my family.”
Victor did not answer.
Daniel whispered through the phone.
“Don’t ask him how he knew our family.”
Emily gripped the photograph.
“Then what am I supposed to ask?”
A heavy breath came through the speaker.
“Ask him who ordered our father to be killed.”
Victor snatched the phone out of her hand.
Emily shot to her feet.
“What?”
Victor pressed the phone to his ear.
“Daniel.”
There was no uncertainty in his voice.
A quiet laugh came from the other end.
“Long time no see, Victor.”
The two guards exchanged a look.
One locked the office door.
The other pulled out his phone.
“We’ve been compromised.”
Emily stared at all three men.
“What the hell is going on?”
Victor did not answer.
He turned toward the enormous windows behind his desk.
The city glittered far below, all glass and cold white light.
Then every light on the forty-second floor went out.
The office fell into darkness.
The electronic lock clicked.
Click.
The sound was clean and mechanical.
Emily’s stomach twisted.
A voice came through the building intercom.
It was not Daniel.
It was a woman.
“Victor Moretti.”
Emily went completely still.
She knew that voice.
She had listened to it in old home videos until the tapes wore thin.
“Mom?”
The woman who had supposedly been dead for seventeen years continued.
“Don’t let my daughter find out who you really are.”
Victor slowly turned toward Emily.
For the first time, the most dangerous man in the room looked like he was the one trapped.
Then someone began unlocking the office door from the hallway.
Not with a card.
With a key.
Metal scraped inside the cylinder.
Victor moved fast.
He shoved the phone into his pocket, caught Emily by the elbow, and pulled her behind the massive desk.
“Get down.”
“I’m not getting down until you tell me why my dead mother is on your intercom.”
“Emily.”
His voice changed on her name.
No command.
No threat.
Something almost like panic.
The first lock released.
Click.
One guard drew a compact pistol and aimed at the door.
The other killed the glow on his phone and moved toward the window.
Emily’s breathing came too fast.
She could smell leather, dust, and the bitter coffee she had abandoned hours earlier.
Under the desk, her shoe struck something metal.
A small steel latch was mounted beneath Victor’s side of the desk.
She looked at him.
He saw where she was looking.
“Don’t touch that.”
Emily almost laughed.
In the last three minutes, everyone had told her what not to do.
Don’t turn around.
Don’t open the file.
Don’t ask how Victor knew her family.
Don’t touch the latch.
Her entire life suddenly felt like a room built out of instructions.
So she pulled the latch.
A hidden compartment snapped open.
Inside was a second photograph, older than the first.
Sarah stood outside a hospital, holding a newborn wrapped in a yellow blanket.
Victor stood beside her.
On the back, written in blue ink, were four words.
KEEP EMILY FROM CARLO.
Emily looked up.
“Who is Carlo?”
Victor’s face hardened.
The office door swung inward.
A woman stepped through the darkness.
She wore a gray maintenance uniform, carried no weapon, and had Sarah Vale’s face.
Older.
Thinner.
Alive.
Emily’s knees nearly gave out.
The woman looked at Victor, not at her daughter.
Then she said, “You had one job.”
May you like
Behind Emily, the electronic lock clicked again.
And this time, every elevator on the forty-second floor started moving upward.
