Chapter 19 - The Fall from Grace."It's over, Ethan," Victoria laughed bitterly, slowly raising her hands.
"If the police find you here, standing over us with a gun, you will go to prison right alongside us."
"I don't think so," Ethan replied smoothly.
Before Ethan could react, Victoria dropped her hands and pulled a customized derringer pistol hidden beneath the hem of her designer skirt.
She aimed directly at Ethan's chest and pulled the trigger.
Ethan threw himself to the floor as the small-caliber bullet grazed his ear, ringing his eardrums with a deafening crack.
From his position on the marble floor, Ethan returned fire.
His bullet struck Victoria squarely in the right wrist, shattering the bone and sending her small gun skittering across the floor.
Victoria collapsed, shrieking in agony, cradling her bleeding hand against her chest.
Alexander lunged for the dropped weapon, completely blinded by desperation.
Ethan did not hesitate.
He fired two rapid shots into Alexander's kneecaps, dropping the crime lord instantly to the floor in a screaming heap.
"You are going to spend the rest of your miserable lives in a federal supermax facility," Ethan said, rising to his feet.
The stairwell doors burst open, and heavily armed tactical officers flooded the hallway, shouting commands.
"Drop the weapon!" the lead officer screamed, leveling an assault rifle at the penthouse doorway.
Ethan looked at Victoria one last time, offering her a chilling, victorious smile.
He turned and sprinted toward the massive floor-to-ceiling glass window overlooking the city.
Without slowing down, Ethan used his good shoulder to smash through the reinforced glass in a shower of brilliant shards.
Victoria screamed as Ethan Caldwell plummeted into the dark, rainy abyss of the New York skyline.
The wind roared in Ethan's ears as he fell, the city lights blurring into streaks of neon color.
Three seconds into the freefall, he pulled the deployment cord on the low-altitude BASE jumping parachute he had stripped from Marcus’s tactical gear.
The black silk canopy erupted into the night sky with a violent jerk, arresting his fall perfectly.
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He sailed silently over the heads of the police barricades, steering the parachute toward an abandoned rooftop in the neighboring district.
He had won.
