Chapter 7 – THE FALL FROM THE ROOF
Marcus shrieked in pain, his grip loosening just enough.
Leo broke free, stumbling forward.
“Run, Leo!” I screamed, sprinting across the roof.
Marcus recovered instantly, raising his gun toward my little brother’s back.
He didn’t get the chance to fire.
Jack moved with terrifying speed, launching himself across the tar paper. He tackled Marcus around the waist, driving them both toward the edge of the skyscraper.
The gun fired wildly into the night sky.
I grabbed Leo, pulling him behind a heavy air conditioning unit, shielding his small body with mine.
“Emily, I’m scared!” Leo sobbed into my shoulder.
“I’ve got you,” I cried, holding him tight.
Near the ledge, Jack and Marcus were locked in a brutal struggle. Marcus was desperate, striking Jack across the jaw with the butt of his pistol. Jack staggered, blood pouring from his lip, but he didn’t go down.
With a roar of pure, protective fury, Jack twisted Marcus’s arm, forcing the gun from his hand.
It skittered over the edge, falling fifty stories to the street below.
Marcus threw a desperate punch, but Jack caught his fist, twisted, and drove his knee into Marcus’s chest.
Marcus stumbled backward, his heels hitting the short concrete parapet. He lost his balance, his arms windmilling in the cold wind.
Jack reached out, grabbing Marcus by the collar of his expensive suit.
Marcus dangled over the edge of the abyss, his eyes wide with terror, entirely at Jack’s mercy.
“Please, Jack!” Marcus begged, weeping openly. “I did it for the family! Silas made me!”
Jack stared down at the man who had betrayed his father, who had threatened a ten-year-old boy.
But Jack looked back at me, holding my brother. He saw the terror in my eyes.
Jack hauled Marcus back over the ledge, throwing him onto the roof.
“I’m not a monster, Marcus,” Jack said coldly. “The police are waiting in the lobby. You’re going to spend the rest of your life in a cage.”
He turned his back on Marcus and walked toward us.
But as Jack reached out his hand to help me up, Marcus pulled a hidden switchblade from his ankle.
With a scream of rage, Marcus lunged at Jack’s exposed back.
“Jack, behind you!” I shrieked.
I threw a heavy steel wrench—dropped by a maintenance worker—directly at Marcus’s head.
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