Chapter 8 - THE FALL BETWEEN FLOORS
Grace fell less than two feet before Ethan caught the blanket.
His chest struck the edge of the maintenance platform.
Pain exploded through his ribs.
One hand gripped the steel frame.
The other held his daughter against his body.
Victoria dropped the folder and grabbed the shaft rail.
Michael pressed the control again.
The platform began retracting.
“He will kill all of us,” Ethan shouted.
Detective Quinn stepped from behind the curtain.
“Drop the control.”
Michael aimed a gun.
Rosa threw a metal tool tray at him.
The tray struck his arm.
Quinn fired.
The bullet hit Michael’s shoulder.
The control box fell into the shaft.
The platform stopped halfway retracted.
Victoria hung above the elevator car.
Her pearl necklace had caught on a bolt.
The strand tightened around her throat.
“Ethan,” she gasped.
For one second, he looked at his mother.
The woman who had raised him.
Controlled him.
Humiliated his wife.
Stolen his daughter.
She reached toward him.
“Help me.”
Ethan shifted Grace into the crook of his left arm.
He extended his right hand.
Victoria stared at it.
Surprise crossed her face.
After everything, he was still trying to save her.
She reached.
Their fingers touched.
Then she looked toward the folder lying near his shoulder.
The guardianship document had not fallen.
Victoria grabbed it instead of his hand.
She pulled.
The sudden movement nearly dragged Ethan into the shaft.
Grace cried.
Ethan released Victoria.
Her necklace snapped.
Pearls scattered through the darkness.
Victoria dropped onto the roof of the elevator car below.
The impact echoed through the shaft.
She did not fall to the basement.
But the heavy crash silenced everyone.
Rosa crawled onto the platform.
She took Grace carefully.
The baby’s oxygen tube had slipped.
Rosa adjusted it with shaking hands.
“Breathe, little one.”
Grace released a weak cry.
Detective Quinn leaned into the shaft.
Victoria lay on the elevator roof.
Her leg was twisted beneath her.
She was conscious.
Her first words were not about her injury.
“Get the documents.”
Quinn stared down at her.
“You kidnapped a premature infant.”
“The papers protect the family.”
“No.”
Ethan crawled away from the edge.
“They protect you.”
Firefighters arrived with harnesses.
They lifted Victoria from the elevator roof.
She screamed when they moved her leg.
Michael Dane was arrested.
The folder was collected as evidence.
Grace was rushed back to the neonatal unit.
Ethan followed until a nurse stopped him outside the sterile doors.
Rosa placed one hand on his shoulder.
“She is alive.”
“My mother almost killed her.”
“She failed.”
Ethan looked toward the operating wing.
“What about Olivia?”
A surgeon approached.
The bleeding had been controlled.
Olivia remained unconscious, but she was stable.
Ethan sat down against the wall.
For the first time since the terrace, he allowed himself to break.
Rosa sat beside him.
The billionaire heir and the housekeeper remained on the hospital floor beneath the red emergency lights.
Neither spoke.
They listened to the faint alarms behind the neonatal doors.
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Grace Hartwell had survived her first hour of life.
She had already cost Victoria an empire.
