Free Gangsters with Guns Episode #3 by D. B. Shuster

the counter.”
    “Good thinking,” Vlad said.
    “Some good it did.” Her mouth fixed in a grim line. She pressed his shirt against Nick’s bleeding shoulder with renewed determination, and he gritted his teeth to keep from gasping with pain. He could feel the shaking of her hands. “You could’ve gotten killed. Both of you could’ve gotten killed. And they’d be too late.”  
    “We’re both okay,” he said, even as the pain in his shoulder threatened to drown out everything around him. He struggled to keep his eyes open, to fill his eyes and heart with Inna.  
    “I think he’s about to pass out,” Inna said, and her voice was far away. She shook him gently. “Nick, stay with me,” she urged.
    “Always,” he mumbled.

MAYA
    “LET’S MOVE,” DATO’S sidekick said. “We don’t want to be here should the cops show up.”
    Dato turned to Maya. He waved his knives, smeared with Stan’s blood, in front of her face. His eyes glittered with menace. “You,” he said, “are going to come quietly. Understood?”
    She closed her eyes—against the fear, against the insulting sense of helplessness, against the glorious moment stolen from her and now crushed beneath Dato’s leather boot—and nodded.
    His companion snatched up the backpack and scooped the pile of money inside with his sleeve. He didn’t make prolonged contact with the tainted cash, and Dato didn’t touch it at all.
    Without her poison, her wits were no match for Dato’s knives.
    What terrible fate awaited her? She swallowed, and the sound was loud in her ears.  
    Maya scanned for escape routes, seeing none. Lights were on in the neighboring houses. Someone might see her being hustled down the driveway. Would anyone come to her aid if she screamed?  
    By the time they did, she might be dead.
    At the end of the driveway, a black SUV with tinted windows waited. “Get in,” Dato said. He brandished his long knife. The metal was stained red with Stan’s blood.
    She shook with what she guessed was terror. She’d never been gripped by this particular emotion. She felt stripped to her very essence, raw and achingly vulnerable. This man could hurt her irreparably, and there was precious little she could do to protect herself.
    She complied with his request. What other choice did she have? She slid silently across the seat and shrunk as far away from her captor as she could. Dato climbed in beside her. He placed a bloodied hand on her knee and smiled at her with a predatory gleam.
    Artur wouldn’t even know she was missing until it was too late.
    More alone than ever, she had no clever trick to get herself out of the mess she’d blithely helped to create.
    Dato didn’t restrain or gag her. He relied on the force of his own menace to keep her in check, and it did. She wasn’t brazen enough to cross or confront him.
    She didn’t say a word. The car sped away from Stan’s house and the mutilated body Dato and his man had left there in its own pool of blood.
    The image of those knives cutting cleanly through Stan’s jugular wouldn’t stop playing behind her eyes. Her natural confidence bled away.  
    Stan’s murder was supposed to have been nice and neat, designed to look like a heart attack, a common tragedy that wouldn’t arouse questions. But this Georgian barbarian had barged in, ready to eviscerate anything and anyone, and left a scene the police would mine for easy clues.
    Dato obviously didn’t care. He didn’t prize subtlety. He didn’t pretend to be something he was not.
    All her life, Maya had thought her secrets gave her power. She had held her own with her quiet manipulations and potions, using stealth and patience to shape her world to her liking. Now, she realized, men like Dato had true power. They did what they liked, took what they wanted when they wanted it, and they didn’t hide; not like her, not like Artur.
    Could Artur really win a war against this man? She had bet on her husband’s power and tactical genius.