Gangsters with Guns Episode #3 Read Online Free Page A

pounds.  
    None of that mattered or gave Nick a moment’s pause. There was no room for doubt, only one thought in his head— save her!
    He launched himself at the man from behind and jumped onto his back. He wrapped one arm around the man’s neck in a chokehold. Inna tried to pull away from her kidnapper, but the man jerked her arm hard. She gasped as her kidnapper pulled her up against him.
    Trying to throw Nick off, the man raised his gun. Nick grabbed the barrel and wrestled for control of the weapon.  
    Spectators huddled together under the shop awnings on the street. No one rushed to their aid. He supposed that was the way among the Russians. No one had helped his grandparents in their time of need, either.
    Inna jabbed her captor with her elbow. She kicked and flailed. The man couldn’t fight them both, and she wrestled herself free.
    “Run!” Nick yelled.
    The kidnapper fired in his direction, but missed. The car window behind Nick shattered.  
    Nick clamped his hand even tighter around the gun, determined to keep the man from taking aim again.
    Inna didn’t run. She came into close range.  
    “Run!” he shouted at her again. But she didn’t run.  
    She screamed for help that didn’t come and added her hands to the fight for the gun. Nick’s heart pounded with fear for her.
    The kidnapper kicked at Inna. She grunted with pain but only tried harder to wrench the gun free.  
    Nick refused to suffer another loss on Artur’s doorstep. He squeezed his forearm against the kidnapper’s throat, ready to snap his spinal column or cut off his air supply. Ready to kill with his bare hands.
    Drizzled rain poked like little needles onto his back and shoulders as they struggled with the kidnapper to gain control of the gun. He could feel the muscles in the man’s throat straining against his forearm as he squeezed. Their hands were slick from the rain, and the assailant’s grip was weakening. Still, the bastard clung to his pistol.
    Inna kneed the kidnapper in the groin. The man’s body folded as he curled inward from the blow with Nick still on his back.  
    He had his first glimmer of hope. The bad guy was going down. They’d get the gun. Inna would be safe.
    There was a loud pop as the gun fired unexpectedly. Pain exploded in Nick’s shoulder. Inna screamed his name.  
    Another set of hands grabbed him. Ripped him from the kidnapper’s back. Threw him to the ground. The impact as his head hit the wet cement blinded him with pain.  
    “Nick!” Inna screamed. Her terror sliced him to the bone. He had to do something. He had to save her. He struggled to get up, and the world went black.

VLAD
    THE STUN GUN hadn’t dampened Vlad’s awareness. His body rioted with pain that dissipated slowly. He heard the gunshots in the shop and the threats designed to gain Inna’s compliance.  
    Vlad couldn’t control his muscles enough to crane his neck so that he could see Inna, but he heard the thunk of her gun as she placed it on the counter and the soft sound of her footsteps. She walked straight into the arms of a kidnapper to save him.
    Get up. Get up! Don’t let him hurt her.
    Vlad struggled to gain his feet and failed. The shock from the stun gun had scrambled his muscle control. He couldn’t make his hands and legs move.
    “Be a good girl. That’s right,” the kidnapper said.
    Vlad raged against his own helplessness. Time seemed to warp, and he was back in another scene, twenty years ago, the past and the present in an eerie sympathy with one another.  
    “Be a good girl, Nadia. Tell me,” Ivan said, voice low and threatening. When she didn’t answer immediately, he backed her up against the wall, the steps to their passionate dance familiar and achingly wrong.  
    No matter how many times Ivan hurt her and Vlad or how many months passed, she always took him back, inviting him into the apartment, into her arms, into her bed.
    Vlad hated Ivan.  
    Ivan’s bare arms caged her. Dark tattoos of