Jax shook his head, scoffed a little. “If Lagoshin was here, you’d all be playing out the Alamo together, and I’d be on the inside. You think he’d have waited while you fetched my little sister before he started shooting?”
Kirill slapped the back of his head. Jax bared his teeth, started to lower his hands.
“Shirt off!” Kirill snapped.
With a sigh, Jax slid out of his vest. “Trouble is, when I take my shirt off, we’re gonna have a lot more to talk about. Maybe we ought to talk about it now?”
Kirill slapped him again. Jax froze, muscles bunching, fighting the urge to slap him back. The many guns in the room apparently persuaded him this would have been unwise, because after a few seconds he exhaled and stripped off his shirt.
Trinity saw the way Kirill stared at her brother’s back, and it baffled her, and then she had an epiphany. She’d never told Oleg about her brother or her father, never said who they were. Now she wished she’d warned them.
“You’re Jax Teller,” Kirill said.
“SAMCRO,” Jax confirmed. He locked his gaze on Oleg’s now, ignoring Kirill and Trinity alike. “My club’s had a long history with the Bratva, some good, some bad. A few days ago, one side of this conflict you’re in tried to kill me, and the other side saved my ass. I figure you’ll understand when I ask which one of those sides you’re on.”
Trinity felt a sick tightening in her gut. She’d tried to avoid the politics, the ugliness, and now it had crept up on her in the dark and wrapped its hands around her throat. She and her brother both waited for an answer.
Kirill narrowed his eyes. He stared at Jax for what seemed like an eternity. Then he gestured with his gun.
“Put your shirt back on, Mr. Teller. Let’s see what your little Christmas present out there can tell us,” Kirill said. “Then we’ll all get to decide whose side we’re on.”
Oh, shit, Trinity thought, glancing at Oleg, who refused to meet her eyes.
That was not an answer.
* * *
Opie stood beside the truck, trying to calm the thunder in his heart. The pickup’s passenger door hung open, but they’d smashed the dome light inside, an excess of caution. The weight of his gun dragged at his hand, whispering to him that it would be much lighter if he fired some of its bullets. Just nerves, he knew. Nerves and exhaustion and blood loss.
He managed a calm front, and most of the time that reflected an inner resolution and acceptance of whatever might come. Tonight, though, they had stuck their hands in a hornet’s nest. Jax’s plan of action had been the most direct, but it sure as hell wasn’t the wisest or most cautious approach. If Kirill Sokolov and his men were the Bratva faction that had tried to murder Jax and Opie on the way back from the cabin, things were headed down a dark road. Opie exhaled, stretched the fingers that clutched his gun, and waited.
“What do ya see in there, brother?” Chibs called from the cab of the pickup.
“Same thing as you,” Opie said. “Jax just put his shirt back on.”
“Sounds like we’re gettin’ somewhere,” Chibs said.
Maybe, Opie thought. Times like this, dealing with professional liars and killers, there was no way to know. Professional liars and killers. What does that make us?
Up in the truck, Luka tried to cuss them out from behind the gag in his mouth. Chibs took a fistful of his hair and slammed his face into the dashboard, not for the first time. When Luka glanced dazedly around, fresh blood dripping from his nostrils, his eyes had the desperation of a coyote with its leg caught in a trap. Opie figured if Luka could have gotten away by gnawing his leg off the way a coyote sometimes would, he’d have done it—and he’d have been smart to make the attempt. The rest of his life could be measured in the number of breaths it would take for him to tell Kirill Sokolov what he wanted to know about Lagoshin. Luka had to know that.
“Here he comes,” Chibs said.
Spotlighted in the truck’s headlights, Jax strode from the hotel and crossed the parking lot toward them. As always, he moved as if he carried a dreadful weight on his shoulders. One of the Russians came behind him, a thin, bony man with sunken eyes and sharp cheekbones.
“Bring him out,” Jax called.
Opie gestured toward the open passenger door. Chibs gave Luka a shove, and the bleeding captive slid to the edge of the seat. He slid out. The moment his feet hit the ground he lunged at Opie, hands tied behind his back as he tried to turn himself into a battering ram. Opie tightened his grip on the gun, but he didn’t shoot the fool, just sidestepped and gave Luka a push. Luka lost his footing and went down on the pavement, twisting so that he landed on his shoulder, scraping flesh from his arm and smacking his head on the ground with a satisfying crack.
Luka rolled on his back and sat up, staring at the Russian who’d come out of the hotel, someone he probably knew. Not long ago, the two warring Bratva factions had been one. They might as well have been SAMCRO going to war with SAMTAC or SAMNOV. Brothers weren’t supposed to try killing each other, but whenever there was a power vacuum, the potential for bloodshed was like the electric crackle in the air right before a thunderstorm hit.
The skinny Russian stood over Luka. “Stand up.”
Luka glared at him, not wanting to do anything to hurry himself toward his fate. After a moment, though, the stalemate ended, and Luka managed to get his knees under him and rise.
“We good?” Jax asked the skinny Russian.
“Good enough,” the Russian replied with a slow nod. He grabbed Luka and twisted him toward the hotel, directing him at the lobby doors.
Trinity emerged from the hotel before Luka reached it, another Russian behind her. Opie thought she looked rough, not unhealthy but uncared-for, as if she’d just come off a long ride—and maybe that wasn’t a bad comparison. Her hair was a mess. She wore jeans and a thin sweater that clung lovingly to her, but her feet were bare. The Russian behind her took her hand as they passed Luka and the skinny man, who were headed the other way.
Chibs climbed down from the pickup, moved out to one side, his hand hovering near his gun. Opie didn’t figure Trinity’s appearance for trouble, but they couldn’t be too careful.
Trinity and Oleg walked until they’d reached Jax. Oleg glanced at Chibs and then at Opie’s gun but didn’t attempt to reach for his own. The lobby windows were dark, but inside there would still be men aiming guns at the truck—Oleg knew his visitors wouldn’t try anything stupid.
“Hello, Trinity,” Opie said, nodding warily.
She smiled. “Opie.” Then she introduced him and Chibs to Oleg as if they were at a damn cotillion instead of the parking lot of an abandoned hotel full of Russian gangsters.
The gun felt suddenly light in Opie’s hand, as if it wanted to float upward all on its own. “What’s the story, Jax?”
With Oleg and Trinity looking on, Jax went to Chibs and held out a hand. Chibs handed over his Glock, and Jax slipped it into his rear waistband. He held out his hands like a magician proving he had nothing up his sleeves and turned to Oleg.
“This going to be a problem?”
Oleg shook his head, expressionless. Noncommittal.
Jax seemed to take that as a positive sign, but Opie wasn’t so sure.
“Chibs, you and Op take the truck back to where we stashed your bikes,” Jax said.
Opie froze. “Not a chance.”
Jax stared at him. “You want to leave the bikes out there?”
“I’ll go,” Opie said. “Chibs can stay.”
Chibs shook his head, obviously not liking this plan any better. “How are you gonna get the bikes into the back of that pick up on your own?”
“I’ll dig around, find something to use for a ramp. I’ll figure it out.”
Jax hesitated, but he didn’t argue, and Opie knew why. This might not have been a very good plan, but it was the only one they had.
“Half an hour,” Opie said, making sure Oleg and Trinity heard him. He went around to the driver’s side of the truc
k, convinced they were making a mistake. If what the Bratva wanted was Jax Teller dead, he had just served himself up on a platter. That was a damn big if.
As he drove away, Opie kept glancing at the figures in the rearview mirror until they vanished in the retreating darkness.
“This is stupid,” he muttered, thinking they should’ve just knocked Oleg out, grabbed Trinity, and thrown her in the truck. Granted, she didn’t look like she wanted to leave, never mind that they probably wouldn’t have made it to the truck without being shot. He told himself it would be all right, that they weren’t even sure which side Sokolov’s men were on, but he was sure that he did know.
He pressed harder on the accelerator, flying through the night as a predawn glow lit the eastern sky.
* * *
Trinity forced herself to breathe. Scant minutes ago she’d been dreaming, and now she found herself all too awake. She rubbed at her sleepy, itchy eyes and studied the tense uncertainty that filled the space between Jax and Oleg. The sky had turned the perfect indigo of predawn, black fading to the deepest blue, and the stars had begun to vanish as if the coming day snuffed them one by one.
“We need to talk,” Jax said. He had a laconic nature, the kind of man who thought people ought to be able to intuit his designs and desires.
“Jax—”
“It wasn’t easy, tracking you down,” he went on, with a quick glance at Oleg and Chibs. “This situation … it’s got a fuse burning at either end. I’ve got some things to say, and you should hear ’em now, before whatever’s gonna happen happens.”
“I didn’t need you here, Jackson Teller,” she said, her Irish brogue thickening with her frustration. “I’m perfectly capable of takin’ care of myself.”
Jax pressed his lips into a thin line and cocked his head. She imagined that he’d envisioned himself as some kind of white knight riding to rescue the damsel in distress. Whatever danger his arrival might have put them both in, she did feel safer having him nearby. But she wasn’t going to admit that to him.
“You’re tough, Trinity,” he said. “But you’re not bulletproof. I came a long way. All I’m asking is a few minutes to talk.”
Trinity nodded slowly. “Give me a second.”
She took Oleg by the hand and led him away, off toward the southern end of the parking lot, away from Jax and Chibs. Away from anywhere the members of Oleg’s Bratva might overhear. His eyes were still hard and sharp as flint, and he gazed at her as if she were someone he only vaguely knew and did not like very much.
“Trinity,” Oleg said.
She punched him in the chest. Did it a second time.
Oleg reached for her wrist, but she dropped her arm away.
He blinked. “You knew we had business with SAMCRO—”
“And I didn’t want it to be our business. I’m a Belfast girl. I’ve never been to California. Jax and me, we share a father. Wasn’t too long ago we’d never laid eyes on each other. I didn’t want you and me to be about SAMCRO any more than I wanted it to be about the Real IRA or the Bratva or any of the other brotherhoods whose loyalties might interfere with our loyalty to each other. Now I see your eyes turn to stone when you look at me, and I want to slap your stupid face.”
With a sigh, he ran his palms over his skull, dipping his head toward her. Oleg groaned.
“We could’ve killed your brother,” Oleg said softly, and when he looked up again, his eyes were full of sorrow. “You don’t want this to be about other people, but what if we’d killed him? Would the history between SAMCRO and my people still not matter?”
Trinity stared at him. She had her back to Jax and Chibs, but she could feel them watching her with Oleg. This should all have been simple. She shouldn’t have to choose between family and love. Truth was, she didn’t know Jax very well, and her feelings about her father and his legacy with the Sons of Anarchy were complicated at best. But her mother had raised her to put family first, above all.
“It was your people who went after him?” she said quietly.
Oleg shifted, glanced toward the hotel.
“What now?” Trinity asked.
“Now we see if Kirill thinks killing Lagoshin is more important than finding out what really happened to Viktor Putlova, the man who used to run Russian interests in this part of the world.”
Trinity shivered. The eastern horizon bled yellow and gold, colors heralding the imminent arrival of the sun. She put her hand on Oleg’s chest, right where she had punched him, and spread out her fingers.
“He’s my brother,” she said.
Oleg nodded, but then he turned away so that she could not read his eyes.
“Don’t be long,” he said, more to Jax than to Trinity, as he walked toward the lobby doors. “If you want to hear what Luka’s got to say, you should come inside while he’s still alive.”
14
Jax stuck his hands into his pockets and waited for her. Trinity watched Oleg until he’d returned to the gray darkness of the hotel and then turned to Chibs, who gave her a nod and went to stand by the lobby entrance, lighting up a cigarette. In the sepia hue of imminent dawn, she looked rough and beautiful in equal measure, and Jax could see the hesitation in her—the love she had for this man she’d chosen.
I’m the least of her concerns, Jax thought. Trinity had put herself in the middle of a quiet little desert war zone. Maybe she hadn’t known what she was getting herself into, but Oleg had known, and if he loved Trinity, he could have kept her out of it. Should have.
Jax kept his hands in his pockets as Trinity approached him.
“You didn’t tell Oleg and his buddies who you were.”
“I told them who I was,” Trinity explained. “I just didn’t tell them who you were, or who my father was. It didn’t seem relevant. Sort of like us talking about Belfast—it seemed like it could only do more harm than good.”
Jax smiled. “It’s good to see you, Trinity.”
She shook her head with a sigh and put her arms around him, forcing Jax to pull his hands from his pockets and return the embrace. Trinity trembled slightly, and he pulled her tighter.
He had a sister. The idea had taken some getting used to, but here and now, with her solid and alive, he felt a bond he’d never imagined.
“I wish you’d known Tommy,” he said quietly.
Trinity backed away, one hand still on his arm. “So do I.”
Jax nodded. “We live through this, we’re gonna have to get to know each other a little more.”
She smiled, but thinly, as if she had zero faith in both of them surviving their time with the Bratva.
“So you found me,” she said. “What now?”
“Maureen wants you home.”
The sun breached the horizon, warm light spilling across the land. Her face glowed with the bright gold of morning.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere. I—”
“You love him,” Jax interrupted. “Figured you’d say that.”
“And?”
Jax touched the bruised flesh on the left side of his face, wincing. “I’ve got my own issues with Lagoshin now. Not to mention, I want to make sure I’m leaving you safer than I found you. Can’t very well tell Maureen I left her baby in the middle of a gang war. I figure we’ll throw in with your pal Sokolov, settle debts, make some new peace. As long as they don’t try to kill me.”
Trinity exhaled. This time it was she who put her hands in her pockets.
“They’ve got to know if they kill you, they’ll have to kill me, too.”
“You think they won’t?” Jax asked.
“I’m not an idiot,” she said. “I know they’ll put their brotherhood before anything else. Maybe even Oleg, if it came to it. He loves me, but I can’t be sure, ya know?”
“That’s not an answer.”
Trinity shrugged. “I think most of ’em would hesitate before tryin’ to kill me.”
“Somehow I don’t feel reassured.”
Jax glanced along the road, wondering how l
ong before Opie returned. Then he gestured for Trinity to lead the way to the hotel.
“Let’s go,” he said. “I don’t want them taking Luka out without me there. I want to make sure they remember who brought him to the dance.”
With the sunrise creeping across the parking lot, they joined up with Chibs and went through the doors into the hotel lobby. Two of the Bratva men were still there, but there was no sign of Kirill, Oleg, or Luka.
“Where are they?” Trinity asked.
The Russians eyed Jax and Chibs with distrust. “Swimming pool.”
Again, Trinity led the way. Jax felt the weight of his gun against his lower back, but he ignored the alarm bells in his head. These guys weren’t going to shoot him in the back while he walked away, not without the boss’s orders, and he didn’t think they’d been given that green light just yet.
The hotel corridors had a dry, dusty smell, with just a hint of mold. They passed one numbered door after another, a dead ice machine and a soda machine whose face had been pried open, a handful of soda cans left inside.
A heavy metal door at the back of the building led out into a fenced area on the east side of the hotel. The main road was visible from the walkway between the back door and the gate, but inside that fence and the overgrown shrubbery around it, they would be shielded from sight.
As Trinity grabbed the gate and dragged it open with a scrape of rusty hinges, they heard Luka cry out in pain. Jax quickened his pace and Chibs followed.
The pool was empty, caked with a thin layer of grime. The patio around it was cracked and shot through with weeds. Down inside the pool were Kirill, Oleg, and three other Russians. One of the faded deck chairs had been placed in the center of the empty pool, and Luka sat there bleeding.
“Scream in pain if it makes you feel better,” Kirill said. “But don’t scream for help. No one out here is going to help you.”
Jax cleared his throat to get their attention. All six men whipped around to stare at him, then noticed Chibs and Trinity. The hope on Luka’s features was pitiful.
“I can see you’re in the middle of something,” Jax said. “But if you can spare two minutes, I’d like to talk about where we stand.”
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