“I’m not leavin’ without Oleg,” she said coldly.
He hesitated, and she could almost see him weighing his options. “We have no way of knowin’ where they are. Best thing we can do for them is keep the exits clear.”
* * *
Rollie stood in the lobby, head cocked as he listened to the sounds of gunfire. Baghead and Mikey the Prospect were with him—he’d sent the rest of them off in different directions to do what they could—but now he hesitated.
“Which way?” Mikey asked.
Good question, Rollie thought. They could just hold the lobby, but he wanted to get to Jax before the Bratva did. Like any brotherhood, they might fight among themselves, but if an outsider came after one of them, they circled the wagons. Rollie would give up his life for that principle.
“Front window!” Baghead snapped.
Rollie turned, sweeping his gun hand up and around to take aim at the shattered, jagged remains of the plate-glass windows. He spotted a pair of stone-faced killers just outside, gray in the shadow of the hotel. One wore a white tank, and his arms were wreathed with tattoos. The other wore a black suit and tie.
Mikey the Prospect took a single shot that snapped off a shard jutting from the window frame. The tattooed Russian spun out of view, no longer framed by the window.
“Mikey, knock that shit off!” Rollie shouted, as he and Baghead moved up on either side of the kid. Friggin’ prospects. Even Bag hadn’t forgotten his orders so fast.
The black-suited Russian put his hands up but didn’t drop his gun. “You are Jax Teller’s men?”
Rollie winced. He was president of SAMNOV, and Jax was VP up in Charming. He sure as hell wasn’t one of Jax’s men.
“We’re with him, yeah,” he said.
The Russian lowered his hands. Rollie, Bag, and Mikey covered him.
“Then we are on the same side,” black suit said. “I am Kirill Sokolov.”
“Sokolov,” Rollie replied. “The man who would be king.”
The Russian grinned. “If you say so.”
“All right, then,” Rollie said, lowering his gun. “Let’s go get you a crown.”
* * *
Opie popped a magazine out of his gun and dug a fresh one from his pocket. The bullet graze on his side had started to seep blood through Rollie’s stitches. The wound would stay closed—wasn’t even that serious—but he had to be careful not to tear it open completely, or blood loss could take him out of the fight.
He glanced at Vlad. “I’m out of ammo after this. We keep dicking around out here, and they’ll outlast us.”
Vlad stared at him as if he’d grown a second head. “You want to rush them? We have them pinned down. If we wait, others will come, and we will have greater numbers. They will have to surrender.”
“You know these guys,” Opie said, frowning at him. “You think they’re gonna surrender? We need to finish this so we can help Jax and your guys with the rest.”
Vlad rose up from behind the marble stairs outside the ballroom and took two shots at the open doors, just to remind Krupin and the others that they were still there. Opie slammed home his replacement magazine and chambered a round.
“There are two of us and at least three or four in there,” Vlad said. “I don’t like the odds.”
Opie shot him a withering look. “Neither do I.”
Vlad exhaled, lowered his head, and then laughed softly. “All right. We go on three. One…”
“Two,” Opie said.
He snapped his head up at the sound of quick, light footfalls along the corridor down below. On the grand staircase, he and Vlad swiveled to aim at the advancing figures, only to exhale when they identified the new arrivals. Opie didn’t know Rollie or Baghead well, and he didn’t even remember the prospect’s name, but he saw their cuts and the club insignia on those vests, and the desperation he’d felt a moment before left him. He imagined Vlad felt the same way seeing Kirill and the other Russian there. Five men. Five guns, including two assault rifles.
Opie and Vlad smiled at one another and finished the count.
“Three.”
They rushed down the steps, moved sidelong toward the open ballroom doors. Opie waved to the others, signaled them to approach the other set of doors—which remained closed. Kirill went first, flung open the doors, and rushed inside, shooting as he moved, fearless and a little mad, the way anyone who wanted the job he wanted had to be. Opie caught a glimpse of Rollie following him, and then he and Vlad were bursting in through the other doors.
Gunfire tore up the ballroom floor and walls.
Opie spotted Krupin toward the back, on the far side of the dance floor, where a large section of wall had been paneled in mirrored glass. He strode toward Krupin, images in his head of their first meeting, of the gleeful, arrogant sadism of the beady-eyed little man. Those eyes had fear in them now, and he felt as if a vengeful flame ignited inside him. Opie had tried to put the violence and bloodshed of this life behind him once, but in moments like this he doubted such a thing could be possible. He yearned for a peaceful life, but he would not turn his back on his responsibilities to his brothers.
Krupin’s right arm hung limply, blood soaking through his shirt from the gunshot wound of the night before. Opie shot Krupin four times, bullets ripping through him, shattering the mirrors on the wall behind him. Blood-spattered shards crashed down on top of the dying man, some reflecting Krupin’s shock and pain and some showing Opie a reflection of his own grim features. As the gunfire ceased, only soft echoes remaining in the ballroom, he turned away. He hadn’t liked the look of his eyes in that reflection. He would have expected to see a killer’s eyes, but all he saw in those mirror shards was pain.
* * *
Black sunbursts of oxygen deprivation blossomed in Jax’s eyes. His legs pounded the floor, and he smashed his fists into Lagoshin’s side. He tried to force the monster’s arms away, but Lagoshin’s size and weight overwhelmed him. In his fury, the Russian felt none of Jax’s blows. In the rush of imminent death, Jax could no longer feel any of his own injuries, only those hands around his throat and the burning hollow in his lungs.
Lagoshin looked down on him and grinned. He whispered something in Russian that Jax would never understand.
A fresh wave of rage flowed over Jax, one last burst of strength, and he slammed his fists into Lagoshin’s sides, already thinking ahead to his next move—his last move. He had to reach the enormous bastard’s eyes.
Tensed, about to thrust his arms up inside Lagoshin’s reach, he punched one last time … and realized that his left fist had struck something at the Russian’s side that shouldn’t have been there. In the fog his thoughts had become, it took him a precious moment to realize it was a sheath. A handle jutted from it.
Lagoshin had a knife.
Desperate, lungs screaming for air, Jax drove his fist into the Russian’s side one final time, but now his fingers closed on the handle of the knife, and he drew it out. In his triumph, Lagoshin didn’t notice until the blade punched through his right side. Weakened, Jax only had so much strength, but he had enough to drive the blade in and twist. He hacked tough muscle, split skin.
Lagoshin roared and lurched off him, scrambling backward in a crouch until he hit the corridor wall. Pain contorted his face as he looked down along his side and saw what Jax had done—saw the knife handle jutting from his side.
Drawing in ragged breaths, fighting back the blackness in his peripheral vision, Jax crawled along the carpet to the opposite wall and used it to leverage himself upward. Leaning against the wall, he reached deeper … breathed deeper … and found a determination that his body lacked.
Jax took a deep breath that seared his throat and stepped away from the wall. Lagoshin reached down and ripped the knife from his own side. Blood poured from the wound, painting the carpet and then running in a steady stream that soaked into his pants. Eyes bright with murder, Lagoshin stepped toward him. Jax punched him in the throat. Wheezing, sucking in a
ir, Lagoshin staggered backward. Jax went to follow, but the Russian swiped the blade across the space between them and tagged Jax on the arm, a thin red line burning against his left tricep. A shallow cut, but the knife would do much worse.
“I will enjoy killing your sister,” Lagoshin said.
Twin gunshots exploded in the hallway. Twin holes appeared in Lagoshin’s torso. He took a single step backward, blinked, stared at Jax and then down at the rose-red patches blossoming on his chest … and then he fell to his knees. A long moan came from his throat, and then he slid down to lay on his side as if he had simply decided the time had come to sleep.
Jax staggered backward a step, staring at the dead Russian. Slowly, he turned to see Oleg lying on his side on the bloody carpet with a 9mm pistol in one hand and the other pressed against his abdomen, his shirt soaked in blood. The smell of blood filled the corridor—his and Oleg’s and Lagoshin’s mixing together into a metallic, copper cloud—and he forced himself to ignore his injuries. He walked to Lagoshin and stepped on the Russian’s wrist, tore the knife from his grip and tossed it away.
“He’s dead,” Oleg said, his voice a groan.
Jax turned to see Oleg trying to force himself into a sitting position again, and failing. He lurched over to Oleg and knelt beside him. Gutshot, blood still foaming from the corners of his mouth, he was close to death.
“Thank you, man. Truly,” Jax said. “You saved my life just now.”
Oleg gripped his arm, staring at him with the dark urgency of words he did not have the strength to speak.
Then his gaze went dull and his grip slackened, and he was gone.
Jax sat down to rest beside the dead man.
His eyes closed.
* * *
Jackie. Wake up, brother.
It might have been minutes later, or only seconds, when he heard the quiet burr of Chibs’s voice, and he opened his eyes again. Jax blinked to clear his vision, weak from blood loss, exhaustion, and the beating he’d taken. Chibs knelt to his right, a hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. To his left, Trinity stood staring down at the pale corpse of the man she’d loved and at the pool of blood that surrounded him where he sat against the wall. She cried silently, mute with grief. For long moments, it was as if she didn’t even realize that Chibs and Jax were there in the corridor with her. Then a dark, familiar anger stole over her face, and she glanced at the gun in Jax’s hand, then over at Lagoshin and the bullet wounds in his torso. He hadn’t been able to save Oleg, but he had taken vengeance for her.
It was cold comfort, but it was all he had to offer.
20
Trinity spit on Lagoshin’s corpse.
She wiped furiously at her eyes, hating every tear that fell. Death had been no stranger to her life, but when she had lost people she loved, it had been at a distance. The presence of Oleg’s body, the way his mouth hung open as if he might be just about to speak … the dull sheen of his dark eyes … it carved a hole in her chest.
“Jesus,” she whispered, the closest thing to a real prayer she had uttered in years.
Chibs helped Jax to his feet. Trinity went to her brother, and he opened his arms to her, pulled her into a bloody embrace. Her tears had dried, but grief poured from her and he held her tightly, absorbing it all.
She took a deep breath and stood back from him. When he took her by the arm, she saw a pain in his eyes that reflected her own, and she loved him for it. They walked away together, Chibs in the lead with his gun drawn, leaving the dead behind.
They made their way to the steps that passed the ballroom and then down the sweeping, grand staircase. Chibs kept a wary eye on the bodies they found along the way. Pyotr lay sprawled on the stairs. At the bottom, just outside the first-floor ballroom, Vlad lay halfway through the doors with a bullet hole in his forehead. Trinity turned away, unwilling to see the gray and crimson matter that decorated the door behind him.
“You smell that?” Chibs asked as they came around the corner into the hall leading to the lobby.
Trinity had lowered her gaze, staring at the carpet as she walked. Now she glanced up and sniffed the air. She saw Jax nod, knew he smelled it, too.
Gasoline.
They walked into the lobby, found it full of dead men, but there were many still alive, too. Timur and Gavril had fetched full gas cans from the trunks of the cars out in the parking lot and were spilling gasoline all around the corners of the lobby. On the other end of the room, Ilia was doing the same. Opie stood by the front doors, watching the street impatiently for any sign of the police. A heavy, bearded man in a Sons of Anarchy cut turned to see Trinity, Jax, and Chibs entering and rushed toward them.
“Son of a bitch,” the big biker said. “We figured you for dead!”
“Rollie,” Jax rasped, clearing his throat.
Then Opie was there, a strangely calm presence, like an oak tree had just grown up beside them. He took in Jax’s injuries and the grief on Trinity’s face, and she could see that he understood immediately. A ripple of regret passed over his features as if he understood her sorrow, though she knew she might only have imagined it.
“Antonio went looking for you,” Opie said, glancing from Jax to Chibs.
“We saw him,” Chibs replied, turning to Rollie. “He’s not coming.”
“Aw, shit,” Rollie said, and then he shot Jax a blazing glare. “You’ve got a lot to answer for.”
Despite his injuries, Jax stood a little taller. “I’m sorry about Antonio—”
“And Mikey.”
“And Mikey,” Jax echoed. “I’m grateful to you for backing us up. Could be we’d all be dead if you hadn’t shown up when you did. But if you want someone to blame, Lagoshin is upstairs with a couple of bullets in him. He’s the asshole responsible for all of this.”
Rollie’s eyes narrowed. Trinity could see that he didn’t entirely believe Jax.
Then she heard her name and looked up to see Kirill entering the lobby from the opposite end. His voice was hopeful until she met his gaze. What he saw in her eyes stopped him in his tracks.
He swore in Russian, staring at the floor for a moment before glancing at the ceiling. At heaven. His lips moved silently, and she wondered if he was cursing God or talking to Oleg’s spirit, making some promise of revenge. None of it mattered. With Lagoshin dead, the only thing any of them could do was survive.
Several other members of the Sons of Anarchy came into the lobby behind Kirill. Trinity looked beyond them, but that seemed to be the last of the survivors of the massacre at the Wonderland Hotel.
“No sign of the cops yet,” one of the bikers said.
“They’ll be here,” Rollie replied. “We need to move.”
Trinity felt numb as she walked to Kirill. He stiffened as she slid her arms around him, leaned her head against his chest. After a moment, she felt his body relax, any resentment he’d felt toward her forgotten. They would both live through the day—Kirill would be captain of the Bratva in this part of the country, at least for a while—but it didn’t feel to Trinity as if either of them had won. Not even a little.
“We have to take Oleg out of here,” she said quietly.
Kirill stepped back, breaking her embrace. His expression had turned back to its usual stone. “No time.”
“But Oleg—”
“What of Pyotr and Sacha and Vlad? Should we leave them to the fire?”
Trinity flinched.
“We must go now!” Timur called.
Kirill moved around her as if she meant nothing to him, and she supposed that compared to what he had lost today, that much was true. They weren’t friends, and with Oleg dead they certainly weren’t family. Still, she felt as if she was a part of this brotherhood—their sister—whether they returned the feeling or not. She owed Oleg that.
“Trinity, let’s go,” Jax said, and his voice got her moving.
When she walked to him, he took her by the arm, and the two of them followed Opie, Chibs, and the rest outside. Some went
out the back door, where the cars were waiting, and others used the front.
“Let it burn,” Kirill said.
Trinity turned to see Gavril snap open an old metal lighter, flicking the thumbwheel to summon the flame. He tossed it through the open door, and it slid along the floor until the flame reached the spilled gasoline. The curtains now on fire, their flame rippled upward, racing along the floor and up the walls, spreading out the doors on either side of the lobby. In minutes, the main body of the hotel would be engulfed.
Jax looked at Kirill. “We good?”
Kirill paused a moment before nodding. “We are.”
Jax took Trinity’s hand to lead her toward his motorcycle, but she hesitated, turning to look at Kirill and Gavril and the others.
Kirill hesitated. “You’re welcome with us, Trinity,” he said, but she wasn’t sure that she believed him.
Jax squeezed her hand. “She needs her family now.”
Trinity shot him a hard look and pulled away. “Don’t tell me what I need.”
Jax held up his hands in surrender and she saw how much blood had soaked into his clothes, saw his injuries with fresh eyes and the way he wavered on his feet. He’d come for her, searched for her, and when he could have walked away, he had fought to the death at Oleg’s side. It could have gone the other way, with Jax dead and Oleg alive. He’d risked that for her.
“Trinity,” Opie said, and she glanced at him. Despite his size and his intimidating appearance, he had a gentle kindness about him.
For a moment, she’d been unsure how she defined her own family. Now she turned to Kirill. He saw her decision written on her face and nodded, encouraging her. She smiled thinly—sadly—to thank him and to let him know they would mourn together, even though they would be apart.
Behind them, the Wonderland Hotel burned.
Cars came out from behind the hotel and skidded into the street, tearing off into the distance.
Trinity turned to Jax. “What are you waitin’ for? I don’t want to go to jail.”
Sons of Anarchy Bratva Page 21