Sons of Anarchy: Bratva (6 page)

“Antoinette,” she said, making her way around Temple while keeping him in her sights. “Take the mobile phone out of your pocket.”

The darkly tanned woman fished out her cell and handed it over. Trinity made sure Oleg and the others were covering Temple and his sidekicks and flipped open the cell phone. The text had come from a local phone number—no contact name—and consisted of four words.
Stall. Fifteen minutes out
.

Trinity read the text aloud.

“Shit!” Oleg muttered, glancing at Gavril. “Krupin?”

The name made Antoinette flinch. Trinity felt her stomach lurch. She pointed the gun at Antoinette’s skull, pressed it into her dark hair, and
nudged,
wondering when she had become so hard. All her life she’d had this sort of violence around her, but most of the time she’d been inside a kind of protective bubble. Never a part of the violence.

Now she jabbed Antoinette’s skull with the gun barrel again. “Who sent that text? Who’s on the way?”

Carney let out a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry … I can’t be here. I’ve got to go.”

He started toward the corridor, jittery and shaking his head. Feliks moved to block his path, and Aaron used the distraction, lunging to his feet and crashing into Feliks, trying to strip the weapon from his hand.

Trinity swore, an instant of panic freezing her in place.

Oleg opened fire on Temple, who dropped behind the kitchen island as he drew his gun. Gavril faded left, trying to get a clear shot.

Antoinette grabbed Trinity’s wrist, twisting to throw off her aim. Trinity pulled the trigger, and a bullet punched the ceiling, raining plaster down on them. Antoinette drove her fist into Trinity’s kidney and then into her armpit, tried to take Carney’s gun from her.
No, no, no
. Her thoughts whirled, heart pounding. It was all falling apart.

The bitch grabbed her face and pushed her backward, slammed her into a rack of cabinets, rattling dishes inside. Antoinette slammed her head twice more, fighting for the gun, and Trinity lost her grip. She felt it as her fingers opened, knew what it meant—that any second the woman would put a bullet in her, and she would die. They would all die. Oleg would die, and she couldn’t have that.

Gunshots boomed in the kitchen.

Trinity spun away from her. Smelled the spices from Temple’s delicious stew. Grabbed the handles on the big pot with both hands and flung the simmering, burning broth into Antoinette’s face.

Her skin steaming and bubbling, the woman screamed and dropped the gun. Trinity dove for it. Her fingers closed around the cool metal, and she rolled into a sitting position and took aim at Oscar Temple’s back. He was hiding behind the kitchen island, but she was on
his
side, nothing to protect him from her.

Temple didn’t hesitate. He started to turn.

Trinity pulled the trigger twice and missed both times. The shots made him flinch, made him draw back as splinters flew out of the kitchen island. The flinch cost him a vital second or two, and then Gavril was there. He shot Temple in the forehead, snapping his head back as blood and brain matter sprayed the cabinets behind him. Gavril shot the old man in the chest as he collapsed.

Antoinette kept screaming. Her face and eyes were raw-red and covered in broth as she lunged for Trinity. Oleg shot her—in the head. The bullet went in through her temple and never emerged.

A pause. A breath. Even the clock and fridge seemed to have fallen silent in that moment between moments, and then one more shot rang out.

Aaron struggled to free himself from beneath Feliks, who had just gone hideously limp. The broken-nosed bodyguard pushed out from under the huge Russian. Blood poured out of a hole in Feliks’s neck like it might never stop. Shaking, Aaron tried to bring his recovered gun up to defend himself but Oleg reached him, kicked him in the face, and then did it again. Aaron howled as his shattered nose was pummeled, mashed bloody against his face. Trinity thought she heard his cheekbone crack.

“Shoot him!” Gavril roared. “He killed Feliks! Put
all
the bullets in him!”

“No!” Oleg snapped. He kicked Aaron again. “On your feet,
khuy
!”

Aaron staggered as he rose, one hand against the wall to keep from collapsing. Feliks had hurt him badly, but now Feliks was dead. Trinity hated it all, but she wouldn’t lie to herself. Aaron deserved whatever Oleg and Gavril did to him. They had come here to make a fair deal, and they’d been betrayed.

Oleg had a fistful of Aaron’s hair and jammed the barrel of his gun against the bodyguard’s gore-streaked throat.

“You know where the guns are in this house,” Oleg said. “Tell me no, and I shoot you in the leg. Then I stomp your balls until they burst.”

Trinity’s stomach roiled.

“You’re gonna kill me,” Aaron said, his voice trembling.

“It’s what happens when you’re on the wrong side,” Oleg said, jamming the gun barrel harder against his throat. “But you take us to the guns right now, not another word from you, and you die with both balls and both eyes still where they belong. No pain. One bullet. Quick.”

Aaron deflated, all hope leaving him, and nodded once. He started toward the back corridor where Antoinette had gone to make her call.

“We’ve got maybe ten minutes,” Gavril said. “Less if anyone heard gunshots.”

Against the wall, John Carney shifted and let out a small sob. Trinity, Oleg, and Gavril all turned to look at him. Broken and shaking, he stood there crying old man’s tears.

“Gavril,” Oleg said.

Trinity knew the tone, knew what it meant.

“No,” she said.

Oleg frowned, glancing at her, his gun now aimed at Aaron’s back. “
Trinity
.”

Letting the old man’s gun hang by her side, Trinity walked over to Carney and stood in front of him. She didn’t look at him, afraid to meet his eyes.

“This man did nothin’ wrong. He’d put this life behind him till we asked him to do us this favor. I’ll not allow you to kill him for it.”

Oleg hesitated. Lips pressed together in a white line, he thought it over, but Trinity knew how it would end. The brutality he’d threatened Aaron with … he’d have done it all but gotten no joy from it. Violence was a tool for Oleg, but he didn’t have a killer’s heart, and he believed in people reaping what they’d sown.

He gestured toward Carney. “Go and sit at the table. You’ll leave when
we
do.”

Silently, Carney went to the little round table in the kitchen, dragging out a chair.

Aaron started to turn, maybe to make a fight of it again. Oleg struck him in the temple with the gun.

“Walk.”

The bodyguard walked the first of his final steps. Oleg and Gavril followed.

Trinity knew they could have used her help to carry the guns they were about to steal, but she pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from red-faced John Carney. He wiped his tears and looked at her with doubtful eyes.

Carney glanced over at the corpses of Temple and Antoinette, and his expression darkened. She thought for a moment that she saw in him the hard man he’d once been.

“Oscar dealt the cards, lass,” Carney said. “He used to say, ‘The house always wins,’ but he was a fool to think it. Sometimes the house loses. Sometimes the cards go the other way, and the house gets burned to the ground.”

5

Jax held
his son Thomas in his arms and pressed his nose against the boy’s head. Thomas wasn’t a baby anymore, but his head still had that baby smell, reminding Jax of his most important role. His sons were his world, his reason for breathing. People talked about the measure of a man, but to any man with children, the only real measure was in the eyes of his kids. If someday they learned the things he had done for the club, for brotherhood, and to try to build the future he wanted for them … he hoped they would understand why. But the more time passed, the more he realized that giving them that future mattered more than them forgiving him for what he had to do to get them there.

Laughter and the sound of splashing came from the bathroom. He kissed Thomas on the head and nudged the door open. Tara Knowles knelt beside the tub, washing the hair of Jax’s older son, Abel. They both looked up at him—his old lady and his boy—and their smiles tugged at him. Abel’s hair was full of suds, and Tara had been sculpting it into strange curls and waves, showing Abel in a hand mirror.

“Hello, Daddy,” Tara said.

Abel tried to throw a handful of soap bubbles at him but they didn’t go far.

“I’m headed out,” Jax told her.

Tara stood and reached for Thomas, who stretched out his arms for his mother. Jax kissed the boy’s head and handed him over. Tara smiled again, and it lit up her angular features. Her face could turn a man to stone if Tara was displeased with him, but she had a dark beauty that made him reach up and trace the contours of her face.

“Be safe,” Tara said, kissing him even as she took Thomas in her arms. “You come back to me.”

“Don’t I always?” he asked with a grin.

“If you know what’s good for you.”

The lightness of the conversation hid a darkness beneath it. Tara didn’t want him to go—not with just Chibs and Opie to back him up—but she wouldn’t tell him to stay, either. Jax had not shared the details with her, only that Trinity was in danger.

Tara had wrapped her arms around him, pressed her body against his to remind him what he would be missing while he was gone, and knitted her brows as she stared into his eyes.

You have to go,
she’d said.
I love you for that. But you never knew she existed until half a year ago. Don’t die for her
.

He didn’t plan to, but they both knew the risk was there. For everyone, yeah … and moreso for the people in their world. The life they’d chosen meant he was sticking his head in the lion’s mouth on a regular basis. One of these days, the jaws were gonna chomp.

Jax went to the tub and splashed Abel, who kicked and splashed him back. He kissed Tara and Thomas again, then turned and left without looking back. He picked up a small bag by the door—just a change of clothes and a few things—and went out, closing the door behind him.

*   *   *

Chibs and Opie were little more than shadows in the driveway as Jax stepped outside. Their bikes were familiar silhouettes, comforting ghosts awaiting new life.

Opie lit a cigarette, the flame momentarily illuminating his face. Jax approached them as the moon slid out from behind a scrim of clouds.

“You set?” Opie asked.

Jax went to his bike. “She understands.”

Opie shook his head, reminding Jax of a bear. “Wish Lyla did. Maybe Tara can talk to her.”

“I’m sure she would if you want.”

Opie exhaled cigarette smoke. “She’s gonna have to get used to it. She thinks we’re going to end up in Vegas with a roomful of whores.”

Chibs stepped between them, threw an arm around each of them, and grinned the devil-may-care grin that always seemed to lift the spirits of his brethren.

“We get this sorted out, maybe we save that bit for the return trip,” he said.

Opie smiled, took another drag on his cigarette, then dropped it to the pavement to grind it out. At some unconscious signal, the three of them moved toward their bikes. Jax had the sack with his gear slung over his shoulder, and now he slipped the second strap over his other shoulder. He wore a leather vest similar to his cut, but this one had no markings—no patches or symbols of any kind. Chibs wore a threadbare old denim jacket with an olive drab T-shirt beneath it. Opie had a plain navy sweatshirt with its sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Without their cuts—with no link to the club—he thought they all looked naked.

“You sure this is the right move, Jackie?” Chibs asked, smoothing his goatee as he sat astride his Harley-Davidson Dyna Street Bob. “Traveling without showing our colors?”

Jax nodded. “We can’t pick sides till we know which side tried to kill us.”

“Clay seemed pretty unhappy about it,” Opie noted, reaching for the handlebars.

The plan had not pleased Clay—that was certain. He didn’t like the idea of the club being three men down for days, didn’t like them going out essentially undercover, and most of all, didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t control whatever unfolded in Nevada. If it had only been about Trinity, Jax figured Clay would have bitched even more, but he at least acknowledged that the trip ought to help give them a better idea of what the hell the Russians were up to.

“Clay knows it can’t be avoided,” Jax said.

Chibs kicked his bike to roaring life. Jax was about to follow suit when headlights washed the driveway in yellow gloom, and he turned to see his mother pull up in her black Cadillac XLR-V. She left the big vehicle idling at the edge of the property and climbed out, slamming the door before striding across the yard toward them.

“Boys,” she said, her voice almost lost beneath the growl of Chibs’s engine.

Opie and Chibs both nodded at her. Opie might have said her name, but Jax was barely paying attention. He sat on his Harley, one hand on the throttle.

“You didn’t have to come see us off,” he said.

Her lips pursed in something like a scowl. “I came to see my grandsons.”

Gemma Teller-Morrow looked damn good for her age. Her brown hair had blond highlights and auburn streaks. She had a hell of a figure and enough of the beauty of the girl she’d once been that much younger men would look at her twice—and maybe keep looking—until her eyes drew their attention. Once they looked her in the eye, most guys turned away, unprepared for a woman so in charge of every moment of her existence. She worked hard to keep hidden the never-healing wounds that life had given her. Jax had seen them, though. He knew them well.

He also knew that those wounds made her more formidable instead of less. Gemma had raised him by example. No one understood her as well as Jax did, not even Clay. She knew why he had to go to Nevada and wouldn’t stand in the way, as much as she hated it.

Gemma kissed him on the cheek, took his forearm, and squeezed once, not at all gently.