Sons of Anarchy: Bratva

13

As Oleg shook her, Trinity fought to stay asleep. She sighed, grumbled, and batted his arm away. In that bleary state between sleep and wakefulness, she became aware of the thin line of drool on her cheek and the dryness of her throat.

“Come on,” she heard Oleg growl. His hand clutched more tightly at her arm, and he shook her so that her head lolled back and forth like an old rag doll’s. “Trinity!”

Her eyes snapped open. They burned, craving sleep, but she batted his hand away more forcefully and propped herself up, glaring.

“What time is it?” she demanded, the question accusation enough.

“Get up, love,” Oleg said, more gently this time, although his gaze carried a grim urgency.

Trinity threw back the single sheet, untangling her legs. Oleg handed her jeans over, and she slid into them. She wore no bra under her tank top, but he seemed too impatient to wait for her to put one on, so she grabbed a thin sweater from the bedpost and slipped it over her head even as he ushered her into the corridor.

“What the hell—” she said, voice muffled by the sweater.

As she drew it downward, trying to keep her footing, she heard voices coming from other rooms, saw Timur and Gavril rushing up behind them with guns in hand, and fear burned the last cobwebs of sleep from her mind.

“Lagoshin,” she said. “Is it—”

“No,” Oleg said, taking her by the hand as they hustled toward the lobby. “In answer to your question, it’s nearly four in the morning. You didn’t hear the truck pull up?”

“I was dead asleep.”

Oleg pushed through the door to the lobby, drawing his gun. In the darkness, the moonlight that came through the lobby windows turned the gun a ghostly blue. It seemed strangely alive, as if it were more at home with deeds done in dark.

“I’ve got her,” Oleg said.

Trinity glanced past him. Kirill stood over by the lobby doors, up against the frame with his gun pointed at the ceiling, keeping himself shielded from bullets that might fly through the doors. Vlad and Pyotr were positioned on either side of the uncurtained section of glass at the front. She saw nothing but darkness outside, had no idea what might have spooked them so completely.

Kirill pushed the door open just a bit, careful to expose as little of his body as possible. “Put those headlights back on!” he shouted.

Twin spots blazed to life, so bright that she had to shield her eyes. She blinked, getting used to the glare.

“If it’s not Lagoshin, then—”

“Step into the light!” Kirill called to the front parking lot.

A single figure stepped from the darkness into the brilliance of the truck’s headlights. A halo of white light silhouetted him, but then he walked a dozen steps nearer to the lobby doors, and the angle of the light changed. She saw the beard and the cut of his features. Trinity knew that face, and that walk.

“Son of a bitch,” she whispered.

“You know this man?” Oleg asked curtly.

Trinity stepped away from him, crossing the lobby. He called her name, reached out, and grabbed her arm, fearing that someone might start shooting.

She turned and looked at him, feeling almost as if she were in a dream. “That’s my brother.”

Oleg’s eyes darkened. “You never told me you had a brother.”

A chill went through her. There’d been a dangerous edge to his tone just then, and it scared her a little.

“Half-brother. It’s a long story.”

“You’d better tell it.”

She nodded. “I will.”

Then she turned from him, walked toward the door with Kirill and the others staring at her. Kirill held up a hand to stop her.

“Look, I brought you a present! Something you need!” Jax shouted from the lot. “What I need is to see my sister.”

Kirill glared at Trinity with deep mistrust. It hurt her, that look, but desperate men were always paranoid, and she couldn’t blame them for being uneasy about surprises. It shocked her that there had not been any gunfire yet. She could picture it in her mind, though… Jax rolling up in this old pickup, getting out, calling out to whoever had been on guard. Knowing the Bratva were here in the hotel—And how had he known that? How had he even known she was in Nevada at all?—he’d just put himself out there as a target. Bloody fool could’ve been gurgling up blood from his lungs by now. If Trinity had been on watch and someone had come strolling up, knowing they were there, she’d have made sure he had at least one bullet in him by now.

Had they hesitated for her, because he said he was her brother?

That alone could have its own complications, if they thought she had told anyone where to find them.

“Kirill,” she said, “I swear I don’t know how he found us. But he’s a good man. You can trust him. If he’s got somethin’ for you, it’s gonna be somethin’ you want.”

Oleg came up behind her. Despite feeling that she’d sinned by omission with him, he seemed to support her. After a few seconds, Kirill nodded.

“Come ahead slowly!” Kirill called.

Trinity glanced at the truck’s headlights and wondered how many other men were out there. Jax made his way toward the lobby doors, lights playing strangely over him, so that at times he seemed barely there, but then he reached the door, and Kirill unlocked it. Jax came through with his hands up. Kirill backed into the lobby again, covering him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Trinity said, crossing her arms.

Grim and troubled was Jax’s resting face, and tonight he certainly had reason to be wary. For a moment, though, he smiled, and it reminded her how much his grin made him look like a little boy.

Jax stepped toward her.

“Not yet,” Oleg rasped, pointing his gun at Jax’s chest.

Kirill aimed at Jax’s back. The others stayed where they were, ready for any attack from the parking lot.

“What’s this gift you have for us?” Kirill asked.

Jax’s eyes went cold, his features hard. “Outside in the truck. I’ve got two of my guys with me. I rode the motorcycle—they came in the truck with the present.”

Kirill pressed the gun against Jax’s back.

“That’s enough,” Trinity said, knowing her own eyes had gone cold, her features hard. They had not grown up together, but there were many things she and Jax had in common—chief among them, an unforgiving nature.

Jax gave a single shake of his head, letting her know not to make a fuss.

“You must be Oleg,” Jax said, glancing from Trinity to her lover. “I’m gonna guess the guy making demands behind me is Kirill Sokolov. You’ll be happy to know, Kirill, that your buddy Lagoshin’s down two more men. One of them, Ustin, is dead on an old ranch road about fifteen minutes’ drive from here. The other one, Luka, is alive. He’s out in the truck. I’d have wrapped him up in shiny paper and put a blue ribbon on his cock, but the stores are closed this late at night.”

Trinity wanted to laugh, but she was too confused.

“What are you doing here, Jax?” she asked again.

“Needed to see you.”

Understanding dawned on her. “My mother called you. Told you I was in the States.”

Jax nodded toward Oleg. “Told me about your new guy. Congratulations, by the way. You two make a cute couple.”

She thought Oleg might say something, but when she glanced at him, she saw only suspicion and anger in his eyes.

“Jax,” Kirill ventured. He gave Jax a little shove with the nose of his pistol. “Take off your shirt so I can see you wear no wire.”

Jax hesitated. Trinity could see the request worried him, and she didn’t know why. No. Don’t tell me you could be that stupid.

“Do you not want Luka?” Jax asked. “I figure he can tell you where to find Lagoshin and you guys can end this little standoff.”

“How do we know you didn’t bring them here? That Lagoshin and his men are not out there right now?” Kirill demanded.

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 truck, 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.”