Sons of Anarchy: Bratva

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 long 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.”

Kirill stared at Jax as if he might spit on him.

“Think of it this way,” Jax said. “The longer you keep him waiting, the more he’s gonna torture himself thinking about how long he’ll be able to keep from telling you what you want to know. It’ll be agony.”

Trinity stood at his side, shoulder to shoulder. Kirill glanced at her, saw the solidarity there, and then looked at Oleg. The nod was almost imperceptible—not enough to make the other Russians question who was in charge—but it was clear that Oleg was Kirill’s second, and the boss valued his input.

“Timur,” Kirill said to one of his men, “break both his thumbs.”

Luka did not beg. He glared at Timur and bared his teeth, refusing to show fear.

As Kirill walked up the steps from the empty pool, Timur started his work. Luka screamed. Instead of a triumphant smile, Kirill wore an expression of deep sadness.

“He’ll talk,” Jax said.

“Of course he will,” Kirill said. “But I wish he wouldn’t make us hurt him. We were friends once.”

“You and Lagoshin are at war. Unless one of you waves the white flag, a lot of your friends are gonna die.”

Kirill gave him a sidelong glance, his face a grim mask, but he said nothing. They went out through the gate, and Kirill set off around the back of the hotel. Chibs followed, but stopped outside the gate, where he could keep an eye on them without Kirill thinking he was trying to eavesdrop. Jax and Kirill strode together to a broad swath of scrubland that looked out on the foothills as the sunlight seared the tops of the mountains, the hot line of its glare moving downward, touching more of the land.

Kirill stopped, staring at the golden aura of early-morning light on the mountains.

“Just so we have no misunderstandings,” Jax said, “you should know I’m armed.”

“I expected you would be.”

“That doesn’t concern you?”

Kirill turned to face him. “You’d have to be suicidal to kill me right here.”

“I have no interest in killing you.”

Kirill smiled thinly, as if to remind Jax that the feeling was not at all mutual. “You wanted to speak with me privately,” he said. “Here we are.”

Jax scraped his fingers through his beard, choosing his words carefully. “I’ve had a lot of new beginnings in my life lately. Not anything you’d give a shit about. Personal stuff. The past relationship between the Bratva and my club is complicated. There’s a lot of bad blood there. You think we killed Putlova. Clearly I’m not gonna convince you otherwise, just like you’re not going to confirm it was your men who tried to put me and Opie in the ground the other day.”

Kirill studied him thoughtfully.

“Lagoshin may be down a few guys,” Jax went on, “but I’m betting he’s still got you outgunned. I can help with that.”

“There are three of you,” Kirill scoffed.

“Three of us, but we got you the thing you couldn’t get for yourself… a direct line to Lagoshin’s location,” Jax countered. “And there are three now, but I’ve got a charter here in Vegas who will send in reinforcements.”

“In exchange for?”

Jax threw his hands up. “Hey, I’m just a guy trying to keep his sister from getting killed. She loves your boy, Oleg, and it looks to me like he feels the same. That makes you and me practically in-laws. All I’m suggesting is that we throw in together until Lagoshin’s in the ground and you’re running the Bratva’s operations in the western U.S. When it’s over, we maintain the current status quo. SAMCRO and the Bratva stay in our separate corners… and your people stay away from the Irish.”

Kirill’s eyes lit up. “I see, now. This is business for you.”

“This is family,” Jax said darkly. “My club is my family as much as Trinity is. I don’t want anybody else dying for no reason.”

He held out his hand, kept it rock steady as he waited.

Several seconds passed, but Kirill grasped his hand and shook.

“Good,” Jax said. “Now let’s go see what Luka has to say.”

As if on cue, they heard Luka scream. The anguished cry echoed off the walls of the empty pool and out into the desert sky. A massive red-tailed hawk circled overhead, watching the show.

Jax leaned against the wall of the empty pool as he and Chibs watched the Russians beat the shit out of Luka. Kirill mostly just observed, leaving the bloody-knuckle work to Oleg and a guy named Gavril. Oleg looked like he had no taste for the brutality. Regret hung on him like a sheen of sweat. When Gavril cut off the little finger on Luka’s right hand, Oleg had turned away. But when Luka still wouldn’t talk, it was Oleg who stormed in with a cry of rage and hit Luka so hard the chair tipped over, and the prisoner smacked his head on the concrete floor of the pool.

Luka had been beaten and cut, lost two fingers and four teeth. His face was split and swollen and bloody, and he slumped in the chair as if he’d been an inflated man and all the helium was slowly leaking out of him.

“He dead?” Jax asked, growing frustrated.

Kirill rounded on him. “You want to take a turn? You think you can do better?”

Jax pushed off the wall.

“Jackie,” Chibs said quietly, worriedly.

Jax strode over and began to circle Luka. “You could cut off his balls, threaten to take his cock as well.”

Kirill and Oleg both blanched. Gavril only looked defeated.

Luka spat bloody phlegm at Jax’s feet.

“This guy used to be your brother,” Jax said. “I get it. Nobody wants to torture a guy who used to get you a beer when he went to grab one for himself. But Luka’s not your brother anymore. He betrayed you. Lagoshin ordered him to stick with me, follow me till I found you, and then call it in. They were gonna come here and kill all of you.”

Oleg glared at Jax. “You think we are so weak?”

Jax frowned. “Nothing weak about brotherhood. You’re men of honor. But we all know this ends with Luka dead.” He crouched down, eye to eye with the prisoner. “Hell, Luka knows that. Thing is, he’s a man of honor, too, right? So the only way he’s gonna tell you what you want to know is if you make it so he’d rather hurry up and die than hold on to that honor.”

Luka glared at him. Jax stood up and glanced around at the Bratva men, who seemed to like him almost as much as Luka did.

“It’s not about honor,” Trinity said, walking down the steps into the empty pool. She tossed her hair back and turned to Jax. “It’s dread.”

“What?” Jax asked.

“They’re takin’ their time, buildin’ up to worse, lettin’ him fill up with pain and fear,” she said, glancing at Oleg and then Kirill. “This is barely torture. It’s foreplay.”

“We don’t have time for foreplay,” Jax said.

Trinity walked to Gavril and held out a hand. “Give me your knife, Gav.”

Gavril knelt and slid up the leg of his pants, retrieving a small dagger from the sheath strapped around his calf. Trinity took it from him as she passed by, moving into the deep end of the empty pool. Jax watched her curiously. Luka sniffed in derision and spit again, disdainful of the very idea that a woman could intimidate him.

She edged past Oleg, her back to him, controlling the space between herself and Luka.

Trinity grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back. Jaw tight, muscles standing out on her forearms, she pressed the knife against the skin just beside his left eye. In the morning light, Jax saw the trickle of blood drip from the wound.

“Bitch,” Luka sneered, eyes pinched closed.

Trinity dug the knife tip into his eyebrow, and Luka cried out as she sliced downward, splitting his eyelid. He tried to tear his head away, tried to use his body weight to move the chair back, but she held him tightly, and the position of the knife blade forced him not to fight too hard.

“She’s your sister, all right,” Chibs said quietly.

Jax stood away from the wall, staring at her. Trinity had grown up with the RIRA in the family, lived a life no stranger to violence and murder, but she had never been a part of that violence as far as he knew.

“Hey,” he said quietly, “don’t.”

Trinity shot him a hard look. If she understood that this blood she’d spilled had changed her, that she’d just given up a sliver of her innocence, he didn’t see it in her eyes. Jax knew she was no little girl, and he wasn’t the guardian of her innocence or humanity, but the moment still felt like a loss.

“Open your eyes,” Trinity told Luka.

The prisoner complied. Blood ran from the slit in his left eyelid, but he seemed to still have the eye. Luka stared at her, all his defiance and disdain obliterated by fear and pain.

“That’s just to prove I’ll do it,” Trinity said. “Five seconds, and I slice out your eye like I’m shuckin’ an oyster. The address where we can find Lagoshin.”

She had barely started counting when Luka blurted out the answer.

Task accomplished, Trinity let go of his hair. She handed Gavril’s bloodied dagger to Oleg and turned from the Russians, walking over to Jax. Where others might have worn a satisfied smile, Trinity had gone pale. She braced her hands against the inner wall of the empty pool and took a deep, shuddering breath.

Jax put a hand on her back. “You all right?”

Trinity took another deep breath. “If I can keep from pukin’ my guts up, I’ll be right as rain.”

Trinity hurried along the corridor, headed back to her room. The real estate agent had not wanted the water to the hotel turned on, but he’d supplied the surveying map, and Pyotr had managed to do it himself. By the time the water department noticed, they would long since have departed.

Just now she could have kissed Pyotr. There were days when a shower—even a cold shower, which was all they had—could save your life. Her face felt flushed, and she couldn’t seem to unclench her fists as she turned the corner. When she saw the door to her room, she managed to exhale, then shuddered in revulsion at the thought that the stale-smelling, dusty hotel room could offer her such reassurance. The building seemed to be closing in around her.

“Trinity!”

She spun, fists still clenched. Oleg had followed, and now he strode quickly after her. Two doors away, almost made it.

An argument had been brewing between them—she’d kept secrets, he’d thought he knew her—but she couldn’t have that conversation right now.

“You knew it was important, your relationship with Jax—”

“He’s my brother.”

“You knew it would complicate things for us.”

“I didn’t know how much, but, yeah, I knew. Do you blame me for keeping my mouth shut when I was falling in love with you?” She ran her hands through her hair. “Honestly?”

Oleg reached out to touch her cheek, lifted her chin. “And if you have to choose?”

Trinity’s breath quickened. She cocked her head, trying to mask her alarm. “Are you going to make me?”

“If you had to,” Oleg said, “who would you choose?”

Trinity gave a small laugh and shook her head. Her life back home had sometimes been troubled, sometimes lonely, and sometimes dangerous, but to her it had always been a beautiful life. School, working in the bakery and later in Keegan’s Pub, seeing her friends, and fighting with her mother. There were churches and cobblestones, and on a nice day there were musicians busking all through the city. Beautiful.

There was beauty here as well. The badlands and the mountains. At night, even the lights of Las Vegas had a brittle beauty. Trinity had believed that she and Oleg could make a beautiful life, but she felt apart from it now, as if the only loveliness she could see was through the barred windows of some prison cell.

“A man who loved me would never ask me that question,” she said.

Oleg nearly growled. She saw him fighting within himself, the grim Russian demeanor in conflict with his feelings for her.

“A woman who loved me would be able to answer it,” he replied.

“You bastard…”

He reached for her, but she shook his arm off. “All I’m asking is… if it came to that…”

Trinity pointed a finger at his face, bared her teeth. “He’s my brother, which makes him the only thing my father ever gave me. He’s family.”

A brutal silence descended upon them.

They heard the shush of clothing and a heavy footfall, and they turned to see Jax coming around the corner at the end of the hall. He stopped, meeting Oleg’s gaze in an open challenge, and Trinity wondered how much he had heard.

“You got a minute?” he asked.

Oleg scratched at his stubbled chin. “She’s got all the time in the world.”

He turned to walk away, but Jax called him back. “I was talking to you.”

Chin high, Oleg regarded him coolly. “Go on.”

“Me being here complicates things for you,” Jax said. “I recognize that. Kirill and I have an understanding. At the end of this thing, we may not all be friends, but we’re not gonna be trying to kill each other. I get the impression you and I need an understanding of our own.”

Oleg wetted his lips. “Putlova recruited Kirill. Kirill brought me into the Bratva, freed me from an ugly life. I had great respect for Viktor Putlova.”

Trinity watched her brother’s face. His features betrayed nothing, were as smooth a mask as Oleg’s.

“I respected Putlova, too,” Jax said. “But it’s hard to keep respecting a guy when you’ve got a knife in your back. Or at your throat. Trinity loves you, so I’m gonna promise you something. All my cards are on the table. My only agenda is to make sure my sister is safe. I know you want that, too, Oleg, but I have to ask… are all of your cards on the table?”

Oleg hesitated, glanced at Trinity, and a veil of aggression seemed to fall away from his face. “Yes,” he said, “all the cards.”

For a second, Trinity thought they might shake, but Jax did not extend his hand, and Oleg only nodded and turned away, striding along the corridor until he reached the turn in the hall. She heard the sound of the metal release bar on the exit door, then listened as it thumped shut.

“That went well,” Jax said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.

“I think it did, actually,” she said. “He may not want to respect you, but I think he’s startin’ to. Harder to hate a man if you know him.”

Jax laughed softly. “Yeah, that’s not really been my experience.”

“Regardless, we’re allied now, all of us. Once Lagoshin’s out of the way, all of this fear will end.”

For half a second, Jax stared at her as if she’d grown an extra head. His doubts aside, she believed that this alliance would be propitious. Awkwardness lingered between them, but it was quickly being replaced by a deep kinship. Jax had made it clear that he had her back, no matter what, and though she’d spent her life learning to deal with men who disappointed her, she had begun to believe in this man. Her brother.

Trinity told herself she would never have to choose between her new life and her old one. She could almost believe it.