Sons of Anarchy: Bratva

7

The next time Jax opened his eyes, the sun was burning around the edges of the blackout window shade and the temperature in the room had gone up twenty degrees. He felt grimy, as if he’d been sweating through the night and it had dried on him, stiffening his clothes. Stretching, he glanced over to see the other bed empty, and he wondered what Joyce had thought when he’d woken to see SAMCRO’s VP sleeping nearby.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and dragged his sneakers on. His wallet chain clinked quietly as he stood and swiped a hand across his tired eyes. With a groan, he shook himself, wet-dog style, and glanced around for a clock but didn’t find one.

The rest of the crib was abandoned, with no sign of Chibs, Opie, or any of the SAMNOV guys, so Jax returned the way he’d come in the early morning hours. The poolroom sofa was vacant as well, but Joyce stood by the table with a cue stick in one hand, studying the arrangement of the balls. After a moment, he realized that Jax was watching and glanced up.

“You snore,” Joyce said.

“We all have our faults,” Jax replied.

Joyce chuckled, his smile causing his burn scar to stretch grotesquely.

“What time is it?” Jax asked.

“Too early to be up and too late to go back to sleep.”

“Any chance you could be more specific?”

“Going on 10 a.m. Antonio called Rollie about an hour ago. I haven’t seen him yet, but I’d guess he’s out front already.”

Jax nodded. “That bacon I smell?”

“We got a grill in the little kitchen by the bar. Thor likes to cook breakfast.”

“He any good at it?”

Joyce gave a small shrug. “Couldn’t make a decent pancake to save his life, but his eggs are fantastic. You’ll see.”

Jax made his way to the front of the building, stopping only to empty his bladder on the way. The main bar area took up about half of the building itself, mostly oak beams and thick floorboards soaked with decades of spilled beer and smelling every year of it. There were no shining brass railings in this place and no mirrors on the walls—the clientele the Tombstone Bar drew in weren’t too fond of staring at their own reflections. There were booths and tables with mismatched chairs, simple and to the point. Behind the long bar were racks of alcohol built up like bookends on either side of a huge marble grave marker with Rollie’s full name on it. The damn tombstone was the only thing in the bar that looked like anyone ever bothered to clean it.

“Morning, Jackson,” Rollie said, rising from a stool near the plate-glass windows at the front of the room. His hair had more salt than pepper these days, and his gut had belled out a bit since Jax had last seen him, but he still exuded the same combination of warmth, intelligence, and mischief as ever.

“Rollie,” Jax said. “Thanks for the hospitality.”

Chibs and Opie were seated at the bar with Antonio, Thor, and Baghead, all of them digging into plates of breakfast. Opie raised an eyebrow and gave a nod, silently letting Jax know the food had his seal of approval. Chibs didn’t even look up, and Jax had to smile. It had been a long ride, and his own stomach growled at the fantastic smells coming from the little kitchen.

Rollie shook Jax’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder.

“If you’d let me know you were coming, I would’ve at least had the boys change the sheets back there,” Rollie said, frowning in disapproval.

Anyone else, Jax would’ve doubted it, but he took Rollie at his word.

“I know you would have, brother. Couldn’t do it, though.”

“Bag said something seemed off,” Rollie noted. “You guys are up at four in the morning, I got to figure there’s trouble. Maybe you ought to lay it out for me.”

Jax glanced over at Bag and the others. “You want to do that here or in your office?”

Rollie understood his meaning. “No prospects here this morning. You can consider whatever you say here just as sacrosanct as anything you’d say in chapel.”

Jax nodded slowly. He wasn’t sure how well Baghead could keep a secret, and he didn’t know Antonio very well, but he trusted Rollie.

The service door swung open, and Hopper stepped through with a wide plate heaped high with food.

“Jax, come sit down,” he said. “Thor wants his food eaten hot. He’s been keeping it warm back there, but don’t test his patience.”

Jax shook his head. Hopper had his hair tied back with a rubber band and his goatee cinched together with a little iron ring.

“Damn, Hopper. I hope Thor makes a better chef than you do a waitress.”

“Sit down, asshole,” Hopper growled, sliding his plate none-too-gently onto the bar.

“Can you talk and eat at the same time?” Rollie asked. If it was a joke, he didn’t let on.

“I’ll manage,” Jax said, ravenous now.

He walked to the bar and slid onto a stool, trading nods and greetings with the other men in the room.“You guys eat like this all the time?” he asked, digging his fork into the eggs.

“Couple times a week, when Thor feels like cooking,” Antonio said.

“I might never go home,” Chibs said, pushing away his empty plate.

Jax let business slide for a couple of minutes while he tucked into the plate of food, heaping eggs on top of toast.

After he’d finished half the plate, Rollie dragged a stool over beside him, a mug of coffee in his hand.

“All right, man from Charming. Your belly ain’t growlin’ quite so loud now. You want to explain your under-cover-of-night arrival and, more importantly, why you’re not wearing your cuts? If I showed up at your place without mine, I don’t think I’d have received such a warm welcome.”

Jax wiped crumbs from his mustache, nodding. “It’s appreciated, Rollie.” He turned on the stool, facing Rollie and making sure as many of the other SAMNOV guys could see him as possible. “Short version…”

And he told them.

When he’d finished the story, Baghead choked up a mouthful of phlegm. “Goddamn Russkies,” Bag said, and spat the wad into his empty juice glass.

Rollie laid a hand on his own prodigious gut, brows knitted in contemplation.

“We try to fly under the radar down here, man,” he said. “You know that. We’ve been in our share of scrapes, but we try to keep business running smoothly, focus on the finer things. But family is family. Until you know your sister’s safe, you’ve got whatever you need from us. Blood, sweat, and tears.”

Jax leaned in toward Rollie. “Thank you, brother. I know you try to keep things looking legit. We’ll do everything we can to avoid bringing trouble to your door.”

“Aye,” Chibs agreed.

Opie had turned to watch the conversation unfold, and he raised a coffee mug to signal his own agreement.

“What can we do?” Rollie asked.

Jax inhaled the stale-beer aroma of the bar, the warmth of it, and the camaraderie of the men of the North Vegas charter. These guys had a good thing going, and he didn’t want to blow it for them, especially when things had been so tense in Charming. The last thing he wanted was to drag his shit over someone else’s threshold.

“Right now, just a place to lay our heads and some information.” He glanced around at Hopper, Antonio, Thor, and Bag. “Anything in the air about rival Bratva factions?”

A lot of shaking heads.

Rollie looked thoughtful and then shrugged. “We’ve got connections with the local PD. Cooperative relationships, ya know? And there are guys we could talk to who have deep ties to the old mob powers that still run most of the dark money in Vegas. I don’t know how much help they’re gonna be, but we can give it a shot.”

Someone coughed at the back of the bar, and they all turned to see that Joyce had entered the room. How long he’d been listening, Jax couldn’t be sure.

“Bag, you gonna tell them about the Birdman’s place?” Joyce asked, the bull’s-eye scar on his cheek gleaming angrily in the daylight filtering in front of the bar.

Baghead frowned, hands fluttering toward his face as if he felt some insect harrying him and wanted to swat it away. He twitched, sniffed, and then nodded swiftly.

“Right, right, Harry,” Bag said, one side of his mouth lifting in a smile. “Stupid of me, yeah? Should’ve thought of that without you making me think of it.”

Harry Joyce. Jax had forgotten the guy’s first name.

“Who’s the Birdman?” Opie asked.

Bag flinched toward him as if he’d forgotten Opie had a voice. “Guy likes old jazz, plus he keeps a bunch of parakeets in the club. Strip club, called Birdland. People think the name comes from the girls, ‘birds,’ like they’d call ’em in London or whatever, but it’s the jazz connection. Famous club in New York has the same name, but not the naked titties and definitely not the parakeets.”

Chibs leaned back against the bar and crossed his arms. “I’m lost. How is this relevant?”

Jax glanced at Joyce, hoping for a rescue, and he wasn’t disappointed.

“Birdland’s always got a few Russian Mafia guys hanging around,” Joyce said. “You wanna find out what the Bratva are up to in Vegas right now, that’s the place to start.”

“Got a contact at the club?” Jax asked, turning to Rollie. “Someone who can point us the right way?”

Rollie clapped him on the shoulder. “We can do better than a contact. Wait till tonight, and Joyce’ll go with you. He’ll know the faces and the names.”

“I’m in,” Joyce agreed. His smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Jax nodded his thanks. He turned toward Opie, saw relief in his expression and a dark purpose in his eyes, and knew they reflected his own. They’d come to visit the Tombstone Bar expecting not much more than a place to crash. People so rarely exceeded his expectations that Jax found himself very happy when they did.

He looked at Joyce. “Thanks, man.”

Bag snorted something back into his nose, then scoffed. “That’s Harry Joyce. Never could resist a damsel in distress.”

Chibs laughed softly. “Ah, well, it’s clear you’ve never met Jax’s lovely sister.” He turned on the stool and looked around the bar. “Trust me, fellas… Trinity Ashby’s not some swooning girl. She’s nobody’s bloody damsel in distress.”

Trinity had never been the sort of girl who cried. To hear her mother tell it, she’d wailed like a banshee as an infant, screeching to wake the dead. Her mother’s friend Kiera had once said baby Trinity’s crying could have driven Christ off the cross, and Trinity had been perversely proud of that. But once she’d been able to crawl—to move without her mother lugging her around—her tears had ended. Oh, she’d wept at a funeral or two, but that was the sum of it. Romantic movies made her roll her eyes, and even in her teen years there had never been a boy who’d made her cry… though she’d bloodied a few of their noses.

This morning she was furious with herself for the tears she had shed last night. Feliks had died, and they’d buried him—grief was only natural—but she knew that she needed to be harder than that. She needed to be able to turn off the pain inside, to go numb, or she might not survive all of this.

For it’s sure Feliks won’t be the last to die.

Steeling herself for the blast of cold, she stepped into the shower. The desert morning was cool and the water much chillier than that. Gavril and Kirill had managed to get the well pump that served the motel—and the oil-stinking generator—running easily enough, but the furnace was broken, so there’d be no hot water. Still, the water sluiced the night’s sweat and the previous day’s dust off her body, and that part felt wonderful.

Trinity shivered as she ran the soap over her body, hurrying as best she could. Gooseflesh prickled her skin.

Feliks had been a good man, but in her experience the death of good men had always been one of life’s few guarantees.

Not Oleg, she thought. She would not lose him. Oleg was a good man. Trinity feared that he might need to become a bad man to survive, but if that was what it took for her to be able to keep him, then so be it.

“Well, well,” he said, stepping into the bathroom as if summoned by her thoughts.

Trinity glanced out through the dirty glass door. “What do you think you’re doin’?” she asked, teeth chattering.

“I thought I might join you.”

“You add one more second to how long this takes, and I’ll have your guts for garters.”

Oleg laughed and leaned against the wall. Trinity hung her head and let the cold water soak her hair, shuddering as she reached for the shampoo. Stepping back from the stream, she worked her hair into a lather, but all the while Oleg stayed there, hands jammed into his pockets, back against the wall.

“Enjoyin’ the show?” she asked.

“Such beauty deserves an audience,” he said, his accent thicker than usual.

Teeth chattering, she smiled nevertheless. She hadn’t met every Bratva thug in the world, but she doubted many were eloquent, particularly in a language not their own.

“But somethin’ else is on your mind,” she said, before she braced herself and plunged her head into the frigid shower’s cascade.

“We have weapons now,” Oleg said. “With luck, soon we will learn where Lagoshin has been staying. Once that happens, we will have to attack, to kill Lagoshin and his lieutenants, or it will only be a matter of time before they find and kill us.”

Trinity stepped back, squeezing excess water from her hair.

“None of this is news to me, love. It’s why we’re hidin’ in a hotel near a haunted kiddie park… why we killed Temple and his bodyguards. You think I don’t—”

Oleg cleared his throat. “I want you to leave, kotyonok. You being here… it makes me afraid, and I can’t do what I need to do if I am afraid for you.”

Trinity shut off the water, freezing water sluicing from her body, dripping from her breasts. She gritted her jaw, but not from the cold.

Sliding the door open, she stepped out onto the mat, her whole body crying out from the cold. A towel hung on a plastic bar within arm’s length, but she did not reach for it, only stood and stared at Oleg as tiny rivulets of water ran down her naked flesh.

“Kotyonok—” he began, moving toward her, reaching for her hands.

“I’m not your fuckin’ kitten,” she snarled. “In bed, you can call me whatever you like. But this is somethin’ else, so don’t you dare be tender to me now. You listen. I love you, ya bastard. I’m not goin’ anywhere. So don’t tell me about your fears or how I’m your weakness. I should be your goddamn strength. I should be the iron in your blood. That’s what love is! I don’t know what kind of woman you thought you were gettin’ when you asked me to leave my home and come with you, but I’ll tell you this much… we survive together, or we might as well already be dead. You understand me?”

Trinity fumed, inhaling and exhaling loudly, face so flushed with her temper that she no longer felt cold. She saw the emotions raging on Oleg’s face, anger and embarrassment and love and doubt.

Then he grinned.

“What in God’s name are you smilin’ about?” she snapped.

Oleg roguishly arched an eyebrow. “You get angry like this, and you breathe very hard. Watching your tits move up and down… it is like I’m being hypnotized. Or put under a magic spell.”

She gaped incredulously at him, and he laughed.

Trinity punched him again, this time in the arm and not so hard.

“Don’t bring up the idea of me leavin’ again,” she said.

He took her and kissed her, the water on her damp skin soaking through his clothes.

“I promise, kotyonok,” he whispered.

Kitten. Again. The bastard.

This time, though, she didn’t hit him. Instead, she reached for his belt buckle.

On the phone’s first ring, Maureen Ashby only glanced up from the leftover stew she’d been heating up on the stove. The phone had fallen silent again, and for half a second she wondered if the ring had been her hopeful imagination. A cat yowled out in the alley behind her place, and she heard one of the neighborhood kids laughing loudly, a cruel sound followed by the shattering of glass and a much more frightened, irritated screech from the cat.

The phone kept ringing.

Poor thing, she thought, on the surface of her mind. She ought to open a window and give those kids hell for tormenting the animal. That Kenny Donovan was a vicious little shit.

Underneath that, though, a voice was screaming at her to answer the phone. When it rang again, Maureen felt as if an electric shock had jolted her. She dropped the wooden spoon from her hand and launched herself toward the phone. Almost nobody called her on this line—her friends used her mobile—so unless it was a sales call… but no, there it was, the international code.

America. Please be Trinity.

“Hello?”

“It’s Jax. You alone?”

Good news, she wondered, or the unthinkable?

“Tell me you found her, Jax. My thoughts are strayin’ into very dark corners these days.”

Crackling on the phone. At least there was only a little delay. Only a little.

“—Nevada,” Jax was saying.

“Wait, what? Sorry, start again.”

“We’re in Nevada,” he repeated. “No sign of Trinity yet, but I wanted to touch base because I don’t know how long it’ll be before I can call again.”

Her heart sank, but she forced herself to buck up. No news might not be good news, but it was better than the nightmare of the phone call that she dreaded so desperately.

“If we have a chance of finding her, it’s gonna be through her Russian boyfriend. Oleg and his buddies are gonna be way more memorable to people than Trinity, so we’re gonna start with that. But, listen, Maureen… is there anyone out here she’d know? Anyone she might go to if she got into trouble?”

She could hear the dark accusation in his voice, that of course if Trinity had been in trouble she ought to have called her brother. Maureen agreed, but given the issues SAMCRO had with both the RIRA and the Russians, she also understood why her daughter might have hesitated to introduce her half-brother to the new man in her life.

“Let me think on it,” Maureen said.

Jax read her off a number. “You’ve got the cell number I gave you last time. I’ve still got that burner on me. But if you can’t reach me, you can call here. It’s a bar, but if you ask for me, they’ll take a message.”

Maureen exhaled. Somehow, despite her fears, Jax had managed to soothe her. Perhaps it was the gruff confidence in his voice, that rumble that reminded her so much of his father.

There was still that other conversation they needed to have—about the letters she’d put in his duffel just before he left Belfast, hoping he’d read them when he got home. He deserved to know that part of his father’s life. Of course he’d have read them by now, but Jax hadn’t brought it up when they’d talked before—maybe because Gemma had interrupted the call—and that was just fine with Maureen. If Jax felt like talking about those letters there’d be time for it later. Right now, Trinity was her only concern.

“Jax,” she said, her voice firm. “Your sister—“

“I’ll find her.”

“More than find her. You’ll send her home.”

“I can’t promise that, Maureen. Trinity’s not some kid. I can’t make her—”

“She’s fallen in love with a Russian gangster. I knew there’d be danger when she went off with him, but she didn’t give me a choice. Now it’s happened already, just a handful of months later, and I can’t allow her any more choice than she gave me. You didn’t grow up as brother and sister, Jackson, but she’s your flesh and blood, and you care for her. I know you do. Just like I know you understand the danger loving this bastard is puttin’ her in. So, yes, I expect you to promise me, to swear on your father’s soul, that you will send her home to me.”

The line crackled with static.

“Jax?” she said, worried that she’d lost the connection.

“I’m still here,” he said, his rough voice a distant ghost.

“Promise me.”

“I promise. I’ll send her home even if I have to bring her there myself.”

Jax hung up without saying good-bye. Maureen kept the phone to her ear for a few seconds, listening to the static and the ghost of a past she’d cherished and a future she’d never had.