Christopher Golden - Sons of Anarchy - Bratva

“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.”