Christopher Golden - Sons of Anarchy - Bratva

He wasn’t leaving Nevada without Trinity.

But he also had no intention of leaving without seeing Lagoshin again.

Trinity heardthe rumble of the Camaro’s engine and put aside the copy of The Great Gatsby she’d found under the counter in the motel’s lobby. Reading more classic literature had been on her to-do list for years, but she’d never been able to stick to it. Oleg had suggested Anna Karenina because he wanted her to read something Russian, but Trinity had always despised the very idea of classic novels about melodramatic rich girls struggling with love. Maybe she shouldn’t judge, but sappy shit like Pride and Prejudice made her want to puke.

Tugging her shoes on, she shut off the light and left the room. They’d cleaned up some, but walking around the abandoned hotel barefoot would have been stupid. There had been enough teenagers partying around the place that shards of broken beer bottles were more plentiful than spiders, and there were plenty of those.

She crossed the cracked parking lot. A door opened behind her, and she glanced back to see Pyotr emerge from his room. The young Russian had blue eyes so pale they were almost white. Oleg liked him, and Trinity was trying, but Pyotr barely spoke to her. Even now he only nodded and kept his stride steady, making no attempt to catch up and walk with her. She did the same, reaching the rear door of the lobby ahead of him. The main entrance and the lobby were dark except for the moonlight, but she only had to pass through and head down a side corridor to reach the motel’s conference room.

When she walked in, most of Oleg’s Bratva were already there. Cigarette smoke swirled and eddied in the room. Heavy blackout curtains covered the windows, and so they congregated there, out of sight of the road. Trinity could have waited out back for Oleg and Gavril—even now they would be parking the Camaro back there—but she wanted the others to see her as herself, and not just the ginger who followed Oleg around. Some of them already had accepted her, and others, she knew, never would.

“Trinity,” Ilia called as she stepped inside. “Have a drink with me!”

He raised a bottle of rum—his beloved—and shook the remnants of it around so it sloshed against the glass.

“I’m grateful, but no, thank you.” She smiled at him, and he seemed happy enough with that. She wondered how drunk he had to be before it pissed off the rest of them.

Kirill was in the small office adjoining the conference room. He had made the place his own and had maps of Las Vegas and the surrounding areas all over the floor, lines and circles drawn in red marker indicating areas they’d identified as likely haunts for Lagoshin and his men.

Voices came along the corridor, and then Gavril walked in, followed by Oleg. He smiled at her, and Trinity nodded to him, but he had more pressing matters on his mind than his girlfriend. Oleg knocked on the office door, and Kirill called that he’d be right out. A few moments later, they were all clustered even more tightly around the conference table.

“You found them,” Kirill said as he came out of the office. “I see it on your faces.”

Oleg nodded grimly. “We hit three or four of them. There were two I don’t think will be getting up again. One was Vasily. I didn’t see the face of the other.”

“Krupin?” Timur asked.

“He was hit in the shoulder. Probably not a killing wound,” Gavril replied.

Kirill frowned, studying them. Trinity noticed that they all seemed to be holding their breath.

“There is something you’re not saying,” Kirill observed.

Oleg and Gavril exchanged a glance, and then Oleg nodded slowly.

“Lagoshin was there,” he said. “I’m sorry, Kirill. We could have ended it tonight if we’d gotten him.”

Silence descended among them. The whole hotel seemed to tick and shift, as if she could hear it breathe.

Kirill said something in Russian. Trinity had listened to them talking enough that she understood a little, knew it translated roughly to “good job” or “you did well.”

“Lagoshin is down by two men, maybe more if the others who were shot are badly wounded,” Kirill went on, scanning the room. “I call it good fortune. Our friends are looking out for us.”

Ilia scoffed. “Friends.”

Kirill glared. “Don’t let the bottle speak for you, Ilia.”

“We have no friends or we would already know where to find Lagoshin and Krupin and the rest,” Ilia said, all of his drunken amiability turned to slurring scorn.

“You can’t blame them for being wary,” Oleg said, and from his tone, Trinity realized how much Ilia’s remarks unsettled him. “Our contacts are afraid. They want to help us, but if they do so openly and Lagoshin is the victor here—”

“Cowards!” Ilia snapped. He stood drunkenly and moved to the heavy drapes, peering out between them at the darkness. “They are cowards, and so are we, hiding here and striking from shadows. I say we talk to our ‘friends’ again, let them know they can’t stand by and wait to see who is still standing at the end. They must choose, and if they do not choose us, then we make them regret the choice.”

The room seemed to hold its breath. Trinity glanced at Pyotr, Sacha, and the others and realized that they agreed. This was why Oleg seemed so wary of Ilia’s words, because he knew the others felt the same.

“Throwin’ away through haste what might be gained through strategy is a fool’s gambit,” she said.

They all stared at her, and she felt more than ever like an intruder. Even Gavril curled his upper lip in disapproval of her interference. Only Oleg looked kindly upon her.

Kirill walked slowly to Ilia. Even drunk, he had the good sense to take a step back as his captain approached.

“It is my brother lying out there in a grave with no name,” Kirill said. “I want Lagoshin dead more than any of you, but I want to do it without burying anyone else in this desert. I agree that we must put more pressure on some of our friends to choose sides, but it must be done carefully and wisely… and soberly. In the morning, Ilia, we will speak of this again.”

Ilia looked terrified, but he raised his chin in a show of defiance and, in his own language, agreed.

Kirill turned from him. “Oleg, Gavril, come into the office.”

Oleg and Gavril followed him into the little side room with its maps and markers while the others began to disperse, realizing that nothing more would be happening until morning.

Ilia, who had been so welcoming to her before, paused to glare drunkenly at her. “If they find us before we find them, they will kill us all.”

Trinity nodded slowly. “They might. But if we rush into their gun sights without a plan, we die even faster.”

The drunken man flinched, sniffed at her logic, and marched out of the conference room. The trouble was that she agreed with him. He was drunk and foolish, yes, and she didn’t think they ought to do anything without preparing for the consequences, but the time had come to force the truth out of the Bratva’s local contacts, even if it meant pain. Even if it meant blood.

No more hiding in shadows.

The crowd at the Tombstone Bar was significantly more subdued than the usual suspects back at Birdland. Chibs stood by the bar and waited on Baghead, who’d slipped behind the oak counter and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. Hopper had been tending bar, pulling pints of local ale off the tap and setting them in front of patrons with the foam still spilling over the rims. Now he turned to glare at Baghead and mutter something sharp. Bag replied, and Chibs saw Hopper look up, search the bar, and settle on him, then nod. Bag may not have explained exactly what was going on in the back room, but he knew it wasn’t good.