Christopher Golden - Sons of Anarchy - Bratva

“What about the old man?” Aaron asked, nodding toward Carney.

Temple smiled beatifically. “You armed, John?”

Carney frowned. “’Course I am. I’ve got that old Beretta you gave me when I turned seventy.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Temple said.

Aaron shrugged. “All right, then. No wire, and no other guns. But that one has a knife,” he said, pointing at Oleg.

Temple smiled that devilish grin. “’Course he does.” He glanced at Oleg. “You look like a knife man, Ivan.”

Oleg chuckled softly.

Temple’s mask slipped a moment. “I say something funny?”

“Nobody calls us Ivan anymore. Ronald Reagan has been out of office for a long time,” Oleg said.

Trinity sighed. Okay, Temple was an asshole, but when you wanted something from an asshole, you had to let him peacock around acting like King Shit. She glanced at Carney, who stood only a couple of feet from her. The old man looked nervous as hell.

“You’re in my house,” Temple warned. He rested his right palm on the gun handle jutting from the holster on his right hip. “I guess I’ll call you whatever I want, particularly since you didn’t offer up your names.”

Carney took a step away from Trinity, marking himself out as separate from her and her friends.

“Listen, I did my part,” he said, his voice a tired rasp. “I made the introductions. But you’re all a little too wound up for me, so I’m gonna be on my way.”

Trinity’s skin rippled with gooseflesh as if a malign presence had just entered the room. She didn’t believe in evil spirits the way her grandmother always had, but she certainly believed that bad intentions carried a weight, an aura that could be felt.

“You sit tight a second, Carney,” Temple said. “You brought these folks here.”

“Can we get down to business?” Trinity asked, raising her hands in supplication. “All we want is a fair price, and we’ve heard you’re a man who deals fair.”

Temple exhaled. He glanced at Aaron, who seemed to deflate a bit, and most of the tension drained out of the room. Oleg and Gavril relaxed visibly, but Feliks didn’t move any farther away from Aaron.

“What are you looking for exactly?” Temple asked.

Carney hummed to himself, looking at the floor, pretending he wasn’t involved in an illegal gun deal.

“MAC-10s. Tec-9s,” Oleg said. “Mix and match. We need a dozen, plus twenty handguns. Hollow-tip rounds, if you can get them.”

Temple whistled appreciatively as he scraped chopped vegetables onto a plate and walked over to the simmering pot. “You guys have quite a Christmas list. That’s a lot of guns just for the four of you.”

No one said a word. Temple dumped the vegetables into his stew and then went back for the big plate of chicken.

“I can get them,” he went on.

Antoinette stepped back into the kitchen. Temple glanced at her, and the woman gave a tiny tilt of the head.

Trinity didn’t like that head tilt, or the way the left side of Temple’s mouth lifted in an almost imperceptible smirk. Something had just passed between Antoinette and her employer, and Trinity ran back through the past couple of minutes in her head, trying to figure out what she had missed.

“How soon can you have ’em?” she asked, as if she hadn’t felt the change in the room.

Temple scraped the chicken into the pot and then adjusted the level of the flame.

“Something’s got me wondering,” he said. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I’m curious what sort of shitstorm you’re all in that you’ve got to come to me. Let’s face it, most of the guns ghosting their way up and down the west coast of this country came through Irish or Russian hands at some point, so why not go to your own people for this?”

Trinity felt cold. “Like you said, Mr. Temple. It’s not your business.”

The smarmy, condescending look returned to Temple’s face. The bastard had snake’s eyes and a predator’s smile.

Antoinette’s pocket buzzed once. The kitchen had fallen silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the tick of the clock, and the buzz was loud enough that everyone in the room glanced over at her.

Everyone except Oscar Temple.

Trinity stared. Why wouldn’t Temple react to the buzz of Antoinette’s phone, the sound of a text message coming in? Unless he’d been expecting the sound—waiting for it. Suddenly all the talk made sense, as did the way Antoinette had slipped out of the room.

Swearing under her breath, Trinity darted left, slipped behind John Carney, reached up under the back of his jacket and drew the gun the old man kept holstered there. Antoinette barked a warning even as Carney cried out in protest, but she nudged the old man aside and leveled the gun at Oscar Temple.

Aaron swore and reached inside his jacket for the pistol holstered at his armpit. Feliks was in motion as he drew the gun, ripping it from his grasp and then slapping him so hard that Aaron crashed into the wall and slid down to one knee, shaking his head to try to clear it. Feliks followed him, cracked the gun across the bridge of Aaron’s nose, smashing cartilage. Temple seemed too calm. Antoinette went for her own gun, but the rancher gestured for her to be still.

“Son of a bitch,” Aaron growled, starting to rise as he wiped at the crimson flooding from his nose.

“No, stay there,” Temple instructed, sneering at the man who’d been his bodyguard. Trinity had the feeling he was fired.

Oleg and Gavril were staring at Trinity like she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had. Paranoia could be an insidious thing—she’d seen it in others, but never in the mirror.

With his mustache and his brand-new, fake-cowboy clothes, Aaron looked ridiculous there on the floor, like a 1970s porn star past his prime. All the threat had hissed out of him like helium from a punctured balloon.

“Want to explain yourself, girl?” Temple asked.

Trinity ignored him.

Feliks handed the bodyguard’s gun to Oleg, then darted back along the corridor to retrieve their guns from the table in the foyer. Seconds later he reappeared and gave Gavril back his own pistol.

“I trusted you,” Carney said, staring at Trinity.

“Wasn’t us you shouldn’t have trusted,” she replied, hating the weight of the old man’s gun in her hand and the way her skin prickled with awareness of what a bullet could do.

“Antoinette,” she said, making her way around Temple while keeping him in her sights. “Take the mobile phone out of your pocket.”

The darkly tanned woman fished out her cell and handed it over. Trinity made sure Oleg and the others were covering Temple and his sidekicks and flipped open the cell phone. The text had come from a local phone number—no contact name—and consisted of four words. Stall. Fifteen minutes out .

Trinity read the text aloud.

“Shit!” Oleg muttered, glancing at Gavril. “Krupin?”

The name made Antoinette flinch. Trinity felt her stomach lurch. She pointed the gun at Antoinette’s skull, pressed it into her dark hair, and nudged, wondering when she had become so hard. All her life she’d had this sort of violence around her, but most of the time she’d been inside a kind of protective bubble. Never a part of the violence.

Now she jabbed Antoinette’s skull with the gun barrel again. “Who sent that text? Who’s on the way?”

Carney let out a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry… I can’t be here. I’ve got to go.”

He started toward the corridor, jittery and shaking his head. Feliks moved to block his path, and Aaron used the distraction, lunging to his feet and crashing into Feliks, trying to strip the weapon from his hand.

Trinity swore, an instant of panic freezing her in place.