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Kirill slapped him again. Jax froze, muscles bunching, fighting the urge to slap him back. The many guns in the room apparently persuaded him this would have been unwise, because after a few seconds he exhaled and stripped off his shirt.
Trinity saw the way Kirill stared at her brother’s back, and it baffled her, and then she had an epiphany. She’d never told Oleg about her brother or her father, never said who they were. Now she wished she’d warned them.
“You’re Jax Teller,” Kirill said.
“SAMCRO,” Jax confirmed. He locked his gaze on Oleg’s now, ignoring Kirill and Trinity alike. “My club’s had a long history with the Bratva, some good, some bad. A few days ago, one side of this conflict you’re in tried to kill me, and the other side saved my ass. I figure you’ll understand when I ask which one of those sides you’re on.”
Trinity felt a sick tightening in her gut. She’d tried to avoid the politics, the ugliness, and now it had crept up on her in the dark and wrapped its hands around her throat. She and her brother both waited for an answer.
Kirill narrowed his eyes. He stared at Jax for what seemed like an eternity. Then he gestured with his gun.
“Put your shirt back on, Mr. Teller. Let’s see what your little Christmas present out there can tell us,” Kirill said. “Then we’ll all get to decide whose side we’re on.”
Oh, shit, Trinity thought, glancing at Oleg, who refused to meet her eyes.
That was not an answer.
* * *
Opie stood beside the truck, trying to calm the thunder in his heart. The pickup’s passenger door hung open, but they’d smashed the dome light inside, an excess of caution. The weight of his gun dragged at his hand, whispering to him that it would be much lighter if he fired some of its bullets. Just nerves, he knew. Nerves and exhaustion and blood loss.
He managed a calm front, and most of the time that reflected an i
“What do ya see in there, brother?” Chibs called from the cab of the pickup.
“Same thing as you,” Opie said. “Jax just put his shirt back on.”
“Sounds like we’re gettin’ somewhere,” Chibs said.
Maybe, Opie thought. Times like this, dealing with professional liars and killers, there was no way to know. Professional liars and killers. What does that make us?
Up in the truck, Luka tried to cuss them out from behind the gag in his mouth. Chibs took a fistful of his hair and slammed his face into the dashboard, not for the first time. When Luka glanced dazedly around, fresh blood dripping from his nostrils, his eyes had the desperation of a coyote with its leg caught in a trap. Opie figured if Luka could have gotten away by gnawing his leg off the way a coyote sometimes would, he’d have done it—and he’d have been smart to make the attempt. The rest of his life could be measured in the number of breaths it would take for him to tell Kirill Sokolov what he wanted to know about Lagoshin. Luka had to know that.
“Here he comes,” Chibs said.
Spotlighted in the truck’s headlights, Jax strode from the hotel and crossed the parking lot toward them. As always, he moved as if he carried a dreadful weight on his shoulders. One of the Russians came behind him, a thin, bony man with sunken eyes and sharp cheekbones.
“Bring him out,” Jax called.
Opie gestured toward the open passenger door. Chibs gave Luka a shove, and the bleeding captive slid to the edge of the seat. He slid out. The moment his feet hit the ground he lunged at Opie, hands tied behind his back as he tried to turn himself into a battering ram. Opie tightened his grip on the gun, but he didn’t shoot the fool, just sidestepped and gave Luka a push. Luka lost his footing and went down on the pavement, twisting so that he landed on his shoulder, scraping flesh from his arm and smacking his head on the ground with a satisfying crack.
Luka rolled on his back and sat up, staring at the Russian who’d come out of the hotel, someone he probably knew. Not long ago, the two warring Bratva factions had been one. They might as well have been SAMCRO going to war with SAMTAC or SAMNOV. Brothers weren’t supposed to try killing each other, but whenever there was a power vacuum, the potential for bloodshed was like the electric crackle in the air right before a thunderstorm hit.
The ski
Luka glared at him, not wanting to do anything to hurry himself toward his fate. After a moment, though, the stalemate ended, and Luka managed to get his knees under him and rise.
“We good?” Jax asked the ski
“Good enough,” the Russian replied with a slow nod. He grabbed Luka and twisted him toward the hotel, directing him at the lobby doors.
Trinity emerged from the hotel before Luka reached it, another Russian behind her. Opie thought she looked rough, not unhealthy but uncared-for, as if she’d just come off a long ride—and maybe that wasn’t a bad comparison. Her hair was a mess. She wore jeans and a thin sweater that clung lovingly to her, but her feet were bare. The Russian behind her took her hand as they passed Luka and the ski
Chibs climbed down from the pickup, moved out to one side, his hand hovering near his gun. Opie didn’t figure Trinity’s appearance for trouble, but they couldn’t be too careful.
Trinity and Oleg walked until they’d reached Jax. Oleg glanced at Chibs and then at Opie’s gun but didn’t attempt to reach for his own. The lobby windows were dark, but inside there would still be men aiming guns at the truck—Oleg knew his visitors wouldn’t try anything stupid.
“Hello, Trinity,” Opie said, nodding warily.
She smiled. “Opie.” Then she introduced him and Chibs to Oleg as if they were at a damn cotillion instead of the parking lot of an abandoned hotel full of Russian gangsters.
The gun felt suddenly light in Opie’s hand, as if it wanted to float upward all on its own. “What’s the story, Jax?”
With Oleg and Trinity looking on, Jax went to Chibs and held out a hand. Chibs handed over his Glock, and Jax slipped it into his rear waistband. He held out his hands like a magician proving he had nothing up his sleeves and turned to Oleg.
“This going to be a problem?”
Oleg shook his head, expressionless. Noncommittal.
Jax seemed to take that as a positive sign, but Opie wasn’t so sure.
“Chibs, you and Op take the truck back to where we stashed your bikes,” Jax said.
Opie froze. “Not a chance.”
Jax stared at him. “You want to leave the bikes out there?”
“I’ll go,” Opie said. “Chibs can stay.”
Chibs shook his head, obviously not liking this plan any better. “How are you go
“I’ll dig around, find something to use for a ramp. I’ll figure it out.”
Jax hesitated, but he didn’t argue, and Opie knew why. This might not have been a very good plan, but it was the only one they had.
“Half an hour,” Opie said, making sure Oleg and Trinity heard him. He went around to the driver’s side of the truck, convinced they were making a mistake. If what the Bratva wanted was Jax Teller dead, he had just served himself up on a platter. That was a damn big if.
As he drove away, Opie kept glancing at the figures in the rearview mirror until they vanished in the retreating darkness.
“This is stupid,” he muttered, thinking they should’ve just knocked Oleg out, grabbed Trinity, and thrown her in the truck. Granted, she didn’t look like she wanted to leave, never mind that they probably wouldn’t have made it to the truck without being shot. He told himself it would be all right, that they weren’t even sure which side Sokolov’s men were on, but he was sure that he did know.