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“We don’t have time for foreplay,” Jax said.
Trinity walked to Gavril and held out a hand. “Give me your knife, Gav.”
Gavril knelt and slid up the leg of his pants, retrieving a small dagger from the sheath strapped around his calf. Trinity took it from him as she passed by, moving into the deep end of the empty pool. Jax watched her curiously. Luka sniffed in derision and spit again, disdainful of the very idea that a woman could intimidate him.
She edged past Oleg, her back to him, controlling the space between herself and Luka.
Trinity grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back. Jaw tight, muscles standing out on her forearms, she pressed the knife against the skin just beside his left eye. In the morning light, Jax saw the trickle of blood drip from the wound.
“Bitch,” Luka sneered, eyes pinched closed.
Trinity dug the knife tip into his eyebrow, and Luka cried out as she sliced downward, splitting his eyelid. He tried to tear his head away, tried to use his body weight to move the chair back, but she held him tightly, and the position of the knife blade forced him not to fight too hard.
“She’s your sister, all right,” Chibs said quietly.
Jax stood away from the wall, staring at her. Trinity had grown up with the RIRA in the family, lived a life no stranger to violence and murder, but she had never been a part of that violence as far as he knew.
“Hey,” he said quietly, “don’t.”
Trinity shot him a hard look. If she understood that this blood she’d spilled had changed her, that she’d just given up a sliver of her i
“Open your eyes,” Trinity told Luka.
The prisoner complied. Blood ran from the slit in his left eyelid, but he seemed to still have the eye. Luka stared at her, all his defiance and disdain obliterated by fear and pain.
“That’s just to prove I’ll do it,” Trinity said. “Five seconds, and I slice out your eye like I’m shuckin’ an oyster. The address where we can find Lagoshin.”
She had barely started counting when Luka blurted out the answer.
Task accomplished, Trinity let go of his hair. She handed Gavril’s bloodied dagger to Oleg and turned from the Russians, walking over to Jax. Where others might have worn a satisfied smile, Trinity had gone pale. She braced her hands against the i
Jax put a hand on her back. “You all right?”
Trinity took another deep breath. “If I can keep from pukin’ my guts up, I’ll be right as rain.”
* * *
Trinity hurried along the corridor, headed back to her room. The real estate agent had not wanted the water to the hotel turned on, but he’d supplied the surveying map, and Pyotr had managed to do it himself. By the time the water department noticed, they would long since have departed.
Just now she could have kissed Pyotr. There were days when a shower—even a cold shower, which was all they had—could save your life. Her face felt flushed, and she couldn’t seem to unclench her fists as she turned the corner. When she saw the door to her room, she managed to exhale, then shuddered in revulsion at the thought that the stale-smelling, dusty hotel room could offer her such reassurance. The building seemed to be closing in around her.
“Trinity!”
She spun, fists still clenched. Oleg had followed, and now he strode quickly after her. Two doors away, almost made it.
An argument had been brewing between them—she’d kept secrets, he’d thought he knew her—but she couldn’t have that conversation right now.
“You knew it was important, your relationship with Jax—”
“He’s my brother.”
“You knew it would complicate things for us.”
“I didn’t know how much, but, yeah, I knew. Do you blame me for keeping my mouth shut when I was falling in love with you?” She ran her hands through her hair. “Honestly?”
Oleg reached out to touch her cheek, lifted her chin. “And if you have to choose?”
Trinity’s breath quickened. She cocked her head, trying to mask her alarm. “Are you going to make me?”
“If you had to,” Oleg said, “who would you choose?”
Trinity gave a small laugh and shook her head. Her life back home had sometimes been troubled, sometimes lonely, and sometimes dangerous, but to her it had always been a beautiful life. School, working in the bakery and later in Keegan’s Pub, seeing her friends, and fighting with her mother. There were churches and cobblestones, and on a nice day there were musicians busking all through the city. Beautiful.
There was beauty here as well. The badlands and the mountains. At night, even the lights of Las Vegas had a brittle beauty. Trinity had believed that she and Oleg could make a beautiful life, but she felt apart from it now, as if the only loveliness she could see was through the barred windows of some prison cell.
“A man who loved me would never ask me that question,” she said.
Oleg nearly growled. She saw him fighting within himself, the grim Russian demeanor in conflict with his feelings for her.
“A woman who loved me would be able to answer it,” he replied.
“You bastard…”
He reached for her, but she shook his arm off. “All I’m asking is… if it came to that…”
Trinity pointed a finger at his face, bared her teeth. “He’s my brother, which makes him the only thing my father ever gave me. He’s family.”
A brutal silence descended upon them.
They heard the shush of clothing and a heavy footfall, and they turned to see Jax coming around the corner at the end of the hall. He stopped, meeting Oleg’s gaze in an open challenge, and Trinity wondered how much he had heard.
“You got a minute?” he asked.
Oleg scratched at his stubbled chin. “She’s got all the time in the world.”
He turned to walk away, but Jax called him back. “I was talking to you.”
Chin high, Oleg regarded him coolly. “Go on.”
“Me being here complicates things for you,” Jax said. “I recognize that. Kirill and I have an understanding. At the end of this thing, we may not all be friends, but we’re not go
Oleg wetted his lips. “Putlova recruited Kirill. Kirill brought me into the Bratva, freed me from an ugly life. I had great respect for Viktor Putlova.”
Trinity watched her brother’s face. His features betrayed nothing, were as smooth a mask as Oleg’s.
“I respected Putlova, too,” Jax said. “But it’s hard to keep respecting a guy when you’ve got a knife in your back. Or at your throat. Trinity loves you, so I’m go
Oleg hesitated, glanced at Trinity, and a veil of aggression seemed to fall away from his face. “Yes,” he said, “all the cards.”
For a second, Trinity thought they might shake, but Jax did not extend his hand, and Oleg only nodded and turned away, striding along the corridor until he reached the turn in the hall. She heard the sound of the metal release bar on the exit door, then listened as it thumped shut.
“That went well,” Jax said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.
“I think it did, actually,” she said. “He may not want to respect you, but I think he’s startin’ to. Harder to hate a man if you know him.”
Jax laughed softly. “Yeah, that’s not really been my experience.”
“Regardless, we’re allied now, all of us. Once Lagoshin’s out of the way, all of this fear will end.”
For half a second, Jax stared at her as if she’d grown an extra head. His doubts aside, she believed that this alliance would be propitious. Awkwardness lingered between them, but it was quickly being replaced by a deep kinship. Jax had made it clear that he had her back, no matter what, and though she’d spent her life learning to deal with men who disappointed her, she had begun to believe in this man. Her brother.