Sons of Anarchy: Bratva by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online Page B

raw-red and covered in broth as she lunged for Trinity. Oleg shot her—in the head. The bullet went in through her temple and never emerged.
    A pause. A breath. Even the clock and fridge seemed to have fallen silent in that moment between moments, and then one more shot rang out.
    Aaron struggled to free himself from beneath Feliks, who had just gone hideously limp. The broken-nosed bodyguard pushed out from under the huge Russian. Blood poured out of a hole in Feliks’s neck like it might never stop. Shaking, Aaron tried to bring his recovered gun up to defend himself but Oleg reached him, kicked him in the face, and then did it again. Aaron howled as his shattered nose was pummeled, mashed bloody against his face. Trinity thought she heard his cheekbone crack.
    “Shoot him!” Gavril roared. “He killed Feliks! Put all the bullets in him!”
    “No!” Oleg snapped. He kicked Aaron again. “On your feet, khuy !”
    Aaron staggered as he rose, one hand against the wall to keep from collapsing. Feliks had hurt him badly, but now Feliks was dead. Trinity hated it all, but she wouldn’t lie to herself. Aaron deserved whatever Oleg and Gavril did to him. They had come here to make a fair deal, and they’d been betrayed.
    Oleg had a fistful of Aaron’s hair and jammed the barrel of his gun against the bodyguard’s gore-streaked throat.
    “You know where the guns are in this house,” Oleg said. “Tell me no, and I shoot you in the leg. Then I stomp your balls until they burst.”
    Trinity’s stomach roiled.
    “You’re gonna kill me,” Aaron said, his voice trembling.
    “It’s what happens when you’re on the wrong side,” Oleg said, jamming the gun barrel harder against his throat. “But you take us to the guns right now, not another word from you, and you die with both balls and both eyes still where they belong. No pain. One bullet. Quick.”
    Aaron deflated, all hope leaving him, and nodded once. He started toward the back corridor where Antoinette had gone to make her call.
    “We’ve got maybe ten minutes,” Gavril said. “Less if anyone heard gunshots.”
    Against the wall, John Carney shifted and let out a small sob. Trinity, Oleg, and Gavril all turned to look at him. Broken and shaking, he stood there crying old man’s tears.
    “Gavril,” Oleg said.
    Trinity knew the tone, knew what it meant.
    “No,” she said.
    Oleg frowned, glancing at her, his gun now aimed at Aaron’s back. “ Trinity .”
    Letting the old man’s gun hang by her side, Trinity walked over to Carney and stood in front of him. She didn’t look at him, afraid to meet his eyes.
    “This man did nothin’ wrong. He’d put this life behind him till we asked him to do us this favor. I’ll not allow you to kill him for it.”
    Oleg hesitated. Lips pressed together in a white line, he thought it over, but Trinity knew how it would end. The brutality he’d threatened Aaron with … he’d have done it all but gotten no joy from it. Violence was a tool for Oleg, but he didn’t have a killer’s heart, and he believed in people reaping what they’d sown.
    He gestured toward Carney. “Go and sit at the table. You’ll leave when we do.”
    Silently, Carney went to the little round table in the kitchen, dragging out a chair.
    Aaron started to turn, maybe to make a fight of it again. Oleg struck him in the temple with the gun.
    “Walk.”
    The bodyguard walked the first of his final steps. Oleg and Gavril followed.
    Trinity knew they could have used her help to carry the guns they were about to steal, but she pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from red-faced John Carney. He wiped his tears and looked at her with doubtful eyes.
    Carney glanced over at the corpses of Temple and Antoinette, and his expression darkened. She thought for a moment that she saw in him the hard man he’d once been.
    “Oscar dealt the cards, lass,” Carney said. “He used to say, ‘The house always wins,’ but he was a fool to think