Krupin’s right arm hung limply, blood soaking through his shirt from the gunshot wound of the night before. Opie shot Krupin four times, bullets ripping through him, shattering the mirrors on the wall behind him. Blood-spattered shards crashed down on top of the dying man, some reflecting Krupin’s shock and pain and some showing Opie a reflection of his own grim features. As the gunfire ceased, only soft echoes remaining in the ballroom, he turned away. He hadn’t liked the look of his eyes in that reflection. He would have expected to see a killer’s eyes, but all he saw in those mirror shards was pain.
* * *
Black sunbursts of oxygen deprivation blossomed in Jax’s eyes. His legs pounded the floor, and he smashed his fists into Lagoshin’s side. He tried to force the monster’s arms away, but Lagoshin’s size and weight overwhelmed him. In his fury, the Russian felt none of Jax’s blows. In the rush of imminent death, Jax could no longer feel any of his own injuries, only those hands around his throat and the burning hollow in his lungs.
Lagoshin looked down on him and grinned. He whispered something in Russian that Jax would never understand.
A fresh wave of rage flowed over Jax, one last burst of strength, and he slammed his fists into Lagoshin’s sides, already thinking ahead to his next move—his last move. He had to reach the enormous bastard’s eyes.
Tensed, about to thrust his arms up inside Lagoshin’s reach, he punched one last time… and realized that his left fist had struck something at the Russian’s side that shouldn’t have been there. In the fog his thoughts had become, it took him a precious moment to realize it was a sheath. A handle jutted from it.
Lagoshin had a knife.
Desperate, lungs screaming for air, Jax drove his fist into the Russian’s side one final time, but now his fingers closed on the handle of the knife, and he drew it out. In his triumph, Lagoshin didn’t notice until the blade punched through his right side. Weakened, Jax only had so much strength, but he had enough to drive the blade in and twist. He hacked tough muscle, split skin.
Lagoshin roared and lurched off him, scrambling backward in a crouch until he hit the corridor wall. Pain contorted his face as he looked down along his side and saw what Jax had done—saw the knife handle jutting from his side.
Drawing in ragged breaths, fighting back the blackness in his peripheral vision, Jax crawled along the carpet to the opposite wall and used it to leverage himself upward. Leaning against the wall, he reached deeper… breathed deeper… and found a determination that his body lacked.
Jax took a deep breath that seared his throat and stepped away from the wall. Lagoshin reached down and ripped the knife from his own side. Blood poured from the wound, painting the carpet and then running in a steady stream that soaked into his pants. Eyes bright with murder, Lagoshin stepped toward him. Jax punched him in the throat. Wheezing, sucking in air, Lagoshin staggered backward. Jax went to follow, but the Russian swiped the blade across the space between them and tagged Jax on the arm, a thin red line burning against his left tricep. A shallow cut, but the knife would do much worse.
“I will enjoy killing your sister,” Lagoshin said.
Twin gunshots exploded in the hallway. Twin holes appeared in Lagoshin’s torso. He took a single step backward, blinked, stared at Jax and then down at the rose-red patches blossoming on his chest… and then he fell to his knees. A long moan came from his throat, and then he slid down to lay on his side as if he had simply decided the time had come to sleep.
Jax staggered backward a step, staring at the dead Russian. Slowly, he turned to see Oleg lying on his side on the bloody carpet with a 9mm pistol in one hand and the other pressed against his abdomen, his shirt soaked in blood. The smell of blood filled the corridor—his and Oleg’s and Lagoshin’s mixing together into a metallic, copper cloud—and he forced himself to ignore his injuries. He walked to Lagoshin and stepped on the Russian’s wrist, tore the knife from his grip and tossed it away.
“He’s dead,” Oleg said, his voice a groan.
Jax turned to see Oleg trying to force himself into a sitting position again, and failing. He lurched over to Oleg and knelt beside him. Gutshot, blood still foaming from the corners of his mouth, he was close to death.
“Thank you, man. Truly,” Jax said. “You saved my life just now.”
Oleg gripped his arm, staring at him with the dark urgency of words he did not have the strength to speak.
Then his gaze went dull and his grip slackened, and he was gone.
Jax sat down to rest beside the dead man.
His eyes closed.
* * *
Jackie. Wake up, brother.
It might have been minutes later, or only seconds, when he heard the quiet burr of Chibs’s voice, and he opened his eyes again. Jax blinked to clear his vision, weak from blood loss, exhaustion, and the beating he’d taken. Chibs knelt to his right, a hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. To his left, Trinity stood staring down at the pale corpse of the man she’d loved and at the pool of blood that surrounded him where he sat against the wall. She cried silently, mute with grief. For long moments, it was as if she didn’t even realize that Chibs and Jax were there in the corridor with her. Then a dark, familiar anger stole over her face, and she glanced at the gun in Jax’s hand, then over at Lagoshin and the bullet wounds in his torso. He hadn’t been able to save Oleg, but he had taken vengeance for her.
It was cold comfort, but it was all he had to offer.
20
Trinity spit on Lagoshin’s corpse.
She wiped furiously at her eyes, hating every tear that fell. Death had been no stranger to her life, but when she had lost people she loved, it had been at a distance. The presence of Oleg’s body, the way his mouth hung open as if he might be just about to speak… the dull sheen of his dark eyes… it carved a hole in her chest.
“Jesus,” she whispered, the closest thing to a real prayer she had uttered in years.
Chibs helped Jax to his feet. Trinity went to her brother, and he opened his arms to her, pulled her into a bloody embrace. Her tears had dried, but grief poured from her and he held her tightly, absorbing it all.
She took a deep breath and stood back from him. When he took her by the arm, she saw a pain in his eyes that reflected her own, and she loved him for it. They walked away together, Chibs in the lead with his gun drawn, leaving the dead behind.
They made their way to the steps that passed the ballroom and then down the sweeping, grand staircase. Chibs kept a wary eye on the bodies they found along the way. Pyotr lay sprawled on the stairs. At the bottom, just outside the first-floor ballroom, Vlad lay halfway through the doors with a bullet hole in his forehead. Trinity turned away, unwilling to see the gray and crimson matter that decorated the door behind him.
“You smell that?” Chibs asked as they came around the corner into the hall leading to the lobby.
Trinity had lowered her gaze, staring at the carpet as she walked. Now she glanced up and sniffed the air. She saw Jax nod, knew he smelled it, too.
Gasoline.
They walked into the lobby, found it full of dead men, but there were many still alive, too. Timur and Gavril had fetched full gas cans from the trunks of the cars out in the parking lot and were spilling gasoline all around the corners of the lobby. On the other end of the room, Ilia was doing the same. Opie stood by the front doors, watching the street impatiently for any sign of the police. A heavy, bearded man in a Sons of Anarchy cut turned to see Trinity, Jax, and Chibs entering and rushed toward them.