Temple didn’t hesitate. He started to turn.

Trinity pulled the trigger twice and missed both times. The shots made him flinch, made him draw back as splinters flew out of the kitchen island. The flinch cost him a vital second or two, and then Gavril was there. He shot Temple in the forehead, snapping his head back as blood and brain matter sprayed the cabinets behind him. Gavril shot the old man in the chest as he collapsed.

Antoinette kept screaming. Her face and eyes were 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 it. Sometimes the house loses. Sometimes the cards go the other way, and the house gets burned to the ground.”

5

Jax held his son Thomas in his arms and pressed his nose against the boy’s head. Thomas wasn’t a baby anymore, but his head still had that baby smell, reminding Jax of his most important role. His sons were his world, his reason for breathing. People talked about the measure of a man, but to any man with children, the only real measure was in the eyes of his kids. If someday they learned the things he had done for the club, for brotherhood, and to try to build the future he wanted for them… he hoped they would understand why. But the more time passed, the more he realized that giving them that future mattered more than them forgiving him for what he had to do to get them there.

Laughter and the sound of splashing came from the bathroom. He kissed Thomas on the head and nudged the door open. Tara Knowles knelt beside the tub, washing the hair of Jax’s older son, Abel. They both looked up at him—his old lady and his boy—and their smiles tugged at him. Abel’s hair was full of suds, and Tara had been sculpting it into strange curls and waves, showing Abel in a hand mirror.

“Hello, Daddy,” Tara said.

Abel tried to throw a handful of soap bubbles at him but they didn’t go far.

“I’m headed out,” Jax told her.

Tara stood and reached for Thomas, who stretched out his arms for his mother. Jax kissed the boy’s head and handed him over. Tara smiled again, and it lit up her angular features. Her face could turn a man to stone if Tara was displeased with him, but she had a dark beauty that made him reach up and trace the contours of her face.

“Be safe,” Tara said, kissing him even as she took Thomas in her arms. “You come back to me.”

“Don’t I always?” he asked with a grin.

“If you know what’s good for you.”

The lightness of the conversation hid a darkness beneath it. Tara didn’t want him to go—not with just Chibs and Opie to back him up—but she wouldn’t tell him to stay, either. Jax had not shared the details with her, only that Trinity was in danger.

Tara had wrapped her arms around him, pressed her body against his to remind him what he would be missing while he was gone, and knitted her brows as she stared into his eyes.

You have to go, she’d said. I love you for that. But you never knew she existed until half a year ago. Don’t die for her.

He didn’t plan to, but they both knew the risk was there. For everyone, yeah… and moreso for the people in their world. The life they’d chosen meant he was sticking his head in the lion’s mouth on a regular basis. One of these days, the jaws were gonna chomp.

Jax went to the tub and splashed Abel, who kicked and splashed him back. He kissed Tara and Thomas again, then turned and left without looking back. He picked up a small bag by the door—just a change of clothes and a few things—and went out, closing the door behind him.

* * *

Chibs and Opie were little more than shadows in the driveway as Jax stepped outside. Their bikes were familiar silhouettes, comforting ghosts awaiting new life.

Opie lit a cigarette, the flame momentarily illuminating his face. Jax approached them as the moon slid out from behind a scrim of clouds.

“You set?” Opie asked.

Jax went to his bike. “She understands.”