Текст книги "Sons of Anarchy. Bratva"

Автор книги: Christopher Golden

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

“Right, right, Harry,” Bag said, one side of his mouth lifting in a smile. “Stupid of me, yeah? Should’ve thought of that without you making me think of it.”

Harry Joyce. Jax had forgotten the guy’s first name.

“Who’s the Birdman?” Opie asked.

Bag flinched toward him as if he’d forgotten Opie had a voice. “Guy likes old jazz, plus he keeps a bunch of parakeets in the club. Strip club, called Birdland. People think the name comes from the girls, ‘birds,’ like they’d call ’em in London or whatever, but it’s the jazz connection. Famous club in New York has the same name, but not the naked titties and definitely not the parakeets.”

Chibs leaned back against the bar and crossed his arms. “I’m lost. How is this relevant?”

Jax glanced at Joyce, hoping for a rescue, and he wasn’t disappointed.

“Birdland’s always got a few Russian Mafia guys hanging around,” Joyce said. “You wanna find out what the Bratva are up to in Vegas right now, that’s the place to start.”

“Got a contact at the club?” Jax asked, turning to Rollie. “Someone who can point us the right way?”

Rollie clapped him on the shoulder. “We can do better than a contact. Wait till tonight, and Joyce’ll go with you. He’ll know the faces and the names.”

“I’m in,” Joyce agreed. His smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Jax nodded his thanks. He turned toward Opie, saw relief in his expression and a dark purpose in his eyes, and knew they reflected his own. They’d come to visit the Tombstone Bar expecting not much more than a place to crash. People so rarely exceeded his expectations that Jax found himself very happy when they did.

He looked at Joyce. “Thanks, man.”

Bag snorted something back into his nose, then scoffed. “That’s Harry Joyce. Never could resist a damsel in distress.”

Chibs laughed softly. “Ah, well, it’s clear you’ve never met Jax’s lovely sister.” He turned on the stool and looked around the bar. “Trust me, fellas… Trinity Ashby’s not some swooning girl. She’s nobody’s bloody damsel in distress.”

* * *

Trinity had never been the sort of girl who cried. To hear her mother tell it, she’d wailed like a banshee as an infant, screeching to wake the dead. Her mother’s friend Kiera had once said baby Trinity’s crying could have driven Christ off the cross, and Trinity had been perversely proud of that. But once she’d been able to crawl—to move without her mother lugging her around—her tears had ended. Oh, she’d wept at a funeral or two, but that was the sum of it. Romantic movies made her roll her eyes, and even in her teen years there had never been a boy who’d made her cry… though she’d bloodied a few of their noses.

This morning she was furious with herself for the tears she had shed last night. Feliks had died, and they’d buried him—grief was only natural—but she knew that she needed to be harder than that. She needed to be able to turn off the pain inside, to go numb, or she might not survive all of this.

For it’s sure Feliks won’t be the last to die.

Steeling herself for the blast of cold, she stepped into the shower. The desert morning was cool and the water much chillier than that. Gavril and Kirill had managed to get the well pump that served the motel—and the oil-stinking generator—running easily enough, but the furnace was broken, so there’d be no hot water. Still, the water sluiced the night’s sweat and the previous day’s dust off her body, and that part felt wonderful.

Trinity shivered as she ran the soap over her body, hurrying as best she could. Gooseflesh prickled her skin.

Feliks had been a good man, but in her experience the death of good men had always been one of life’s few guarantees.

Not Oleg, she thought. She would not lose him. Oleg was a good man. Trinity feared that he might need to become a bad man to survive, but if that was what it took for her to be able to keep him, then so be it.

“Well, well,” he said, stepping into the bathroom as if summoned by her thoughts.

Trinity glanced out through the dirty glass door. “What do you think you’re doin’?” she asked, teeth chattering.

“I thought I might join you.”

“You add one more second to how long this takes, and I’ll have your guts for garters.”

Oleg laughed and leaned against the wall. Trinity hung her head and let the cold water soak her hair, shuddering as she reached for the shampoo. Stepping back from the stream, she worked her hair into a lather, but all the while Oleg stayed there, hands jammed into his pockets, back against the wall.

“Enjoyin’ the show?” she asked.

“Such beauty deserves an audience,” he said, his accent thicker than usual.

Teeth chattering, she smiled nevertheless. She hadn’t met every Bratva thug in the world, but she doubted many were eloquent, particularly in a language not their own.

“But somethin’ else is on your mind,” she said, before she braced herself and plunged her head into the frigid shower’s cascade.

“We have weapons now,” Oleg said. “With luck, soon we will learn where Lagoshin has been staying. Once that happens, we will have to attack, to kill Lagoshin and his lieutenants, or it will only be a matter of time before they find and kill us.”

Trinity stepped back, squeezing excess water from her hair.

“None of this is news to me, love. It’s why we’re hidin’ in a hotel near a haunted kiddie park… why we killed Temple and his bodyguards. You think I don’t—”

Oleg cleared his throat. “I want you to leave, kotyonok. You being here… it makes me afraid, and I can’t do what I need to do if I am afraid for you.”

Trinity shut off the water, freezing water sluicing from her body, dripping from her breasts. She gritted her jaw, but not from the cold.

Sliding the door open, she stepped out onto the mat, her whole body crying out from the cold. A towel hung on a plastic bar within arm’s length, but she did not reach for it, only stood and stared at Oleg as tiny rivulets of water ran down her naked flesh.

“Kotyonok—” he began, moving toward her, reaching for her hands.

“I’m not your fuckin’ kitten,” she snarled. “In bed, you can call me whatever you like. But this is somethin’ else, so don’t you dare be tender to me now. You listen. I love you, ya bastard. I’m not goin’ anywhere. So don’t tell me about your fears or how I’m your weakness. I should be your goddamn strength. I should be the iron in your blood. That’s what love is! I don’t know what kind of woman you thought you were gettin’ when you asked me to leave my home and come with you, but I’ll tell you this much… we survive together, or we might as well already be dead. You understand me?”

Trinity fumed, inhaling and exhaling loudly, face so flushed with her temper that she no longer felt cold. She saw the emotions raging on Oleg’s face, anger and embarrassment and love and doubt.

Then he grinned.

“What in God’s name are you smilin’ about?” she snapped.

Oleg roguishly arched an eyebrow. “You get angry like this, and you breathe very hard. Watching your tits move up and down… it is like I’m being hypnotized. Or put under a magic spell.”

She gaped incredulously at him, and he laughed.

Trinity punched him again, this time in the arm and not so hard.

“Don’t bring up the idea of me leavin’ again,” she said.

He took her and kissed her, the water on her damp skin soaking through his clothes.

“I promise, kotyonok,” he whispered.

Kitten. Again. The bastard.

This time, though, she didn’t hit him. Instead, she reached for his belt buckle.

* * *

On the phone’s first ring, Maureen Ashby only glanced up from the leftover stew she’d been heating up on the stove. The phone had fallen silent again, and for half a second she wondered if the ring had been her hopeful imagination. A cat yowled out in the alley behind her place, and she heard one of the neighborhood kids laughing loudly, a cruel sound followed by the shattering of glass and a much more frightened, irritated screech from the cat.

The phone kept ringing.

Poor thing, she thought, on the surface of her mind. She ought to open a window and give those kids hell for tormenting the animal. That Kenny Donovan was a vicious little shit.

Underneath that, though, a voice was screaming at her to answer the phone. When it rang again, Maureen felt as if an electric shock had jolted her. She dropped the wooden spoon from her hand and launched herself toward the phone. Almost nobody called her on this line—her friends used her mobile—so unless it was a sales call… but no, there it was, the international code.

America. Please be Trinity.

“Hello?”

“It’s Jax. You alone?”

Good news, she wondered, or the unthinkable?

“Tell me you found her, Jax. My thoughts are strayin’ into very dark corners these days.”

Crackling on the phone. At least there was only a little delay. Only a little.

“—Nevada,” Jax was saying.

“Wait, what? Sorry, start again.”

“We’re in Nevada,” he repeated. “No sign of Trinity yet, but I wanted to touch base because I don’t know how long it’ll be before I can call again.”

Her heart sank, but she forced herself to buck up. No news might not be good news, but it was better than the nightmare of the phone call that she dreaded so desperately.

“If we have a chance of finding her, it’s gonna be through her Russian boyfriend. Oleg and his buddies are gonna be way more memorable to people than Trinity, so we’re gonna start with that. But, listen, Maureen… is there anyone out here she’d know? Anyone she might go to if she got into trouble?”

She could hear the dark accusation in his voice, that of course if Trinity had been in trouble she ought to have called her brother. Maureen agreed, but given the issues SAMCRO had with both the RIRA and the Russians, she also understood why her daughter might have hesitated to introduce her half-brother to the new man in her life.

“Let me think on it,” Maureen said.

Jax read her off a number. “You’ve got the cell number I gave you last time. I’ve still got that burner on me. But if you can’t reach me, you can call here. It’s a bar, but if you ask for me, they’ll take a message.”

Maureen exhaled. Somehow, despite her fears, Jax had managed to soothe her. Perhaps it was the gruff confidence in his voice, that rumble that reminded her so much of his father.

There was still that other conversation they needed to have—about the letters she’d put in his duffel just before he left Belfast, hoping he’d read them when he got home. He deserved to know that part of his father’s life. Of course he’d have read them by now, but Jax hadn’t brought it up when they’d talked before—maybe because Gemma had interrupted the call—and that was just fine with Maureen. If Jax felt like talking about those letters there’d be time for it later. Right now, Trinity was her only concern.

“Jax,” she said, her voice firm. “Your sister—“

“I’ll find her.”

“More than find her. You’ll send her home.”

“I can’t promise that, Maureen. Trinity’s not some kid. I can’t make her—”

“She’s fallen in love with a Russian gangster. I knew there’d be danger when she went off with him, but she didn’t give me a choice. Now it’s happened already, just a handful of months later, and I can’t allow her any more choice than she gave me. You didn’t grow up as brother and sister, Jackson, but she’s your flesh and blood, and you care for her. I know you do. Just like I know you understand the danger loving this bastard is puttin’ her in. So, yes, I expect you to promise me, to swear on your father’s soul, that you will send her home to me.”

The line crackled with static.

“Jax?” she said, worried that she’d lost the connection.

“I’m still here,” he said, his rough voice a distant ghost.

“Promise me.”

“I promise. I’ll send her home even if I have to bring her there myself.”

Jax hung up without saying good-bye. Maureen kept the phone to her ear for a few seconds, listening to the static and the ghost of a past she’d cherished and a future she’d never had.

8

The Sons rode into Birdland’s parking lot two by two, Joyce and Chibs in front, Jax and Opie in back. Harley engines roared the news of their arrival, and a handful of people in the lot glanced up and watched as they rolled by. Jax ignored them, just as he’d ignored their surroundings on the ride over. The day had seemed like an eternity, but now night had fallen and it was time for answers.

They parked their bikes in the corner of the lot, far from the exit but near a stretch of dirt that led out to the curb. If they needed to make a quick departure, they wouldn’t worry about pavement. One by one, they killed the engines and removed their helmets.

They started toward the entrance to Birdland, admiring the neon sign depicting a woman with wings. She had them covering her breasts one moment, and the next they were unfurled, revealing small hearts over her nipples. Classy joint, Jax thought, but he appreciated the oddness of it. Jazz music played from speakers outside the door as they approached.

Opie sidled up beside Jax. “You sure you don’t want me to ask the questions?”

Jax glanced at his dour expression, the concern in his eyes. “I’ve got it.”

“I’ve seen that look on you before, Jax,” Opie said quietly. “I’m just thinking you may not get answers if everyone you ask thinks you’re a heartbeat away from caving in their skulls.”

Jax shot him a look that silenced him. “Cover my back, Op.”

Opie nodded. He didn’t seem satisfied, but he wouldn’t push it any further.

Joyce led the way, opening the door and moving into a darkness broken by flashing colored lights. Jax and the others followed, taking in every detail, watching for exits and for trouble. The foyer had a bathroom door, an old pay phone, and a curtained-off section that could’ve been anything—a party room, a coat check, stairs leading to an attic. A single doorman sat on a stool beside a podium, a black bodybuilder with a shaved head and a thin goatee. A strong guy, but not a fighter. Jax could see it in the way he held himself, even the way he stood and fronted them as they approached. He was a man used to intimidating with his size. Maybe he’d been in his share of scuffles in this place, a fistfight now and again, but he wasn’t a boxer, a soldier, or a street fighter, and so Jax wasn’t worried about him until he saw the bulge of the gun sticking from his belt, underneath his shirt, and he reassessed. The gun was a threat, even if the doorman might not be.

“This is a nice place,” the doorman said. “Boss doesn’t like trouble.”

Chibs held out his hands, palms open. “No trouble here, brother.”

The doorman sized them up. “Twenty-dollar cover, right?” Joyce asked, handing over a pair of folded tens.

The doorman hesitated, studying Joyce in apparent disapproval, then took the bills. As the others passed him, he took their money without another word, but as they moved through an arched doorway flanked by two huge bouncers, Jax knew they’d been marked. The doorman would tell the bouncers to keep an eye on them. One of the bouncers, a vampire-pale white guy, looked like he worked out at the same gym as the doorman, but the other bouncer had cold eyes and stood with his back to the wall in a stance that said he was ready to hurt someone. Jarhead, Jax thought.

The music outside had been jazz, but inside it was whatever the girls onstage felt like dancing to. Right now, two girls were twirling topless around the same pole to AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” while a third marched up and down a smaller stage in the back. They all had glitter sparkling on their breasts, like they’d grown up doing little art projects at the kitchen table and this was all that remained of their girlhood imagination. The room was an L shape, and off to the left, on the leg of the L, was an area with four pool tables. There’d be rooms in the back for private dances. Waitresses in next to nothing wandered the floor selling alcohol Jell-O shots, and bartenders worked at inhuman speed behind the counters, slinging eight-dollar beers and twelve-buck whiskeys.

Then there were the birds.

Behind the bars, above the stages, even in the corners of the pool area, there were huge cages either hanging from the ceiling or standing on poles like those the strippers used. Inside the cages were parakeets, parrots, macaws… even a goddamn toucan, and in the lulls in music, Jax could hear the birds calling to each other.

Planning an escape, he thought, amused and horrified at the same time.

“Guy who owns this place must be a loon,” he said, moving up beside Joyce.

Joyce shrugged as if to say, of course he is. “On Sundays, he’ll only play jazz in here. The girls who want to keep him happy… they’ve learned how to dance to that stuff. You’d be surprised how many people show up for it, too. They do brunch.”

“It’s shit, though, right?” Opie said, raising his voice to be heard over the grind of AC/DC. “I’ve never eaten anything in a strip club that didn’t taste like ass.”

“Might be best we don’t talk about what you’ve eaten in strip clubs,” Chibs said aloud.

Opie gave a sheepish grin, and Jax laughed. Joyce seemed curious, but it was a story for another day. Jax glanced back toward the bouncers, saw their eyes tracking him and the others, and clapped Chibs on the back.

“End of the bar. Shit goes down, the jarhead’s yours.”

Chibs knew better than to look at the bouncers. He nodded and moved off immediately toward a waitress picking up drinks from the end of the bar. She had dark skin and bright red hair and was wearing a half-shirt and a skirt so short it displayed her pink panties in all their glory. Chibs said something to her, and she grinned. Jax had seen the soulless smile that hookers and strippers put on for the men who were paying their bills, and this wasn’t that. Something about Chibs just charmed them. Part of it was the accent, but Jax thought the scars did something to them as well—suggested the beginnings of a story that they finished in their own heads. Lost girls liked broken men. Jax had a taste for women like that, but today he kept his mind on the job at hand.

The bartender came over to make sure Chibs wasn’t troubling the waitress, glancing at the bouncers, but the girl touched Chibs on the arm and must have passed along his drink order, because when he turned toward the bar to set up camp there, nobody tried to move him along.

Jax didn’t know how many people Birdland drew on its busiest nights, but tonight’s crowd was substantial. Clusters of young guys in business suits were side by side with truckers and contractors and housepainters, not to mention the occasional freak. The freaks were the easiest to spot because they sat alone, usually at the rounded corners of the stage, and they doled out single dollar bills and nursed watered-down beers for hours. Jax had seen a particular brand of strip-club freak more than once, guys who would lean in when the girls came near, inhaling deeply, trying to catch a whiff of pussy that would carry them through their daydreams for months.

Joyce led them past the pool-table area and into the thick of the crowd around the stage. A waitress in a see-through plastic top brushed close against Jax, her smile like a mannequin’s, but he only scanned the faces ahead. Opie stuck close behind him, but Jax wasn’t expecting trouble unless they started it themselves.

The music switched over to “Crazy Train,” and the two girls on the main stage used side snaps to remove their panties. They did it in synch, facing each other and then air grinding so that their hips nearly touched. It was almost enough to coax a smile out of Jax. Not all the girls looked like they were having fun, but those two did.

Joyce changed direction slightly—moving like he owned the place—and Jax stayed with him. The rear stage was less populated than the one at the front of the club. A group of middle-class suburban types were along one side, probably a bachelor party, but on the other side, not far from the beaded curtain that led into the back room—and presumably to the back exit—there sat a trio of darkly clad men with rugged, stony Slavic faces. The stripper there, a Latina with enormous fake tits, crawled toward them on her hands and knees to retrieve the trio of twenty-dollar bills the three men had laid upon the stage. Two of the men wore wolfish grins, but the third had an expression Jax could almost have called a sneer. He watched the girl closely enough, but almost as if she disgusted him.

“Opie,” he said, nodding toward the beaded curtain at the back.

With a wary glance, Opie moved toward the curtain. He stopped ten feet away, near a high round table laden with abandoned glasses. A waitress would approach him quickly enough, and he would order a drink, but it was a strategic location from which he could observe the rear section of the bar. His attention would not be on his beer.

The Russians saw them coming. One of the wolves tapped the sneering man, who looked up to watch as Jax and Joyce approached. The second wolf stood and moved to block them, but Joyce didn’t slow. He sidled a bit, moving like a snake rising from a street charmer’s basket.

“Down, boy,” Joyce said, one hand raised as he spoke loud enough for the Russians to hear over the pounding music. “It’s Yurik, right?”

The grizzled Russian nodded. “I know you?”

“Naw, man, but we have friends in common. Lizzie Broski, you know her? She pointed you out at a party one night. That’s how I recognized you.”

Yurik looked confused. When his mouth opened, Jax saw yellow teeth and a bit of sweat on his lips. The guy’s pupils were pinpricks in his glassy eyes. He was high on something, and suddenly this seemed like it might have been a terrible idea.

“What you want?” Yurik asked.

Which was when the sneering man rose up behind Yurik, put a hand on his shoulder, and physically moved him aside. He stared a moment at Jax, then turned to Joyce. His sneer had deepened.

“Go away, you idiots. Don’t you know you don’t interrupt a man when there are naked girls around?”

Jax smiled.

The sneer died on the man’s face. “Did I say something funny?”

Jax stepped in close to the sneering man, almost but not quite crowding him. He opened both hands to show he held no weapons and stared right into the Russian’s eyes, knowing he could match the bastard cold stare for cold stare.

“I’m real sorry we interrupted your pussy gazing. It’s pretty clear you’re a serious man, and I’m not going to waste your time. I’m looking for a guy named Oleg Voloshin, and I heard you guys might be able to tell me where to find him.”

The sneering man blinked in surprise, studying Jax more closely.

Yurik said something in Russian, guttural and full of arrogant condescension. The name Voloshin appeared in the midst of a host of other words that sounded like made-up spy language to Jax. But he’d heard that one.

Thanks, Yurik, Jax thought. Now he knew which side these pricks were on.

“What you want with Oleg?” the sneering man asked.

Jax glanced at Joyce as if trying to decide whether or not to confide in these Bratva goons, but he didn’t need Joyce’s reassurance.

“Nothing he’ll enjoy,” he said.

The three Russians stood together a moment, looking like nothing so much as a trio of black crows on a telephone wire, the uniformity of their black coats and shirts and pants almost laughable, if not for the guns they surely carried and a history of murder.

“I am Iov,” the sneering man said, moving closer, so that he and Jax were intimately, uncomfortably near. “What if I told you Oleg is my brother?”

The music throbbed and the lights flashed. Glasses clinked and men whistled and howled for the new batch of strippers as they began to remove their tops, revealing first one breast and then the other, playing coy. They were the worst actresses in the world.

“Iov, my name’s Jack Ashby,” Jax lied. “If Oleg’s your brother, then you and me—we’ve got a problem. The prick has my sister.”

The Russian cocked his head dubiously. “Oleg kidnapped your sister?”

Jax shook his head. “Nah. She took off with him. Left home. But from everything Oleg said before they left, I know there’s some serious shit going on with you and your people and I want to get my sister back before she ends up in a ditch with a bullet in the back of her head. I want to get her out of this, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure she gets home safely.”

Iov scratched at a spot under his left eye, thinking.

“You want us to help you find your sister? To tell you where to find Oleg?”

“He’s not your brother, is he?” Joyce asked, looking a little squirrely. A sheen of sweat had formed on his forehead.

“I can pay,” Jax said.

Iov’s eyes sparkled. “I work for a man who would also like to find Oleg. Right now, we don’t know where he is, but maybe my employer will want to meet you. Maybe you can help him, and he can help you.”

He sent Yurik to make a call, and the thug headed toward the men’s room, where the thumping music wouldn’t prevent him from hearing voices on the other end of the line. Los Lonely Boys’ “Crazy Dream” came on the sound system, and the girl on the rear stage dropped down and began pumping her lace-covered crotch at the bachelor-party guys. All the while, she stared longingly at Iov—the Russians tipped way better than suburban dads. She caught Jax watching her and scowled at him, pissed that he’d drawn her best customers away.

A waitress floated their way, a lithe brunette who looked closer to fifteen than twenty, which had to be an illusion given the law. Her purple eye shadow had sparkles in it that changed color with the shifting lights in the club. She wore a little tartan skirt that must have sparked a thousand Catholic-schoolgirl fantasies, and she made a beeline toward Joyce. Her eyes lit up like she knew him.

“Hey, Harry. Give a girl a taste?” the waitress asked. “You’ve always got the good stuff.”

Joyce gave her a dark look. “Now ain’t the time.”

Jax bristled. He didn’t much care if Joyce was using drugs to buy favors from strippers, but if he was selling in clubs, that was the kind of small-time shit that could get the whole charter jammed up. It was something for Rollie to take care of—and Jax would bring it to his attention—but right now the girl was just a distraction.

Jax saw Opie signal him and looked toward the front of the bar to see what had gotten Opie’s attention. One of the bouncers—the bodybuilder, not the jarhead—stood beside the main stage watching Jax and Joyce talk to the Russians.

“Maybe next time, honey,” the waitress said, before she turned to the rest of them. “What’ll you have, boys?”

“Go away, girl,” Iov rumbled.

She glanced at Jax. “You look like a whiskey man.”

Iov grew angry. “Are you blind or stupid? We want a drink, we find you. Now fuck off.”

She looked him up and down with the belittling disdain only a beautiful young woman could muster.

“I can’t decide if you’ve had too much to drink or not enough,” she said, and then she turned to Joyce, moving close enough to give him a whiff of the perfume that had already filled Jax’s nostrils. “I’m dancing in about half an hour, honey. I hope you’ll stick around for my show. Trust me, you won’t be—”

Iov shoved her. The girl’s arms pinwheeled, flinging away the trayful of Jell-O shots. For a heartbeat, the music stopped—just between songs—and Jax could hear the little cry of surprise as she staggered backward and fell on her ass, tartan skirt flipping up to reveal the tiny patch of pink lace between her legs.

Joyce tried to wade in. “Hang on, man, there’s no need for that.”

“Stay out of it,” Jax told him, shoving him backward.

Iov barely glanced at them, but he wasn’t stupid. The Russian had to have noticed Joyce’s obedience, recognized that Jax was the one in charge. His eyes narrowed, but Jax wasn’t sure if it was with appreciation or suspicion.

Yurik came out of the bathroom but stopped with his phone in his hand and a stupid look on his face. The girl had risen to one knee and was glancing around at the splotches of Jell-O and little paper cups strewn around her, cursing like a lunatic in the drunk tank. Opie started to leave his position in the back corner, but Jax gestured for him to stay put, thinking he could salvage the whole thing…

The bouncer who’d been watching marched toward them, looking confident in his strength and his purpose. Anger rushed like fire through Jax’s veins—any other day, this bodybuilder wouldn’t have been an issue, but he needed to finish his conversation, and time had just run out. One of the bartenders emerged from behind the bar, and a couple of customers—good old boys with noble intentions—had started shuffling as though they might also step in.

The girl came surging to her feet and spit in Iov’s face.

He backhanded her, the slap so loud that the stripper on the little rear stage stopped dancing to stare, and so did the bachelor-party guys. Jax swore under his breath and went to intervene, but the bouncer beat him to it. The muscle head slid between Jax and Joyce, brushed by the waitress, ducked a punch from Iov, and grabbed the Russian’s arm, twisting it behind his back in one smooth move.

The third Russian, who’d been lingering the whole time, kidney punched the bouncer, and the poor bastard roared in pain and went down on one knee, releasing his grip on Iov. Jax almost felt bad for the guy—the way he’d subdued Iov, he’d been better at his job than Jax had expected—but when shit turned ugly, you had to know how to read the situation if you wanted to keep your head from getting caved in.

Slapping the girl had done it.

The bartender punched Joyce just for standing there. The noble civilians waded in, but by then all hesitation had passed. Jax stepped inside the reach of the first guy and leaned into his swing, punching the man in the gut so hard he heard the burble of vomit about to spew from the hero’s mouth. He stepped out of the way, saw the guy fighting the urge to puke, and nailed him in the temple with enough force that he dropped straight down.

When Jax looked up, Opie had the bartender from behind, crushing his larynx, and Joyce had started to pound on the second Good Samaritan. People were shouting, and the stripper on the stage had stood up and was screaming, covering herself like Eve after her first bite of the apple.