Free Sons of Anarchy: Bratva by Christopher Golden

peaceful were good. Less chance of trouble.
    Opie rode on his left and Chibs on his right. When a car or truck appeared coming the other direction, Opie dropped behind them, but vehicles had been few and far between for the past three quarters of an hour or so. Opie had been his best friend pretty much all his life. He had a gentle soul and a savage heart, able to find mercy where others could not and to be merciless when a line had been crossed. Jax worried about Opie—the loss of his first wife had broken something inside him—but when shit turned ugly, there was no one he’d rather have at his back. Chibs had survived ugliness and tragedy, too. A son of a bitch named Jimmy O had given him the scars on his face, stolen away his wife and daughter, and made it impossible for him to stay in Ireland and keep drawing breath. Jimmy O was dead now, but somehow betrayal had made Chibs understand loyalty better than anyone else.
    Jax had unwavering faith in both men. Out here, flying, these guys were his brothers now. He trusted them with his life.
    *   *   *
    Kirill asked Trinity to say a prayer over his brother’s grave. They stood there, nineteen Russian men and this one Irish girl—no longer such a girl—and lowered their heads. In the moonlight, the dirt on the arms and faces of those who’d dug the grave made them look like orphans out of some grim, modern Charles Dickens tale. They didn’t have much use for God. They were gunmen and leg breakers. Since the moment Oleg had begun introducing Trinity around to his Bratva when they’d been in Belfast, she had tried very hard not to wonder what their worst crimes might have been. Drug smuggling, certainly. Murder? Some of them, she was sure. They were hard men, and some of them seemed like cruel men, but to Oleg they were family, and if she wanted him, she knew that they were part of the package.
    Quietly, her voice carrying in the reverent hush that the small hours always created, she said the Lord’s Prayer. When she’d finished, they all said, “Amen,” almost as if they meant it. Most of them were godless, but she’d found that even those without faith still wished their loved ones a safe journey through whatever might come after life.
    “Feliks was a man of few words, so I won’t disturb the quiet with a lot o’ my own,” Trinity said. She glanced at Oleg and then at Kirill, whose expression had never been more like stone. There would be no tears from this lot. “He had courage and dignity, and he defended his brothers with his life. God keep him.”
    For several seconds they all stood there, staring at the freshly turned soil. The wind blew, and somewhere a loose shutter creaked in the dark like the squeal of a frightened rat. They had dug the grave in the scrubland behind the motel, fifty yards back from the cracked, empty swimming pool.
    Kirill realized she wasn’t going to say anything more and cleared his throat of whatever thickness of emotion had lodged there.
    “The traitors have taken another life,” he said, speaking English purely for her benefit.
    He’d mourned in his native tongue, but now he clearly wanted to include her, and it touched her deeply. For a long time she had been nothing but Oleg’s woman to them, but now that they were at war, she had become family, for better or worse.
    “Krupin and the others might not have been at Temple’s ranch, but it was for them Temple acted. For Lagoshin. Feliks’s blood is on his hands. Another of us dead because Lagoshin wants the Bratva business in this part of the world for himself. We have … What would they say here? Rules. These men have betrayed us all. They have murdered those who should be their brothers. We have been forced to strike from the shadows, to hide our heads because they have numbers and weapons we could not match. But now that has changed.”
    Kirill nodded at Oleg, Gavril, and Trinity in turn.
    “We have as many weapons as we have hands and enough ammunition to