Page 5 of Savage Surrender

VIKTOR

Iwent to college back when I was younger and not as used to the harder aspects of what it meant to be a Baranov soldier. Oleg had asked me to consider a business degree, or even a law degree. Some needs of the family could be varied like that. Ultimately, he asked me to oversee a mission at one of the whorehouses, though, and that was that. I ended my college courses after only a year and had been stuck at the brothels ever since.

It almost felt like a full circle to come back to a college campus now. This was where I had been before my career with the business of sex, and it was where I was returning now.

Nothing was the same. I assumed nothing would be the same since I’d last been on a campus twenty years ago. But that wasn’t something I couldn’t figure out how to deal with. Any mission, even unexpected, out-of-the-blue ones that popped up like Oleg’s request for me to go to Moscow and follow those old clues about Sonya, could warrant drastic adjustments. As spies for the Boss, we employed disguises. In order to look like a professor, I shifted my appearance to a cleaner cut, with a professionallyacceptable suit and tie, but I took care not to look too stuffy or formal. Also in the name of being a spy or operative, we used aliases, which was why I was here as Professor Viktor Remi, not Viktor Baranov. I’d need to tidy up my language and adopt a whole different personality to fit in here.

All of those changes were doable. Even though I was usually in supervision at the whorehouses, I was still up to the challenge of altering myself for the job.

When I arrived, both to check out my office on campus and my apartment nearby, I couldn’t help but look at everything as though it were all new. As if I had never been a college student. It would’ve been smarter to view it all with the mindset that I belonged here as a fraudulent professor. Keeping the facts straight was critical in any mission, but the more I meandered around campus and realized it was much bigger than I had given it credit for, I saw it as what it could’ve been. If Oleg had decided so long ago that I’d serve more of a purpose with a different career in the family, I wouldn’t have had to endure so long at the whorehouses and deal with so many morons. The family had a vast amount of wealth, and it all came from Oleg’s smart choices in diversifying our income. My role here to spy on the drug trade and turf issues was just one more facet of ensuring we stayed prime like that.

Rurik met up with me, more familiar with the campus and ready to fill me in on more than what Oleg and Lev had told me at the Baranov mansion and headquarters.

The tall man was dressed for the weather, wearing a thick coat and keeping his hands shoved in his pockets. Atop his head was navy beanie, and if I didn’t know better, he could’ve resembled a student, not a man much older and deadlier than many others here.

“How’s it going, man?” I greeted, accepting his handshake and pat on the back. I wondered how long he’d been waiting in the parking lot for me.

“Cold,” he answered wryly but honestly. He gestured for me to start down a path leading to the east. Since he’d come here when Lev started as Eva’s bodyguard, he’d served the role of being a backup guard, eyes and ears for Lev when he couldn’t get away to follow up on what any Petrov or Ilyin men were doing on campus. As we walked toward the building where the English department was housed—since I was here to fake being a professor of American English History—he caught me up on how the Baranov presence started here.

Lev came to follow Eva around because she’d wanted a taste of being a “normal” twentysomething. She befriended a woman named Kelly, and even though the two were supposed to have been roommates, they’d only become friends, close to the point that they snuck out to a party and witnessed some sketchy things. From following Eva and Kelly for the majority of the fall semester last year, both Rurik and Lev gathered more information about how drugs were being distributed at a higher rate, even though no one could really tell who was selling them and where they were coming from. Rapes and attacks on women had also gone up. Eva had almost been raped at a party by a member from a rival family, and Kelly had been drugged and might have been attacked.

“You don’t know?” I asked Rurik. He seemed awfully familiar with details about Kelly.

“No. We couldn’t tell. After Kelly was found unconscious in the shower room, she more or less moved in with Eva and Lev at their apartment off campus.”

“More or less?” I asked, curious about that detail and how he’d worded it. She either did or didn’t move in. Regardless, it sounded like Ms. Kelly Garnet had been approved by someone higher up to receive security under the umbrella of protection an association with the Baranov name could deliver on.

“Kelly moved in for a while, but before the end of the semester, she left again.”

I furrowed my brow, blinking at the light snow falling and dropping into my eyes as we walked. “Could she be working against the family? Getting close to spy?”

He shook his head but didn’t seem bothered by my question. Being that paranoid was just a given.

“No. She had no ties with anyone else in the Mafia. She came from a difficult background, but Lev ran extensive checks on her.”

He continued updating me on what he’d noticed in his on-and-off-again surveillance on campus. Over the winter break, with so many students gone home or not at school, everything stalled and died down. With the next semester starting again, he anticipated more activity from any returning Petrov and Ilyin men on campus.

“I appreciate your giving me the rundown,” I told him as we walked into the large, old building that housed the English department.

“No problem. I look forward to working with you again.”

We hadn’t crossed paths regularly, but we were brothers, regardless.

“I’m not surprised that the Boss wanted someone else to come in on this. Lev is busy with Eva. And after the way they escaped, I can’t blame them for wanting some distance from all of this,” he added.

“Sounds like a reassignment was necessary.”

He glanced at me, brushing the snow off the top of his hat. “But I am surprised that you’d give up your position at the, uh…” Looking around at the few people in the hallway, he cleared his throat.

“Establishments,” I suggested as a cleaner alternative forbrothelsin case anyone was listening in on what we said. The family’s whorehouses were certainly not legal places of commerce.

“Yes. I’m surprised you’d be interested in giving up time working at the establishments to come here.”

I shrugged, keeping an eye on the students and staff-like people in the halls. “I got tired of it.”

Rurik laughed once, smirking at me. “Tired of the, um, professionals there?” A salacious grin covered his face.

I nodded. He wouldn’t understand. Sure, in the beginning, it was fun and adventurous being surrounded by elite whores and dancers. After twenty years of it, it was all the same old. Nothing new. I’d seen enough tits and pussies that the novelty of it all had soured.

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