7. Viktor
7
VIKTOR
T he first two weeks of pretending to be a professor hadn’t gotten me anywhere with Irina. I saw her at class, where she continued to look like a bored diva. All of my students looked bored. I made the classes dull on purpose, all the better to watch them. When people were uninterested and had idle minds, they tended to let their thoughts show. Moods—other than boredom—were easier to pick up on. Maybe they let their minds wander to thoughts of things they were excited about. Or perhaps they scowled as they analyzed something they wanted to change or disliked.
Not Irina.
After two weeks, I was certain she was hiding something. I doubted it was anything like a confidential matter that the Boss could really benefit from. But I knew for a fact that she was an expert at hiding her emotions. That cool, blank ice princess mask wasn’t something anyone was born with. She’d developed it. Given how young she was, I was even more intrigued why she had grown up knowing how to hide herself and look indifferent to the world.
Checking in with Lev and Rurik would hopefully give me some insight for what I was supposed to be looking for. Because so far, I had nothing. Rurik had given me a rundown when I started, but I felt like I was missing something else.
“Why am I following her again?” I asked them both after they met me for coffee the day after I saw Irina at that party.
“You’re not supposed to be following her,” Lev said, furrowing his brow.
“He’s not,” Rurik said. “He’s around, but he’s not actively stalking her.”
I nodded. “Because this isn’t my first rodeo at this shit.” Smiling smugly, I let them laugh. “I’m not ‘following’ her, but I am making a point of running into her.” It wasn’t hard. The campus was large, but if I went to the commonly frequented places that staff and students visited, the odds were high that I’d cross paths with Irina without even trying to.
“You couldn’t look like you’re stalking her with the legions of fans interfering,” Rurik teased with a shit-eating grin.
“Ah.” Lev smirked. “Garnering attention, are you?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not that bad.”
Rurik laughed. “Remember the beginning of Indiana Jones ? When he’s teaching and all the students are staring at him like he hung the moon?”
I shoved at his shoulder. “I said it’s not that bad.”
“If only those girls knew what they were lusting for,” Lev taunted. “A big, bad brothel boss.”
“Nice alliteration you got there.” I lifted my coffee to him, mocking him.
“Funny.” He flipped me off.
Hell, I was lecturing about the English language. Crap like alliteration was on my mind. “They’re just typical horny girls. Eager to have the whole college experience and experiment sexually.” I shrugged. “I’m happy that I’m not getting the attention from anyone else on campus.” And I’d noticed a few faces.
“You saw them too?” Rurik asked. He turned to Lev. “A few more Petrovs have shown up on campus.”
I hadn’t talked to Rurik recently either, so it was good to hear that I wasn’t alone in this observation.
“More than anyone who’d be there to watch over Irina?” Lev asked.
Rurik shook his head. “They’re still staying back from her. Like they were when you were on campus as Eva’s bodyguard.”
“They’re there,” I said, backing him up. “But they gave her space. I’ve been curious about that.”
“Why?” Lev asked.
“Well, are they slacking to let her go off on her own this much? She was at that party by herself while the guards waited outside.” Or do they trust her to be able to handle herself if she gets in a bad situation?
“They were like that when I was guarding over Eva,” Lev said. “Keeping a distance.”
Telling Lev about the increase of more men on campus, both from the Petrov and Ilyin families, was done now. That task was only part of what I wanted to share in this meeting. I was most interested in getting more clues about what I had to do.
“So, again, why am I supposed to be following Irina or getting closer to get intel from her?” I shrugged. “What exactly do you think that she could know? As far as I can tell, she’s just a stuck-up brat who seems bored about going to college. Social, but never seeming close to anyone specifically.”
Rurik looked at Lev, who frowned and wore a pensive expression. “We suspect she has to know something about what Igor Petrov is up to.”
“Why? Just because she’s his daughter?” I huffed and set my coffee mug down. “That doesn’t mean shit. Oleg doesn’t tell Eva everything.” It was just a fact of our lives. Mafia women weren’t privy to details that the men found and collected. Women simply didn’t matter in terms of power—until they could serve as a pawn in an arranged marriage or breed babies for the next generation.
“Eva wouldn’t be a spy,” Lev argued instantly. “Oleg values her happiness too much to ever ask that of her.”
I held my hand up to ward off any anger he might feel toward me for making that comparison. He was so damn protective of her. “Yes. I agree. But would Igor Petrov really rely on using his daughter as a spy? He’s got plenty of men to use for that.”
Rurik shrugged. “Not necessarily. Irina could be a spy and get closer to people on campus because no one would suspect her.”
“That’s not true. I suspect she’s up to something. But I can’t tell what.”
“How does she act suspiciously around you?” Rurik asked.
“Just little things I picked up on.” Nothing I could pinpoint accurately, but small quirks I noticed. She had the inner workings of a spy. She people watched, even when she tried to make it less obvious. She always sat with her back to the wall and had a vantage point that would allow her to see everything happening in a room. She had that quiet, perceptive nature, slow to engage or participate until she got a good feeling for the room or group. That wasn’t a paranoid kind of behavior, but rather, soldier-like behavior.
“I wouldn’t discount the idea of her being a spy,” Lev warned. “Even though it would make more sense to have a soldier carry out the task of spying on anything Petrov is plotting, women have been used for surveillance. Think about some of the women you’ve caught at the whorehouses, wired or recording clients.”
I nodded in reluctant agreement. That had happened, but it was usually a matter of a greedy and overzealous whore trying to get ahead for herself, not acting as an agent for a crime family.
“I heard some of the rumors about what the Boss sent you to Moscow to look into,” Lev added. “The rumors that Sonya could have been used as a spy when she disappeared.”
Again, he was right. The theory that Sonya hadn’t run away with her mother floated out there, and it came with the detail that Sonya had been expected to be a spy outside of and perhaps against the Baranov organization.
“But she was so young when she disappeared.” That happened years ago. “Per the lack of answers and clues I found over there, I’m more inclined to think Sonya and her mother are dead.”
Neither of them replied, not agreeing or arguing with me on that point.
“Irina has to be defiant against whatever Igor is plotting or trying to do,” Lev reasoned.
“Because she helped Eva escape and save you?” They had told me about that already. “That does make it sound like she would be a friend, not a foe.”
“She saved Eva. If it weren’t for Irina stepping up and helping her, I don’t know how that day would’ve turned out,” Lev said. “Above all else, I owe her my thanks for helping Eva, whatever her motivations were.”
“But what would her ulterior motive be?” Rurik asked, like he was wondering aloud. “From what I saw of Eva’s semester there, she and Irina didn’t befriend each other. For a while, we were operating under the assumption that Irina was behind the rumors that spread about Eva, that Eva was the reason more drugs were showing up on campus.”
Lev nodded. “True.”
“She had to have an ulterior motive to help Eva escape, though,” I said. “And one way or another, I’ll find a way to get close to her and get her to open up to me.” I looked them in the eye, one at a time, serious. “I’ll get her to spill her secrets to me.”
“I’m surprised a ladies’ man like you hasn’t already,” Lev teased.
Rurik grinned. “Yeah. What’s taking so long?”
“I haven’t gotten close to her yet.” I shrugged.
“ Yet ? You’re assuming you can?” Lev asked, brows raised.
They were having way too much fun with this, poking fun at me.
“She seems a bit standoffish,” I admitted. Too cool and collected. Hiding her thoughts too damn well.
“If you can’t get a woman to talk…” Rurik shook his head. “There’s no hope.”
“At the brothel, sure. In a club, yes.” I was a dominant in those cases. “But at a college campus where I’m supposed to be her professor to get in and spy?”
Lev shrugged. “I doubt where you get her to open up matters.”
“But if you’re implying I could use my, um, former skills to manipulate her…”
“To seduce her?” Rurik guessed.
He and Lev both nodded.
“I’m surprised you haven’t tried that already,” Lev admitted.
From the first sight of her, the thought had entered my mind. I’d spent the last two weeks talking myself out of directly confronting her and trying to seduce her. My excuse for this delay was wanting to get a feeling for what I was working against. To observe, then act. But like Rurik and Lev were explaining, it wasn’t clear what I was facing. It wasn’t obvious what secret Irina was hiding.
“Getting too old?” Rurik teased.
“And losing your touch?” Lev joked.
I shook my head, running my hand down the stubble I needed to shave before I really had a beard again. “No. Fuckers. I’m not getting too old.” I was older than Irina, but unlike her childish and immature peers and classmates, she posed a challenge with the difference in our ages. A thrill—to tame her, to discipline her. “I’m not losing my touch.”
It would be fun to seduce my student. I had options for how I could get her to talk. Torture, bribes, ultimatums, and threats. Those were all fine techniques.
But seducing her?
It’s worth a shot.