2. Rurik
2
RURIK
“ I ’m not sure about this,” I told Oleg. Voicing concerns to the Boss wasn’t a sign of weakness, or it never should be. I spoke up now with a slight worry that he would be annoyed with my opinion that we shouldn’t proceed with his plans. Part of being a Baranov brother included looking out for all the other members in the family, though, so I had to point out my reservations. If I suspected danger, I had to speak up. And I did now.
“It’s fine,” Oleg replied. His rich, deep voice from many decades of smoking cigars would never come across as a true whisper, but I noticed how he’d try to speak as quietly as possible. He wasn’t at ease waiting around near this warehouse either. His cautious gaze roved around the space as if he, too, had a subliminal need to be careful and look out for something that wasn’t right.
“This is supposed to be a casual meeting,” he said quietly.
Those words, supposed to be , never applied to anything with much accuracy in our lives. Some things could be taken as fact, like the codes and rules that we lived by and obeyed. Loyalties, grudges, and violence could all be taken or given in expected doses. But sometimes, when something just didn’t feel right, we had to play by ear and count on the unexpected.
“It’s just a casual meetup.” Oleg looked around where some soldiers were expected to talk to us about deals that had been made. Lots of Baranov men had the job of following up on business and making sure stipulations of agreements were addressed by all the involved parties. It should’ve been a casual meetup, but I was getting nervous. Too many guards seemed absent. It was… too quiet, for lack of a better term. Noises reached us from the street, always bustling and busy with the sounds of the city that never slept. Machinery moved from other floors in this building. In the distance, workers could be heard laughing, talking, and carrying on as usual for their jobs in the sweatshop we owned. It seemed like this was just any other ordinary day, but I couldn’t turn off this worry that the Boss could be at risk here.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I said. Again, saying such a thing came with the risk that he could be irritated with me. Oleg Baranov was a powerful leader, one of the strongest men in the area that no other family, gang, or criminal organization ever wanted to mess with. He was inherently a target no matter where he went, representative of not only all that power he’d accumulated over the years but also because of his net worth.
“Sometimes, it’s just a feeling,” he said, not matter-of-fact or in denial, but merely stating it conversationally.
I wasn’t prone to being paranoid. Not like some of the other guards and spies in our network could be. I also wasn’t familiar with being the Boss’s main security guard. Lev and other men typically took up that position while I stuck with spying and doing surveillance from a distance. That was more my style. With so many other men busy elsewhere, though, I was tasked with being Oleg’s backup today.
And he was right, sometimes, these feelings just came up and didn’t go away. It came hand in hand with a dangerous lifestyle like ours. Being suspicious was just a way of life for us.
“But sometimes,” he said, still looking around, “it’s not just a feeling.”
Aha. So, I wasn’t alone in thinking something seemed off about this supposedly casual and routine meetup. He was on edge too.
“Exactly. Maybe we should just go.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been eager to talk with this crew about the Ilyin activity on that side of town,” he argued.
I was well aware that he wanted intel about one of our rivals in the area. “But if this is an ambush or some kind of a setup, that intel can’t be worth it.” No news could be worth our leader’s life.
“I suppose.” He wasn’t relenting yet, though. “If this meeting was about getting intel on Igor Petrov, then I wouldn’t hesitate and want to linger here. But I don’t need to go out seeking answers about the Petrovs’ plans because Irina came into our lives. But it’s not about the Petrovs today.”
Again, he was right, but there was more disarray lately, more chaos all because of the Petrov Boss. He’d singlehandedly stirred up far too much trouble lately. We’d just learned that he’d tried to hold a bastard son of the Baranov family hostage. He’d tried to plot against us in a war about turf and drug trades. If anyone was a clear enemy who’d want to take out Oleg Baranov, Igor Petrov would be at the top of that list.
“I wouldn’t put it past the Petrovs to try to take a shot at you whenever and however they can.”
He nodded, ceding that point. “Yes, but there are plenty of men positioned around here. And there is a chance one of the men coming to meet me here could have information about Sonya.”
It baffled my mind how he was still determined to find his eldest niece who’d gone missing years ago. His dedication to locating her was a testament to how he never failed anyone in his family and organization.
“And I think?—”
The rest of whatever he wanted to say was lost to the gunfire. I lifted my gun from its holster, where I’d been keeping my hand as my anxiousness increased, but I didn’t aim to shoot yet. “Get down!” I rushed at Oleg to shove him down to the floor with me. His safety was the first order of business. Then I could attack.
Too many men rushed into this open-air meeting space of the warehouse. My sixth sense about danger had been accurate. Those funky feelings of nervousness had been warranted, after all. Guns were fired all over the place. With the increase of danger under the attack, more Baranov soldiers fired into the warehouse to help protect the Boss. Our men shot at the invaders, and whoever these masked men were aimed and pulled triggers right back.
The silence was gone, and now my ears rang with the rapid-fire shots. Above the thunderous rush of my pulse in my ears as my heart raced, I winced and tried to tune out the clamorous and deafening noise of all the fighting.
Lying over the Boss, I kept him down and secure. If anyone were to try to get a shot at him, they’d have to go through me first. Other Baranov soldiers came close, surrounding our Boss, but not before I took a hit. Turning at the last second to block a man from firing a shot right at Oleg’s head, I jerked back. Pain ripped through my arm.
“Fuck!” I whispered it in a whoosh of an exhale as my body was flung back halfway. In the momentum of being hit like that, I was shoved into him harder, forcing him to fall flat to the floor. We lay there, me bleeding on top of him, as more of my Baranov brothers filed in and outnumbered the assholes who thought to ambush us. Within a couple more minutes, the men were dead. If they hadn’t been shot by us, they killed themselves.
Several men came to help me ease off Oleg, but the Boss wasn’t a stranger to blood and gore. He didn’t fight on the front lines anymore, but he wasn’t afraid of getting dirty.
“Rurik?” he asked as men gathered around to help me. He took off his suit jacket and used it to compress the bleeding at my shoulder. “You all right?” I nodded, wincing at the pain that came with the motion.
Agonizing pain spread through my shoulder and arm. Blood gushed too quickly, and through the searing ache from the gunshot wound, I felt dizzy. Too many things had happened too quickly. In the back of my mind, I struggled with the crash of adrenaline. Shock claimed me, and all I could do was hang on and wait for everyone else to help me.
In a blur, I was transported to the hospital. All the while, the Boss stayed with me, as well as a crew of guards. Lev was there too, just before surgery. Vik came, and more men showed up, both to further protect the Boss but also to give or receive a report.
“None of them?” Oleg asked when Lev confirmed that not a single man was found alive at the warehouse.
“None survived,” Lev said. “Checking back on the camera feed, it looks like all were gunned down by our men, and the last two killed themselves.”
Just so they couldn’t be captured and forced to talk. It happened, but it was always aggravating when it did. I shifted to get comfortable on the bed, resting after my shoulder was repaired from the shot that almost killed the Boss. “There’s no easy way to guess who sent them there,” I remarked.
Lev shook his head. “It’s not clear who could’ve sent them, but nothing indicates it as a hit from the Petrovs.”
“What about the Ilyins?” Oleg asked.
Lev shook his head and shrugged. He’d more or less become the Boss’s right-hand man since asking Eva to marry him, and it was a good promotion for him. He deserved it, no matter that he was found as an orphan and not born into the family by blood.
“Nothing to indicate it could’ve been a hit from the Ilyins, either.”
“Yet,” Viktor added. “The men are still looking through the men’s IDs and watching all the cameras that are trained on that place.”
“It has to be Petrov,” Oleg muttered. “Ever since we let you take his daughter…”
Lev cleared his throat. “If Petrov wants retaliation for Irina coming into the Baranov family and telling us all his secrets, he wouldn’t have attacked you first. He’d go for her.”
“Not on my watch,” Vik said, so possessive and protective of his fiancée.
“No.” I shook my head, recalling how we’d all helped to get Maxim Petrov—who was actually a Baranov bastard—out from under Igor Petrov’s control. “He’d be more upset about losing his son. Well, not his son, but still.”
Oleg dismissed my comment with a wave. “He can be mad about both of his children becoming Baranovs, but this ambush is ridiculous.”
I huffed a laugh. “No one’s ever said he’d play fair.”
“Well, I’m not in the mood to play at all,” Oleg growled. He faced me, sobering up into an expression of gratitude. “Not when one of my best men can be hurt in the process.”
His praise hit home. I never went out of my way to earn his favor. I knew my worth. I had good standing in the family, but for so long, I preferred simpler jobs where I could blend in. I liked being the dependable backup, not the leaders who headed up jobs or projects like Lev and Vik did.
“You’ll be off duty until you’re rested,” Oleg said, placing his hand on my good shoulder. “You deserve the break. You more than deserve my thanks.”
“No. Don’t say it like that.” Off duty? I couldn’t handle being put on the sidelines completely. I hated to be idle. Ever.
“You do deserve a break,” Lev agreed. “You’ve been doubling up on so many things at once lately. Your routine work as a soldier. Then being a spy on campus, too.”
“And I’m fine. I’ll take a couple of days off and I’ll be right back out there to keep an eye on things.”
Keeping an eye on things ceased to matter as much. Without Eva enrolled in classes anymore, there was no need for Lev to be there. Which meant there was no need for me to be there either, at least not as much.
“We can’t just stop surveillance at the college,” I reminded them all. I looked from one man to the next, checking that they were as serious as I was. “With all the intel that Irina told us about the Petrov plans to take over that area, we can’t back out completely now.”
Vik sighed and agreed. “It wouldn’t be smart to have fewer spies there right now. Irina and I heard enough to make me think that the Petrovs or the Ilyins will increase their influence there soon.”
“Just give me a couple of days to recover,” I told them, desperate not to be relegated to recovering and doing nothing else.
“A couple of days?” Lev asked with a laugh. “You took a bullet for the Boss. You just got out of surgery. You’ll be out for more than a couple of days.”
No. Please no. “Then who will keep watch on campus?”
More to the point, one burning question remained unanswered in my mind.
Who will keep an eye on Kelly?
Who’s going to check in and make sure she’s doing all right?
It had been hard enough to reduce my time on campus when Lev left, and subsequently, his crew, of which I was a member. Justifying my time on campus wasn’t so easy when Vik was there to get close to Irina for answers. But now that he was off the project because his cover as a professor was ruined, there wasn’t any one specific soldier or spy in charge now, not anyone in this upper circle of the Boss’s confidantes.
“I’ll assign someone to check things out,” Lev said. “We’ll find someone.” He almost smiled at me, nodding once in acknowledgment. “All you need to do is recover and rest.”
That wasn’t true. I felt like I needed to be able to check in on the petite blonde I hadn’t forgotten. Kelly Garnet wouldn’t leave my mind, and I knew it would be absolute hell to miss out on the chance to stop in on campus for limited surveillance and spying there.
I smiled, hoping I could figure out how to avoid bed rest or the idleness of recovery. With a dismissive shrug, only lifting my good arm that wasn’t still bandaged from the surgery, I resolved to return to her sooner rather than later.
A couple of days. That was all I’d allow to recover from this gunshot wound.
Because I’d be damned if I had to lose all the remaining opportunities to see the woman I hated to leave behind.