Professor Hunt (1)
The city morning broke gray and cold over Hevilly. I headed straight for the academy that Sunday without wasting a single breath. There was no time left to lose, and besides, I had managed to slip past the moment without choosing between Elena and Felicia.
“Boss, are you sure we shouldn’t have brought Sarina along?”
“We brought the wolves from that side, didn’t we?”
We were riding in a very special car on our way to the academy—my father Vito Fellini’s armored limousine. Once it had served as the godfather’s safe haven and rolling war room. Father had commissioned it himself, armor-plated and customized to survive the endless feuds and chases against the five families. Thick bulletproof glass, reinforced steel, and a menacing machine gun mounted in the rear.
The best defense is a good offense.
Sure enough, condensation suddenly bloomed across the window I was staring through, and letters took shape. The glass had been clear only seconds earlier. And there was one more detail I hadn’t mentioned. The car was painted the exact same green as Hevilly’s police cruisers. Sirens, emergency lights, and a radio—everything a patrol car needed, inside and out. A clever trick passed down from the Wolves who came before: disguise your ride as the law and dodge half the trouble on the streets.
“Huu…”
The acrid smoke thickened inside the sealed cabin. In the world I came from, no one smoked with the windows shut. Here, it was normal. What I was dragging on wasn’t even a regular cigarette—it was a magic herb. No filter, of course. The kind of smoke real men were supposed to endure. Or maybe it was just that this world had never bothered with modern niceties.
“Boss.”
Giovanni slid the ashtray under my hand before the ash could fall.
“The Gullymen still tailing us okay?”
“Yeah. They’d better not be the kind of idiots who can’t even drive.”
A convoy of cars followed the armored beast I rode in. Some belonged to the Gullymen who had recently bent the knee. Sarina, meanwhile, remained in Greenbug with her own pack of wolves. Giovanni clearly thought we should have brought her, but I had my reasons. Our combat strength was sufficient with the drafted Gullyman muscle. What mattered more was announcing to every green-skinned bastard in the district that the northeast of Greenbug now belonged to the Fellini Family.
After talking it over with Elena, I had dispatched one of my men as caporegime to the surrounding blocks. He still lacked the necessary reputation and sheer presence, though. So Sarina went to Greenbug to plant the flag, and we plugged the hole in our own ranks by pulling in the Gullymen.
“Giovanni. Any professors at the academy who flipped to Bottari’s side?”
“Looks like three so far.”
“Three?”
Not too many, not too few. An annoyingly ambiguous number.
“Two of them reached out to us.”
“…”
I kept listening. When I offered no reaction, Giovanni went on.
“They claim siding with Bottari was just a cover.”
“So they want to betray him from the inside?”
“Boss, what do you want to do?”
Four professors had rebelled, yet two were already offering to switch sides. Amadeo Bottari’s grand scheme was dead in the water. Besides, we had plenty of other people on our payroll—administrators, staff, students. The fact that the administrators were still loyal was especially comforting.
Considering how much money we’ve poured into that man over the years, it’s only natural.
If the Fellini Family ever fell, he would probably tumble down with us.
“What department are those professors in?”
“Same humanities department as Bottari.”
“…Then the humanities dormitory is our best entry point.”
“Yes. There’s a secret passage that opens right into it.”
Our target had sharpened into focus.
Meanwhile, Professor Bottari was not sitting idle.
“Goddammit.”
“Professor Bottari, how did it go?”
A small goblin approached the professor who had just returned from meeting the administrator. In this city and this academy, it was rare. Yet that goblin was undeniably one of the faculty.
“It’s no use. He has no intention of listening to us.”
“…Of course he doesn’t. The administrators are already bound by fate to the mafia.”
“We’re no different.”
An elf joined the conversation between the human and the goblin.
“Danielle.”
Of the three gathered there, he alone was not a professor but a teaching assistant.
“I’ll go this time.”
“Forget it. You’d only be wasting your time.”
“You never know until you try.”
While the goblin professor repeated the same futile attempt Bottari had made, the elf assistant seemed to have something on his mind.
“Professor, there’s been something I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time.”
“…What is it?”
The professor answered even while his mind clearly churned elsewhere.
“Why are you suddenly resisting them?”
Some might have found the assistant’s question strange. But he had reason to ask. Amadeo Bottari was one of the men who had helped the Fellini Family turn the academy into a drug pipeline. Leveraging both his human birth and his professorial title, he had transformed the campus into an opium den. And now that same man had raised his banner in rebellion.
“Professor, whether this succeeds or fails, they’re going to kill all of us. Why make this decision?”
While the assistant questioned him, the professor merely stared at the bizarre creatures passing beyond the window.
“…If I don’t do it, who will?”
The old professor’s single sentence carried heavy weight—regret for having ruined countless bright young lives blinded by momentary greed, the insight not to miss the chaos left by the death of godfather Vito Fellini, and a small sense of duty that he could not allow his name to be recorded in history with nothing but shame.
“…”
Yet the assistant could not understand. None of the professor’s actions felt like genuine atonement. More than that, Bottari had dragged in yet another outside force to oppose the Fellini Family.
While that conversation unfolded inside the humanities building, we successfully slipped into the humanities dormitory.
“Looks like that passage really was too narrow for those guys.”
“Well, we should be plenty on our own.”
Unfortunately the Gullymen were simply too big to squeeze through the secret tunnel. We would enter the dormitory first and open the way for them afterward.
“This place never changes,” Giovanni muttered.
One thing still made no sense to me.
Just what kind of twisted bastards decided to build a student dormitory under a lake?
I used to think disdain for the humanities was limited to the universities of my old world. The location chosen for Hevilly Academy’s humanities dormitory was spectacularly bad. Under the lake. Former underground prison. Put those two phrases together and you had the dormitory in a nutshell.
We changed into the familiar academy staff uniforms after emerging from the passage. Blending in was essential no matter where you went.
“Tsk.”
A student clicked his tongue when he saw me among the wolves. Probably because I was an elf. He was human, after all. My long ears must have offended him.
“…”
“Giovanni, let’s get moving before you do something stupid.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I hurried us out of the dormitory before Giovanni could start trouble. Discrimination between races was still one of the hardest things to get used to in this world. Especially when black folk sat just below whites in the hierarchy. Either way, we left the underground prison that dared call itself a dormitory.
We felt our way along damp stone walls covered in thick green moss. Clearly no one bothered to clean down here. The view through the narrow windows confirmed we were still beneath the lake.
No wonder the humanities students are so deep into drugs.
Where they got the money was another question.
We finally climbed out of the dark underground and into daylight. After even a short time below, the sun and fresh air felt like gifts from heaven.
“All right, Giovanni. Begin.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Giovanni sent some of his wolves toward the academy’s main gate. We needed internal support if the Gullymen were going to enter. The rest followed me and Giovanni toward the humanities building. Even in staff uniforms, that many armed men moving together looked more than a little threatening.
“…”
“What the hell?”
We had not expected this. The Russo Family—especially the bloodsuckers operating in the northern districts—had already sunk their claws into the academy.
“Must be the Russos.”
“Yeah. Mosquito bastards. Figures they’d be here.”
Not every Russo was a vampire, but the boss and a large chunk of their made men were. The ones smoking openly in front of the humanities building were definitely vampires.
“…”
“Giovanni, no guns.”
Despite the difficult order, Giovanni nodded. He stepped forward and several wolves fell in behind him. They began drawing the weapons hidden beneath their clothes. Knives, clubs, brass knuckles. No firearms. I had forbidden them, and shooting inside the academy would turn a quiet job into a catastrophe.
“What the—?!”
The vampires wore the same surprised expression we had worn moments earlier. Before they could alert the rest of their crew, the wolves were on them.
“Urk…”
The entrance to the humanities building turned crimson. We dragged the bodies out of sight. The bloodstains, though… damn it.
“Boss, we’ll clean this up,” one of the wolves volunteered.
Leaving them to handle the mess, Giovanni and I pushed deeper into the building. The lobby contained stairs to the upper floors, a small cafeteria, and a map of the interior.
“His office is… third floor.”
I started toward the stairs, but Giovanni stopped me.
“Boss, let’s take the elevator.”
One elevator stood at each end of the building. We split our men to block both the central staircase and the elevator doors. A complete cutoff of every escape route.
“Been a while since I’ve seen Bottari.”
“Yeah. Ever since the young lady took the academy from us.”
I hadn’t brought it up to hear that reminder. Still, the current Elena would probably apologize for it without hesitation. But after we finished with Bottari, before this day was over, both Elena and Felicia would press me again to choose one of them. I was still turning that problem over in my mind when the elevator doors opened on the third floor.
“…”
“Boss, the guns…”
“No choice. Use them.”
Professor Bottari and the others were on the third floor. Russo Family soldiers had taken up positions in plain sight. In a long corridor like this, we couldn’t handle them effectively without firearms. The moment we stepped out of the elevator, a gunfight erupted in the heart of the academy.