***
The Bosnian government wanted the Bosnian University of Management to operate as long as possible. Since many students came from affluent families, they had strong connections to the top politicians in the Bosnian government.
The new university president wanted Veronika to return and promoted her to the executive director, the second highest position in the university. She reluctantly accepted.
Some days, Veronica hated her job, not because of Damir, but because money troubles continually plagued the university. Without that drug money, the university fell on hard financial times and had trouble paying staff salaries. By the end of the school year, half the foreign faculty fled the university. Veronika expected the other half would flee by the end of the next school year, as their tight finances continued.
The police had questioned Veronika, but they let her go after an hour. She only told them that Damir had fired her that day, and she packed her things and left quietly. She didn’t hear a gunshot, nor see an upset professor, like Keith Swanson, who submitted his letter of resignation to Damir around the time of the murder. Besides, if the police knew Veronika received 10,000 euros in cash from Keith, then they would demand their cut. Veronika would keep her money because she experienced hell at the university under Damir's stewardship. She intended to keep every penny of it.
Because Damir terrified and intimated all the university staff, the next president closed Damir’s office by constructing a wall over the door. To any new staff, they never knew the wall, which now had a beautiful oil painting of a spring Tuzla countryside, was hiding the door to Damir’s office.
Veronika and the veteran staff, at least once a day, would approach Damir's office door. The new staff members mistakenly thought the veteran staff was admiring a beautiful painting of the Bosnian countryside. However, the evil that once lurked through the university hallways was sealed in that room. Even the air around the university became fresher, as Damir’s evil stench dissipated at the time of his death.
That new wall became sacred for the staff, instilling inspiration. If God could come down and remove an evil man from the world, then Veronika knew she could rise every morning, come to work, and make a difference.
Veronika would work for the university until it bankrupted. She would be the last person to leave the university's front door and would lock up the university forever, if it came to that.
Then to insult further Damir's untimely demise, the university buried him in a grave in the cheapest cemetery they could find in Tuzla, with a blank tombstone marking his grave. They never would bury Damir next to his beloved Emina in Srebrenica.
Anyone with a run-in with Damir – quite a large crowd – attended his funeral. No one read a eulogy during the wake, but a large joyous party ebbed and flowed with laughter and happiness. Even the Mayor of Tuzla made a quick appearance. He grinned widely. Tuzla’s evil man had died, and everybody was happy. No one would miss Damir.
Searching for Stolen Love Page 39