Dogs Among Withered Roses - Chapter 17

“…Liquor?” asked the contact back a beat late.

“Single malt, Linferno wine, brandy, things like that.”

“When was Prohibition repealed that this suddenly….”

“If the amount of liquor brought into the port warehouses has nearly doubled, it’s worth looking into at least once.”

Where it’s being delivered, who’s drinking it.

Or whether they’re really importing liquor at all.

I only mentioned it because I thought it was worth reporting. As if saying the rest was up to them to decide, Erkin muttered casually. The contact nodded and asked if he’d like another cup of coffee, but Erkin declined.

He refused favors that came with a reason.

“Anything to mention about that woman besides the liquor?”

Throwing them one thing should be enough. More persistent than I expected.

It had only just entered the third week since he took on the bodyguard duty, and he didn’t know what more they expected here. Maybe they thought if they asked in passing, he’d nod without thinking, but not a chance.

“There might be more to say if there were, but Berenice Valentiera’s lover ran off with the tribute money, so she’s busy cleaning that up right now. There haven’t been any notable movements.”

“Her lover? Tribute money?”

The contact’s eyes widened as if asking what that was supposed to mean, but Erkin only gave a light nod as if he was repeating exactly what he’d heard. Ask for something reasonable. It’s still too early.

If he started talking carelessly here, everything would fall apart.

Firmly keeping his mouth shut, Erkin left the café, leaving the untouched muffin and half‑finished coffee behind.

Checking his wristwatch, Erkin rubbed his forehead. There was still time left before the next shift, but now that the regular contact meeting was over, there wasn’t really anything for him to do today besides stay by Berenice’s side.

Ricardo’s study and the secret inner room came to mind, but he had no excuse to enter, and he didn’t want to wander around there without Berenice and draw suspicion. There also wasn’t enough time left to sneak into Berenice’s penthouse and install a listening device.

After briefly considering how to spend the empty time, he headed toward a nearby park open to anyone.

Each step was met with a sharp spring wind that whipped his hair into disorder, but Erkin didn’t slow down. The biting late‑winter wind, harsh enough to feel like it might peel flesh away, even swept away useless thoughts and helped clear the clutter in his mind.

He wandered through the park, which had little to see since new shoots hadn’t appeared yet, then stopped slowly when he noticed something. Small leaf buds clung to every branch.

Normally, he wouldn’t have even spared something like that a glance.

Choosing one of the benches scattered along the lake, Erkin sat down and narrowed his eyes lazily. It was a spot where the trees filled with buds were most visible.

Taking out a cigarette and a lighter, he quietly imagined the greenery those small, slender buds would one day hold. At almost the same moment, the image of a woman who seemed to hold an unwithering summer deep in her eyes floated above the buds.

Or maybe she had been on his mind the entire time.

The cigarette hanging from the corner of his lips swayed lightly. For a moment, Erkin pushed Berenice, who occupied more than half his thoughts, to the side and pulled in another woman’s voice as if layering it over the scene.

“…Should I call her the Goddess of Victory?”

Goddess of Victory, Berenice.

He didn’t expect to hear that nickname there again. Even thinking about it now, it was so unexpected that a dry laugh slipped out through the gap between his teeth where the cigarette hung.

Was it the end of last summer?

A bank employee in Belloc was murdered. The police narrowed down several strong suspects on the grounds that the victim had produced and distributed counterfeit money together with the mafia, but it was reported that they failed to find any decisive evidence, only suspicions and circumstances.

In the end, they couldn’t even make an arrest, let alone conduct a proper investigation. When the news spread, rumors briefly circulated among the Belloc mafia that perhaps the job had been commissioned to the Valentiera Family’s contract killing company to take care of the banker, but that was all.

As the investigation made no progress and people’s interest gradually drifted away, Erkin learned that the “Goddess of Victory” who helped the prime suspect in the banker’s murder case escape the investigation due to lack of evidence was Berenice.

It was information he obtained by chance, like a Christmas present, on the day he visited the Valentiera estate with the capo for a regular business report.

But aside from that, everything else here was still completely unclear.

Whether Berenice was the architect who flawlessly planned the contracted assassination, the assassin who pulled the trigger herself to eliminate the target, or someone who hired a quick‑handed mercenary to contaminate the crime scene and destroy evidence, or even whether she used money to firmly seal the investigators’ eyes and mouths. There was no way to know the method or the exact credit for what happened.

Anything beyond that wasn’t an area Erkin, who for now was nothing more than a mere soldato despite being an associate the boss kept an eye on, could easily dig into.

However, it was clear that beneath Berenice’s glamorous appearance, she hid countless thorns whose true nature was impossible to read. Perhaps at the tips of those thorns were the things Erkin had spent so long searching for. Walking away like this wasn’t an option.

He already knew Berenice wasn’t some naive young lady who knew nothing about the mafia, nor an honest accountant faithfully following the law. But being deeply involved in the contract killing company operated by the Valentiera Family and being called the “Goddess of Victory” was a completely different matter.

So during the pichoto ceremony, he’d been searching for an opportunity to approach the lady he couldn’t even easily make eye contact with. At the time, Berenice’s colorful history with men, as flashy as her appearance, provided a convenient excuse.

“You think I don’t look into the men who try to approach me? How many men do you think come to a mafia accountant like me with pure intentions? You think I’d just let them? Idiot.”

As it turned out, that famous history with men was mostly nothing but a flashy shell with little substance….

After learning Russo’s true identity, Erkin silently applauded his decision once again for changing his approach from seduction and playing the handsome man to becoming her bodyguard.

Looking at the lovers Berenice replaced steadily over the past few years and the length of her relationships, which never lasted longer than a single season, and considering her fickle dating style, the change of approach was the right decision a hundred times over.

Compared to an unstable romantic relationship where it was impossible to predict when a breakup notice might come, a bodyguard who met her face every day and had far fewer reasons to fabricate emotions and actions made infiltration more stable and maintaining his cover much easier in many ways.

No. Is it really easier?

Didn’t he nearly get fired on the very first day as her bodyguard? The moment the thought that guarding Berenice was easy crossed his mind, Erkin corrected his revised evaluation of his infiltration assignment. Right. It wasn’t easy at all.

There was no need to go far back. Just thinking about what happened last weekend was enough, and it wasn’t exactly….

“…You sucked my tongue like you were going to rip it out by the root just to stop my hiccups. I guess you enjoyed it?”

Did he enjoy it? Did he really?

Thinking the lighter’s flame, trembling as it might snap in the spring wind, looked much like his own precarious situation, Erkin tilted his head slightly. After finally lighting the end of his cigarette, he corrected his thoughts again.

Rather than saying he enjoyed it… well. He still wasn’t sure.

Following Berenice into the study when anyone could see she was sneaking in, cramming himself under the desk to avoid Ricardo, wiretapping a wiretap. Pressing their lips together in a near crush with the single purpose of stopping the woman’s hiccups. None of that entire chain of events was something someone deliberately planned.

It was surprising that, in a situation where he could be discovered at any moment, he still had the spare capacity to feel even a brief surge of excitement toward the woman who occupied all his senses. Maybe that was why it drove him even crazier, but….

It was simply unavoidable.

In any case, the erection that day didn’t stray from the physiological reaction of a healthy adult man who felt no particular shame about it. Reaching that conclusion, Erkin exhaled cigarette smoke as if finally releasing the breath he had been holding.

What was certain was that the results he achieved over the past three weeks were better than anything from the previous two years. Whether he intended it or not.

Especially Chiara Volonte, the one said to specialize in information gathering.

Erkin was certain Chiara Volonte was the meticulous planner who gathered information on targets requested by the contract killing company.

The contract killing company organized by Antonio Abel Valentiera, the first boss of the Valentiera Family who died three years ago, was not widely known either inside or outside the Family.

The planner who gathers information on the target and designs the assassination plan,

The assassin who directly takes the target’s life according to the plan,

The transporter who handles the assassin’s movement and escape after the job is completed,

The cleaner who destroys or manipulates unfavorable evidence at the murder scene.

After relentless investigation, wiretapping, and surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Security, the only thing they managed to learn was that those four roles operated as a single team.

Since around seventeen years ago, when Antonio Valentiera is believed to have organized the contract killing company, murders and disappearances presumed to have been carried out by members of that organization occurred steadily. But none of them ever led to a meaningful investigation.

More precisely, before the investigation even began, the cases stalled at the preliminary inquiry stage after examining the interests between organizations or individuals closely connected to the victims, and they all faded away due to a lack of evidence.