Dogs Among Withered Roses - Chapter 18

Since Erkin infiltrated the Family, it took two full years before he discovered even a trace of it, which said enough on its own. Without needing to shake it out himself, Erkin’s face grew thoughtful as he watched cigarette ash and murky smoke scatter into the early spring wind.

What role did that woman take there?

Now he knew who the planner was.

She wasn’t the transporter either.

After identifying the planner, Erkin also excluded the transporter without reconsideration. He’d heard that while learning to drive from Michele, she sent three cars straight to the junkyard. With skills like that, there was no way she could handle moving the assassin or managing an escape.

That left only the assassin and the cleaner.

Between the two, the title that suited her better was probably….

Erkin tossed the fully smoked cigarette butt into the trash and leaned his back and head slightly. In truth, it didn’t matter who the woman was. What he wanted were the traces Berenice left behind when she preserved fragments of her memories and the past.

The question was how to drag them out.

Brushing away the ash and the lingering sting of smoke from his fingertips, Erkin took out a small notebook and a fountain pen. The leaf buds decorating the tips of the branches trembled finely in the harsh wind, but Erkin’s hand did not move above the notebook.

All he did was call the woman’s name, like bursting new shoots that endured through winter. Only after he scraped the cigarette smoke soaked deep in his lungs from his chest did the hand holding the fountain pen begin to move.

Berenice.

The unfortunate goddess who brings blood-soaked victory.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have the chance to tell you this, but

No matter what happens from here on, I hold no personal feelings.

Because I know you weren’t the one who killed my family.

“…Run. Go somewhere safe!”

“B-but I, I… I….”

“It’s dangerous here. Go. Hurry!”

Still, the one standing beside death that day fifteen years ago was you.

You saw what I missed when I arrived a step too late. You knew the truth I didn’t know and held it as well. Knowing nothing, all I could do was urge you to run and stay safe.

In the end, I’m filled only with the thought of using you to achieve my revenge, and the only thing I can offer you in return is this miserable misfortune. That’s why I can only regret meeting you again like this.

Imagining the moment when instead of saying “Goodbye, take care,” everything would end in betrayal, Erkin repeated the words he would someday say to Berenice.

I hold no personal feelings.

I didn’t before, I don’t now, and I never will.

There must not be.

***

The photograph in Berenice’s hand spread across the coffee table.

The man in the picture had a cold impression drawn only in black and white contrast, with delicate and refined features that looked as if they were carefully carved.

The man in the photo was taller than most by a head, with straight, broad shoulders, wearing a well-tailored suit that fit his strong build and a long coat that slightly covered his knees.

Berenice stared at the photo without much interest. Sitting with her legs loosely crossed, she lowered her eyes halfway and asked, “Is this everything?”

The private detective who investigated the man as requested nodded slowly with a short answer. His manner was extremely polite, but it wasn’t the kind of response that would satisfy a client who had paid a considerable amount of money.

“You must be very upset, but even if we dig deeper, nothing else will come out.”

“Upset is a bit much. It’s not like the money was lacking.”

“Of course not. If I had to point out anything that might be an issue, it would be his expulsion from high school, a prior assault conviction, and the fact that he’s a soldato of the Valentiera Family.”

After scanning through dozens of photographs without much reaction, Berenice lifted only her eyes and looked at the private detective. John Baker, the private detective, suddenly met her gaze and his Adam’s apple bobbed noticeably.

Softly cascading thick dark brown hair, large clear eyes, and deep, vivid grass‑green irises. A straight and gentle nose bridge, rosy cheeks, and lips tinted an even deeper red.

Her appearance was as brilliant as a fully blooming rose yet carried a frosty chill, creating a strange atmosphere that caught even the most indifferent glance. He saw her face once a month for several years now, yet every time he saw it he could only click his tongue at the sheer beauty.

It was hard to imagine a more fitting nickname than the somewhat embarrassing title, the Rose of Valentiera. Realizing that the eyes staring so intently as if to enchant someone had reached his silent lips waiting for an answer, he immediately put on the smile of a salesman.

“But this isn’t what you’re looking for, is it?”

“Of course not. I’m a Valentiera, after all.”

“In that case, there truly isn’t anything else.”

“….”

After exchanging glances with John Baker for a moment to gauge his sincerity, Berenice swallowed a sigh as if there was no helping it.

Should she be relieved by the empty result that nothing came up even after following his every move for nearly a month, or disappointed that she’d simply wasted the investigation fee? Berenice flipped through the documents the private detective handed over along with the photos, one page at a time.

Erkin Lucio Lafayette.

Age twenty‑eight, birthday May… soon he’ll be twenty‑nine. For an investigation covering nearly thirty years of a man’s life, the contents were rather thin. After quickly scanning the shallow results, Berenice absentmindedly stared at the youthful ID photo of Erkin, apparently taken when he first entered high school.

Expelled after getting involved in a school violence incident during high school. Left Melbourne claiming he wanted to earn money and came to Belloc, where he served one year in prison for assaulting a taxi driver before being released. After his release, he temporarily joined as a pichoto after helping a Valentiera soldato who was fighting in a bar. And now.

In ordinary professions, his criminal record and troubled past would be unwelcome, but within the mafia this level couldn’t even be called unusual. Still, the fact that his only conviction was assault rather than murder was slightly surprising.

Looking over the photo of the taxi driver who reportedly got into an argument while driving and ended up crashing into a roadside tree after Erkin’s ruthless beating, Berenice shifted her gaze back to the table scattered with Erkin’s photographs as if double‑checking.

No matter how she looked at it, his face suited a silenced pistol more than bloodied fists. Or perhaps swinging a long, smooth stiletto to slash someone’s throat. Whether fists suited him or guns and knives suited him more, it was obvious he had a nasty temper without even seeing the photos. But….

Why he became a mafia member remained impossible to understand no matter how many times she looked.

Both parents are alive and currently living in Melbourne. His mother, an immigrant from Linferno, runs a small bookstore, his father works as a high school teacher, and his younger sister, who is preparing to get married, works at a bank.

Judging only from the briefly listed notes and photographs, it was an even more ordinary and peaceful family than she expected. It made her curious how the only son of such a household ended up rolling into a den of criminals like this.

One of his grandfathers had been the consigliere of a mafia group that collapsed more than a decade ago, but there had never been anything that could even be called contact with that side from the beginning. After leaving Melbourne, he also stopped keeping in touch with the family he had previously gotten along with.

Considering Erkin’s indifferent face, his criminal record that an ordinary person would find difficult to accept, and the organization he now belonged to, it wasn’t impossible to understand. Yet the more she looked, the more a strange irritation welled up inside.

Leaving behind a perfectly normal family, how could he, why?

Of course he must have had hardships others didn’t know about. But just as those hardships were natural, it was also certain that he grew up inside a fence filled with proper choices. He had more than enough environment and background to live quietly as an ordinary member of society, neither standing out nor lacking anything.

So why throw all of that away and become something like a mafia member? Berenice stared fixedly at Erkin’s face in the photograph as if she truly couldn’t understand.

You could have lived without being branded a criminal. You didn’t have to walk into the mud on your own. It’s not like you had only one hand you could hold onto like I did, or a life stuck to your back like a barnacle that you had to protect.

And that hand was supposed to be family….

Realizing she was unconsciously comparing Erkin to herself, Berenice clicked her tongue shortly as if cutting off the thought. Of all things, to feel jealousy and envy toward someone in the same Family organization. It was pathetic.

As if suppressing her emotions, Berenice twitched her cheek and pushed the photographs scattered across the table aside one by one with her fingertips. Leaving behind the past that offered no room to nitpick, her eyes examining the photos narrowed with a strange light.

It was already the third time she’d looked at these photos while sitting here, yet the more she looked, the harder it was to shake the feeling that the effort to bring back results worthy of the request had gone too far. Otherwise, perhaps the photographer simply wanted to use up as much expensive film as possible on this opportunity.

Look at this. What’s the point of taking good pictures?

Erkin sitting at an open‑air café reading a newspaper, Erkin standing by the roadside smoking with Michele, Erkin getting into a car together with Berenice, Erkin walking behind Berenice, Erkin sitting across from Berenice while eating….

There isn’t a single useful photograph. Berenice, who appeared almost as often as Erkin in the pictures, swallowed a hollow laugh as she looked at Erkin in the photographs.

No matter how she looked at them, they were nothing but pictures taken like a tabloid reporter trailing behind a runway model or an actor. Just from the photos alone, it felt as if the photographer saw a subject worth capturing and pressed the shutter first without thinking.