Dogs Among Withered Roses - Chapter 20

Even if Erkin Lafayette had not joined the Valentiera Family, he was the kind of man who would end up staining his hands with blood in one way or another. The instincts he developed as a detective in Rockbern warned him of that.

Whose blood it was did not matter. The problem, if it could be called a problem, was that those hands were already soaked in old blood and would continue to be stained with more.

Erkin stared openly at John Baker, whose expression had been expertly wiped clean by long experience. As if trying to judge the identity of the person coming out of Berenice’s office, his eyes searched every corner with persistent sharpness, as though confirming something.

A stretched moment of tension followed. Just as anxiety pricked at his throat, Erkin quickly lost interest and gave a casual nod of greeting. He stepped against the hallway wall to make it easier for the guest whose business was finished to pass by. His gaze briefly touched John, but that was all.

That young bastard has quite the presence….

For a moment, John thought he was looking at an investigator carrying around a suspect’s montage and conducting field inquiries. No wonder he abandoned his family and chose the mafia instead. As soon as Erkin stepped into the office behind him, John Baker took a photograph from the inside pocket of his suit.

It was one of the photos he had handed to Berenice.

In the picture, Berenice sat at an open-air café reading a book, while Erkin watched her with coffee paused at his lips. John’s eyes narrowed as he examined the man and woman sitting across a small table from each other.

It wasn’t just this photograph.

Most of the dozens of photos he gave the client today were similar. Berenice was not looking at Erkin, yet at the end of Erkin’s gaze, there was always Berenice.

Strange.

A bodyguard should always watch the surroundings of the person they protect, remaining alert for danger that could appear at any moment. Yet Erkin rarely took his eyes off Berenice.

It would be easy to dismiss it as the attention given to someone he was assigned to protect, but the emotion contained in those eyes was not simple. Yet if someone asked whether he looked like a man focused on a woman he loved, that was not quite right either.

Separate from the complicated emotions, the eyes looked so dry they almost seemed parched, something that could be felt even through the photograph. It was difficult to conclude that it was the gaze of someone looking at a lover.

Putting the photograph back into his pocket, John Baker glanced once more at the firmly closed office door. Berenice seemed either accustomed to his gaze or simply found it easier to ignore it.

“…This is harder than I thought.”

It was difficult.

The investigation target of the client whose interest he should now drop, the client who refused to abandon a difficult request, and someone he might have to search for beyond the borders of Bridgent. All of it was difficult.

***

Berenice, breathing heavily, set down her tennis racket and hurriedly gulped water. She no longer had the strength to control it, so half of it spilled down instead of going into her mouth, but she only wiped her lips roughly. It was something that always happened after exercise.

“You’ve improved a lot, Berenice.”

Cecilia Castillo approached from the opposite side of the court, catching her breath before collapsing onto the bench. She barely had enough strength left to twist open the lid, and the hand holding the water bottle moved sluggishly.

“Thanks to you.”

Berenice, who sat beside her, also let her exhausted arms hang limp. Her competitive streak pushed her to overdo it more than usual, and now even standing felt difficult, but squeezing time out of her schedule to move like this left both her body and mind refreshed.

Cecilia set down the towel soaked with sweat and picked up the newspaper beside her. Even after moving that much, she could still focus on the paper, apparently.

Berenice clicked her tongue and asked, “Something interesting?”

She’d come to play tennis with Cecilia right after hearing the results of two investigation requests from the private detective who visited her office that morning, so she still hadn’t looked at the newspaper.

Cecilia flipped through the damp pages with wet hands and shook her head. Nothing particularly eye‑catching, but….

“The Rockbern mayor is causing more noise after resigning.”

Just a few weeks ago the scandal of Rockbern’s mayor, Gary Duncan, appeared only in tabloids. Now every major media outlet in Bridgent covered it without exception.

Wiping the sweat from her forehead as if washing her face, Berenice responded indifferently, “I’m sick of it. How long are they going to keep that up?”

“How would I know. Probably Director Weaver’s doing.”

Berenice, wearing an expression of complete disgust, shook her head as if she understood.

Jonathan Weaver, who had held the position of Director of the Federal Bureau of Security for more than a decade, was notorious not only in Bridgent but also among intelligence agencies overseas.

Surveillance without limits, indiscriminate wiretapping, collecting sensitive information and personal scandals of politicians and celebrities, using them as tools of blackmail and exercising overwhelming power. Politicians, heads of federal agencies, businesspeople, famous actors, and artists alike all kept their guard up around him.

The resignation of the Rockbern mayor probably started when he tried to revise the terms of office for heads of federal government agencies, including the Director of the Federal Bureau of Security, into a single‑term system to push Jonathan Weaver out.

“Normally, he would’ve just blackmailed him and left it at that, but Duncan didn’t crawl flat and stay quiet. He kept pushing back for quite a while….”

So Weaver didn’t hold back and finished it completely.

Jonathan Weaver, greedy enough to treat surveillance and wiretapping like breathing, and Gary Duncan, who committed all sorts of dirty acts behind the scenes and stirred up trouble without thinking. Both of them were disgusting and unbearable. While Cecilia complained like that, Berenice stared at her.

“Berenice, I can’t read minds.”

“Did the Mayor of Rockbern contact the Castillo side? Because of the Director of the Security Bureau. It feels like he would’ve reached out at least once.”

Unlike other Families, the Castillo Family, led by Cecilia, was famous for its exceptional information network. Rumors circulated almost as fact that half of the private detectives working in Belloc and Rockbern were soldatos of the Castillo Family.

They say she also has many informants connected to the police and federal agencies. Berenice had informants as well, but compared to Cecilia’s connections, they couldn’t even be compared.

Was it four years ago? After ending her short marriage in divorce and reclaiming the Castillo name, Cecilia inherited the position of boss of the Family from her father without much noise.

More precisely, the position became vacant because Cecilia’s younger brother, Alberto, ran away, saying he didn’t want to be the boss.

Anyway, because of Cecilia’s influence after becoming the head of the Family, the Castillo Family always had the highest proportion of female members among the four major Families of Belloc. It was Castillo, or rather Cecilia, who completely halted the counterfeit money operation that the previous boss used as a major source of funds and business, and who first cleaned up prostitution.

Cecilia, roughly tidying her bright blond hair, smiled as she said, “Berenice, you don’t actually think I’d tell you that straight out, do you? And you.”

“What about me?”

“You ran a background check?”

Taking a photograph out of the front pocket of her white tennis bag, Cecilia waved it lightly in front of Berenice. Snatching the photo like a hunting cat, Berenice let out a deep sigh.

What kind of photo is this…. It was a picture of Berenice and Erkin sitting together at an open-air café.

“This is driving me crazy. Was Baker part of the Castillo organization?”

“He didn’t tell you? I thought you knew.”

“He didn’t.”

Berenice’s eyes shot up fiercely, filled with a small sense of betrayal. Cecilia grinned mischievously as if she had found an entertaining piece of gossip.

“Are you rebelling because Valentiera assigned you that bodyguard? I hear the reviews are pretty good. Isn’t he a candidate for capo?”

“Since when was Baker Castillo? From the beginning?”

“Isn’t he a bit young though? Maybe they’re starting a generational shift beginning with Erkin.”

“Does Ricardo know I investigated Erkin?”

“I heard he assigned that bodyguard because of Russo Gucci. Is that right? They still haven’t found Russo Gucci, have they? You didn’t already kill him, did you?”

“You didn’t tell anyone that, right? Cecilia, I trust you. Seriously, don’t betray me. Do you know how much of your assets I protected?”

“While seeing Russo, you were also seeing the senator’s youngest brother?”

Without exchanging direct answers, they stubbornly continued throwing their own questions back and forth. It was almost a series of monologues, but thanks to the saying that silence means agreement, communicating wasn’t particularly difficult.

After the question about whether she had been seeing Russo Gucci and Brian Lockwood at the same time, Berenice finally shut her mouth tightly first. At that honest reaction, Cecilia burst into loud laughter.

“My god, Berenice. You’ve grown up. Now you even know how to weigh men against each other.”

“Ah, please….”

“Don’t worry. Ricardo doesn’t know you investigated Erkin. I just stopped by Baker’s office for something else and saw photos of you and Erkin, so I slipped one out. I didn’t expect to run into you two like that earlier, though.”

Cecilia covered her mouth, laughing as if she found Berenice adorable like a much younger sister. Cecilia, who was one year older than Ricardo, naturally saw Berenice as the youngest.

After calming her laughter, Cecilia asked casually, “Doesn’t Baker do good work? Maybe because he’s a former police officer, but his work is clean and fast.”