How Lilies turn Black Chapter 49 - The Blood Bath (6)  

“Anyway, after what happened with Mora… I vowed never to become like my father. No matter what, I swore I wouldn’t get tangled up in that filthy world.”  

 

It was because he had learned that the place where Mora worked was one of the many brothels managed by his father.  

 

Of course, Theodoro largely respected his father.  

 

The privileges he enjoyed—for instance, people who had never met him becoming excessively kind the moment they heard his father’s name, the streets at night that never felt threatening, no matter how much he wandered, a life where he never knew want.  

 

He was well aware that none of those things were given, that they were all thanks to his father.  

 

Yet, despite that, he could never bring himself to walk the same path.  

 

Liliana, who had been quietly listening, pondered the contradiction.  

 

A child who had glimpsed the underworld and fallen into despair was now the underboss of an organization.  

 

Theodoro himself couldn’t have been unaware of that fact, and a self-deprecating glint flickered in his eyes.  

 

“Maybe if my younger self saw me now, he’d be furious. He’d probably say it’d be better to die than grow old like this.”  

 

“…”  

 

“But that boy wouldn’t understand. The feeling of not even being able to die.”  

 

Liliana’s eyes narrowed slightly as the meaning didn’t quite sink in. She gave him a questioning look, but no clear explanation followed…  

 

The timeline of the story abruptly jumped forward several years, shifting to the postwar period.  

 

“About four years after that, my mother returned to Demercy.”  

 

It was right after the war ended, in 1945, when Theodoro was around twelve years old.  

 

Serena left rural life behind and came back to Demercy. Her condition had improved, but she wasn’t fully cured. 

 

Even while staying in Demercy, she frequently traveled back to Favona Island, her hometown, for recuperation.  

 

It must have been a far better sanctuary than an unfamiliar countryside.

 

At last, the long war had ended. 

 

Peace finally came to Favona Island, once a battleground, and she could rest there without worry.  

 

Meanwhile, Theodoro threw a tantrum, insisting he would go with his mother.  

 

“Even back then, I never fit in, whether it was with the group or at school.”  

 

He skipped school often, but that didn’t mean he spent time hanging out with friends either. 

 

Theodoro stubbornly argued that he would leave Demercy, where he felt no affection at all, and go to Favona.  

 

Vittorio probably had no other choice.  

 

He must have thought it was better to let his son stay by Serena’s side rather than leave him to grow up sullen and withdrawn.  

 

And so, Demercy became like a vacation spot—a place where he and his mother would occasionally return to reunite with the family.  

 

“…It was a happy time. I don’t have many good memories here, but the few I do have were made back then.”  

 

Muttering to himself, Theodoro suddenly locked eyes with Lilia.  

 

“Do you know when De Lucia Bar was established?”  

 

The sudden question caught her off guard, but given the flow of the conversation, she could easily guess the answer.  

 

“It’s been around… since that time, hasn’t it?”  

 

Somehow, whenever she looked around the bar, she could feel the passage of time etched into every corner. 

 

To think it had been there for twenty years—it gave her a strange, nostalgic feeling.  

 

“Back then, it was called Grace Bar. A couple who had worked as spies in the distant countries of Milan moved to Victoria and opened a jazz bar.”  

 

“And it became De Lucia Bar when…?”  

 

“I changed the name after taking over. It was my mother’s maiden name—Serena De Lucia.”  

 

“Ah…”  

 

“I’m rambling about all sorts of things, aren’t I?”  

 

So, De Lucia was his mother’s name…  

 

A sudden ache throbbed in her chest.  

 

Was that why old songs always played in the bar? Why the worn-out interior had been left untouched—to preserve the way things were back then?  

 

As she lost herself in thought, his voice, heavy as if lost in a dream, reached her ears.  

 

“Whenever we returned to Victoria from Favona, our family would always have a light dinner there, with music playing in the background.”  

 

“…”  

 

“People say memories are idealized, but… I remember truly feeling happy back then.”

 

And Lilia realized her guess had been correct.  

 

At what was now De Lucia Bar, Theodoro sipped his drink, lost in old memories.  

 

Meanwhile, as Theodoro reminisced about that time, all that remained was bitterness, and he quietly stared at the floor.  

 

Happiness, as it always had been in his life, was nothing more than a fleeting visitor.  

 

1949. An event that would shake the life of a sixteen-year-old boy had occurred.  

 

“…I don’t know when it all started. I never wanted to pay the slightest attention to what my father did, and I didn’t even want to listen to the rumors.”  

 

Once again, the story began with vague, cryptic words.  

 

“But no matter how hard I shut my ears and closed my eyes, by the time things got serious… I couldn’t ignore what was happening.”  

 

About 20 years before that, in the 1930s.  

 

Vittorio, brimming with youthful vigor and ambition, eliminated Magadino, the reigning leader of the underworld at the time, and rose as the new king of the criminal world.  

 

So, what happened to Magadino’s inner circle?  

 

To consolidate his power, Vittorio had no choice but to spare them. At the time, it was a wise decision.  

 

But…  

 

“He shouldn’t have let Magadino’s right-hand man, ‘Chaboné,’ live.”  

 

After being imprisoned for tax evasion and serving a long sentence, he returned and reignited the battle for the throne.  

 

“My mother was the first to fall.”  

 

“…!”  

 

“Back then, we were at a small villa on Favona Island, a place untouched by people… It was just around bedtime.”  

 

The moment Serena noticed the intruder, she hid Theodoro under the floorboards, in the storage space.  

 

Had she hidden as well, her son would have been discovered too. Foreseeing this, Serena chose a desperate death—solely for Theodoro’s survival.

 

When I looked up through the narrow gap between the floorboards…  

 

The woman, frail yet resilient, stood firmly on her own two feet, facing three hitmen.  

 

Theodoro remembers that her final moment was truly befitting of the wife of the underworld ruler.  

 

But as if mocking her bravery, cold gunfire tore through the air.  

 

Once, twice, three times… four… five…  

 

And then six.  

 

There was no need to butcher someone so cruelly. 

 

A single shot would have been enough to take a life—two at most.  

 

If they had chased her all the way to Favona to carry out the assassination, they must have been professional hitmen.  

 

His mother, who had been standing tall, had collapsed to the floor and now cast a dark crimson shadow over Theodoro. Her body, which had flinched with each gunshot, had long since stopped moving altogether.

  

“I watched every moment until my mother took her last breath. Through the thin gap in the wooden planks.”  

 

“…”  

 

“Warm blood flowed through that gap, soaking my face… Even as the stench of blood overwhelmed my nose, I couldn’t make a sound. I had to stay completely still.”  

 

Much later, when all signs of people had vanished, Theodoro quietly climbed out of the warehouse.  

 

His trembling hands touched his mother’s shoulder—it was ice-cold. Devoid of any trace of life.  

 

“M… Mom… M-Mom…”  

 

He clumsily checked for a pulse, but there was no heartbeat.  

 

Denying reality, he fumbled over her slippery, blood-soaked neck, but it was the same.  

 

Theodoro, belatedly panicking, stumbled and fell back with a clatter.  

 

“Hah… Hah… agh…”

  

Only then did the house—dark, yet so recently filled with warmth and laughter—close in on him with overwhelming terror.  

 

With a cold corpse lying beside him, it was no longer a place of comfort.  

 

After speaking up to that point, Theodoro fell silent for a long time.

 

The death she had witnessed with her own eyes was something Liliana couldn’t even begin to imagine, leaving her unable to say a word.  

 

She knew he wouldn’t want any half-hearted comfort.  

 

“I… couldn’t forgive myself for a very long time.”  

 

Theodoro could not forgive himself.  

 

Even as his mother was dying, he had hidden, terrified that someone might notice his presence—and he could never forgive himself for that.  

 

Standing at the edge of the cliffs of Favona Island, he would stare at the waves every day and wonder:  

 

Do I deserve to live? Should I take one more step forward?  

 

But he couldn’t die, either. His mother had given herself up to save his life… and if he died, he wouldn’t be able to fulfill her wish with his own hands.  

 

“I never wanted to feel that helpless again.”  

 

That was when Theodoro began picking up guns and knives.  

 

“I had to avenge my mother… and I couldn’t lose my father and brother—the only ones I had left.”