System Error: The Hero is a Villain? Chapter 08

System Error: The Hero is a Villain? Chapter 08

Lucian Moretti’s mother was Isabella Moretti. Daughter of a baker in Brooklyn’s Little Italy.

When she was eighteen, Vito Colonelli, head of the Colonelli crime family, got drunk at a neighborhood festival and took her by force.

The next morning, he left a few hundred dollars on the table and vanished.

Isabella didn’t break. She took over her father’s bakery. Rose at four every morning to knead dough. Supported herself and the child growing inside her.

When her son was born, she named him Lucian.

Every night after closing, she’d cradle him on the worn sofa in the back room and whisper.

“Lucian. From the Latin for light. You are my light, baby. No matter how dark the world gets, carry that light inside you. Promise me.”

She meant it.

Years passed. Thugs shook down the bakery. Winters left them unable to afford heat. She never went to Vito Colonelli.

That man didn’t know he had a son.

Lucian grew up wrapped in that love. Helped his mother knead dough after school. Pressed heating patches to her aching back. On her birthday, he spent a year’s allowance on a bouquet of her favorite white roses.

But when he turned twelve, everything shattered.

Vito Colonelli came knocking.

The Colonelli family’s matriarch couldn’t bear children. Elders pressured Vito for a legitimate heir. Investigation revealed an illegitimate son in Little Italy.

Vito arrived with an entourage.

Two bodyguards dragged Lucian out. He bit, kicked, fought. Took a slap that split his lip.

Isabella crumpled, clinging to Vito’s pant leg, sobbing. “He’s my son! Give him back!”

Vito looked down. Sneered.

“Your son? He’s a Colonelli. He has my blood. And you? A baker who couldn’t keep her legs closed.”

He took Lucian.

From that day, only a grieving mother remained in the Little Italy bakery.

Isabella never saw her son again.

Lucian was renamed Vito Colonelli II.

He endured his biological father’s icy indifference. Vito cared only if he’d become a successor worthy of the name.

He endured the mistress’s hatred. She looked at him like a stray dog fouling her nest.

He endured five a.m. brutal training. Ten-hour etiquette drills. Locked in basements for the smallest mistakes.

He endured it all with one thought. Escape. Return to his mother.

Autumn of his twelfth year, opportunity struck.

He stole a key. Scaled the iron fence. Crossed vineyards and docks. Ran three miles.

He got lost.

The Colonelli estate was a labyrinth. He wandered four hours before patrol guards caught him. Dragged him back by the collar.

This time, the price was two days in a pitch-black basement. No food. No water. Whipped with a belt until his back was raw meat.

He didn’t quit.

Escape one. Escape two. Five times. Nine. Each capture brought harsher punishment.

Solitary confinement. Starvation. Tighter surveillance.

But every time his wounds scabbed, he planned again.

At fifteen, he succeeded.

He ran all the way back to Brooklyn. Stumbled through the bakery’s familiar door.

What greeted him was dust. Moldy racks. The sigh of the old landlord next door.

“She’s gone, kid. Two years now. Cancer. Waited for you till the end… kept saying your name.”

That day, something in Lucian went dark.

When the system reached this point, I couldn’t listen. I raised a hand.

The system fell silent.

I closed my eyes. Tried to crush the suffocating ache in my chest.

Failed.

Memory dragged me back to that night Lucian played the escape game with me.

I’d run half an hour, collapsing before I glimpsed the exit.

Back then, I hadn’t known Lucian had stood in my shoes.

A small, wounded boy. Dragging himself down paths of escape again and again. Finding no end.

But we differed.

When I failed to escape, someone came. Wrapped me in a warm coat.

Twelve-year-old Lucian? Failure meant only more abuse. More cold fury.

Endless despair.

The rest unfolded swiftly.

After learning of his mother’s death, Lucian evolved. Ruthless. Decisive. He climbed the Colonelli ranks with terrifying speed.

Things began “going wrong” for the family.

Lost port contracts. Raided casinos. Vito’s most trusted men vanished or turned.

By the time Vito realized the truth, Lucian walked into his study.

Nineteen years old. Holding a gun. Wearing the smile his mother taught him.

“Hello, Father.”