The store has been torched at least three times and targeted by an angry customer armed with a bag of nitroglycerin. A man was stabbed 12 times next to the front desk, a dead body was found beside the back door, and a thug once shoved a double-barrel shotgun in the manager's side and pinched about $3,000 from the register.

Over the decades she has helped run Liquor Land, the gritty landmark on the cusp of the South End in Lower Roxbury, Jackie Petrillo has seen it all, and had more than enough reason to close.

But with so much history invested in the large store - she began as a teenager, doing paperwork in the office beside her mother; met her husband on the job; and has since groomed her daughter to take over - Petrillo refused to quit, certain that the neighborhood would improve.

Petrillo has seen her hopes fulfilled, as the store's revenues have more than doubled, with an increasing number of its 5,000 weekly customers buying fine wine instead of 40-ounce beers and nips.

But come January, after 68 years serving everyone from the homeless to college students to millionaires, the liquor store at Harrison Avenue and Northampton Street will close to make way for a CVS .

"We used to hear gunshots all the time, but now it's safer, a nicer atmosphere," said Petrillo, 58, who co-owns the store and has managed it since the 1980s. "We worked for this day for so long, and now this? I just can't believe it."

Adding insult to injury: It was her cousin, owner of the 75,000-square-foot building, who refused to renew her lease, opting instead for a negotiated deal with CVS.

"I would have bet my life that he wouldn't have done this," said Petrillo, whose 10-year lease on the building expired in April 2006. "I was shocked, absolutely shocked. This has been devastating. I don't think I'll ever get over it."

When reached on his cellphone, her cousin, John Corey, said before hanging up: "I don't want to get into it all."

Petrillo had heard rumors that her cousin was looking for a new, higher-paying tenant, but she didn't believe it. She said he had told her he would renew the store's lease, even if it meant sharing the space with a new tenant.

But in June she got a call from her cousin's financial adviser, who told her the store would have to close by Jan. 1. CVS has apparently agreed to pay double the nearly $10,000-a-month rent that Liquor Land pays. Petrillo's partners offered to match the extra rent, but she said her cousin would not accept their offers.

While neighborhood groups worry about chain stores replacing mom-and-pop businesses, they welcome a store selling medicine and sundries instead of an establishment whose best-selling products are the $20.99 Bacardi rum, the $20.99 Smirnoff vodka, and the $26.99 Hennessy cognac.