The moment Levi's door clicked shut, a wave of nausea and a frantic energy surged through me. I didn't stop to think, didn't pause to process. I spun on my heel and practically sprinted back to my own room, the echoes of his polite "Good night" ringing mockingly in my ears. I slammed the door shut behind me, the sound reverberating through the suffocating space.

What the fuck do I do?

It wasn't just about dismantling a social structure; it was about calculated, systematic elimination. He possibly killed many people, rendered countless others sterile, and orchestrated the abortion of unborn children. And he did all of this with the cold, detached logic of someone swatting flies.

And the horrifying irony? He was the Saint of Ascaria. The man lauded for bringing equality and progress was, in truth, responsible for monstrous acts.

I paced the length of my room, my breath coming in ragged gasps. My mind raced, a chaotic jumble of disbelief, fear, and a sickening sense of complicity. I was married to this man. Did anyone else know the truth? Julia suspected his radicalism, but did she grasp the sheer scale of his actions?

My fingers fumbled with my phone, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. She was the only one who might even remotely understand the turmoil I was feeling, the only person I could even begin to confide in. My thumbs hovered over the screen, hesitating for a moment before I finally typed out a short, desperate message.

"Julia, I need to talk to someone. It's… it's important. Can you meet? Soon?"

I stared at the message for a long moment, the simplicity of the words failing to capture the enormity of the situation. What could I even tell her?

With a shaky breath, I pressed send and then collapsed back onto the bed, the silence of the room amplifying the frantic thoughts racing through my mind. Now all I could do was wait, hoping that Julia was awake, that she would see my message, and that she could offer some semblance of guidance in this terrifying new reality. The night stretched ahead, long and uncertain, filled with the chilling echo of Levi's calm, matter-of-fact confessions.

A small ping from my phone broke the oppressive silence. I snatched it up, my heart leaping with relief.

“Come to Salted Sugar, tomorrow. 10 am.”

Just those few words, but they were a lifeline. Julia hadn't asked any questions, hadn't dismissed my desperate plea. She understood, or at least sensed, the urgency in my message. Salted Sugar. The place Levi despises.

Tomorrow. It felt like an eternity away, but at least it was something. A plan. A chance to finally voice the terrifying truth that was now suffocating me. I closed my eyes, a wave of exhaustion washing over me, but sleep felt impossible. The image of Levi's calm explanation of his actions kept flashing through my mind.

I clenched my eyes shut to sleep.

...

Around 8 am, I heard the familiar quiet sounds of Levi preparing to leave. The soft click of his door, the muffled footsteps in the hallway, and then the finality of the front door closing. I remained in my room, unmoving. It wasn't unusual for me not to greet him before he left for the day, so my absence wouldn't raise any immediate suspicion. The thought of facing him, of pretending that nothing had changed, was unbearable.

The minutes crawled by. I stared at the ceiling, lost in a sea of anxious thoughts. Ten am felt like a lifetime away, but it was the only thing I could focus on. I finally forced myself out of bed around 9:30. I needed to get to Salted Sugar. I needed to talk.

The walk to Salted Sugar felt surreal, my legs moving almost on autopilot.

And there it was, on the corner, its clashing decor – the bright pink walls fighting with the mismatched vintage furniture – somehow a comforting anchor in the storm raging inside me. And there she was, Julia, sitting at our usual corner table, a steaming mug in front of her, her expression a mixture of concern and anticipation.

A wave of relief washed over me, so potent it almost buckled my knees. I didn't try to compose myself, didn't bother with pleasantries. I practically rushed to her table, pulling out the opposite chair and collapsing into it, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The dam inside me was threatening to break.

“Julia, what the fuck?” I blurted out.

A knowing, almost weary, but undeniably playful smirk spread across Julia’s face. “Oh, little doggy,” she said, her eyes twinkling with a hint of dark amusement. “Do you finally understand now, why he is not a kitten?” She took a slow sip of her drink, watching me with an expression that said, "I told you so," but with an underlying current of genuine concern.

“I didn’t know. I still don’t know…” I stammered. “He didn’t tell me everything.”

“Well, he must have some compassion for you then,” Julia said, her smirk softening slightly, replaced by a more thoughtful expression.

“He offered me the evidence of the things he did,” I repeated, the weight of that offer still heavy in my chest. “He said… he said it might help me understand. But… I don’t know if I want to see it. I don’t know if I can see it.”

“Do you remember what you said?” Julia asked, her gaze direct and unwavering. “You said he is not a god, not a devil, but a sad bastard. Do you still think that?”

“I know nothing…” I whispered, a tremor running through me. “I am just scared shitless. Did you know… all of these things?”

Julia leaned forward, her expression shifting from knowing amusement to something sharper, almost exasperated. “You are… really naive, Raphael,” she said, her voice low and intense. “We did half of these things together, you idiot. We were married for five years.”

“But… How and why?” I stammered, the question a desperate plea for understanding. “Why would anyone…”

Julia cut me off, her gaze intense. “Raphael. Levi is not a kitten, neither am I. We did what we had to do. He is a ginormous motherfucker. And he chills me to my bones. But… he is right.”

There was no room for argument in her tone, only a grim conviction.

“He watched his sister die, from a simple cold,” Julia continued, her voice softening slightly, a flicker of pain in her eyes. “I was there the whole time. When she was born, when she got sick. All of this… this whole rotten system… it’s because of those marriages. Forcing people together for titles and land, breeding weakness and disease. He knows that, Raphael. And I know it too. You think abortion is cruel, I guess? No. Sometimes,” she said, her gaze hardening again, “it is compassion. Compassion for the child who would suffer, compassion for the families trapped in that cycle.”

“It’s not about the abortion,” I said quickly, waving a dismissive hand. “It’s that someone… No, let me ask you something else. Did he kill someone? Is he a murderer?”

I needed to know the absolute limit of what Levi had done, what Julia had been a part of.

“Doggy. Are you sure you want to know?” Julia asked, her gaze piercing, her earlier conviction now tinged with a hint of warning.

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“I think so,” I replied, my voice barely a whisper, but firm.

Julia leaned forward, her expression unreadable. “What will you do, Raphael, if the answer is yes?”

“I really… don’t know.”

“Okay, little doggy,” she said, her voice low and serious. “He didn’t obviously take a gun and shoot people in the streets. But if there was someone who was already gravely sick, someone whose lineage he particularly wanted to end… he usually tweaked their medications. Replaced them with placebos. Made sure they didn’t get the care they needed. It was… subtle. Untraceable, for the most part.” Her gaze was steady, unflinching. “Did it lead to their deaths? Yes. Was it direct, violent murder? Not in the way you might imagine. But the outcome was the same.”

“And… You helped him?” I repeated, the question hanging heavy with disbelief and a dawning horror.

Julia’s gaze didn’t waver. “My father is in a coma, Raphael. Why do you think so?”

The line between right and wrong seemed to have completely dissolved for her, twisted by her history with Levi and whatever warped sense of justice they shared. My stomach churned.

“Why did you do that to your own…” The words caught in my throat, the sheer betrayal and twisted logic of it all leaving me speechless.

“Because he made me marry Levi Blake when I was eighteen, we were engaged when I was sixteen.” Julia stated, her voice flat, devoid of emotion. Forced into a marriage with a man who now confessed to systematic extermination, a man who put her own father in a coma.

“Now, doggy. You see.” Julia’s gaze, though still intense, held a flicker of something akin to grim satisfaction. “I hate Levi. He is a manipulative, cold, calculating bastard. But…” she paused, a strange twist to her lips, “I am grateful.”

“He did a fucking genocide, Julia. What are you grateful about? Am I the stuck-up asshole here?”

Julia didn't flinch at my outburst. Her expression remained a complex mix of weariness and something else… resignation, perhaps?

“Grateful that he took away the power my father wielded,” she said, her voice low but firm, cutting through my anger. “Grateful that he systematically dismantled the very system that allowed my father to force me into that marriage in the first place. Grateful that the kind of life I would have been trapped in, perpetuating that cycle of arranged marriages and inherited misery, is gone. Yes, Raphael, his methods are brutal, horrifying even. And believe me, I’ve had my share of sleepless nights because of it. But you weren’t there. You didn’t see the casual cruelty, the utter disregard.”

She leaned forward, her gaze intense. “Was it a genocide? Maybe. But it was a genocide against the very people who would have continued to inflict that kind of suffering on others, on their own children. My father, in his own way, was just as destructive. Levi just… acted on a larger scale. And now,” she said, a grim satisfaction in her voice, “my father lies in a coma, powerless.”

She wasn't condoning Levi's actions entirely, but she saw a twisted kind of justice in them. It was a perspective I hadn't considered, a glimpse into the long-term consequences of the nobility's actions that Levi had so vehemently reacted against.

“So no, Raphael,” she said, her voice softening slightly. “You’re not necessarily the stuck-up asshole. You’re just seeing it from the outside. You didn’t live it.”

“I… am so scared of him,” I confessed, the raw fear I had been trying to suppress finally bubbling to the surface. The intellectual understanding of his motivations, Julia’s grim justifications – none of it could fully quell the primal fear that now coiled in my stomach. I was living with a man capable of such calculated cruelty, a man who had operated in the shadows for years, reshaping the very fabric of Ascarian society through deception and the deliberate ending of lives.

Julia's expression softened with a flicker of genuine empathy. "I know, little doggy," she said, her voice gentle. "He can be... intimidating. Even when you know him."

“What if I just grabbed the documents and went to the police?” I blurted out, the desperate thought a fleeting image of escape. “No, wait…” I shook my head, the memory of our initial conversations flooding back. “He told me, right after we met… if I tried anything, if I went public, the people would side with him, they would revolt with him.”

“Exactly. On that note,” Julia continued, her gaze thoughtful, “he first started doing his charity work for the sickly, then for poor people, and then it just expanded. I’m sure you have some idea. The reason why his popularity has bubbled up this much is also a direct consequence of ending some of those noble lineages. We would purposely bankrupt them, just like what I did to my company. After a while, Levi amassed such great wealth, there wasn’t any place to store money anymore. So he started expanding his foundation. It expanded so much even the pavement blocks are somehow affected by him.”

“I saw some of the articles. Apparently he was the one who pushed the disability act,” I replied. I had read those articles, seen the praise he received. It felt surreal now.

“Yeah. He did that. Which caused more donations for him, which made him do another benevolent thing. At first, I thought he was trying to launder money or something. But, no. He just did charity, very thoroughly. Maybe he was trying to absolve his sins, or maybe he just wanted more protection from the citizens.”

“I know,” I admitted quietly, a lump forming in my throat. “I got help from his foundation as an immigrant.”

“Well. He is a fucking monster. But a beloved monster. You can’t just take him down.” Julia’s voice was hard, all traces of earlier empathy gone. Her gaze was cold and unwavering. “Also, if you try to stop him, I will end you, Raphael.”

“I can’t stop him even if I try to,” I replied.

“Good. So. You know you can just divorce him and take an insane amount of alimony and leave,” Julia said, her tone matter-of-fact, as if discussing the weather. “He’s wealthy beyond measure, and he’d likely agree to a generous settlement to avoid any scandal or unwanted attention. You could disappear, start a new life somewhere far away, with enough money to never worry again.”

She watched me, her expression unreadable. “It’s the easiest option, Raphael. The safest. You get out, he continues his… work, and everyone goes their separate ways. No one gets hurt. Well,” she added with a wry twist of her lips, “no one new gets hurt.”

I took a deep breath to mask my shame from the things I am about to say. “I am gonna say something. Something that’s gonna sound fucking dumb. And you are going to mock me. But… The first night I spent with Levi, he said something so weird… It felt so out of place. He specifically said this, there are crossroads in decision making. So, Julia, I think. If I leave now. I don’t think I can sleep at night.”

A sharp scoff escaped Julia's lips, and the mockery I had anticipated finally arrived, though it carried a strange undercurrent of something else. "You are a sentimental fool, Raphael," she declared, shaking her head with a mixture of exasperation and something that might have been a twisted form of affection. "And Levi is gonna eat you alive. He chews up people with far more steel in their spines than you possess, little doggy."

She leaned forward, her gaze surprisingly intense. "But... if he does cross a line," she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "... you come to me. I can sneak you out of the country. Consider it my penance for dragging you into this mess, however indirectly."

It was clear she didn't approve of my sentimentality, didn't think it was a smart move, but beneath her cynicism, there was a flicker of protectiveness, a lingering connection to the naive immigrant who had stumbled into their dangerous world.

“You are actually… a really nice person.”

A wry smile touched Julia's lips, a flicker of something genuine in her eyes. "Don't let it get around, little doggy," she said, her voice softening slightly. "It would ruin my reputation. But yes,” she admitted. Then she asked. “What are you going to do now?”

“Oh, me? I am gonna drink the hell out of Levi’s reserve. I need alcohol, right now. At 10 am.”

A sharp laugh burst out of Julia, the tension in the air momentarily broken, a genuine smile finally gracing her lips. “He really tamed me, well. Didn’t he?” I asked.

“That’s not what I think. I think you have some kindness that Levi probably never has seen in his life. Including me. We shared a quarter of a century together, but he was mostly distant and guarded. I think it is also what you said, he is a lonely and sad bastard.”

“Yeah. He is fucking good at manipulating,” I agreed, a bitter taste coating my tongue. The memory of his carefully crafted charm, the way he had drawn me in while concealing such darkness, now felt like a calculated act of deception.

“Oh, I have my ways of dealing with him,” Julia said, a sly smile returning to her lips, a spark of her old fire reigniting. “And since I no longer have a company to run, I am thinking of buying this place.” She gestured around the brightly colored bakery. “Less stress, more sugar. And,” she leaned forward, “a convenient place for… clandestine meetings, wouldn’t you say?”

The air in Salted Sugar shifted, the oppressive weight of Levi’s confession momentarily lifting. Julia’s words, coupled with the subtle defiance in her eyes, sparked a flicker of something other than fear within me. Perhaps, just perhaps, I wasn't entirely alone in navigating this terrifying new reality.

“Thanks. And sorry for being a little…”

“A little bitch?” she remarked.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Don’t worry, after the bomb he dropped, you have every right to be scared. But dial it down a little. Because, Cybil is on the action, you both will be busy.”

“I met Lady Isolde at the party. She sent Levi a list of potential birth mothers.”

“Isolde? Ah, yes the blonde. She is a little prickly but she is another ally of Levi. If you meet her again, don’t be scared.”