Chapter 10: The Curriculum of Justice

Thomas was softly licking her as his breathing evened out completely, leaving him fully asleep, sedated beneath Liv.

I stared at the scene, feeling the pressure in my chest tighten until I could barely draw air. This was beyond manipulative. It was an assault on reality. My mind, usually so rigid and organized, scrambled to categorize what I was witnessing. It could not reconcile the intimate, yet utterly violating, position Liv held with the man who was now just inert flesh. Liv had not given me a script this time, only the silent command to observe, which felt far more terrifying than any verbal instruction could have been. The silence of the apartment, broken only by Thomas’s shallow, drugged breaths, pressed down on me, heavy and absolute.

I wanted to move, but my legs were anchors, weighted by a paralyzing confusion. My entire education had prepared me to analyze predictable systems and quantifiable risks. This situation offered neither. The risk was no longer social ruin or academic failure; it was something final, something beyond the purview of any law book I had ever read.

Liv finally moved, separating herself from Thomas with the same profound, unhurried grace she used to enter a room. She stood over him, smoothing the expensive silk of his open robe. She looked at him with an expression of complete neutrality, as if observing a piece of equipment she had just successfully deactivated.

“Observe the total reversal of control, Emma,” Liv instructed, her voice dropping to a low, pedagogical murmur. She spoke as though we were still in a quiet café, dissecting a successful manipulation. “Two hours ago, he was a man defined by assumption—the assumption that his wealth, his position, and his gender guaranteed immunity. Now, he is defined by a single element: unacknowledged vulnerability. That is the architecture of true power.”

I swallowed, the wine leaving a metallic taste in my throat. I hated how smoothly the word power dropped into this monstrous context, finding an easy synergy with violation.

“Liv, what happens now?” I asked, hearing the tremor in my own voice. The question was unnecessary, of course. I already knew the answer. The phrase eliminating vulnerability echoed in my mind from the previous chapter, too cold and too precise to offer any real hope of a peaceful resolution.

Liv finally turned her attention from Thomas and walked back towards the coffee table, retrieving her glass. She didn't drink from it, merely held the heavy crystal as if weighing it.

“Now, the curriculum continues,” Liv stated, her eyes locking onto mine with the intense, unflinching focus that always demanded absolute comprehension. “You have observed the systemic failure that allowed him to exist outside consequence. You saw only the surface of his professional control. Now, you witness the correction.”

Liv placed the full wine glass back on the table. She opened Thomas’s laptop, which sat on a pedestal table near the leather armchair. She used a swift motion, effortlessly bypassing the security—a move that confirmed she had planned this entire night meticulously, not just the sedative. She accessed one specific application, a secure messaging platform hidden in his desktop.

“Come here, Emma,” Liv ordered, a decisive edge returning to her voice. This time, I moved. The fear of disobeying Liv was, strangely, more immediate than the terror of the dead man in the chair.

I walked over and stood beside her, looking down at the screen. The encrypted platform opened to an extensive, cataloged set of files. Liv quickly scrolled through the directories. The labels were mostly file codes and dates, but the associated contents were immediately sickening.

“I told you about the intern, the seventeen-year-old,” Liv said, her finger tracing a specific file name from four years earlier. “The settlement required NDAs and the destruction of digital evidence, but Thomas