TMGD CHAPTER 6

Posted by Bree, Released on February 8, 2025

To My Gentle Dictator – Chapter 006

Three years had passed.

He had half-forgotten about her in that time, but in the end, he had wanted to see her with his own eyes.

And when he did—

Strange. I didn’t feel anything back then.

The day he crashed into Vasily’s car, when he had seen Sasha curled up on the balcony, he had felt nothing.

So why was she, sitting there so pitifully in front of the building today, as fascinating as she had been back then?

A raw gem is still a raw gem.

It seemed keeping her alive had been the right choice.

Ulrich flicked the ash from his cigarette, leisurely crossing one leg over the other.

Beyond his own personal amusement, the current military regime of Velus had no idea how valuable that woman truly was.

If even a single person among them had the intelligence to recognize it, they wouldn’t have left her to rot in such a miserable state.

This makes things easier for me.

He would rescue the fallen princess—

And then, he would watch what happened next.

With any luck, she would hold his interest for a long time.

A faint smile curled on his lips, his blue eyes gleaming like gems embedded in stone.

It was the kind of smile a child wore while plucking the legs off a bug.

* * *

There was a long-standing tradition of playing bagpipes at imperial funerals.

But on the day Sasha’s family was executed, there was no solemn melody—only the deafening roar of the crowd’s cheers.

The Father of the Empire, the last emperor of the 400-year-old House of Fedotov, was beheaded before the jubilant masses.

Next came the Crown Prince and the Empress.

The Empress, who had clung to the belief that her relatives abroad would come to her rescue if she just endured a little longer, wet herself when she saw the severed heads of her husband and son.

To the public, she was nothing more than a foreign whore—an enemy nation’s daughter who had engaged in an affair with a fraudulent court physician, ruining the empire. She was the most despised figure in the entire imperial family.

And so, the soldiers laid her on the guillotine and severed her head.

As for the so-called court physician who had wielded undue influence over the imperial household and driven the country to ruin—

The courts deemed even the guillotine too merciful for him.

So, they threw him into the hands of an enraged mob. His limbs were torn from his body, and while he was still barely alive, he was set on fire.

Foreign newspapers dubbed that day “Red Friday.”

But in truth, the executions stretched on for days.

Some nobles who failed to escape were beaten to death, while others were sent to the guillotine.

Not just nobles—landowners, industrialists, and people of all kinds were slaughtered for all kinds of reasons.

Locked in a solitary cell overlooking the square, Sasha had watched it all.

The carnage. The blood.

She had been certain that she and Kiril would be next.

And they nearly were.

The first Supreme Commander, Lvov—a former serf who had led the coup—had shown no intention of leaving behind a single trace of the imperial era.

But then, just two weeks after Red Friday, Lvov found himself on the guillotine.

And in his place, Vasily’s father, Kryuchkov, became the new Supreme Commander.

The new regime made a decision: Sasha and Kiril would be spared.

Whether that could truly be called mercy, she wasn’t sure.

If she had been alone, she might have bitten off her own tongue to end it all.

If it weren’t for Kiril—if she didn’t have to think of him—she would have followed her parents and brother into death.

“Ugh…”

A strangled sound escaped her lips.

The faint scent of antiseptic lingered in the air.

As Sasha forced her heavy eyelids open, the blurred edge of a stark white coat came into view.

Antiseptic. A doctor’s coat.

The moment her brain registered those two things, her heart clenched with visceral dread.

To Sasha, there were only two kinds of doctors.

One was the disgusting imperial physician, the one who had been executed in the square.

The other was the terrifying doctors of the NSS clinic.

Vasily had made it a habit to send her there regularly—for pregnancy checks, STD screenings, and chemical disinfection treatments.

The reason was simple.

He suspected that Sasha, who had once lived her life being served, couldn’t possibly survive on legitimate labor alone—so she must have been selling her body.

Whether Vasily truly believed that or if it was just another excuse to torment her, she didn’t know.

All she knew was that every visit to that clinic had been a nightmare.

And just then, she felt a hand gripping her ankle.

Panic surged through her.

Sasha thrashed violently.

“N-no, no! Stop—!”

Each time they forced her legs apart and doused her in that burning antiseptic, her body would shut down for an entire month.

She would have preferred being beaten.

“Stop! Please—please, I’ll take the beating! Just hit me as much as you want, I don’t care—just please…”

The hand on her ankle loosened.

Then, thick arms wrapped around her struggling body.

“Sasha, calm down. It’s alright.”

A voice—deep, unexpected—pierced through the fog of her panic.

Sasha’s movements stilled. Slowly, she lifted her tear-streaked face.

Her blurred vision met a pair of piercing blue eyes.

“…Ulrich?”

The hand that had been gently pushing back her disheveled hair froze.

Sasha stared at him with wide, glassy eyes, mumbling feverishly.

“Ulrich… You’re back. Where have you been?”

Her dazed, tearful gaze locked onto his.

“Take me with you this time.”

Her voice was barely above a whisper.

“You promised, remember? That you’d grant my wish if I finished the mille-feuille without ruining the layers.”

The fever burning through her body dragged her mind back to that evening.

The rose-filled balcony, where they had sat across from each other.

The childish bet, exchanged over delicate layers of pastry.

She clung to his collar with trembling hands, her grip surprisingly strong for someone on the verge of collapse.

“Please… take me away. I’m scared, Ulrich. I’m so scared, I—”

She gasped for breath, her frail body quivering in terror.

A long silence stretched between them.

Ulrich simply looked down at her, expression unreadable.

Then, he nodded.

“…Alright.”

His voice was quiet, steady.

“Stay with me, Shura.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

For a moment, Sasha simply stared at Ulrich, her tearful eyes wide, as if trying to gauge whether his words were true.

Then, all at once—like the first snowfall of winter—a radiant smile bloomed across her tear-streaked face.

“…Okay.”

And just like that, she collapsed again, completely drained.

Ulrich caught her effortlessly, holding her against his chest before turning to the physician, who was still standing there in stunned silence.

“Give me the medicine.”

“Y-yes, sir!”

The doctor—who had just been in the middle of explaining her injuries to Ulrich before being abruptly cut off—fumbled to open the bottle and handed it over.

‘Is she the Director’s ex-lover? No… that can’t be it.’

The physician had known Ulrich Kastrov for twenty years.

And in all that time, he had never once looked back on something he had discarded.

The woman lying unconscious before them looked utterly wretched, but there was no way Ulrich had suddenly developed sympathy for someone he had already abandoned.

Besides, hadn’t he just told her to stay with him?

‘She must be useful for something. But even so… why is he treating her like this?’

As the doctor’s thoughts spiraled, Ulrich calmly parted Sasha’s lips and carefully administered the fever medicine, wiping away the droplets that trickled down her chin with his fingers.

Then, he simply stared at her sleeping face in silence.

As if searching for something.

As if waiting for a fleeting thought to return to him before it slipped away completely.

“What on earth is their relationship?”

“You did well, Igor.”

Ulrich’s voice broke through the physician’s musings.

“I’ll take care of things from here. You’re dismissed.”

* * *

When Sasha regained consciousness, she felt as if she were floating in the middle of a flower field.

The soft mattress, infused with lavender, cradled her gently as she opened her eyes.

For a brief moment, she thought she was dreaming of her childhood again.

Because if this wasn’t a dream, there was no way she would wake up in a place so warm, under a ceiling so lavishly adorned.