Guidelines for the Perfect Goodbye - Chapter 227

“…What are you talking about?”

Cecilia looked up at Logan. His gaze, clear and focused, met hers, like a single flower laid delicately on a polished silver spoon. Cecilia lowered her head.

“I really have no idea what you’re implying.”

Logan tilted her chin up, urging her to meet his gaze. Her brow furrowed, betraying a flash of discomfort. Logan watched his fiancée’s expression carefully before a faint smile tugged at his lips.

“Seeing how you’re pretending not to understand, it’s clear this isn’t something you’re doing for my sake.”

He leaned in slightly, closing the distance between their faces.

“And it’s not as if your desire to keep me away isn’t genuine.”

“……”

Shadows darkened his searching eyes.

“So, what is it with you…?”

Cecilia gently removed his hand from her chin. It fell away easily, as if he hadn’t been holding her firmly in the first place.

With her back to him, she spoke in a quiet voice.

“As I said, this has nothing to do with you.”

The truth was out now, and given that he was an illegitimate child of the Pierce family, it was inevitable that he would learn the truth someday. She felt no particular need to hide it from him anymore.

But neither did she feel compelled to reveal everything to him. She had no intention of becoming deeply involved with Logan in this lifetime.

“I do have a grudge against the Pierce Duchy. But it’s personal—a private matter. I know it’s your birth family, but it has nothing to do with you and me.”

“A personal grudge?”

His shadow crept closer as he took a step toward her. With her back to the wall, Cecilia replied.

“Yes. Whether I marry you or break off the engagement, my grudge against that family won’t disappear.”

She folded her arms, turning her head just enough to address him evenly.

“This concerns Lord Christian Pierce, not you.”

His composed face briefly crumbled, and Cecilia’s gaze wavered slightly at his reaction.

‘Is this something worth reacting to like that?’

He had already sensed her resentment toward the Pierce family. Knowing that, he had remained unperturbed until now. If her animosity stemmed from her interactions with someone like Christian, a man of similar age, it should seem a natural explanation.

Yet, why did he…?

He took several steps forward, his voice tense and impatient.

“What did that scoundrel do to you?”

“Pardon?”

“Did he harass you? Humiliate you? Or…”

“Wait, just a moment.”

Cecilia instinctively placed her hands on Logan’s chest, trying to calm him. Feeling the tense rise and fall of his chest under her fingers, she quickly withdrew her hands.

“I’ll say it again—this has nothing to do with you.”

After all, it was a misfortune from her past life. It wasn’t something he, with no memory of it, needed to shoulder.

“No, it has everything to do with me.”

“Even if we break off the engagement and become strangers?”

“Yes.”

His answer was firm and final.

“That family abandoned both my mother and me. If you hold a grudge against them, it means you and I bear the same hostility toward the same target.”

“…Did you really resent the Pierce Duchy?”

“Yes, I did. And I still do.”

“……”

It was a lie.

He wasn’t a petty person like her. He wouldn’t waste his youth and potential on something as pointless as revenge.

Cecilia suddenly realized that she had never asked him his opinion of the Pierce family. In her past life, she avoided it for fear of hurting him, and in this life, she didn’t ask because she didn’t want to get too involved.

Yet here he was, offering an answer to a question she had buried deep.

A response she couldn’t wholly trust.

“I do resent them.”

And yet, having heard it from his own mouth, she couldn’t entirely disregard it.

Her revenge was rooted in him, after all.

The desire for retribution was born from marrying him, and the events that followed.

Or, if they had happened without him, they wouldn’t have felt like her own burden.

People can be lenient about the misfortunes of others. It only becomes unbearable when someone else’s misfortune becomes their own.