Rage blazed through his mind, turning everything white.

His body moved before he could register what was happening.

Logan seized Jack by the shoulder, spun him around and punched him in the face.

There was a sickening crack. Jack’s head snapped violently to the side, and he collapsed in a heap on the floor.

“Ugh! Wh—who are you? Ah! Agh!”

Logan mounted him and pinned him down. Instead of answering, he struck again.

Fist after fist came down before Jack could properly resist. The room was filled with the sounds of flesh colliding and raw screams.

“Did you touch her?”

Logan’s voice was low and controlled, but laced with lethal intent.

Jack only just managed to block one of Logan’s blows before attempting to retaliate. However, Logan grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up roughly.

“I didn’t do anything! I didn’t touch her!”

Jack’s face was already battered and almost unrecognizable. He shook his head frantically. Air hissed through his broken teeth.

But Logan was no longer looking at him.

His gaze had shifted to Bella.

She stood frozen to the spot, her hands clamped over her mouth. Her fingertips trembled visibly. She had not screamed. She had not cried.

She had swallowed her terror whole.

Her breathing was shallow and uneven, as though even that required effort.

Logan released his grip on Jack. The man’s limp body fell back to the floor in a crumpled heap. Jack dragged the back of his hand across the blood streaming down his face and shouted in pain. Logan could no longer hear him, however.

Slowly, he stepped towards Bella.

Each movement was deliberate and careful; he was afraid that even the slightest misstep might frighten her further.

He removed his blood-stained jacket and gently draped it over her trembling shoulders.

The moment his hand brushed against her, Bella flinched.

This caused Logan’s expression to harden instantly. Fury surged from somewhere deep within him. But now was not the time to give in to his anger.

“It’s alright. It’s over now.”

He forced his voice to soften in an attempt to calm the trembling woman in front of him. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, steadying her and preventing her from collapsing.

“Y-Your Grace, have you found—”

Joshua, who had hurried down the corridor after Logan, burst into the room, his words spilling forth.

Only to find that they died in his throat.

The scene before him needed no explanation.

Blood was splattered across the floor.

Jack was lying crumpled in a heap.

Bella stood there, wrapped in Logan’s jacket.

For a long moment, Joshua could not speak.

He slowly lowered his head, the weight of what had happened in the brief instant he had stepped away settling heavily on his chest.

He didn’t even have the right to offer an excuse.

“This is my fault.”

“If you choose to bring someone as your partner, then you are responsible for making sure nothing like this happens.”

Logan’s voice was calm—but firm as he rebuked him.

“Stay here. I’ll send my secretary shortly.”

Seeing Joshua accept the blame without protest, Logan added nothing further. Instead, he lifted Bella into his arms and walked past him.

“Thank you… for saving Bella.”

Joshua did not raise his head until Logan had left the room.

***

“Please… put me down now…”

On the way out of the ballroom, Bella buried her face in Logan’s chest. Her fingers were still clutching tightly at his shirt, trembling.

The fear had not yet left her hands.

“We’ll be at the car soon. Endure it a little longer.”

A carriage was waiting at the entrance, summoned at Logan’s command. When the door opened, he helped her inside with great care.

Even after she was seated, Bella could not relax.

Her body remained rigid.

Her hands, folded neatly over her dress, trembled uncontrollably. The color had drained from her face and the fear lingering in her eyes made the air between them feel fragile and unsteady.

The driver shut the door. As the carriage began to roll forward, the music and laughter of the masquerade slowly faded into the distance.

An uneasy silence settled inside the enclosed space. After a long moment, Bella slowly turned her head to look at Logan beside her.

“Thank you. Because of you, Your Grace…”

She had no idea how he had found her. But she did not dare to imagine what might have happened if he had not appeared.

“You don’t need to thank me.”

Logan replied flatly, his gaze fixed on the darkened window.

When the carriage stopped outside his hotel, he helped Bella inside and escorted her to his private suite on the top floor.

The door closed behind them.

Now alone, Logan sat down at a deliberate distance from her.

The room was far more spacious than the bedroom he had used at Rosedale, which helped to ease Bella’s unease at being alone with a man.

“Explain what happened. There may be an investigation starting tomorrow.”

Bella hesitated briefly at his words, then nodded.

In a steady voice, she explained how she had ended up alone with Jack, and what had happened in the room.

While Joshua had stepped away to get drinks, she said, several men had come up to her. To avoid their persistent requests to dance with them, she simply moved away from the center of the ballroom.

It was then that she ran into Jack Hunter by chance.

“He grabbed me and pushed me towards the back of the room. I tried to leave as soon as we entered the room, but he blocked my path and moved closer. He said that if I screamed, people would see us alone together.”

Her voice thinned as the memory resurfaced.

“That bastard.”

A curse slipped from Logan’s mouth between clenched teeth.

In polite society, it was an unspoken rule that women should never wander alone into secluded areas at gatherings. Beneath the glittering surface of high society, crude and tangled desires lurked just out of sight.

But how could Bella, who was so unfamiliar with that world, have known?

Joshua probably didn’t know either.

“I had Jack Hunter investigated. He appears respectable on the surface, but his private reputation is poor. I should have told you sooner. I was too late.”

There was unmistakable self-reproach in his apology.

“No. If it hadn’t been for you, it could have turned into something much worse. Thank you for helping me.”

She pulled his jacket closer around her shoulders.

After a long silence, she finally spoke the thought she had repeated to herself countless times.

“It must be because I’m a commoner. I’m just a maid with no one to support me. That’s why he thought he could get away with it. At least I know what kind of person he is now.”

Her voice was too calm.

In fact, it was so calm that the repressed emotions beneath it were painfully evident.

Bella placed her hands neatly over her knees and bit her lower lip, as though trying to come to terms with a reality she could not change alone.

Logan’s expression hardened at her withdrawn words.

“Don’t conclude it that way.”

Bella looked up at him briefly.

She tried to lift the corners of her lips in a casual smile, but the faint tremor betrayed her.

“No. It’s the truth.”

She forced the words out lightly.

“To people like him, I’m no better than a pet they’ve raised in their home. A commoner. An orphan who doesn’t even know her parents. I’m just a maid who earns enough to survive. Unlike everyone else, I don’t have any childhood memories.”

“Bella.”

Logan cut her off firmly.

She had always said she was fine, as though it were a habit. This was the first time she had revealed the self-reproach she had carried with her for so long.

“That’s not your fault. Not being sent to the orphanage. Not losing your memories. None of it.”

Nothing that happened to Bella was her fault.

In fact, Logan held her in high regard for her strength of character in enduring harsh circumstances without giving up.

In a society full of people born into wealth through sheer luck who are unable to live with dignity, her quiet resilience shone all the more clearly.

At Logan’s words, Bella fell silent, as though she had forgotten how to speak.

‘It’s not your fault. You were simply unfortunate.’

They were words she had longed to hear since childhood.

At the same time, they were the very words that could destroy the wall she had spent years building in order to survive.