Chapter 184 The Vicious Mother Has a Heart Attack—Refuse to Save Her Even If She’s Dying?

Chapter 184 The Vicious Mother Has a Heart Attack—Refuse to Save Her Even If She’s Dying?

Patrick suddenly got nervous. He instinctively looked over at Cressida.

"Cressida, what do we do? She's not gone yet, and the officers are already here!"

Cressida stayed calm. "Don't panic. There's a cellar. I'll take her there first. Noah, you stay with Father and deal with the officers. They're probably just here for routine questioning — it won't take long. Once they leave, we'll send Rose on her way."

"Alright, alright!" Patrick was completely deferring to Cressida now.

Jessica and Rita helped Brynn clean up the hall and dragged the unconscious Cora and Molly away.

Rose tried to struggle, but Verity shoved a handkerchief in her mouth, and just like that, two women hauled her off.

Beneath the woodshed in the southwest corner was an abandoned cellar. Rose was thrown in there for the time being.

Cressida walked down the wooden steps, slow and steady, the light fading beneath her feet with each step, until Emma shut the cellar door above them.

Ingrid handed her a pair of scissors. "Ms. Cressida Hamilton, Mr. Patrick Hamilton says to shave her head right away. Once the officers are gone, he'll have someone take her to St. Mercy Convent."

St. Mercy Convent was deep in the mountains, ninety-three miles from Emerald City.

Cressida took the scissors and walked toward Rose.

"Cressida!" Rose was pinned down by Verity and Emma, tears streaming down her face as she begged. "Please, don't cut my hair. I never wanted to take anything from you. I — I can leave Emerald City right now and never come back!"

Besides, her biological father was on his way back to Emerald City. If she could just hold on until then, what did the Hamilton Mansion even matter?

Cressida looked down at Rose, her eyes cold as ice.

She lifted Rose's chin with the scissors. "Never wanted to take anything from me? When I came back from the military fortress, our parents had you living in Emerald City in my place."

"Didn't Mother promise you she'd use my military achievements to set you up as Marshall's wife, so you could go head-to-head with the Gomez family?"

Cressida's voice grew colder with every word. "And the real me would have to live in the shadows forever, never allowed to show my face. Isn't that right?"

Rose went pale, her lips trembling.

Those were things Clio had said in private. How could Cressida possibly know?

With a sharp snip, Cressida's hand moved, and a lock of dark hair fell to the ground.

"No——!" Rose let out a piercing scream and thrashed wildly.

Cressida grabbed her by the hair and forced her head back. "It's not that you didn't try. It's that I never gave you the chance. You're not innocent in any of this."

Rose could see it clearly now — Cressida was dead set on destroying her.

So she dropped the act. Through her tears, she let out a mocking laugh.

"If you've got the guts, just kill me!"

"Kill you? That's letting you off too easy. What I want is for you to spend your life hiding, too afraid to show your face — because the moment you do, the authorities will haul you in as a murderer."

It was only fair that Rose got a taste of it — living in the shadows, nameless, unable to face the world.

Every bit of suffering Cressida had endured in her past life, she would make sure they all experienced in this one.

Rose's face was smeared with blood. The tears had long stopped. Her eyes burned with pure hatred.

"If you treat me like this, Mother will never forgive you."

"Don't worry. Once you're gone, she's next."

The moment Cressida said that, the color drained from Rose's face.

Cressida handed the golden scissors to Emma. "Shave her head, knock her out, and stuff her in a sack. Send her out after dark."

"To St. Mercy Convent?" Verity asked.

Cressida shook her head. "St. Mercy Convent is too close. Send her northwest. There's a place called the Penitence Abbey out there — no waterway in, just one mountain path. The warden there is not someone to mess with. Send her there. If Father asks, keep it vague."

Rose's heart dropped when she heard this.

The northwest was too far from Emerald City. If she was sent there, how would she ever get back?

If even Clio didn't know where she'd been taken, how would her biological father ever find her?

"Cressida, Cressida, I——" Seeing things go south, Rose tried to beg again.

But before she could finish, Verity knocked her out with a swift chop to the neck.

Cressida glanced at Verity, who said with obvious indignation, "She flips faster than the weather changes. All that fake crying and carrying on — honestly!"

With Rose dealt with, Cressida headed to the front hall. The officers had just left.

Just as expected, it had only been routine questioning. The staff at Lumina Retreat and Everett's coachman had all confirmed seeing Rose there that night.

The officers had wanted to speak with Rose in person, but Patrick told them she had gone out early that morning and hadn't returned.

So they arranged to come back the next day and left.

After dark, six sacks of grain and flour were loaded onto a cart — one of them holding Rose.

Cressida had Verity borrow two undercover guards from Miguel to take Rose directly to the Penitence Abbey.

By the time everything was settled, the night had grown deep and still.

The autumn breeze drifted in cool and quiet. Cressida pulled her clothes tighter and went back inside.

She had first heard of the Penitence Abbey from Rose herself — in her past life.

She had been standing beneath a window when she overheard Rose suggesting to Clio that they find some excuse to send her there.

The place was not only buried in the middle of nowhere, but the head matron was brutal and ruthless. They took money to do a patron's dirty work — handling women who were troublesome but couldn't simply be killed outright. The matrons had no shortage of ways to torment them, making their lives unbearable, until they eventually died in what looked like an accident.

Cressida had assumed Clio would refuse. But she heard her own mother say with her own ears, "We'd have to find the right moment and drug her first. Otherwise, knowing her temper, she'd tear the whole house apart."

The memory faded. Cressida stared at the candle flame, and a cold, quiet smile crossed her lips.

Back when she was at the military fortress, an old soldier who had once been a monk told her — the world runs on karma. What goes around comes around.

So whatever was coming for Rose, she had brought it on herself.

The night stretched on, deep and dark.

Clio felt like she was caught in another nightmare.

First, she was surrounded by fire. She turned around and saw Cressida standing just outside the door.

She was about to run out when Cressida shut the door on her.

Clio jolted awake in a cold panic.

The room was dark and silent, broken only by her own ragged breathing.

"Nanny, Nanny!" Her voice came out hoarse, scorched raw from the smoke.

She called and called. No answer.

Clio reached out and pulled back the bed curtain — then froze.

In the darkness, a tall, composed figure sat in the chair, still and heavy as a block of cold jade.

The nightmare flashed back to her. Clio's heart lurched, and fear came flooding in.

"Cressida! What are you doing here in the middle of the night?"

The figure in the chair rose and slowly moved closer.

In the darkness, half her face caught the moonlight — her brow and eyes sharp as frost. When her gaze swept over, it felt like looking through a layer of mist, with no warmth to reach.

"Mother, you may not have heard yet. Rose killed someone and fled. There's a warrant out for her arrest."

"What did you say?" Clio's pupils shrank.

She threw back the covers and lunged at Cressida, but Cressida stepped aside with ease.

Clio stumbled forward and hit the floor hard, her knees slamming against the ground. She hissed in pain.

"It was you!" Clio looked up and screamed, the veins in her neck standing out. "You framed her! I know you resent me for favoring her, but Rose is innocent! Cressida, how can you be so cruel!"

Cressida let out a soft laugh. Moonlight passed over her eyes, and something in them looked sharp as ice splinters.

"There's no point trying to pin this on me, Mother. Rose is a murderer. The official warrant is ironclad. The moment she shows her face, she'll be taken in."

Clio suddenly let out a raw, anguished scream. "Cressida, how dare you do this to Rose while I was sick and unconscious! I should have strangled you with my own hands at birth. You really are the reincarnation of Sirius, an evil star — you're my punishment!"

Her voice cut off.

Clio clutched her chest, her face going white as paper in an instant.

She gasped like a fish out of water, and cold sweat soaked through her nightgown.

"My medicine — get my medicine, quickly!" Her trembling fingers clawed at the hem of Cressida's skirt, but the silk slipped right through her grasp.

Cressida stood still at the edge of moonlight and shadow, looking down at her without moving.

Clio looked up. In Cressida's eyes, she saw a complete indifference to life and death — and something else forged over years in the military fortress: a coldness, a ruthlessness that left no room for feeling.

She finally understood. Cressida was no longer that fourteen-year-old girl she could bend and shape however she pleased.

In the fourteen years since Cressida was born, Clio had never once shown her real warmth. She had even resented her for not being soft and pretty enough.

When she sent Cressida off to the military fortress, Clio had quietly felt relieved.

The fortress was dangerous. The enemy was brutal. If Cressida died out there, well — it was just her fate.

What Clio never expected was that this daughter she had written off would fight her way through blood and fire in that brutal place, and in ten years, rise to become a general.

She had known Cressida craved family love, so she had used that weakness to control her, to demand things from her. But now that Cressida no longer cared about any of that — now that she was beyond her reach — she had become something truly frightening.

"Cressida……" At the edge of death, Clio crawled toward her. "My medicine — please, get my medicine!"

But Cressida just watched.

Then, in a quiet, measured tone that carried something unreadable beneath it, she said, "Mother — looking at her from this angle, Rose really does look quite a bit like you."

Clio's eyes flew wide open.