Chapter 182 Patrick Exposes His Adoptive Younger Sister’s Plot!

Chapter 182 Patrick Exposes His Adoptive Younger Sister’s Plot!

When Rose was brought in, her pale face wore an expression of pure innocence and confusion.

"Father... you wanted to see me? What's going on?"

The moment she walked in, Rita — who had just been crying on Brynn's shoulder — rushed over and slapped her hard across the face.

Rose was stunned, pressing her hand to her cheek. "Rita, what are you doing!"

Rita glared at her, eyes red and swollen. "Still playing dumb? You gave me that disgusting drug, trying to get me to seduce Jessica's man. When I refused, you bribed a servant to lure Peter into my room. You're despicable!"

"I didn't do any of that," Rose turned to Patrick, her voice urgent. "Father, she's making things up. When did I ever give her any drug? She's lying through her teeth!"

Patrick stared at her, his expression dark.

Just then, Verity walked in with two women, dragging Brynn's coarse-work maid between them.

With a thud, Verity shoved the maid to the ground.

"Earlier at the Autumn Feast — you were the one who went to tell Brynn that unrelated men had entered Rita's room?"

"Yes... but what did I do wrong?" The maid scrambled to her feet, trembling but still defiant.

Cressida spoke up, calm and unhurried. "Then interrogate her. Beat her until she talks."

The words had barely left her mouth before Verity turned to the two maids. "Drag her out and beat her. Keep going until she confesses."

The maid panicked instantly. Once outside, three or four blows from a nail-studded wooden rod were all it took to break her.

She wailed at the top of her lungs. "Mr. Patrick Hamilton, please have mercy! It was Ms. Rose Hamilton's orders! When I refused, she threatened to sell me to a brothel!"

"She's lying!" Rose's face had gone white as a sheet. "How would I ever get the chance to bribe Aunt Brynn's maid?"

Cressida raised her hand, and the beating outside stopped.

She looked at Brynn. "Aunt Brynn, are all the maids around you your own personal maids?"

Brynn thought carefully — then her eyes went wide with sudden realization.

"Only a few of them are my personal maids. The rest, including that Cora outside, were all arranged by Clio."

Clio had managed the household for years. In a family this large, her influence had long seeped into every corner. Except for the main house, which kept its distance, the third branch was entirely in her grip.

Cora crawled back inside, covered in blood. The sight of her made Rose's face go even paler.

Cora forced out the words through her pain. "Ms. Rose Hamilton warned me — if I didn't get this done, she had ways of dealing with me. And my contract is still with Mrs. Clio Hamilton..."

So Clio knew about this too.

Patrick slammed his palm on the table in fury. "That vicious woman! She's been deliberately stirring up trouble in this house."

Cora kept confessing through her tears. "It was Ms. Rose Hamilton who told me to lure Mr. Nguyen to the garden using Ms. Jessica Hamilton's name. The tea was also given to me by Ms. Rose Hamilton. That's truly all I know!"

Jessica, sitting nearby, raised her head. "Uncle, forgive me for being blunt — I don't want to speculate about Aunt Clio's intentions. But if Rose dares to pull something like this today, whether or not Aunt Clio deliberately let it happen, if you don't deal with Rose, I won't be able to hold my head up in front of Peter. And when you see Uncle Marlon in the future, you'll have lost all standing too."

"I will deal with this severely, without question!" Patrick said, shaking with rage.

Rose dropped to her knees with a thud, tears streaming down her fair, delicate face, doing her best to look pitiful.

"Father, I admit what I did wasn't honorable. You can say I handled it badly. But you can't say I was wrong. I did it for Rita — she was the one who said she liked Mr. Nguyen. I was just trying to help."

"That's a complete lie!" Rita shot to her feet. "Even if I admired him, I would never use my own reputation to trap a man! You've done so many dirty things yourself that you think nothing of these tricks. You have absolutely no shame!"

Rose's expression hardened, a trace of defiance creeping in. "If you never had those feelings, you shouldn't have accepted the drug when I gave it to you. You took it, and then claimed you'd never actually use it. Rita, your hands aren't exactly clean either."

Brynn was so furious her pointing finger was shaking. "You ungrateful wretch! Even now, you dare say such things? What has the Hamilton family ever done to deserve this from you?"

Patrick's face was dark as a storm.

"You're right about one thing, Rose — since you came to us, we've raised you as a daughter for ten years. We've done everything we could for you. Not only are you ungrateful, you've used underhanded schemes to harm your own family and bring chaos into this house."

"And now there's a suspected murder involved. We simply cannot keep you here any longer."

The word murder hit the room like a stone dropped in still water. Everyone's expression changed — everyone except Cressida.

Brynn asked in alarm, "Patrick, who did she kill?"

"Who? Ask her yourself. Where was she on the night Everett died?"

Patrick's cold, sharp question, combined with every pair of eyes in the room turning toward her, made Rose's knees buckle. She nearly collapsed.

Her face had taken on a greenish pallor. "His death has nothing to do with me."

Patrick let out a cold laugh. "Nothing to do with you? Then take a look at this."

He pulled a warrant for arrest from his sleeve and tossed it toward her.

The paper floated down lightly, but to Rose, it felt like a mountain crashing onto her chest.

The warrant stated that Everett had been stabbed to death by an unknown assailant at Lumina Retreat. Officers searching the area had found the murder weapon — a gold hairpin — in the pond at the base of the building.

The hairpin was sketched in the warrant. Its design was distinctive, and being made of pure gold, it was not commonly seen in Emerald City.

"This warrant was posted by the authorities last night. The moment I saw that gold hairpin, I knew it was connected to you. The year after you first joined the Hamilton family, Clio threw you a birthday celebration and had a whole set of gold pieces made for you. This hairpin was one of them — pure gold, costly to make. Are you going to deny it?"

Why would Patrick remember this so clearly? Because when Rose first arrived, he had seen her as nothing more than an orphan girl with some medical knowledge and a clever tongue. Yet Clio had treated her exceptionally well, gifting her entire sets of pure gold jewelry without a second thought.

Patrick had seen this Magpies Perching on Branches hairpin at the time and remarked that it was too extravagant. But Clio had said that gifts for a young girl should be lavish — and so Patrick, though displeased, had let Clio have her way.

Cressida sat quietly to the side, listening, her face perfectly composed, her eyes deep and unreadable.

This was exactly the advantage of steering Patrick's attention toward Rose. Once he caught a whiff of something suspicious, he would start doubting on his own and dig until he found the truth. Cressida didn't need to say a single word — Patrick would handle Rose himself.

Rose shook her head quickly. "Father, you've misunderstood. That hairpin isn't mine. I do have one just like it, but I chipped it the day before yesterday and sent Molly to take it to the goldsmith for repairs. Let Molly go pick it up right now."

When she had first seen the gold hairpin on the warrant, she had felt a wave of relief.

Rose quietly congratulated herself on her foresight. If she hadn't anticipated that Cressida still had something up her sleeve and had Molly commission an identical hairpin in advance, the consequences would have been unthinkable.

She was still quietly savoring that small sense of triumph when Patrick suddenly reached for a brocade box beside him, opened it, and lifted out the gold hairpin inside.

"Is this what you wanted Molly to pick up?"

The shock hit Rose like a bolt of lightning.

That custom-made gold hairpin — how did it end up in Patrick's hands?