Ms. CEO’s Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death – Episode 36
Connor remained silent during the drive from the hearing. Scarlett knew the silence concealed violence he had chosen not to use. She thanked him for stopping.
He admitted that obeying her had been harder than any fight. Bennett had threatened Summer and expected laws to protect him. Scarlett answered that restraint was not mercy; it was strategy.
Connor promised Asterion would remain hers. He offered enough money to buy every Whitmore-held debt by morning. Scarlett refused to exchange Bennett’s control for her husband’s, however loving the intention.
Her answer wounded him until she explained the difference between help and ownership. She wanted him beside her, not above her. Connor accepted the boundary and offered Dominion’s investigators instead.
The Reed Foundation gala transformed a damaged hotel into a symbol of recovery. Survivors, officials, and business leaders gathered beneath screens showing the three saved cities. Richard intended the evening to restore public confidence.
Summer entered between Connor and Scarlett wearing the family pendant. Richard’s stern expression softened immediately. Lily whispered that one small girl had accomplished what generations of advisers could not.
Scarlett addressed the guests as Asterion’s president. She announced emergency-navigation grants and promised that her mother’s technology would protect civilians. The room responded to purpose more strongly than wealth.
Bennett arrived with Stephen Hayes and a group of Whitmore directors. Security moved to remove them, but Richard allowed them to remain. A public lie, he said, deserved a public answer.
Stephen declared that he had sold his controlling Hayes shares legally. He accused Scarlett of abandoning family duty, damaging the company, and attaching herself to a dangerous stranger. Bennett displayed the signed contract behind him.
Scarlett asked whether her father understood that he had sold property belonging to her dead mother. Stephen insisted everything in the marriage had become his. His certainty revealed how little he had ever known about Evelyn’s arrangements.
Bennett announced himself as Asterion’s new controlling owner. He offered Scarlett a ceremonial position if she ended her marriage. Connor moved forward, but Scarlett caught his arm.
She rejected Bennett before the entire room. Asterion would close before it served a man who threatened children and purchased women through their fathers. Several investors withdrew from Bennett’s side.
Humiliated, Bennett called Summer illegitimate and unworthy of the Reed name. Scarlett slapped him before Connor could move. The sound silenced the ballroom.
Connor seized Bennett by his jacket. He warned that another word about his wife or daughter would cost Whitmore everything. Scarlett again told him to stop, and this time he released Bennett immediately.
Bennett laughed for the cameras and demanded security arrest Connor. Richard crossed the ballroom before any guard responded. He identified himself as the host and ordered Bennett removed.
Then Richard publicly acknowledged Scarlett as his daughter-in-law and Summer as his granddaughter. He stated that any attack on them would face the full legal and financial strength of the Reed family. Summer squeezed Connor’s hand.
Connor disliked the declaration’s possessive edge, but Scarlett recognized its value. Richard had not claimed Asterion; he had placed his reputation between Bennett and a child. For once, power had been used without demanding payment.
As guards escorted Bennett away, he promised Stephen that the contract would still stand in court. Stephen demanded the protection he had been promised. Bennett ignored him.
Cypher examined the projected contract and found a reference to an inheritance trust absent from Asterion’s current records. Scarlett remembered a locked box among her mother’s possessions, one Stephen had never been able to open.
Summer touched the pendant at her throat while listening. Its unusual lower edge matched the shape of the box’s narrow keyway. What Richard had brought as a family gift might unlock the proof that could save another family’s legacy.
