Ms. CEO’s Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death – Episode 42
Vanguard’s demonstration took place above an empty desert range. Governments, investors, and reporters watched a live feed as an unmarked missile climbed toward the clouds. Vale promised it would never reach its target.
A silver interceptor launched without a human command. It adjusted to the missile’s changing path and destroyed it at a safe altitude. The precision exceeded Dominion’s best defensive platform.
Applause filled the remote conference. Voss announced that Vanguard could protect cities without depending on the Merchant of Death. Connor studied the telemetry and saw Aegis shaping every correction.
Scarlett recognized her mother’s navigation logic beneath Vanguard’s polished interface. Vale had combined it with C-7 targeting and disguised the result as a new invention. The stolen fragment had become commercially operational.
Connor ordered Dominion to publish a technical challenge. Before Cypher could transmit it, emergency alerts appeared across the city. Hospital delivery drones and fire-service aircraft were losing control.
One drone struck an office tower, while another crashed beside an ambulance. Rescue traffic halted as authorities grounded every connected vehicle. The demonstration’s triumph became a civilian emergency within minutes.
Cypher traced the malicious instructions. They carried Dominion encryption and Connor’s retired executive certificate. Every public record suggested his company had attacked the city during Vanguard’s launch.
Vale immediately offered Vanguard systems to restore control. His network corrected the drones one by one, allowing him to appear as both competitor and rescuer. News stations repeated the contrast without questioning its convenience.
Regulators entered Dominion headquarters with warrants. Connor ordered his employees to cooperate and surrendered access to the affected servers. Resistance would only strengthen Vale’s accusation.
The investigators froze Dominion’s external networks. Civilian contracts were suspended, including the new partnership with Asterion. Scarlett watched months of reform disappear beneath one forged command.
Richard suggested using private Reed infrastructure to keep their investigation alive. Scarlett accepted only systems disclosed to regulators. Vale had built his attack around the expectation that Connor would hide something.
Vanguard shares rose while Dominion’s fell. Several directors demanded that Connor resign until the investigation ended. The two founders allied with Vale called an emergency vote.
Connor returned home after midnight. Summer waited in the living room despite Lily’s attempts to put her to bed. She had seen reporters call her father dangerous.
He sat beside her and explained that someone had used his name to hurt people. Summer asked whether he would leave to keep her safe again. The question carried every promise he had once broken.
Connor told her no. He might work, fight, or stand before a court, but he would always tell her where he was going. He would return because being her father was not a disguise he could remove.
Summer made him place the promise into her watch as a voice recording. Connor obeyed, and she played it twice before accepting his answer. Scarlett watched from the doorway.
Later, Scarlett told him that staying would be harder than disappearing into war. Connor agreed. Vale knew how to provoke the man he had trained, but he did not know the father Connor had become.
Cypher found an inconsistency in the drone attack. The commands used Dominion encryption but entered through emergency-navigation relays belonging to Asterion. Evelyn’s civilian network had been turned against both companies.
Scarlett opened her mother’s oldest architecture files. One diagram contained a cluster of linked stars not present in the official Aegis design. She had seen the pattern before but assumed it was decoration.
Across the city, Vale reviewed footage of Connor comforting Summer. He told Voss that family had not made Connor weak; it had made him predictable. The next attack would force him to choose which promise to break.
