Ms. CEO’s Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death – Episode 43
Dominion’s emergency board meeting began without Connor’s voting authority. Vale’s allied founders demanded his suspension, citing the drone attack and the unresolved history of the laboratory explosion. Their motion needed only two more votes.
Connor addressed the directors without denying his past. He had led Dominion through violent years and accepted responsibility for its culture. He would not accept evidence manufactured by a man hiding behind civilian casualties.
Vale joined through secure video. He displayed personnel files naming himself Dominion’s original architect and Connor as a junior operative. The records implied Connor had benefited most from his supposed death.
Voss presented a recovered message in which Connor appeared to threaten the laboratory. Cypher identified compression artifacts, but the directors heard a younger Connor say that Vale’s work would end that night.
The sentence was genuine, though the context was missing. Connor had meant the illegal program, not Vale’s life. A truth cut into pieces proved more dangerous than a complete lie.
The board suspended Connor pending external review. His access disappeared from every Dominion system. He surrendered his credentials rather than force loyal employees to choose between him and the law.
Richard began calling directors who owed the Reed family favors. Connor stopped him after the first conversation. If his position survived through pressure, Vale could rightly claim Dominion belonged to wealth instead of principle.
Richard accused him of refusing help out of pride. Connor answered that control disguised as protection had damaged their family for years. Richard ended the call, wounded but listening.
At Asterion, Scarlett reviewed files recovered from Evelyn’s encrypted drive. The star diagram appeared beside correspondence with Vanguard’s earliest shell laboratory. Evelyn had known Vale professionally.
One message was dated the day before the explosion. Evelyn warned Vale that his targeting research violated everything Aegis was built to protect. She threatened to give Connor proof.
The final line stunned Scarlett. Evelyn wrote that if Connor learned what Vale had done, he would destroy him. Her mother had trusted a younger Merchant of Death to choose conscience over power.
Scarlett showed the message to Connor. He remembered receiving an anonymous package before confronting Vale but had never known who sent it. The evidence inside exposed the unauthorized tests.
Evelyn had connected their lives years before the rainy night. Connor wondered whether Vale later targeted Scarlett because he discovered her mother’s role. Bennett may have financed the pursuit, but someone else could have supplied the motive.
Cypher recovered fragments from the anonymous package. They showed Vale overriding safety restrictions and selecting populated zones for simulations. The files could clear Connor if their origin was authenticated.
Authentication required the original archive held inside Dominion. Connor no longer had access. Vale’s directors ordered the archive transferred to an external auditor controlled through Vanguard.
Scarlett proposed obtaining it through a lawful preservation order. Asterion had standing because Evelyn’s intellectual property appeared in the evidence. Her attorneys filed before the transfer could begin.
The court issued a temporary hold. Dominion security sealed the archive, but one guard replaced the storage case during the confusion. Cypher watched the switch through an overlooked analog camera.
Connor recognized the guard as a former member of Vale’s laboratory team. The man had been declared dead in the same explosion. Vale had hidden an entire network inside Dominion for twelve years.
The false case reached the auditor while the real archive left in a medical transport. Connor and Scarlett followed its signal, only to find the vehicle empty beneath an overpass. A message waited inside.
Vale promised to return the evidence when Connor confessed publicly to stealing Dominion. If he refused, the next file released would prove how many deaths the young Connor had once accepted in his mentor’s name.
