📖 The Story Continues
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Ms. CEO’s Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death – Episode 03
Four years later, Scarlett Hayes stood outside a grimy repair garage with her daughter’s small hand tucked firmly inside hers. She had imagined this moment through countless dead ends, missed sightings, and reports that arrived one day too late. Connor Reed had always vanished before she could reach him, never remaining in one place for more than a night. This time, his broken semi sat in plain view, and Scarlett intended to make sure he had nowhere left to run.
Summer bounced beside her, excitement making it impossible for the four-year-old to stand still. She asked again whether her daddy was truly inside, her blue eyes bright with hope. Scarlett promised that he was, though privately she added that the bastard had better not disappear again. She had not crossed half the country to let a damaged engine become his latest escape.
The same battered truck from that long-ago night occupied one side of the garage. Scarlett could hardly believe he was still driving it after four years. Its scratched metal brought back the chase, the fear, and the stranger who had held her as if she mattered before leaving without a word. She tightened her grip on Summer’s hand and walked toward the sound of tools striking steel.
Connor lay beneath the semi, bare arms streaked with grease and sweat darkening his shirt. He had traded distant highways for a temporary job at the garage, but the disguise remained the same. To the world, he was a struggling driver awaiting a lucrative haul, not the commander whose hidden organization could shift weapons and intelligence across borders. Ordinary hardship was useful camouflage, even when it came with overdue rent.
A pair of heels stopped beside the truck. Fay, his landlord, bent down and told him he could not hide beneath the chassis forever. Connor slid partway out and found her gaze traveling openly across his body. He promised that the next haul would cover everything he owed, but Fay clearly had another form of payment in mind.
She suggested he could repay her in a more personal way. Watching him work, she confessed, drove her wild, and she would gladly pamper him if he stopped pretending to be poor and proud. Connor refused without cruelty but without encouragement. He had survived empires, assassins, and betrayals; the last thing he wanted was an arrangement that tied him to another person.
Fay challenged the life he had chosen. Was he truly content sleeping on the road and living paycheck to paycheck when someone could offer him comfort? Connor knew the financial struggle was an illusion, but the loneliness was not. Still, he told her he would never be tied down by anyone.
No wife, he declared. No children. Not ever. The words came from an old conviction that men like him did not build families—they created targets. He had barely finished speaking when a child’s delighted cry cut through the garage.
“Daddy!” Summer raced forward before Scarlett could restrain her. She dropped to her knees beside Connor and wrapped both arms around him as though she had known him all her life. “I finally found you.” Connor froze beneath the truck, staring at the golden-haired child clinging to his chest.
Fay’s eyebrows climbed. Her teasing smile hardened into disbelief as she repeated Connor’s claim about having no children. Connor sat up, grease on his hands and confusion across his face. He had faced firing squads with greater composure than he managed before this tiny stranger.
Summer leaned back to study him, utterly certain she had found the right man. Something in the shape of her eyes unsettled him. Connor told her gently that she had the wrong person, expecting tears or embarrassment. Instead, Summer shook her head and explained that her mommy said he was her daddy—and lying was not nice.
Connor searched the garage entrance for the mother responsible for this impossible claim. Scarlett stepped from the sunlight, poised and furious, every bit as beautiful as the woman he remembered from the truck. Recognition struck him hard enough to silence every denial. His mysterious girl had a name, and she was looking at him as if she had spent four years preparing for judgment.
The past returned in fragments: Scarlett asleep beneath the pale dawn, the urgent message from Cypher, and his decision to leave before danger could touch her. Connor had wondered about her more often than he admitted, but he had never allowed himself to search. Seeing her now with a child old enough to fit the timeline made his carefully ordered thoughts collapse. The danger he had escaped was nothing beside the truth standing before him.
Scarlett’s gaze swept over him, taking in the worn clothes and grease-stained hands. To her, nothing had changed; he was still the drifter who had abandoned her after one night. She had no idea that every humble detail was chosen camouflage. All she saw was the man who had missed Summer’s birth, first steps, first words, and every lonely question about her father.
Connor rose slowly, towering over Scarlett even as the little girl kept hold of his hand. He wanted to ask a dozen questions at once, but none would form cleanly. Summer smiled up at him with an openness that reached somewhere dangerous beneath his ribs. The possibility that she belonged to him made hope feel more frightening than any threat.
Fay demanded to know whether the child was really his. Connor ignored her, unable to look away from Scarlett. The woman he remembered as vulnerable and feverish now carried herself like a blade, polished by years of anger. Whatever softness had once passed between them was buried beneath her determination to hold him accountable.
Scarlett approached until only Summer stood between them. She confirmed that the child was not confused and that she had not been taught to deceive him. Connor was Summer’s father. The declaration settled over the garage with the force of a verdict.
His instincts urged him to deny everything until he had evidence. Enemies had used elaborate traps before, and a child could be the most effective weapon imaginable. Yet when Summer slipped her small fingers around his, suspicion became unexpectedly difficult to hold. No operative could manufacture the trusting pressure of that grip.
Scarlett mistook his silence for the same cowardice that had kept him running. Her patience snapped, and four years of restrained rage flashed across her face. Connor had once vanished before she could demand answers, but his truck was broken now, and she had finally cornered him. This time he would hear everything she had endured.
Summer looked from her mother to the stranger she already loved as her father. Connor felt the walls of his hidden life closing in, not because an assassin had found him, but because a little girl had spoken one word. Daddy. Before he could decide whether to embrace it or run, Scarlett stepped closer and announced, “You’re her father.”
