📖 The Story Continues
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Ms. CEO’s Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death – Episode 09
The secure laboratory doors opened, and Cypher entered Connor’s command room carrying a sealed report. Connor had faced the result in his imagination from both directions, but preparation did nothing to slow his pulse. His lieutenant confirmed that the independent analysis was complete. Summer Hayes was Connor Reed’s biological daughter.
“She’s really mine,” Connor said, the words almost too quiet to belong to the commander everyone feared. The legal report had told him the same truth, yet this result reached deeper because it came from the system he trusted with his life. Doubt vanished, leaving wonder and the first crushing weight of regret. He had a daughter, and he had already missed four years of loving her.
Cypher’s expression remained grave. The investigation into Scarlett and the Hayes family had uncovered more than financial records. Life inside that powerful household had not been kind to either mother or child. Connor’s brief joy tightened into dread.
Scarlett had rejected an arranged marriage to Bennett Whitmore, choosing independence and Summer over the alliance her father demanded. Since then, the Hayes family had suppressed her authority and used the company’s financial crisis as a weapon. Relatives and social circles treated her motherhood as disgrace. Summer absorbed the punishment meant for Scarlett.
People called the little girl a bastard. Children repeated the cruelty they heard from adults, mocking her because no father appeared at school or family events. Cypher continued describing the pattern until Connor stopped him. He had heard enough to understand his own absence had given vicious people their favorite weapon.
Connor thanked him and dismissed the room. Alone, he opened the collection of photographs and posts recovered during the investigation. The first showed Summer at two years old, laughing over a birthday cake while Scarlett promised to love her forever. Connor stared at the tiny face and tried to imagine where he had been that day—some highway, safe house, or meaningless meeting he could no longer remember.
Another image showed Scarlett and Summer eating lunch after swim lessons. Scarlett’s caption celebrated the day her daughter crossed the deep end alone. Connor could almost hear the pride in her voice. His girl had been brave long before he knew her name.
There were photographs from a pumpkin patch and Summer’s first baseball game. Scarlett had documented each milestone because no one else could be trusted to remember it. Beneath the happiness, one sentence cut Connor deeply: Summer’s father would never attend her firsts, but Scarlett would be present for as many as she could. She had written him out of the future because he had given her no reason to expect his return.
The final entry described Summer being bullied by a child who called her a fatherless stray. Scarlett had taken her for favorite ice cream, trying to mend a wound she could not prevent. Then came the message directed at the man who had disappeared: she would never forgive him. Connor read the words twice and accepted that he deserved every one.
Scarlett had raised Summer alone while fighting her family and holding together a failing company. It must have been hell, yet the photographs showed a child who still knew how to smile. Scarlett had created that warmth without Connor’s protection or fortune. Whatever anger she carried toward him had been purchased with sacrifice.
He rested a hand over Summer’s face on the screen. Wealth could replace missed gifts but not missed memories. No army could return her first word, her unsteady steps, or the nights she asked why other children had fathers. For the first time, Connor confronted a loss no amount of power could reverse.
But the future remained. He vowed that Scarlett would no longer face the Hayes family alone and Summer would never again be bullied without consequence. His daughter would know she was wanted, protected, and loved. Anyone who called her worthless would answer to a man capable of destroying empires.
The children’s watch number appeared on his encrypted phone. Connor recognized it immediately because he had stored the contact himself only hours earlier. A brief warmth pierced the regret; perhaps Summer already missed him. He answered before the first ring finished.
“Summer?” he said, expecting her excited voice. Instead, he heard ragged breathing and distant shouting. The sound was faint but unmistakably wrong. Connor rose from his chair, every instinct sharpening.
“Daddy…” Summer whispered. The single word barely crossed the connection. Connor asked what had happened, forcing his voice to remain steady so he would not frighten her further. There was no clear answer, only another desperate attempt to draw breath.
The joy of paternity transformed into lethal fear. Connor had heard wounded soldiers make that sound when their lungs could no longer provide enough air. Summer was four years old, alone somewhere, and using the number he had promised would always reach him. He refused to let his first promise become another failure.
He signaled Cypher back into the room and transferred the call to the command system. Technicians moved instantly, tracing tower handoffs and the watch’s location data. Connor kept speaking to Summer, telling her that Daddy was there and she needed to stay with him. Each moment of silence felt like a blade against his throat.
Through the connection, he caught Scarlett’s muffled pleas and another woman’s mocking voice. The investigation report took on immediate, terrible meaning. This was not an accident on a playground or a random medical emergency. Summer was in danger inside the Hayes family’s reach.
Connor’s operatives waited for orders, watching the man they knew as an unshakable commander become a father under siege. He ordered vehicles prepared, weapons checked, and every route to the signal opened. No law, gate, or family name would slow him. Dominion Tech had spent years making Connor Reed impossible to stop.
Summer tried to speak again, but the line dissolved into static. Connor gripped the phone hard enough to whiten his knuckles. Hours earlier, he had promised that no one would ever bully his daughter again; now someone was stealing the air from her lungs. “Baby, what happened?” he demanded, as the signal began to fade.
