Ms. CEO’s Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death – Episode 19
Connor made his choice before the smoke cleared. Aegis mattered to governments and armies, but Summer was his daughter. He handed the shielded case to his most trusted operative and ordered the team to move it through the northern tunnel. Then he pulled Scarlett toward the maintenance corridor leading to the service road.
Scarlett kept pace despite the pain across her healing back. The corridor door required power, and the explosion had disabled its electronic lock. She opened a service panel and crossed two emergency contacts with a metal clip from her hair. The mechanism released as gunfire struck the wall behind them.
Connor stared at her for half a second before they continued. Scarlett reminded him that chief executives learned to understand the buildings people tried to steal from them. She was not trained for combat, but she knew Hayes headquarters better than any attacker. Partnership meant allowing her knowledge to matter.
They emerged above the service road and saw Summer’s armored vehicle boxed between two vans. Attackers fixed shaped charges to its rear doors while Dominion guards fired through narrow defensive ports. The vehicle could withstand bullets, not a concentrated breach. Connor’s control vanished beneath a father’s terror.
He descended the access stairs under covering fire. Scarlett remained at the garage control terminal and activated the emergency barriers separating the service lanes. Steel gates dropped between the hostile teams, cutting their numbers in half. A second command extinguished the roadway lights.
Darkness belonged to Connor. His optics adjusted instantly, and he crossed the distance before the attackers understood what Scarlett had done. He disabled the first charge, drove its operator to the ground, and turned the man’s weapon against the remaining team. Each movement carried the precision of a reputation Scarlett had only begun to comprehend.
One attacker reached the driver’s side with another explosive. Scarlett opened the fire-suppression system, flooding that section of road with dense white foam. The man lost his footing, and a Dominion guard pulled him away from the vehicle. Connor ripped the last charge from the door seconds before its timer armed.
He entered the armored car and found Summer crouched beneath the seat as instructed. Her headphones had fallen around her neck, but her children’s watch was pressed close to her mouth. She had been reporting what she could see to Cypher throughout the attack. Even terrified, she had remembered the rules Connor taught her.
Summer threw herself into his arms. Connor checked her for injuries until she protested that he was squeezing too tightly. Scarlett climbed into the vehicle and joined them, relief breaking through her composure. For one brief moment, the battle outside disappeared behind the circle of their embrace.
Dominion forces secured the service road and captured one surviving attacker. The man refused his name, rank, and employer, but Connor recognized the old Dominion encryption device sewn inside his sleeve. Marcus Voss had equipped the assault with technology stolen years earlier. Lawrence Brickson’s shadow reached farther than anyone believed.
Under questioning, the prisoner laughed at Connor’s assumptions. Lawrence had never been the architect of the assassination campaign, only a disposable buyer eager to steal a company he could not understand. Voss financed him to test Connor’s hidden defenses. The failed warehouse attack merely taught Voss where to aim next.
The prisoner also confirmed Bennett’s role. Whitmore Capital had supplied financial access, Hayes building plans, and information about Scarlett’s movements. Four years earlier, the men chasing Scarlett had been searching for her mother’s Aegis research. Her escape into Connor’s truck had interrupted an operation already linked to his oldest enemy.
Scarlett absorbed the revelation with horror. The night she considered a terrible accident had never been random. Connor had not merely crossed her path; their enemies had been connected before either knew the other’s name. Summer’s conception and their reunion had bound together two wars that began years earlier.
The Aegis team reported that the shielded case had reached safety, but Connor felt no victory. Summer remained pressed against Scarlett, trembling whenever distant sirens rose. She asked whether Daddy’s enemies would always find them. Connor could not answer with a lie after the promise he made to Scarlett.
That night, at the safe residence, Connor watched Summer sleep between reinforced walls and armed patrols. He convinced himself that her fear proved his presence was the threat. If he disappeared and Voss followed, Scarlett and Summer could receive new identities somewhere beyond his enemies. The familiar logic returned because guilt made it sound like love.
He gave Cypher silent orders to prepare an overseas sanctuary, clean records, and enough independent money for generations. Connor would draw Voss away after ensuring neither woman could be traced. He planned to leave before dawn, repeating the same mistake with greater resources. This time, he told himself, the goodbye would be permanent.
Scarlett found the travel files open in the operations room. She read Summer’s new identity, the hidden property, and Connor’s separate route in opposite directions. Anger replaced the fear she had carried since the garage. Connor had broken his promise less than a day after making it.
He argued that the attack proved she and Summer could not remain near him. Scarlett countered that Voss had hunted her mother’s research before Connor entered her life. Separation would not erase Aegis, Bennett, or the enemies already aware of Summer. It would only deprive them of their strongest ally and wound the child again.
Connor insisted he could not watch his daughter live behind armor because of him. Scarlett stepped close enough that he could not retreat into command. Summer did not need a perfect fortress, she said; she needed a father who stayed when fear made leaving easier. Protection without trust was only another form of abandonment.
Scarlett placed the false passports against his chest. “If you walk away now, don’t call it sacrifice,” she said. “Call it what it is—the second time you abandoned your daughter.” Connor stared at the names of the family he was preparing to erase, and for the first time, he understood that running might be the most selfish choice he could make.
