Ms. CEO’s Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death – Episode 72
Vale stopped the truck inside the abandoned freight yard. Rain struck the metal roof where Connor and Scarlett had once sheltered. Four years had transformed an accidental refuge into a field of hidden explosives.
The hospital core continued counting down. Evelyn and Cypher guided the local bomb team, but its lock required a code generated inside the truck. Nine minutes became eight.
Vale told Connor that this place proved family was an accident. One drugged stranger, one impulsive night, and one child had diverted the greatest commander he ever trained. Without them, Connor would have inherited the world.
Connor answered that power built on people having no choices was not an inheritance. It was a cage. Scarlett and Summer had not weakened him; they had taught him to see the door.
Inside the service corridor, Scarlett reached the mechanical command panel. Connor’s old identification card unlocked its first layer. Eleven rows of wheels displayed freight numbers from Dominion’s earliest deliveries.
Evelyn recognized Vale’s habit of hiding codes inside real events. Each warehouse required its original route, cargo weight, and delivery time. Most records had been destroyed.
Connor remembered driving the routes but not every number. Scarlett recalled the details written on the manifest she saw in his cab the night they met. Her memory supplied the first sequence.
Cypher transmitted it to the hospital team. The core accepted two of three values. The missing value was the precise time Connor stopped on Highway 47.
Summer searched the offline watch records with Lily. Scarlett had once entered the date and time she first met Connor while building the search file. The information remained in the family archive.
She read the time to Cypher without being connected to Zero Hour. The hospital team entered it manually. The timer paused at three seconds.
Relief lasted only a moment. Ten other cores accelerated because the lead system detected interference. Their codes appeared in rotating fragments across the truck panel.
Scarlett photographed the analog wheels with an isolated camera. Evelyn, Richard, and teams in eleven cities divided the fragments. The final crisis no longer belonged to one commander.
Vale heard their progress and attacked Connor. The two men fought between the cargo locks, each impact shaking the panels Scarlett needed intact. Connor defended the system instead of pursuing a quick kill.
Vale accused him of hiding behind committees and family. Connor said cooperation was not hiding. It was trusting that other lives contained knowledge he did not possess.
Scarlett decoded four more routes from Asterion’s inherited shipping records. Richard supplied two from early Reed ledgers. Evelyn reconstructed three from Vale’s laboratory notebooks.
Only one route remained. Vale carried its manual key around his neck. He ripped Connor’s identification card from the panel and moved toward the driver’s cab.
Scarlett emerged from the service corridor and blocked him. Vale struck the emergency partition, sealing her inside the cab. The first hospital core resumed its three-second countdown but waited on a physical trigger.
He connected the card and his neck key to a handheld controller. Scarlett’s cab restraints locked around her as the hospital core linked to her door. Forcing it open would complete detonation.
Vale escaped through the roof hatch with the only remaining route code. He challenged Connor to follow before he reached a backup vehicle. The choice looked exactly like every trap he had built before.
Connor saw Scarlett behind the reinforced glass and Vale disappearing into the rain. He turned away from his mentor, placed both hands on the mechanical lock, and chose his wife before vengeance.