Ms. CEO’s Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death – Episode 64
Connor entered the public tribunal without Dominion guards. Families of people killed in his early missions filled the gallery. Their presence made every title he once held feel empty.
Prosecutors separated Vale’s unauthorized experiments from operations Connor had approved. Some missions prevented larger attacks. Others relied on intelligence too uncertain to justify the lives lost.
Connor did not call every death necessary. He named decisions he would reject now and admitted that Vale’s approval had once mattered more than doubt. Responsibility survived manipulation.
Vale interrupted through a hacked public channel. He offered a simple bargain: Connor would claim sole responsibility for the illegal programs, and Black Meridian would stop attacking witnesses. Vale would also provide Lighthouse’s shutdown key.
The tribunal expected Connor to negotiate. Scarlett recognized the trap as another heroic sacrifice designed to remove everyone else’s choice. She waited for Connor to answer himself.
He refused the false confession. A lie could not create justice, even if it promised immediate safety. He accepted only the crimes supported by evidence.
Vale displayed footage of a village destroyed during Connor’s command. Connor explained the intelligence and the order but did not hide behind either. He apologized directly to the surviving families.
One survivor testified that Connor returned after the strike, evacuated the wounded, and terminated the officer who falsified the target report. The act did not restore the dead, but it contradicted Vale’s claim that Connor never cared.
Other witnesses described missions Connor aborted despite financial and political pressure. His change had begun before Scarlett or Summer entered his life. Family strengthened a conscience already fighting to exist.
Richard testified about financing the programs and suppressing records. He rejected immunity. Father and son sat under judgment together without attempting to purchase its outcome.
Evelyn authenticated the files that first exposed Vale. Her evidence established that Connor confronted him and intended to inform the board before the laboratory explosion. Vale’s murder accusation collapsed.
The tribunal found Connor responsible for unlawful secrecy and negligent command in two operations. It cleared him of staging Vale’s death and of the autonomous tests conducted after he withdrew consent.
His sentence included restitution, continuing cooperation, and a permanent ban on unilateral control of strategic weapons. Connor accepted every condition. The limit formalized the man he had chosen to become.
Outside, reporters asked whether the Merchant of Death had been defeated. Connor answered that no one person should ever possess the power he once held. Losing it was not defeat.
Scarlett met him beyond the courthouse doors. She said accountability looked better on him than invincibility. He told her she had terrible taste in husbands.
Summer waited at home with the watch. She asked if the judge said Daddy was bad. Connor explained that good people could make terrible choices and still owe repair.
She saved a new recording: Daddy does not get to control all the weapons. Connor confirmed it with unusual seriousness. Summer labeled it “Good Rule.”
Vale responded by activating dormant Meridian cells. Attacks began against Lighthouse witnesses in twelve cities. The promised shutdown key had never existed.
Cypher found that each attack corresponded to a city where predictive systems controlled public services. Vale was testing whether fear could make governments surrender willingly. The tribunal had been his distraction.
As alarms spread, Evelyn received her authorization to testify before the international hearing. Vale sent one final message: by the time she spoke, Lighthouse would already be the law.