Chapter Text
1. 15th June 2022
2. 16th-18th June 2022
3. 19th June 2022
4. 20th June 2022 - Stede's phone
5-6.
7. 20th June 2022
Stede has been waiting a long time for his father to die.
He knows that it probably seems callous, but it doesn't stop it from being true.
Edmund Bonnet was - to the public - a charming, wealthy, enigmatic businessman, a family man, and a respected employer.
To Stede, he was a tyrant. The torment of his childhood, a fierce man with a fearsome temper. A man who wanted his son to be anyone other than who he actually was.
Nevertheless, Stede sets the picture frame on his new desk as CEO of his father's company; a portrait of him with his parents, aged ten, his father smiling, but with an imposing hand upon young Stede's shoulder. Sitting in his new office, at his father's old desk,Stede absentmindedly reaches for that shoulder now, fretfully. He can still feel the weight of that hand upon it.
Shortly after that photo was taken, he'd been whisked back to his boarding school without a goodbye, or so much as a glance from his father, who'd often said that boarding school 'made boys into men'.
Stede shuddered.
A knock at the door snapped his gaze away from that ghastly photograph. He looked up as Lucius poked his head around it.
"All okay boss, got everything you need?"
"Uh, yes, thank you Lucius. Uh, the computer…?"
"Someone's coming to connect it," his assistant entered the room fully, rolling his eyes, and placing a takeaway cup of coffee on his desk, "told them to be quicker but-"
"No, no! It's…it's fine, I'll be…" his eyes flick back at the photo, "...fine."