Daniel Stevens POV
January 1974
Success, in my father's eyes, was a simple equation. Tonnage moved. Ore extracted. Pounds on the balance sheet. He built Stevens Consolidated from a single Cornish tin mine into a minor empire of mining and shipping with the force of his will. He was not a cruel man, nor an unloving one. He was… consumed. The business was his first child, his true legacy. My mother accepted it with quiet grace. I learned to view his absences not as neglect, but as the immutable weather of our family life.
His sudden death in my final year at Cambridge did not feel like a storm. It felt like the sea itself had vanished, leaving me standing on empty sand, expected to command the tides.
I never wanted the crown. My passion was the muddy, roaring chaos of the rugby pitch. The clarity of a game plan, the tangible collision of effort and result. I'd gone to the University of Illinois on a whim, chasing American football, a bigger, stranger version of the game I loved. There, I found a different kind of clarity.
Margaret
She was from Indiana soil, sharp as a whip in economics, yet grounded in a way my family of speculative industrialists never were. She saw the world as a system to be understood, not a prize to be captured. When she worried her farming family would balk at her marrying a British industrialist's son, I'd smiled. "Darling, you're rich in land and we're rich in capital. They might be shocked you're crossing an ocean, but they'll understand the love and our marriage."
My goal for Stevens Consolidated, once I took the helm, was not my father's explosive expansion. It was consolidation. Strength through stability. We would not be the biggest, but we would be the most resilient. My business style was to reinforce the hull, check every seal, and plot a steady course. Expansion would come only when the opportunity presented a risk so calculated it was nearly a certainty.
Watching my children, I see the echoes.
Damien, at eight, is all my unspent athletic energy. He charges through the house like a wing forward, tackles problems head-on, and possesses a loyalty as solid as granite. He wants to understand the business. He asks about ships and minerals with a practical curiosity. The first son, built in the old image. The foundation. I will teach him to be a better steward than I had to be.
Andrei… is a different equation.
He is Margaret's mind housed in a quiet, observing form. At five, he carries a stillness that feels ancient. I confessed my worries to Margaret once—that his silence was a fracture, a sign of some deep unease. She, ever the cool analyst, had him assessed. "Gifted," they said. His mind works on a level that simply leaves social noise behind. It's not a weakness, but a different operating system.
I would have split the company in two, happily, if he'd shown an interest. A mining arm for Damien, shipping for Andrei. But Margaret, my interpreter of all things Andrei, explained his focus was turning elsewhere. "Media," she said. "Intellectual property." Then she showed me his project.
Mortimer the Mouse Detective.
It was a professional-looking dossier, absurdly so for a child. Character bios, market analysis of the "9-15 year-old reader," concept art for the first three mysteries. The mouse himself, Mortimer, was shrewd but kind, solving puzzles through logic and observation. It was charming. But it was the supporting documents that stunned me: a rudimentary but sound cash-flow projection, notes on royalty structures, and a clause about retaining all adaptation rights.
This wasn't a child's drawing. It was a business prospectus.
Tonight, after the children are asleep, I sit in my study with it. The fire crackles. I pour a small whisky, not for the drink, but for the ritual of appraisal. I shift from 'Father' to 'Chairman.'
I examine the proposal as I would any new venture from a junior executive.
The Product: Unique, defensible. A character with franchise potential.
The Market: Identified gap. Tangible.
The Ask: Minimal. Just an introduction to my contacts in publishing.
The Risk: Negligible. A few rejections at worst, a small capital outlay for illustration at best.
The Potential Upside: Not just monetary. It's a test of Andrei's peculiar mind in the real world. It's confidence. It's a first step.
A smile touches my lips. He isn't asking for a handout. He's asking for a bridgehead. He's using the family's social capital as his first line of credit. It's a shrewd, sophisticated move. A move I respect.
As for Daphne, my little queen… she needs to ask for nothing. The world is hers. Damien would storm its gates. Andrei would devise a seamless, logistical plan to acquire it. And I? I would simply sign the purchase order. Her joy is the one profit margin I care about without calculation.
I take a final sip, the warmth spreading. My father looked at me and saw a successor to be molded. I look at Andrei and see a pioneer charting a territory entirely his own. My job is not to mold him, but to fortify his position.
I open my address book, finding the number for Charles Waltham, a managing director at Penguin Books. A good man. Likes golf. Appreciates bold ideas.
Tomorrow, I will make the call. Not as a father begging a favor for his son's hobby. But as Daniel Stevens of Stevens Consolidated, introducing a promising new venture to a valuable contact. I will present the Mortimer proposal on its merits.
Because that is what Andrei deserves. Not indulgence, but professional respect.
The game he is playing is different from mine. But I recognize a sound business strategy when I see one. And for the first time, I allow myself to envision it: not just shipping manifests and mineral yields, but storybooks, screen credits, and a legacy built not from the earth, but from the mind.
It has a certain elegance to it.
A/N
Daniel makes the call. How will the hard-nosed world of 1970s publishing react to a business proposal sourced from a five-year-old prodigy? The stage is set for Andrei's first real-world test.)