The next morning, William woke up as usual and had breakfast with his mother, Selina, and an obviously grumpy Nissa.
As for Abigail and Jesse? No one even bothered to ask when they'd be waking up.
During breakfast, Lena smiled warmly as she watched her son devour a massive steak, showing zero disapproval of his unrefined eating habits.
Only after William finished his steak and was sipping the coffee Nissa had poured for him did Lena casually mention,
"William, Chelsea's new stadium is finally ready for use—we're just waiting for you to decide on the move-in date."
"Hmm?" William blinked in surprise.
Thinking it over for a moment, he asked, "That's odd… I hired a Chinese construction company for the project.
How did it take more than three years to finish the stadium?"
"You misunderstood," Lena explained.
"The Chinese contractors did complete the main construction within the agreed two-year contract, with high quality and on schedule.
But after the stadium was built, certain people in England wanted to cause trouble—nitpicking about construction quality to make things difficult for the Chinese company."
Lena put down her utensils, dabbed her mouth with a napkin, and sighed.
"The people in charge of inspections and approvals didn't argue with us.
They didn't openly create obstacles, either.
Instead, they simply followed every regulation, inspecting every aspect of the construction with extreme thoroughness.
Initially, we thought that even with this level of scrutiny, the process would take maybe six to nine months at most.
But then you went to Mars, and I lost interest in pushing the approval process forward—so it kept getting delayed.
Then, yesterday, I suddenly got a call saying all inspections had been completed, and the stadium was ready for handover."
"Wait a second," Nissa scowled, looking at William.
"Isn't this sexism?
The moment you left, they came up with endless excuses to stall.
But as soon as they heard you were coming back, they immediately backed down?
If that's not discrimination against women, then what is?"
William shrugged and squeezed Nissa's hand with a smirk.
"If you're really that upset, call Anthony.
He'd love to unleash his best legal team on those auditors—he'd probably send me a six-figure or even seven-figure settlement check afterward."
"Seven figures? Pfft, I could dig up a few shovels of gold on Mars and make that back in minutes," Nissa scoffed.
Then she looked at William more seriously.
"Wait… so we can sue them?"
"Nissa!"
Before William could answer, Selina set down her utensils with an annoyed expression.
"Can't you just relax and do something normal for once?"
William chuckled and patted Nissa's hand, signaling her not to argue with Selina.
"Relax, Selina—Nissa isn't wrong.
Some people just don't know their place.
If the stadium had real issues, I'd be grateful for the inspectors doing their job.
But since there aren't any problems, someone should pay for wasting our time.
Otherwise, it's unfair to the Chinese construction company, and it makes us look like easy targets."
"Give me a break, William," Selina rolled her eyes.
"Who in all of England would dare mess with you without solid proof?"
"Hehe, let's just say I'm bored and feel like having some fun."
Before William could say more, Lena spoke up.
"Enough—you don't need to go looking for trouble.
A year-long approval process? At worst, the media will just call them inefficient.
It's not enough to accuse them of corruption or misconduct.
Besides, even if you want to make a statement for the Chinese company,
they probably don't want you making a bigger fuss.
They'd rather just get paid and move on."
Hearing that, William had to admit—Lena was probably right.
At this point, the stadium had already served as a massive advertisement for Chinese engineering.
Now, the contractors would just want to get their final payment and move on to their next big project—demolishing the old stadium and building a residential complex for another round of profits.
"Alright," William conceded.
"You and the stadium management can decide on the move-in date.
I'll just show up for the opening ceremony."
Compared to Chelsea's new stadium, William was more interested in the Devonshire Museum.
But that was something he'd rather ask Abigail about later—no need to risk annoying his mother by bringing it up now.
After breakfast, Lena happily linked arms with William, leading him on a walk through the garden.
As they strolled, she shared updates on various happenings while William, who already knew everything from Sunday's reports, simply played along—enjoying her company.
While William was enjoying family time in London,
in deep space, aboard the Skrull spaceship that had just emerged from a jump point, Nick Fury and Talos were reviewing the latest intel from their agents on Earth.
"William Devonshire is still in London at his estate," one of the Skrulls reported.
"And our captured operative is no longer transmitting a signal—most likely aboard a spaceship en route to Mars."
Within an hour, the Skrull ship had reached the outskirts of the solar system and began scanning the Mars-Earth travel corridor.
Since the travel routes were fixed, it didn't take long to locate William's spaceship.
After analyzing its speed, the Skrulls concluded that it wasn't capable of interstellar travel.
At its current velocity, it would take years just to leave the solar system and reach a jump point.
This immediately made the Skrulls underestimate it.
Talos smirked and turned to Fury.
"It's obvious now—this William Devonshire guy is a genius, but no matter how smart he is,
he's still limited by the technological level of his civilization.
There's no way he invented space travel on his own.
Since we've ruled out interference from another advanced alien race, I've decided we'll wait on Mars for his ship to arrive.
Once we rescue our operative, we'll head to London to personally investigate these so-called 'wizards' who can see through our disguises."
Fury, after reading the same analysis, actually agreed with their logic.
But his real goal was to see William fight the Skrulls—to test his strength.
So, still deceived by William's act of hiding his true capabilities,
Fury desperately wanted Talos to go to London first.
If things went south, maybe—just maybe—they'd start a fight.
If the Skrulls rescued their operative from Mars first, their willingness to confront William on Earth would drop significantly.
Acting deep in thought, Fury frowned and said,
"I still think Mars is a trap.
We should go to London first and talk to William Devonshire before negotiating the prisoner's release."
"But what if his cryostasis technology is flawed?" Talos argued.
"If there's even the slightest mistake during thawing, our operative could die."
Growing visibly frustrated, he added,
"I suspect Devonshire is using our man as a test subject to perfect his cryostasis tech!"
(End of Chapter)
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