GENDER & PRONOUNS: Cis Male & He/Him.
DATE OF BIRTH & AGE: March 18, 1989 (31).
HOMETOWN: New York City, NY.
CURRENT LOCATION: Beatrice’s Landing.
OCCUPATION: Boxing Instructor.
HOW LONG THEY HAVE BEEN IN AMORY? Newcomer — 3 months.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Child Abuse, alcohol and drug mention.
Family: Edgar doesn’t know what the word means entirely. Of course, he knows what the dictionary says family is, and what the media says family is, but he doesn’t actually know what a family is supposed to be. He’d always felt as if he was living in a reality tv show – on the outside, everything seemed perfect. The Fortiers had money – the result of a rather successful winery business that had been in the family for generations. The Fortier children had the best of everything – schooling, clothing, material possessions. On the inside, though, family was his own personal hell. His mother often numbed herself with pills and his father… Well, Xavier was the worst kind of monster – the kind of man who abused his wife and children simply because he could. The only bright spot in young Edgar’s life was his sister, but even she didn’t know how much he suffered.
Edgar made sure of that. Life may have been torture for him, but he would be damned if life was anything less than perfect for Alexandria. She was entitled to the picturesque home life that they’d seen on the television and obsessed over and he was determined to do everything in his power to give her that, even if it meant walking through hell.
Edgar Michael Fortier. It was a stately name. One a prince would be proud to bear, but to a young, broken boy, it felt like a burden. Edgar never felt as if he quite belonged. The son of a Chinese mother and Caucasian father, Edgar was made aware of just how different he was from a young age; he wasn’t white enough to have a place among the children of his father’s friends, and he wasn’t connected enough to his Chinese heritage to truly have a place among his mother’s family. He’d almost come to expect the quizzical looks that always accompanied his introductions.
He learned from a young age to breathe through those feelings, to be the stronghold his surname suggested. When the other children hurled ugly words at him, Edgar would simply bury the feelings that those words brought to the surface. Whenever his father flew into his rage and used Edgar as his target, Edgar would grit his teeth and propel his mind to somewhere else. After a while, it became easy to hide behind the mask he’d cultivated – cold, unfeeling, all business; to be the snake, biding his time for the perfect moment to strike.
That moment finally came on Edgar’s eighteenth birthday. His mother had baked a small cake (the first kind thing she’d done for her son in years). At first, it seemed as if the family would get through one event without an incident, but as the night progressed, it became increasingly apparent that Xavier wouldn’t allow his son to be happy. Overflowing with selfish pride, he announced that he’d played a hand in separating his son from the boy he’d fallen in love with. The family, after all, had different plans for Edgar – plans that didn’t involve losing his heart and his good sense to a staff member’s son. Years later, Edgar still cannot say exactly what happened. One moment, he’d been staring his father in the eyes. The next, his hand was wrapped around his father’s throat, pinning the man to a wall.
After his eighteenth birthday, Edgar cut all ties to his father. He changed his surname to his mother’s – Yang – and moved to New York City, an entire ocean away from the family’s legacy. While he still maintained his connections to the winery and its staff, Edgar began to build a life away from the Fortiers. This led him to the private security industry, where he could easily convert the skills he’d learned training since his youth with his sister. It was a career at which he excelled. The clients were annoying and Edgar couldn’t say that the job was fulfilling, but it was easy enough and kept him sharp.
As he got closer to the end of his twenties, Edgar realized that being a bodyguard for hire was not what he planned to do for the rest of his life. He moved to Amory, hoping for a quieter existence – somewhere where he could focus his efforts into building his own private security firm while also learning more about business management in the case that he ever decided to return to France and the family’s wineries.
POSITIVE TRAITS: Disciplined, meticulous, charming.
NEGATIVE TRAITS: Short-tempered, workaholic, jaded.
