Courtland gentry was an angry kid,
Scratch that, he was a mouth-spitting, fist-flying, teeth-snarling angry kid. What can he say? His father had one hell of a way of beating that anger into him— and every other emotion out.
He’d been the kind of kid living life fast and destined to burn out even faster—either on the streets, addicted and dealing, or eventually in prison or dead. (Unsurprisingly, he managed to hit the last two.)
He was volatile, a soda can shaken every consecutive day waiting to explode—carrying around a passive suicidality he couldn't name at the time but that made him reckless all the same. No helmet on his bike. No seatbelt in the car. No double-checking when his girlfriend of two months told him not to worry after the condom broke because she was on the pill.
But time passes, there’s a brutal break up and three months later, he was following the life path everyone expected of him: stuck in a prison cell, his father dead by his hand, his brother dead from aspirating, and a whole lot of bigger problems to think about than an ex-girlfriend.
Twenty-six years later, he finds himself regretting not looking her up at least once.
Ryland and Colt Grace know they're the product of an accidental teenage pregnancy.
Their mother ran with the wrong crowd back then. She met a boy her age, and they made a mistake. By the time she realized she was pregnant, it was too late for an abortion.
She was too young to raise twins, but her grandparents were more than willing. So she left to grow up herself while Colt and Ryland grew up with grandparents who could easily pass as their parents and a mother who felt more like an older sister than anything maternal.
They never knew who their father was. It was probably written down somewhere, but their mother didn't like talking about him. Their grandparents liked him even less. All they knew was that he'd died in prison when they were young and, from everything they could piece together, wanted nothing to do with them. Any family on his side was dead too.
Still, every now and then, they wondered. What would it have been like if he'd wanted them? But life moves on and people grow up.
Ryland turned out to be a child prodigy in the sciences. And Colt instead he found his passion in the physical.
Thoughts of their father didn't really come to a head until Colt received a wrapped birthday gift from Tom Ryder: a free one-use subscription to Twenty-three and Me. A thank-you gift for almost drowning for him and not suing afterward. Well, technically it was one of Gail's gifts, bundled with some compensation money, but Tom had thrown it in too. Probably to feel included. Colt and Ryland could already trace most of their family tree on their mother's side. But maybe there was a half-sibling out there somewhere. Maybe some distant cousins. It was an intriguing concept. And it was free.
So Colt shrugged, thought what the hell, spat into a tube, and mailed it off without a second thought.
And Tom Ryder, for the first but certainly not the last time, subsequently ruined his life.
Here's the thing: Fitz knew about the twins.
He always did his research before recruiting an asset, and he'd had a good feeling about Courtland. So he'd done his due diligence to see whether Courtland Gentry might be suitable for the Sierra program.
And, surprisingly, he'd found two sons. Older than expected. Court would have been barely more than a teenager himself when they'd been conceived. It was also immediately obvious that Gentry didn't know they existed. The mother and grandparents had almost certainly intended it that way. Frankly, Fitz couldn't blame them. Having the father of your children be a convicted murderer sitting in prison wasn't exactly ideal.
But, he needed assets with no external attachments and Courtland didn't know, so that made the decision a little easier to strike anything connecting Courtland Gentry to those two boys. And sweep it all under the rug. He'd be doing the kid a favor. Besides, Fitz had a feeling Courtland would have accepted the offer even if he had known.
That assumption would come back to haunt everyone but no one more then Courtland Gentry.
