Cyrus was born to a single mother in Gatling, Texas who struggled to afford to pay for herself and her child. Despite that, she did her best for her son, and she raised him as best she could. Without a father figure, Cyrus grew up to be almost naturally antisocial, attached to his mother; not that anyone can blame him — sleeping together on the floor with the oven door open will do that to someone. In fact, Cyrus was mute for most of his early life.
Struggling in the developmental stages, Cyrus’s first word didn’t come easily for him. It wasn’t until he was almost three years old that he was speaking to his mother in short sentences. By the time he started his first year of schooling, it was still uncommon for Cyrus’s mother to get more than a sentence out of her son at a time. Concerned that he was perhaps developmentally disabled, she arranged for him to work with a child therapist provided by the school.
It took a while, almost two complete school years, before the therapist managed to get Cyrus to open up. Once that was over with, the therapist was able to help Cyrus speak more comfortably and confidently. Throughout this whole process, something was constantly proven to be true: Cyrus was smart. His reading comprehension, writing skills, and mathematics proficiency levels were through the roof. He was far beyond his peers in the third grade, and when he and his mother were presented with a choice: send Cyrus to accelerated learning courses in the big city, or remain in Gatling and integrate himself with the rest of his classmates.
They chose the latter, which Cyrus would quickly come to regret.
Even at such a young age, people are — typically — assholes. Having been absent from the class for the previous three years, for being ‘special,’ Cyrus was immediately bullied. He was ostracized and alienated by most of the students at school, and found himself wishing that he would have chose the other option. Cyrus found himself damn near alone. Throughout it all, Cyrus stuck his guns and kept himself five steps ahead of his peers academically, in some cases single handedly dragging his class through a curve.
It wasn’t until fifth grade that Cyrus finally made a friend.
Roxanne Williams invited the quiet, introverted young man to sit with her for lunch, something that at first surprised him more than anything. In fact, as he slowly made his way to her table, he assumed he was getting set up… he wasn’t. Roxanne was his first, and only friend.
From the first day she invited him to sit with him, until the day they graduated, Cyrus stuck to Roxanne like glue. He didn’t know anybody else, and even as he talked to and befriended her friends, he assumed (perhaps rightly so) he was only there because of Roxanne. Cyrus was at least happy to help with homework, and inside Roxanne’s little group, Cyrus was a hot commodity when it came to group projects. It was the best he could do, considering how much they’d done for him just by accepting them into his group.
Cyrus was primed to graduate early, going out of his way to do extracurricular academic activities to quickly acquire all the necessary credits. Instead, Cyrus chose to stick with his friends — they were all he had, after all. Quiet, reserved, and smart, Cyrus worked hard and built an attractive resume, which he used to throw out applications to Ivy League schools…
And, to almost no one’s surprise, Cyrus had his pick of the little when graduation came. With a full ride scholarship to his school of choice, Cyrus chose to go to Yale. Everyone assumed he’d do great things there, and that Gatling would have someone they could brag about.
When Cyrus arrived at his dormitory, he had big dreams and a lot of hope. He was on his own again, and a complete ball of nerves. Luckily though, Cyrus’s roommate would quickly become his best friend, with the pair of them having similar levels of intelligence. Keiran, the roommate in question, told Cyrus that the two of them were going to make a lot of money together…. That, of course, comes later.
Though Keiran and Cyrus were similarly intelligent, Keiran had something that Cyrus hadn’t yet found: charismatic confidence. However, Cyrus was lucky — Keiran was willing to teach and show his friend how to blossom. Cyrus got contacts, he learned to dress himself, he dieted, he worked out. He learned how to talk to people, and how to get them to like what he liked, and think what he thought. Keiran, with eyes on politics, was a great teacher, and Cyrus absorbed the information like a sponge. He had self-discipline; it was direction he had lacked.
Keiran gave him that.
Younger by one year, once Cyrus neared his 21st birthday, Keiran, who had helped mould him into a popular, charismatic, powerful personality told him the plan. Las Vegas. Cyrus was confused at first, Vegas was somewhere they could go for his birthday, he supposed, but he didn’t see how that lined up with Keiran’s plan…. until Keiran explained they were going to put that mathematics degree to good use: counting cards.
Cyrus wasn’t sure about it at first, but Keiran assured him they would be fine. After all, they had everything they needed. Cyrus was the smartest person Keiran had ever met, and Keiran himself was nothing to snuff at; they just needed a few decoys, and it would be easy enough for the pair of them to convince a few girls to go with them to Vegas and help out on the scheme.
By the end of the first weekend, they had made over two hundred thousand dollars. But it was a risky business. Even more so than Gatling, Las Vegas was a lawless land. If they got caught, they were dead. It was that simple. Keiran, however, assured Cyrus they wouldn’t get caught… Greed. Greed is good. Greed made them go again. Greed made them get more chips, more money, more hundred dollar bills to stuff underneath the floorboards of their dorm room.
Cyrus was ready to back out when he had what he felt was ‘enough,’ but Keiran’s greed… Keiran’s greed sent him back, alone. Keiran’s greed got him caught, Keiran’s greed got him shot in the back of the head and dumped in a ditch in the desert. Keiran’s greed convinced Cyrus to drop out. He couldn’t do it without his friend, not a chance. It didn’t matter how much he had improved and came into his own since his high school years, without Keiran, Cyrus didn’t have the will to drag himself through the rest of it.
Following his exit from college, just shy of his Master’s degree, Cyrus found himself wandering with duffel bags full of money and a lack of hope. He could have went back to Gatling. He nearly did. But he didn’t feel like he had anything left there; a promise made years ago was quickly forgotten, and his mother has passed away just a year prior. Drained mentally, and with no other idea where to go, Cyrus found himself heading south, toward New York.
There, Cyrus found the New York Stock Exchange. It was ruthless, it was cutthroat, and headstrong and… Cyrus found that he liked it there. With his bundles of money, Cyrus got the license he needed, and decided to make his own trading company: Keiran Holdings. Using the starting capital, Cyrus soon had a booming business, and more money than a small town boy from Texas knew to do with.
With no love, or hope left in his soul, Cyrus blew threw women and drugs like it was nobody’s business. What else was he supposed to do? At least the cocaine made his nostrils burn. Cyrus was bored and rich, sitting in a massive mansion that was the furthest thing from a home he could remember.
He missed Keiran.
When flipping through the TV channels, Cyrus curiously saw someone that he remembered from a life he’d nearly forgotten. Diana Lancaster, it seemed, had made a life for herself remodeling houses, with an included television show. Cyrus remembered her. She was hot in high school, she was hot now. She was out of his league in high school, but now? Now, Cyrus looked at her as a challenge more than looking at her as a possible significant other.
He reached out to the producers of the show, and they agreed to link him and her up. An eccentric billionaire (billion, with a b) from Wall Street, who went to high school with their host? It wrote itself. Once they reconnected… well, it was only about two hours before they were getting into it on his kitchen counter (which she hated, and was replaced on the show). Cyrus could check that box, not that he had anyone to tell.
In a shocking turn of events, for both parties, they found comfort in each other. She reminded him of when life was easier, and he… he had money and he was hot enough. They dated, which mostly consisted of private jetting around the world and having sex. Then, three years before they got the message about Roxanne, they got married in Thailand. Marriage has been much the same as their relationship leading up to it was.
Now, the pair of them have agreed to head back to Gatling to pay their respects. Cyrus feels he owes it to Roxanne, because if it wasn’t for her, he would have ended himself before he even made it through junior high.