Our Saving Grace

Burdens of a Leader - Mr. Blackbourne

I finished cubing the mango before flipping the fish in the pan, and testing the cook with my pinky finger. It had been much too long since we all sat down and had a home cooked meal together and there were some serious things that we needed to talk about. Hell, who was I kidding? We all needed intensive therapy, but I knew that wasn't going to happen. But something had to change because no matter how much I tried to control the situation, my family was spinning out of control. 

Looking back, I can now see that we got cocky from our early success and prided ourselves in being able to take on more challenging missions because of the size of our family. But the truth of the matter is that the majority of my team was under the legal drinking age, and yet we had done things and seen things that most grown men didn't have to in a lifetime on this Earth. Part of that came with life within the Academy, but I worry that maybe I pushed these boys too hard, too fast. 

But the moment that I suggest that we slow down and work on problems within the family, I can feel my brothers pulling away from me. Every single one of them. As far as I am concerned, the only thing keeping us together is the work that we do. Thus, I decided to take yet another long term, difficult mission and within weeks of starting the whole thing had blown up in our faces. We were still reeling from the last job and all of us were suffering from unseen wounds. Because of that we missed critical details in the initial recon step and decided on a course of action that lead to a full blown firefight on the outskirts of a heavily populated city. 

I had already been been called up to the Academy review board and got my ass personally handed to me for those mistakes. It had cost me more personal favors than I had to compensate for our mistakes and for the first time since I was a boy, I was in a favor debt. Not to mention what we owe the Toma team. Not that I wasn't hugely grateful for them for the save - I mean I could have lost almost half of my family that night if not for their quick actions - but I was not a fan of Axel Toma or the majority of his team. I did not like that he had spent time in prison before joining the Academy. Allowing felons to join our ranks did not send the right message. In my opinion, he lacked finesse. 

Which made swallowing my debt to him that much harder. But I was a man of honor and I would do everything in my power to ensure that debt paid. Which was one reason why we needed a family meeting tonight - Axel Toma called me today to ask for a favor. One that I was fairly confident my brothers would more than willing to fulfill, but there were multiple different aspect to consider. 

With the fish done, I moved into the dinning room and started setting the extra long dinning room table that Victor had special ordered. This was technically his beach house, located a little south of the city along the coast, but Nathan and Gabriel also called this place home. It was also the place that we used as home base the most often because it had the most room - if you discounted the Morgan's primary resistance. After we all graduated from the Academy, Kota had decided to get a small apartment downtown and seemed to embrace the times that he spent in solitary. Both of the Taylor boys still lived out on Uncle's property, while Silas had bought a house that he lives in with his family. Sean and I still live in our condo and I find the arrangement to my benefit. He can usually pull me out of my OCD ways long enough to see the bigger picture of things. Or at least he used to. 

Kota arrived and helped me move the large amount of serving dishes to the table and I asked for a report on how wiring up another one of the Gilbane construction sites went. He detailed that they covered as much real estate as possible without actually setting foot on Gilbane property, because we had recently discovered a link connecting Gilbane with an impressive start up tech company called Capacity. Capacity filed a patent on a heat signature, motion activated, security camera and we figured that was the reason why we had been caught searching the first construction site.