Cade Bentley

## Bio

Cade Bentley used to know power, luxury, privilege. He was fluent in the language of old money and a master navigator of high-powered politics. As a Bentley he was born into it, a fluid gold expected to someday learn from the gems and precious metals of people he flowed between to form himself into something befit for a jewel on the Six-Capitol crown.

Cade, however, never had interest in becoming anything. He rather preferred the liminal spaces between the glorified, where he could fill in the gaps and still get into all the right parties, know the right people, find the right drugs to keep the fun going.

It didn’t come from nowhere, he knew that– but his father’s company, Bentley Industries, was the backbone of Six’s industry, a critical component of the Capitol’s ability to keep its nation the right amount of connected. He supposed the fountain of cash was not bottomless, hypothetically, but so long as the Capitol was, so Bentley Industries would be. In his early twenties, though, the pressure started to mount on him to figure out a direction for his life, for the molten riches within him to begin to cool into his own glorious form. The issue was, Cade was happy like this. Parties, women, men, drugs, cash to blow. Who wouldn’t be? Reluctantly, he took up a role as a stylist in the Games. He had enough connections to bullshit his way through it, and once the tributes were in the Games, he’d be in the clear to do whatever and access Games-exclusive fun. It wasn’t like Six ever won. For a little while, it seemed to work. Paying actual starving artist designers under the table to do his work who needed the cash, attending the occasional meeting, and like magic, he’s off the hook and can do his own thing. Then his father died. Had the fucking audacity to have a heart attack, the bastard, and to leave the entirety of Bentley Industries in Cade’s hands, his only heir, naming him CEO of a national powerhouse company at the ripe old age of 26. It was the first time in Cade’s life he ever felt stress like this. Within days he was drowning in the paperwork, and drowning in his complicated grief. Within months, the company started to take a sharp downturn, and he asked for help in a fellow socialite he thought he could trust to go in with it on him, fairly, fifty-fifty. Business is cutthroat. Selene Honeybell swindled him out of any controlling shares, money, inheritance, control, power, and while his name still, technically, was in association with Bentley Industries, Selene Honeybell was the new puppetmaster. Cade Bentley had nothing. He was homeless, districtless, skilless. He was dirty rainwater running through the gutters of the Capitol streets, formless and helpless to the direction he was being swept. It seemed he was deposited at Everett’s doorstep. Everett showed him a kindness that he barely understood. It didn’t come with the usual language of kindness, not the motherly type or the good samaritan type. The type that offered up his couch, occasional packets of noodles, and more often than once finding themselves in each other’s beds– though to what end, neither of them seemed to want to think about or know. It was simpler that way.

At first, he took the space, finally, to breathe. Process. Grieve. It became evident very quickly, however, that he couldn’t expect Everett’s hospitality to last long. He had little money to pay in rent or groceries (though he tried to pitch in), he had no purpose anymore to keep him occupied, and when they were around each other this often, there was the same weird undercurrent that had remained in stasis for a couple of years now as to what they meant to one another. They looked out for each other, but they fought and thought so differently, but they shared Everett’s bed more than Cade went to the couch.

He had to leave. He’d planned it, but told no one. He waited until Everett’s breathing had dropped off into deep sleep one night, standing and carefully gathering his few items from around the apartment that he thought wouldn’t wake him. It didn’t even take twenty minutes for Cade to then be on the next train to Six.

Six he understood a little better. He knew who to talk to to find jobs. At first they were small ones, simple ones though not at all lacking in their difficulty. Cade didn’t excel at these– he jumped between them a lot. What it did do, though, was introduce him to a host of people at Six’s underbelly, and the types of work where the real money would come. What Cade lacked in intelligence, he made up for in looks and a general lack of self-preservation, favored traits in the kind of work the underground powerful needed done. It went on like this for a year. At first, it was easy cash, Cade could slip in and out of contact. The grip they had on him, though, wound around him quietly, without him noticing. The jobs got a little more complex, the asks bigger– and the pay higher. It was only once he started questioning if he could really do some of the tasks given to him that he realized how tangled in Six’s criminal networks he was now, that to even test the bindings now cinched tight around him could get him killed.

He was stuck. The 132nd Games came and passed, shortly after he was taken into an office and given a talk as though he was receiving a promotion. Or… maybe he was? He wasn’t sure. He had a spot as the bartender on the inside of the Tower for the coming Games, the perfect spot to collect intel and run their drug hustle– among other things they’d ask of Cade. He was perfect for the job, celebrity enough to be right at home in the Capitol, he knew the ropes of the Tower from his time as a stylist there, but low profile enough he’d be perceived as harmless. He could get anything– or anyone– in or out of that Tower. His role starts with a bang at the 132nd Victor’s Ball. He both dreads being back, and is relieved to get some distance from the organized crime life in Six. Besides, bartenders make good tips and sometimes get to bring pretty people home. It could be worse, as he was often reminded these days. Cade is ambivalent about the Games these days. He used to find them fun and intriguing, and sometimes he still enjoys the atmosphere of it all in the Capitol, but he’s gone lukewarm on them since being up close with the tributes– and his unnamed closeness with Everett. He’s quite charismatic, boisterous, and outgoing, but he can be reckless, shortsighted, and cowardly.