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His mother, Lilly Brookstone, is the owner of the martial arts dojo and boxing rink at the end of the street.
Originally, they had been two separate things but when Lou (Cole’s father) passed from cancer, the connecting wall was knocked down and they were merged.
Looking back now, he had had the most normal-ish life out of the entire group.
Cole had been seven-years-old at the time of Lou’s death, too young to understand what had happened but old enough to understand that Lou had died and was not coming back.
He was helping out around the place, doing odd jobs like fixing some equipment, and tidying the boxing rink after each lesson concluded.
Then one day when Cole was eight-years-old and on his way home from school one afternoon, he gets jumped.
Some older boys from his school who had been walking that way also had caught sight of him and decided to ‘have some fun’. Or rather, beat him up.
When he got home to the little apartment above the dojo and rink with a black eye and split lip, Lily sat him down at the table.
“Cole, this can’t keep happening,” Lily told the eight-year-old.
He tries to convince her otherwise, “Mum! It’s fine, really,”
“No, it’s not, I’m going to start teaching you martial arts, just so you can defend yourself,” Her tone told him that he couldn’t convince her otherwise.
“Okay…”
In the weeks following, Lily taught him two different styles, Taekwondo and Jujitzu, even though she focused more on the latter, why? He’ll never know.
In the months, plus years that follow, Cole starts helping more and more, and eventually starts his own classes.
Then, on the fifteenth of February, his life explodes.
Okay, it doesn't actually explode. But the boxing ring part of the place did explode.
The explosion happened at nearly seven PM, a time when only two classes were held. Out of the eight people that had been in the building at the time, no one was killed, one was paralyzed from the waist down as one of the metal rafters had fallen on and crushed his legs.
You know what was said earlier about Cole having the most normal-ish life of the group? It was a lie.
After that explosion, a series of not-so-pleasant events followed.
The man who had been paralyzed, Albert Walker, had sued the place costing them a great deal of money.
On top of that, there was half the place that was missing one wall and the boxing ring itself was unsavable, the explosive must have been placed under it, and all the customers who came for boxing lessons demanded a refund, costing them even more.
And they still had the question of who? Who had something against them that they would go far enough as to blow up part of the place?