Behind the Character: Pedro Cortez

Pedro Cortez is a medical resident who later becomes a large part of Genevieve’s life, and is the main love interest in Gilded Silence, the first book of the Hollow Crown Trilogy.

At first glance, he is easy to overlook. He has no empire. No fortune. No name that opens doors. But appearances can be deceiving.

Pedro was born into a world that was set against his success from the get go. With both his parents heavily addicted to party drugs, it was an uphill battle for him and his siblings to survive. They moved every few months, crossed state lines nearly annually.

When he was ten, he lost his only sister, Juanita, to a fatal accident, his only older sibling, Carlos, to the prejudiced legal system, and his remaining brother, Diego, to adoption. He himself remained in the foster care system till he came of age, bouncing from one foster family to another.

None of it had dulled his love of learning, and ever since his sister’s death, he had made his decision to become a doctor.

He spent months in high school getting perfect scores, staying up late into the night to study, and participating in every extracurricular he could for the extra credits. His hard work paid off when he won a discounted program to the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, from where he graduated as the second highest in his class.

Throughout his life, Pedro has always chosen kindness.

He had lived through the worst of what society had to offer. If it had brought out the worst in him, made him seek revenge on a system he could never win against, he could hardly have been blamed. He chose not to.

He chose to be better.

This is what I loved most about his character. He did not let all the injustice of the world write a villain origin story, as deserved as it might have been. He looked at all of it and chose not to be a part of it.

In Gilded Silence, all of that kindness and compassion that he put out into the world finally comes full circle. He finally finds a woman who is willing to repay every kindness, to help pave a path where he can live up to his true potential.

There is no reader who is not rooting for him in Gilded Silence.

For me, Pedro’s story is about the strength no one sees. The one that shows up at 3 AM, either for their own goals that no one else supports, or someone else who never expected it.

In this story, he does both.