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“But I don’t want to be a butcher.”
“Valerio,” my father said placatingly, “it’s an honest—”
“Not only do I not want to be a butcher,” I growled, “but I don’t want to move back ‘home’ with you either. Argentina may be my birthplace, but it’s not my home. Not anymore. Not after you brought me here fifteen long years ago, and raised me in America.”
I stormed out, before I could dwell on the pain I saw in my father’s eyes. Neither of them called after me. They were wise enough to let me go.
Cordoba.
It was a wonderful place. A fun place, filled with laughter and beauty and all kinds of amazing memories spent running around with my cousins, enjoying our youth.
But it wasn’t the same for me as it was for my parents. And it never would be.
My phone buzzed, and I picked it up without looking. Brock’s voice came through, loud and clear:
“In for steaks?”
I smiled, even as my stomach rumbled. Fuck yeah I was in for steaks.
“Our girl’s out tonight,” he continued, “finishing her projects. So it’s just the three of us.”
Family.The word had taken on all new meaning for me here in America. It was a much different meaning than my parents had for the word, and that’s because I had a life here. Independence. Even….
Brothers.
“Make mine medium rare,” I grinned.
At the other end of the phone, I heard Brock’s brotherly laugh. “Is there really any other way?”
Thirty-Two
SLOANE
Sweat poured down my face, dripping from the end of my chin as I pulled down the heat-shield and got back to work. The casting mold was already set. The investment hardened, the pouring funnel already positioned to send a rush of molten metal through the sprue-channels and down into the pockets created after my burn-out.
Take it slow, Sloane.
It was something I always had to remind myself around this part. The whole project was so close to being finished — just minutes away from being a real, tangible thing inside of nothing more than a concept in my mind. I’d spent hundreds of hours sculpting the piece itself, getting it to look exactly the way I wanted. Every last detail had been checked and double-checked. Every mold-line, chip or flaw had been buffed out.
Reverently I approached the induction furnace, where the liquid aluminum-bronze glowed in a shimmering, bright orange pool. I’d skimmed off the impurities and added my flux. Done my last temperature check, at exactly one-thousand thirty-one degrees.
“It’s now or never.”
Talking to myself helped my confidence somehow, although I was never really sure why. Maybe it made me feel less alone in what I was doing. Especially here, late at night in the foundry, when the only three souls around were me, myself, and I.
I pushed the green button, and with the scream of a hydraulic motor the furnace began listing to one side. At twenty-six degrees of incline the molten metal flowed into the crucible I’d be using as a casting ladle. It hung from the ceiling on a movable overhead assembly, on chains as thick as my forearm.
There we go…
I waited until the material had transferred, then began the process of lining it up with the mold itself. This involved two different chains; one that went left and right, one that went up and down. Slowly but not too slowly, I swung the crucible over the pouring funnel. I had to be careful and I had to be precise. But I also had to be quick, because if the metal cooled down…
C-CHUNK!
My heart leapt into my throat as one of the chains shifted, then dropped a good six inches on one side. The crucible tilted. I gasped out loud.
“What the—”
The chain shifted again, and then suddenly—
