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CHAPTER ONE
Abraham Castro Salcedo listened intently as his mother, Bella, retold the story of how she’d lost her sight, then miraculously regained it via a surgical procedure that she didn’t know was an option for her disease.
He’d heard the story before. Living in poverty in the rough Hispanic gang neighborhoods of Los Angeles, her brother was forced to care for her when their parents left them alone. When his sister continued to struggle with her vision, he had no choice but to join the gangs in order to have the money to care for her and get her sight back.
But then a doctor who ran a free clinic told her to get used to being blind. No options. No surgeries. Nothing. They didn’t know any better.
Years later, after meeting and falling in love with his father, Diego ‘Razor’ Salcedo, Bella met Gabi, their resident physician and surgeon at the Steel Patriots. Gabi knew something was wrong after a few simple questions and an examination. They took her to a specialist in Baltimore, and with one surgery, her eyesight was recovered.
Yes, he’d heard the story a dozen or more times, but it always amazed him that his father had fallen in love with her, even knowing she was blind. He’d like to believe he would have the same respect and foresight to love a woman no matter what her physical attributes, but it was difficult to see that through fifteen-year-old eyes.
“Didn’t it scare you to know you might have kids, and she wouldn’t see them?” asked Abe.
“Honestly? I never thought of it,” said Razor. “I think I was more bothered by the fact that she would never see how beautiful she is. I wanted her to see that. To feel it.”
The other men stared at young Abe. They were new members to the team, all older than him, but he knew one day he would fight alongside them.
“Is there something else you want to ask, Abe?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Maybe. I guess I’m just wondering, I mean, I know a lot of guys here are married to women that had, you know, things wrong with them.”
“Abe, no woman here has anything wrong with them,” said Gaspar. “Almost everyone on our compound has been through something. Tragedies, abuse, trials, but there is nothing wrong with them. Sometimes, that leaves visible scars. Sometimes, they’re invisible. But there is nothing wrong with them.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. I mean, if they have scars, doesn’t that mean there’s something wrong?”
“Tell me why you think that?” asked Ghost. He knew Abe and knew that he wasn’t raised to believe physical impairments meant something was inherently wrong with you.
“Mr. Krauss, our biology teacher at school. He said the perfect body has no imperfections. No scars, nothing wrong with their DNA, they can see perfectly, hear perfectly, their legs function properly. He showed all these photos of men and women. They were dressed, I mean, in bathing suits, but they looked amazing to me.”
“But not to Mr. Krauss?” asked Razor.
“No. He started pointing out all the things wrong with them. Some of the women had short hair. He said women should have long hair only, that God willed it that way. Some of the men didn’t have enough muscle definition. He really criticized that. I mean, the guys in the photos looked incredibly fit and able to hold their own. Between you and me, I think he takes steroids. He’s huge but in a bulky, awkward way. He can’t really turn his neck or anything.”
“Huge doesn’t equate to strong or physically fit,” said Razor. “You know that. And Mr. Krauss should not be speaking of such things in a biology class.” Abe shrugged, looking at the men in the room.
“He made fun of Keith,” said Abe softly, staring down at his feet.
“Fun of him, how?” asked Gaspar, immediately ready to defend his nephew.
“He came to pick a bunch of us up from school the other day, and Mr. Krauss saw us signing to him. The next day, he asked me who the ‘dumb mute’ was. I told him Keith wasn’t mute; he was deaf and that it wasn’t nice to say.”
“What did he do?” asked Razor.
“Failed me on a verbal quiz,” frowned Abe. “But it was all on stuff we haven’t even studied yet. How was I supposed to know all that stuff?”
Gaspar looked at the other men, then noticed some of the other boys across the grove. He waved over Patrick, Matt, Benjamin, and Christian.
“What’s up?” asked Christian.
“Are you boys all in Mr. Krauss’s biology class?” asked Ghost. The boys looked at each other, then at Abe.
“Yes, sir. He’s a real tool, sorry.”
“He sounds it,” said Gaspar. “Is he teaching you all that you have to have perfect bodies?”
“Yes, sir,” said Matt. “He made fun of Dad’s scar once, and I warned him if he said something again, I’d make sure Dad knew. It was kind of cool to see him scared of a man he thought was imperfect.”
“Why didn’t you tell your father?” asked Ghost.
