CRUEL.

full  name.  gael  tomás  cortez  salazar parents.  hector  &  emilia  cortez  salazar siblings. open  (  younger half sister  ) age. thirty  five zodiac. leo gender  &  pronouns. cis  man,  he  /  him sexual  orientation.  pansexual,  panromantic relationship  status.  single occupation. dealer  &  ranch  hand personality  traits. protective,  reliable,  sharp-witted,  determined.  volatile,  melancholic,  skeptical,  temperamental.

about  gael.

GAEL was born as a result of an affair between an important businessman and some random woman in the early 90′s. It was Hector’s greatest desire to have someone to pass his legacy onto, have an heir that’d carry on all his conquests, and despite being a married man, his wife was never able to give him children. Until Gael’s mother came around and fulfilled that dream of his.

Hector offered the woman the world for the boy, knowing well that a nobody like her would never be able to provide Hector the life he deserved. As the son of Hector Cortez Salazar, he was fit to be a king. But the young woman didn’t want to give up on her precious baby, she was willing to fight for him. Still, Salazar was a much more powerful man and he would usually always get what he wanted. It wasn’t much different when it came down to his son. Before Gael was even a year old, his mother had a fatal overdose that resulted in her death. She didn’t have any history of drug abuse nor any marks on her body that could indicate previous usage but her death was ruled as nothing but an accidental overdose. She was a nobody after all, right? After that, Gael was raised by Hector and his wife. 

Growing up, he had everything. He was spoiled rotten by his parents and they’d always find ways to clean up after him whenever he’d start wreaking havoc. Still, his actual relationship with them was never good. The rumors about how he was brought into the world were all he’d hear about as a child and it got stuck to him, made him feel less, made him feel worthless, nothing but the bastard son of a drug addict. It only worsened when his younger sister came around, the legitimate daughter of Hector Salazar, and the family relocated from Mexico City to Miami. But it was never about her, Gael loved his little sister more than anyone in the world. She was his best friend and even with their distance nowadays, there’s still absolutely nothing he wouldn’t do for her.

AS HE GREW OLDER and despite the fact he was his father’s favorite to take over his “throne”, Gael became more and more disconnected from his family and started to walk into a very dangerous path of destruction at the age of twenty. He made some friends, not the good kind of friends, and they sucked him into their violent games. That’s when he found himself going down a road you can’t come back from. And that path only became more insane as he delved into it until he was snatched right out by his father, knowing that if something like that would leak to the public eye, the Salazar reputation would be over. But Gael didn’t care, he didn’t give a shit about that. But he did care about his sister and if something were to threaten her safety, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. 

So he retracted, went back home, even started working in his father’s company as a way to please him after his shenanigans in somewhere in the middle of Texas. And things were good for a while, peaceful even, which was something Gael just wasn’t used to. But that was just the calm before the storm, before his life took an unexpected turn that he hadn’t been able to fix since. He thought he had his shit together, he had a great career, he was fucking happy for once, but his world came crashing down on him when he received an anonymous letter saying that his biological mother’s death wasn’t an accident, that she wasn’t some junkie like he had thought all his life, it was all planned by Hector Salazar himself. Gael still doesn’t know where the letter came from but all the proof he needed in order to believe what it said was there, including very vivid pictures of the woman’s dead body.

ALL THE PENT UP anger he harbored for his father over the years came out all at once and he marched up towards his house looking for answers. All it took was one look at the older man to know that it was all true. Needless to say, Gael didn’t talk to his father after that.

Two years passed and he found himself falling back into his older days of feeling destructive. He completely ruined his life, his career, throwing everything he fought for out the window just like that. His whole life had been a complete lie, anyways. Feeling hurt and hopeless, Gael returned to Texas like a lost puppy, trying to find a new direction in his life but instead only drowning himself in different ways to numb out the pain. He completely lost his sense of reality during that time and it was the worst he’d ever felt. At least, for a while.

Somewhere in between that, the powerful Hector Salazar was involved in a car accident and passed away from the injuries caused. His will stated that his son, Gael, would be named the new CEO of his company but it was clear that he didn’t want anything to do with that anymore and passed it on to his sister. Such action was looked down by all of those who were familiar with the Salazar’s and for a time, they saw Gael’s refusal as an insult to everything his father had previously done for him. Rumors even stated that Gael, the black sheep, had caused Hector’s death but nobody ever bought that soap opera bullshit.

HE EVENTUALLY was able to get back on his feet and walk on his own again, finding solace in the gang he now called a family. The life he lived wasn’t the one he pictured for himself but at least it had been his choice, he was the one in control now. And in the midst of that, just as he found a meaning to his miserable life again, he would get caught smack dab in the middle of a shower of bullets. A decade’s old fight between gangs finally lead to the confrontation that almost left Gael for dead, clinging to an open wound while he bled out onto the burning hot concrete of Texas. 

A bitter end to a bitter life.

And yet, somehow, he was able to make it out again. That wake up call was all he needed to know that life he was leading wasn’t going to last and, as someone who’s always been extremely pessimistic, he took it as a sign that he needed to change. Turns out, he didn’t want to die. Not like that.