Chapter Four: The Hustle
There’s a kind of hustle that’s born from hunger. Not greed. Not ambition. Just the raw, aching need to make it through another day. She didn’t steal because it was thrilling. She stole for reasons she didn’t understand, she’d already lost herself, she had no identity, she was nothing, and nothing has no value. The first time was a bottle of tequila from her parents bar . She told herself it wasn’t theft—the adults drank it. For the pain in her pelvis. The pain in her head. The pain of being awake. It wasn’t the first lie she’d told herself to survive, and it wouldn’t be the last. Later, it was food. Then came the credit cards. The forged checks. The fake IDs. The fake passports. The web of aliases and stolen numbers, a labyrinth she built around herself. Not to hide, but to move freely as alters in a world that had caged her since childhood. She figured the world refused to see her, care for her, she had to create her own. Somewhere along the way, there would always be ...