My bedroom hadn’t changed since I left four years ago. The air was thick with dust, and every breath tasted stale, like time had stopped here and refused to move on.
Same faded floral wallpaper. Same creaky double bed with the iron frame. Same view of the clubhouse parking lot through lace curtains that had probably been white once, back when someone gave a shit about things like that. The wallpaper’s faded roses felt like memories I couldn’t scrub away, no matter how far I ran. The room carried the scent of old cigarettes and regret, the muffled sound of distant motorcycles vibrating up through the floorboards. It was all too familiar, as if my absence had never mattered. I could almost hear the echoes of the last argument. How Oscar’s voice thundered down the hallway, making it clear I had no space of my own. The stagnant setting pressed in on me, mirroring the frustration and hopelessness I carried back through the door.
I dropped my backpack on the bed and locked the door. The metallic click was oddly reassuring amid the suffocating nostalgia.
Not that a lock would stop Oscar if he decided to check on me. Not that anything would stop him, really. My brother had always been protective to the point of suffocation. The kind of love that left no room for breathing, no room for mistakes. Fouryears of freedom, four years of making my own choices, the good and catastrophically bad, and now I was right back where I started, as if nothing and everything had changed all at once.
Except this time, I had seventy-five million reasons to get the fuck out as fast as possible.
I pulled my laptop from my backpack. The weight of it was familiar and reassuring. It wasn’t much, just a refurbished Dell I picked up from a pawnshop in Sioux Falls with cash, no questions asked. The kind of machine that wouldn’t be traced back to anyone, least of all me. I had wiped it three times before even turning it on, installed a fresh OS from a USB drive, and loaded it with everything I needed to disappear.
The church meeting had been exactly what I had expected. Zeus asking questions in that calm, measured way that made me want to confess sins I hadn’t even committed yet. The other officers watched me like I was a bomb that might go off. Oscar stood behind me, his presence a wall between me and the rest of the club, protective and imprisoning all at once.
I had stuck to my story: bad relationship, needed to get away, came home because I had nowhere else to go. The classic tale of a woman who fucked up and needed her family. They bought it, mostly because it was close enough to the truth that the lies didn’t show.
Zeus had given me a speech about family, about the club being there for me, about how I was under their protection now. Which was exactly what I didn’t need. Protection meant surveillance. It meant people paying attention. It meant I couldn’t just slip away in the middle of the night without someone noticing.
I had maybe a week.
Two, if I were lucky.
After that, someone would start asking better questions. Someone would start digging. And when they did, they wouldfind a trail that led straight back to a girl who used to dance under purple lights for men who thought money bought them ownership. A girl who had been manipulated, abused, and subjugated to a life without her consent. And that was something I couldn’t explain.
I opened the laptop and waited for it to boot up.
The room was quiet except for the distant rumble of motorcycles and the low murmur of voices from the clubhouse. Saturday night. The brothers would be drinking, playing pool, maybe entertaining some of the club girls who hung around hoping to catch an old lady patch. Oscar would be down there, keeping an eye on things, being the good, loyal enforcer he had always been.
Which gave me time.
I pulled up the VPN software first, routing my connection through servers in Romania, then Singapore, then somewhere in South America I couldn’t pronounce. Three layers minimum. More if I were feeling paranoid, which I absolutely fucking was. The VPN masked my IP address. Made it look like I was accessing the internet from anywhere but a guest room in Athens, Texas.
Next came Tor.
The browser loaded slowly, that little onion icon spinning while it connected to the network. Tor was the gateway to the dark web, the place where people went when they needed things that couldn’t be bought or sold in the light of day. Identities. Weapons. Information. Anything, really, if you knew where to look and had the money to pay for it.
I learned about Tor from a regular at the club in Rapid City. Some tech guy who liked to talk while I gave him lap dances, going on about encryption and anonymity and how the government couldn’t track me if I was smart about it. I listenedbecause listening was part of the job, but also because I knew, even then, that someday I might need to disappear.
Turned out that someday was now.
The Tor browser finally connected, and I navigated to one of the marketplaces I had bookmarked a few weeks ago, back when jumping from town to town, desperate to put distance between me, Michael, and the Prancing Pussycat.
The marketplace looked like a shitty version of eBay, all black background and green text, listings for everything from fake passports to stolen credit cards to contract killings. I scrolled past the drugs and the weapons and the truly horrifying shit I didn’t want to think about, looking for the section I needed.
Identity Services.
There were dozens of listings. Some were obvious scams with prices too low, descriptions too vague, sellers with no ratings or reviews. Others looked more legitimate, if I could call anything on the dark web legitimate. Sellers with hundreds of transactions, detailed descriptions of what they offered, escrow services to protect both parties.
I needed someone good. Someone who could create a complete identity: birth certificate, social security number, driver’s license, credit history, the works. Something that would hold up to scrutiny, at least long enough for me to get out of the country and disappear for good.
I clicked on a listing from a seller calledBrotherDocs. Five hundred transactions, 98% positive feedback, detailed description of services offered. They specialized in U.S. and international identities, complete packages guaranteed to pass basic background checks. Price: $50,000 in Bitcoin, half upfront, half on delivery.
Fifty grand was nothing compared to what I had. I could pay ten times that and still have enough left over to live comfortably for the rest of my life.
I read through the reviews. Buyers talking about how clean the documents were, how fast the delivery was, how they’d used their new identities to open bank accounts, rent apartments, even get jobs. A few complaints about delays, but nothing that suggested the seller was a scam.
Good enough.
I clicked the contact button and started typing.
