Chapter 1: The Last Chance Ticket

May 2018. At my lowest point, I flew into Louisiana alone. The airport air tasted stale, like old popcorn and regret.

I’ll never forget that gross, flickering yellow light in Dallas—made the whole gate look like a gas station bathroom. My hands shook, not just from the cheap airport coffee, but from everything I’d left behind. As the plane dropped lower, the air got thick and swampy, and Louisiana sprawled beneath me—somewhere between green and gray. It didn’t feel like a new beginning. It felt like a last chance.

For 527 days, I saw gamblers get their fingers broken right in front of me. I saw girls trafficked like cattle.

Even now, those images haunt me—the dull crack of bone, the muffled sobs behind a closed door, the silent exchange of cash in the smoky corners of backroom bars. These memories stick to me like sweat in the Louisiana summer, impossible to wash away.

The stories that swirl around the borderlands are gripping, but no TV drama can ever capture the true brutality of reality.

I’d seen all the Hollywood takes on crime and the South—swamps and neon, everything looking slick and dangerous. But nothing on TV prepared me for the way reality bites: the stink of spilled beer mixed with blood, or the way fear sits heavy in your gut when you realize nobody’s coming to save you.

Everyone says the industrial parks near Shreveport are hell for outsiders. I think even demons would hesitate to linger in a place like this.

The truck stops here run all night, but nobody makes eye contact for long. Men in camo jackets and muddy boots drift through the parking lots. Even the stray dogs seem to know better than to trust a stranger. I kept my head down, my wallet in my front pocket, and my secrets even closer.