by V. Theia
Funny.
Lawless would get on with this guy on the outside. Maybe have some fun with his church going wife too, he’d seen the pics. She was hot in a good housewife needs a decent fuck kind of way. He could picture her trussed up in rubber ropes and hanging from a beef hook while the officer went down on her.
Lawless smiled on the inside.
It was satisfying to move a chess piece into place.
“Swear on my fucking grave, you don’t bring my name into it. I might not have the Renegade Souls backing me, but I’ll make you regret it somehow.”
Check the balls on him. Lawless laughed.
Dreyers paced some more. “Hot bastard blackmailing me. Should’ve fucking known.”
“Ah, don’t look at it like that, it’s doing a favor, that’s all.” He appeased like a normal man.
Dreyers only snorted and seemed resolved to doing this for Lawless.
Maybe he’d do the dirty on him, get Lawless thrown into ad-seg. Or moved to another prison. But he hoped Dreyers would understand what kind of payback would follow.
Starting with his good wife.
As Lawless turned to leave, he imparted over his shoulder. “I need it this week, Dillon.”
It wasn’t up for discussion.
“Fuck,” the other man said and then sighed, started to follow Lawless out. “Hey, you think I should do that then, with my Emmy?”
“Man, you like dick up your ass, tell her to get on one of those sex toy sites to buy a strap on, her sex life will improve 200%. You fucking normal weirdos, no wonder you all turn crazy with the things you hide.”
Dillon Dreyers asking for Lawless’ sex advice after he’d blackmailed him was as close to crazy as it got.
But what do you know, Officer Dreyers sex life with his nice girl wife was never better after that.
Was Lawless turning into a humanitarian?
Prison wasn’t ideal, it was pretty fucking shitty most days but Lawless had it handled.
He grew a wealth of patience to tap into. Needing only to close his eyes to see his who and why reasons.
Never letting himself forget.
Carrying vengeance was a burden he liked on his back.
It kept Lawless sane.
SEVENTEEN
“Stained in ink and sin.” – Lawless
Privacy was an illusion in prison.
Lawless was left alone for the most part, but he was still monitored and told where he could go and when.
Not for the next few hours though. He paid well for the time alone and like a well-trained fish, Dreyers got him uninterrupted time in another other convicts cell.
The pain was welcome, he didn’t feel the needle repeatedly going in his skin.
For more than two hours he watched the tattoo become stained onto his body and didn’t feel a thing other than the thrill of what he was seeing unfold.
The petty thief working on him was a true artist and the design took form on both forearms leading all the way down to his wrists.
“You’re all done, boss,” the guy announced, giving the area a last wipe to clear away dots of blood. Lawless would take care of the area himself with the antiseptic cream and cling wrap in his cell.
For now, he looked down at the dark ink.
Intricate thin lines that looked like brush strokes.
Detailing on each feather, shading a 3D effect.
To anyone looking, it seemed as if it were only feathers adorning his arms. It was only when Lawless put both forearms together that the angel wings spanned appeared to curve around him.
He tossed the 200 bucks to the guy, and then Lawless walked the hallways of the top wing back to his own cell, only officer Dreyers knew Lawless wasn’t in his cell as he was supposed to be.
Special privileges didn’t suck.
Later that day, Pastor Danny Murphy drove the six hours to the prison to visit with Lawless. People looked at their table like he was receiving last rites.
Ah, maybe he was in a way. The holy man had a way about him.
The tattoo burned that night as it settled into his skin and started the healing process.
It reminded Lawless of his mission.
Never forget was a moto many used in vain, throwaway sentiments said in the heat of the moment but soon passed.
He never did.
Eye on the fucking prize.
Only, there wasn’t any prize for him.
Not one he’d allow himself to think about anyway.
His arm outstretched on the hard bunk; he turned his head to look at the ink.
The reminder was stark and ingrained into his skin.
Forever.
EIGHTEEN
“Never turn your back on the devil…he doesn’t play fair.” – Lawless
When a man had nothing but time, it was straightforward to plan an unplannable murder.
His ducks were in a row and ready for plucking before going into the boiling pot.
“Swear to Christ, if you get caught doing anything, you keep my name out of your mouth, you got it?” Dreyers dared utter as he let Lawless out of his cell.
Lawless grinned at Bennie who had saucer wide eyes looking down at him from the top bunk. He lifted a hand and put a finger to his lips to tell the other man to be quiet while the C.O. locked Bennie in.
“Stop fretting, Dillon, go back to watching Disney plus with your buddies. I’ll be a good boy.”
Oh, what lies.
Thanks to the nervous nelly C.O. Lawless was now in receipt of a temporary prison job over in D wing, filling in for a guy who got sick.
It was no coincidence…
For three weeks, Lawless blended in to D wing. He mopped every floor like he was gonna receive blowjobs for his efforts and while he did, he got the lay of the land. It wasn’t hard to see Carmine ran rackets through the wing with the help of some crooked C.O’s.
There was only a small window of opportunity with the inmates out of their cells for yard time, before Lawless was taken back to his wing.
He needed to act swiftly and to do it without detection by cameras, guards or other inmates.
Some would say he was an overachiever, that he aimed for the impossible.
Ah, maybe they were correct. He’d put himself in prison to ice a man.
A man it had taken almost a year to get close to and now Lawless was looking at him from across the prison gym doing chest curls.
Built bigger than Preacher, the guy looked like he swallowed steroids with coffee. Every vein grossly standing out of his bulged arms.
The big break was now, Lawless understood. No second chances here.
It was the rare moment none of Carmine’s goons hovered around him. Lawless pulled up his hoodie and moved deeper into the gym. Keeping to the fringe of the room, his eyes searching out the camera sensors, because of Teresa and her Marvel obsession, he knew the blind spots for all the cameras.
The guy saw Lawless and dismissed him as nothing of interest.
Ah, dude, bad mistake, he thought.
What kind of villain was he if he didn’t sense imminent death?
The risks had been counted and deemed worth it.
If he got caught, it wouldn’t be a three year sentence and out for good behavior. Lawless would be serving life.
He didn’t care, not so much at all. A good life so far, he’d done everything he wanted to do. Hadn’t gone to space mountain but oh, fucking well.
Taking a quick gander at the ink adorning his forearms, the angel wings reinforced his decision as he pretended to walk to the weight wall. Carmine was busy looking at himself in the mirror doing curls.
When Lawless crossed his path, the other man growled. “You wanna get out of my fucking way?”
Vanity was going to be his downfall.
“I don’t think I do,” he told Carmine in a tone that translated as being both bored and superior.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?”
The bluster meant nothing to Lawless, he’d fa
ced bigger men in his past and he was still alive. That one second of rage gave him the time he needed to pick up a forty pound dumbbell. When he faced the mouth breather again, he moved with adrenaline fueled speed. Feet carrying him forward, his veins steady, his brain on fire now the end was near. Shoving the weight into Carmine’s throat, the force and shock took him down like a bag of fucking bones. Pressing the bastard into the bench, hard enough to immobilize in seconds.
Carmine dropped the weight he was holding, trying to save his own life.
Bad fish always tried to survive first.
Next would come anger and threats, followed by bargaining.
Lawless liked the acceptance part of any death. When a man accepted it and Lawless watched it creep into the eyes staring back at him.
This death he was going to enjoy like a well charred pot roast his dear drunken nana would cook on rare occasions.
Gulp it down, taste the victorious acid in his throat.
Relish the death for what it meant to him.
Vengeance and payback.
“Motherfucker,” Carmine tried to say, only it came out gurgled, his eyes bulging.
Aw, poor guy. Should he let him breathe for a second? Nah. Using every ounce of strength, he pressed harder, the force of his hatred giving Lawless some fucking Popeye kind of power. Those tiny important bones in the throat started to crack.
Pop. Pop. Pop!
Blood vessels merged into those bulging eyeballs, his skin mottling to a deep burgundy.
It was like a beautiful fucking symphony listening to death coming to call.
“What was that? Didn’t quite hear it over the sound of a filthy cunt dying.” Lawless smiled like a sinister fucking monster. Straddling both the bench and Carmine’s body, using all his own muscle weight to choke the filth.
Death was motion. And a silent song.
Cancer took people sickeningly slow. Zapping the energy and dignity from the husk of a decaying body. He would much prefer to be taken out in a blaze of quickness.
But a dumbbell to the throat? Even Lawless himself thought it was pretty brutal but ask if he cared. Ask him if he had second thoughts.
“Gonna…kill…..you….” the guy wheezed, battering his hands with all his weak little might.
Of course it was hopeless. The weight was forty pounds and Lawless weighed close to two hundred. Do the fucking math.
“Sure, sure...ah, maybe not.”
He pushed harder. As slow as he wished he could take this assassination, time was of the essence and he watched the man dying in pain before his eyes. The struggle seeping out of him.
“Consider your debt paid in full, fucker,” he growled. Giving one last heave down to break his neck and cut off whatever little airways was left.
When he stood, air pounded out of his lungs, sweat dotted on his forehead, but there was no time to process how juiced he felt.
Using the cuff of his prison issued shirt to wipe any trace of him from the dumbbell before replacing it on the wall. There was a second he smirked at the slumped Carmine. Funny that death made him happy.
“See you in Hell,” he smirked and retraced his steps around the perimeter of the room.
It took Lawless precisely three and a half minutes to kill a man. And four minutes to return back to his mopping where he was humming a song stuck in his head when a C.O. told him to make his way back over to his own wing.
He was halfway there when the alarm sounded loudly. He heard scuffled feet and doors slamming shut. Ah, lockdown so soon, he grinned and waited for the electronic door to open for him. “What’s going on?” He asked the guard.
“Keep fucking moving,” the man said and gave Lawless a shove.
The prison was on lockdown for two and a half days.
And in those almost three days, Lawless read five books and terrified cellmate Bennie at least twenty times with his mere presence.
Prisons talked. It quickly became clear to everyone for the lockdown.
Everyone was interviewed, Lawless included. Several times.
It paid to be a consummate liar because he didn’t even appear on their radar as the suspect. That finger pointed to one of Carmine’s gang. Poor bastard.
It was Colonel Sanders in the library with a candlestick.
Lying on his bunk that night, more than a week after the event, he listened to the usual prison sounds. Nutcases freaking out. TV’s playing. Talking. Officers doing walk-throughs. Bennie snoring.
Lawless smiled to himself.
He’d completed what he’d set out to do.
It wouldn’t mean anything in the grand scheme.
It didn’t change her past in the slightest. It wouldn’t bring her parents back or stop her from reliving that traumatic night over and over. Some might question why the fuck he’d even bother. Sex trafficking and selling defenseless bodies would go on. One predator died, and two replaced him on the perverted throne. It was the nature of the degrading beast.
But this was personal to Lawless. He didn’t dig too far into the motivations, why would he need that clanging in his head anyway?
He’d done a good thing for his own goddamn self; he didn’t need an explanation clipped to it.
But it clawed through his skin. The sound of clanging doors drilling on his last nerve, more years of this still to come. He knew one day he’d have to dig into his reasons.
But that wasn’t today.
It wasn’t tomorrow either.
The next day he pushed an unopened letter into that small box.
It joined the other letters he hadn’t read.
It would take four more long months before Angela gave up writing to Lawless altogether.
He told himself he was glad.
Psychos loved lying.
But as he settled, his past came back to stir the pot…bad fucking fish.
And that was just the beginning.
NINETEEN
“Look at the trouble you get into without me, darling boy.” – Jay
With three visits this week from Snake, Preacher and Arson. The last person Lawless ever expected to see waiting for him in the visiting room was a face he hadn’t forgotten.
Approaching with his long legs eating up the space, he didn’t stall, but he felt unnaturally surprised. Hooking his leg over the bench seat, he stared into the other man’s eyes.
In the medium security prison anyone could visit without notification. As long as a person turned up at a certain time, Lawless got called to the visiting room. But he could give names to the duty officer to turn people away. It was why Angela was never allowed through.
Usually though his boys let him know when one or more of them were coming through.
“Should I ask what you’re doing here?”
Jay Benz smiled his enigmatic grin and crossed both his hands on the table. “Still rocking the shaved look, darling. It’s good to see you, Penn. I’d ask how you are, but it seems you’re not doing so well.”
Questions bit the back of his skull like gnats, but he took offense at the sympathetic look in Jay’s eyes.
So he stared until the other guy smiled once more.
“Do you want a drink or something to eat? The big clown showing me in said we’re allowed to get you something or leave money in your account.”
“I have enough. I’ll take a coffee. black, no sugar.”
“I remember, darling boy.” Jay rose and walked the distance to the cafeteria station. Lawless watched as he bought two drinks.
Jay Benz didn’t do anything by chance or accident and now Lawless was left wondering what the fuck he was doing here.
“How did you know where I was?”
He mentally answered his own question. Having been around Jay long enough to know he paid to have certain people watched. Lawless was the one Jay paid to do his spying.
“Let’s say I got nostalgic on your birthday and looked you up. You’ve had quite the time since you left me, Penn. A motorcycle gang suits you.”
Jay
didn’t look very different from the last time he saw him. Still dressing like a model mobster in tailored clothes. His hair was a little longer on the top, clipped short on the sides, few days’ worth of stubble. He didn’t look bad in his black on black, what was he now … forty-three?
There was a good chunk of Lawless’ history in this man but it didn’t stop the tickle of irritation staring across at him.
“Prison, huh? I know you weren’t stupid enough to get caught up in drugs.”
Condescension colored Jay’s voice along with whatever affection he felt for Lawless. It was there in his eyes looking at him.
“A lot of time has passed, maybe I got stupid.” Lawless smirked, picking up his coffee. The stuff in this place was atrocious, it was a crime against coffee beans and thank fuck for the commissary so he could buy his own coffee or he might have gone mad.
All men need vices. He chose coffee. For now.
Anything else would wait.
He was forever waiting.
Patient like a pathetic lamb trotting off to slaughter in hopes of slowly slitting his throat—in order to make the torture all the more arduous.
That was Lawless’ only vices currently.
Jay laughed and leaned forward, penetrating with a stare, trying to intimidate. Nothing much changed there.
“Why the fuck are you in this place, Penn? Why didn’t you fight it? I could have got you the best attorneys.”
So could Lawless.
The moment the charges were in place, he allowed Archie, the MC’s lawyer, to plea bargain his sentence down to the five years he received. It could have easily been twenty.
“Why are you looking me up?”
A flash of his own irritation crossed over Jay’s face and Lawless wanted to laugh. His ex-lover hated being regarded less than a king.
“Can’t I have missed you? It was you who left me. When I found out you were in this place I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Benz, I’ve always been okay, no matter where I’ve been at the time. I had to be with some of the places you sent me to.”
Jay smirked and his body relaxed into a cocky slouch in the chair. The condescending way that used to turn Lawless on. Arrogance always was an aphrodisiac. He was in prison not dead. With hardly anything worth taking a second look at and Lawless’ depraved appetites were suffering. Of fucking course he let his eyes roam over Jay for a minute.
