Page 1 of Darling Psycho

ONE

“Freedom was his new kink.” - Lawless

“I hear you’re leaving us.”

A voice Lawless recognized as Dillion Dreyers -aka correctional officer and a few times booty call- said behind him.

Being in the exercise yard was the most normal Lawless had felt in almost three years.

Whatever normal felt like.

Anyone knew his wiring didn’t fire in the proper sequence, so normalcy was apples and oranges for him. He’d stopped agonizing over the answers a long time ago. Instead, he’d learned to live with how his analytical brain worked. Lawless felt like a computer that never booted down.

An extraordinarily high IQ and his diagnosed low latent inhibitions meant his surrounding environment constantly stimulated his brain.

Couldn’t shut the fucking thing off.

Being inside a prison with hundreds of boring lunatics meant Lawless had to get used to the low-level din noise. It constantly ticked through his white meat, over-stimulating him like a firework that never fizzled out.

Outside under the sky, especially when he was alone, like now, because he’d paid a guard to let him have extra exercise time in the yard, there was only blessed silence.

Two hands in the gray issued sweatpants pockets; Lawless cast a withering glance over his shoulder as Dreyers sidled up to him in his manly uniform, taser included.

“Have you come to say goodbye, Dillion?”

About a year ago, Dreyers transferred to the psych building. Shorter hours, better pay. But he dropped by Lawless’ wing to talk like old friends from time to time. Bags of meat were so pedestrian because Lawless had all but blackmailed the man into giving him access to many parts of the prison not available to low-life prisoners. Yet, it seemed he’d forgotten all about that and made Lawless into a friend.

“Something like that. At least now the other C.O.’s will get a chance at winning some money.”

Lawless smirked, looking out at the acres of nothingness that surrounded the prison. To the untrained eye, it appeared huge, and it was. But the size of the prison never mattered. It was all about the bars and the locked doors, which narrowed his world down considerably.

For six long days since his phone call to Archie to get him the fuck out of there, he’d been counting the seconds to when he wouldn’t hear another electronic door slamming shut.

The C.O.’s had been fair with Lawless, so he’d been fair with them. He’d even sat at their gambling tables, robbed them all blind. Fairly.

Lawless never had to cheat.

Until he did.

Now the end had come, his skin was too tight, he felt scratches on the inside of his brain.

Unable to sleep.

He was wired as fuck.

Waiting.

Waiting.

But now, his roadmap had been derailed, and he’d been forced to think outside of the box.

To re-plan everything from the start.

In any other circumstances, he would have been thrilled to play cat-and-mouse games. But all Lawless felt in the last six days was irritation coating the back of his throat.

Irritation at how he’d beenblackmailedinto a corner like a pathetic animal fighting for its life. It had been a long time since Lawless felt inadequate.

If he were the emotional type, like Snake was, he might have reacted a whole other way to Benz’s blackmail.“Come back to me. Fully, in every sense, be at my side, rule with me, allow me to love you. I’m fucking empty without you there, Penn. And I will leave her alone. She won’t exist to me.”

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