Page 5 of Darling Psycho

They parted ways, and Lawless punched in the building code and trekked the stairs to the top floor. He never trusted elevators. And once there, he unlocked the door to one of three properties he owned here in Denver. This one was rarely in use, and he considered renting it a few times, but he’d always hated people in his space. Nasty meat had weird habits, and he never wanted it over his floors and walls and then seeping into his nose.

Not as though he needed the rent money, and he didn’t want to be anyone’s landlord, dealing with their whiny issues.

Lawless was Bill Gates rich.

Some would question why he still strived to make the big bucks if he didn’t need it.

The answer was always the same.

When he’d grown up in squalor and poverty, never knowing where his next meal would come from, having too much wasn’t even considered wrong.

In Lawless’ eyes, when was too much? When he said so. And he wasn’t singing yet.

Besides, playing around on the stock market was fun for him.

Winning was a hobby.

And he relied on things to keep his mind occupied.

It meant he could mentally stretch his gray matter.

Illegal or clean, he loved money.

The apartment looked about the same as the last time he was here.

It smelled clean of pine and bleach, and he was grateful to his buddy for getting it ready on short notice. Standing in the open-plan space, the kitchen and all its solid steel appliances down one end and the carpeted living area in the middle, Lawless looked over the view of Denver and let the clean air fill his lungs.

Prison didn’t do a number on him. He was too hard-headed for that.

But he sure as shit was glad to be back in his world again.

He shrugged out of the jacket, tossing it on the black couch, and then bent at the knees to unlace the Stylmartin Rocket boots; when he kicked them off, Lawless grabbed both boots and the jacket and padded barefoot down the long hallway with two doors on either side. It was two bedrooms, two bathrooms.

Some might say he had OCD about untidy messes, even with something as simple as a coat tossed on a couch. But he could have told them OCD was a mental illness and more than just liking things a certain way. Living in a single trailer for most of his childhood, he felt like a sardine-packed into a hoarder’s can. His dear bitch of a momma collected shit in her drunken, high state like she was going for bag lady of the century.

Now he liked his places to be orderly and without disgusting clutter.

When Lawless made his way back to the kitchen, he opened the fridge and grabbed a beer from a shelf full of bottles. Cracking it open, he drank deeply until only half was left.

Fuck. It hit the spot.

He carried the bottle through to the bathroom, tossed the clothes he was wearing into the tall hamper by the sink, and reached into the shower stall to switch on the water, letting it heat, drinking the rest of the beer in a long swallow until the room filled with steam.

He was sure prisons kept their showers at a tepid temperature as punishment, and he sighed when he stepped into the stall and the hot water poured down over his head. The pleasure started in his gut and made the surface of his skin tingle.

Using a scentless shower gel, he scrubbed until his skin burned, and then with a white towel slung around his waist, Lawless stepped up to the twin sinks and used an electric shaver to scale back his hair to one-inch coverage all over.

In the mirror, he caught sight of the black ink. They looked like regular feathers when his forearms weren’t together, but when they were, they were two wrapped angel wings holding his arms in a hug.

His ethics were long gone.

The ink wasn’t for divine forgiveness.

If the afterlife existed, then sure, as with all the money in his offshore accounts, Lawless would roast chestnuts on an open fire with Lucifer.

Rubbing a thumb along the ink on his right arm, which went from wrist to the curve of his elbow, he’d sometimes felt as though the ink were alive in his skin, but he’d put that down to prison insanity when he was laid on the bunk late at night unable to sleep.

With another dip into the shower to rid himself of any stray hair clippings, Lawless dried off in the bedroom and didn’t bother dressing. Instead, walking naked through the apartment, he helped himself to what looked like a bowl of chicken salad. Homemade too. He bet Winter stocked the fridge. She might have been wary of him at first, most people were, but Snake’s old lady was sweet on him now. She was the old lady who wrote to him the most with anecdotes from the clubhouse, keeping him abreast of the goings-on in everyone’s life like she thought he was a gossip hog.

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