by V. Theia
Animals he could understand. They didn’t lie and present a face that wasn’t real. They were upfront, even when they were about to devour you in a vicious attack.
He stroked absently over her tiny head and went on unapologetically listening in to a private conversation.
“We can ask her social worker if you can see her more. Her foster family seemed nice you said.”
“They are. They’ve been fostering for thirty-five years. They take in the troubled kids too so they know how to deal with Angela’s grief.”
A growing ulcer the size of a mountain settled in Lawless’ sternum.
“I feel helpless, honey. She has no family; she’s having a hard time settling in with the foster people and she’s had no closure with her parents.”
That was because Hades’ crew made sure they got rid of their bodies.
The science experiment in front of him continued. Rider petting his ol’ lady’s hair, laying the mouth on hers. “You helped her, Icy. Who protected her when you couldn’t even fuckin’ protect yourself? You’ve got a bond with the girl, I get that, but you gotta drop this sad shit or I’ll stop it.”
“Oh, will you now?”
“Fuckin’ hate seeing you upset.”
Z-girl laughed. “Fine, you great gorgeous bully, but you promise we can see more of her?”
“Any time you want.”
The word of the Prez.
After that, Lawless saw that girl around the clubhouse more times than he saw Grinder. Wherever he turned, there she was. And if she arrived on a weekend with Zara, those dark, sad eyes would seek him out.
He felt it like they were fiery arrows coming at him.
“Look lively, Law’s sidekick is here,” joked Pretty-boy one day, weeks later. All the boys around the pool table cocked their heads toward the entryway.
Lawless didn’t look over.
His skin already fucking knew because it started at the base of his spine and rushed down his back. Vibrations and fire ants.
He didn’t want to be cruel.
She was a kid with her heart all broken and misshapen at her feet.
Keeping his boots up on the table, he felt her slink over. Seeing out of the corner of his eye that she wore jeans and a hoodie with it over her long hair. She took the seat next to him—of fucking course she did.
Swallowing his growl of exasperation. He didn’t say a word and her only saving grace for this shadow shit was that Angela rarely said a word either.
After a few minutes, the boys back to their game, he reached into his pocket and brought out a kitten he’d picked up last night from behind Otis’ bar.
He dumped the tubby black and white cat on her lap, catching her gasp and then the sound of her giggle when the cat explored all over her.
Next he grabbed a bag of Ruffles chips he’d brought out of the kitchen. Whatever, it might have been in case she stopped by, he didn’t need a reason to feed a skinny kid and he tossed those on her lap too. Then he went back to nosing through his phone.
“Thanks, Lawless,” he scarcely caught her saying, and felt a tight pinch inside his belly.
Definitely an ulcer brewing.
Something else brewed that night.
After a visit to the private members only club in Denver.
Not a MC.
Uncle Jed would have a fucking coronary if he saw bitches strapped to a Saint Andrews cross getting a nice flogging from a Dom.
Lawless was a premium member, which allowed him to take guests if he wanted to. He never wanted to because that was his down time. It afforded him the luxury of having every dirty amenity at his disposal.
He’d used his privilege well and rode back into Armado Springs loose in his limbs after dropping about a bucket of come.
The sound of the girl’s gratitude played on repeat inside his head that night while him and insomnia lounged on his couch. All because he gave her a fucking cat to hold and some chips.
He thought about his own trailer park helplessness. All those kids with nothing and no hope whatsoever. He’d looked some of them up discreetly and nine times out of ten those schmucks were either dead, a junkie, knocked up with a million kids or in prison. He reckoned they’d amount to nothing. But still helped when he could, fed them more often than their parents did.
The girl—Angela, would never get the closure she needed in letting her parents go. He’d give his own mom away for fucking free at a county fair and no one would even have to buy a ticket.
The idea percolated, biting at his tired brain as he paced around his cabin.
It was gnats and buzzards for fucking hours.
His former sexcapades all but forgotten as his hard-worn body tensed through each muscle.
He was going to do it, wasn’t he?
People were right, he must be fucking mad.
They whispered and gossiped on their little Facebook accounts. Now they’d have proof of how far the notorious troublemaker had fallen from his lofty self-imposed throne.
Ah, fuck.
As dawn crested over the mountains, sitting on the front porch steps. The chill biting at his skin as he held a coffee cup in his hands.
The decision was all but cemented.
And anyone who was anyone knew, the moment Lawless latched his vicious teeth into a project, it was all but game over.
He didn’t smile.
Didn’t react.
But his bones and skin felt it.
He’d do this.
He’d finish it for her.
Of course, he’d murdered people before. What was he, Saint dickhead of Denver? But it would be the first time he put it down as a plan. It would be the first time he strategically went about hunting and gathering the naughty maggots before he ended their tyranny of pain.
There was a chain of command.
It didn’t start with Hades, only ended with that jerk off.
It began somewhere else and Lawless would find them.
He wasn’t a trained tracker like Grinder who hunted people for a living. And he wouldn’t involve the boys.
Somehow he felt exposed to the elements, recognizing he was doing this.
He kept his secret close to that place that was burning.
That fucking ulcer probably.
Murder.
Retribution.
Closure.
Peace.
He was a stone cold… frigid… killer.
This was no skin off his nose.
She was a kid who thanked him for potato chips, for fucks sake.
He’d get her closure and she’d have nothing to thank him or anyone else for ever again. Because to his mind—the one that was wired all wrong, with the neurons firing off in different frequencies—she would have a fresh start in life.
Murder, as he knew, was cathartic in many ways.
It started the very next day.
But he had no idea as he took on an impossible endeavor, where it would lead him.
Lawless was no fucking quitter.
Crazy? Oh, yeah, maybe a touch of madness stung his psyche.
But then, all the best psychos were.
Knowing darkness like the back of his hand was no big deal to him.
He forever trudged through it.
ACT III
TEN
“I’ll take a burrito and a corpse to go.” - Lawless
The first handful of degenerates were relatively easy to find when Lawless put his mind to it.
Justice was paid and he moved on without much fanfare.
For months he searched, in between his regular duties outsmarting the bratva operation.
Seriously, it was Christmas every day for Lawless and he usually hated that whole holiday.
When the net was cast further afield, he dug in deep with every spare hour he could to the point of exhaustion.
The compulsion biting through his head.
He couldn’t explain why.
Why the fuck would he want to?
He was taking scum
off the street.
Where was his statue?
Lawless was no Batman, but he dug his ride.
There was no valid reason why he kept it a secret, even from Snake.
The boys would have probably helped out, lessened his load.
He had no justification for taking it as a personal vendetta.
After the first kill, Lawless caught the bug.
The need to finish it.
Not even for a day or a month did he let up.
Fighting the Russians. Outwitting those morons at every turn. Swindling info from the inept accountant by fucking him and his Mrs. Seeing Snake get married. Attending Reaper’s second marriage. And celebrating with his boys when they had kids. Through it all, Lawless didn’t waver in his task.
It took him to Tennessee, Boston, New York and even Florida.
The selling ring, as he discovered, was colossal.
Hades was simply the buyer and therefore, he’d been a small rat in the big food chain.
The men he tracked and eventually ended their breathing, were the real deal. But it was taking some time to find the head of the beast, even Lawless grew frustrated sometimes when leads came to nothing.
But he was growing closer. He felt it. And because he was getting to that end, he’d made some enemies along the way.
Who knew perverts selling kids and women to other depraved perverts would take offense to being killed.
More often than not, he had to stop on the way home to Colorado and rest up in a motel. His body needing time to heal if the work took a turn for the worst.
He was bruised and hurting but still breathing so he continued.
There was no big mystery of why Lawless was the way he is. Many had tried to psychoanalyze him; he could have told them for free they were wasting their time.
Bags of stupid meat believing they could peek beneath his skin and find all the answers.
He simply lived like he was dying.
It was a Friday. Food smells drifted through the clubhouse as he trekked in at midday. Which meant some of the groupies were here early. Feed a biker, then fuck a biker, they knew the priorities.
He wasn’t interested and he didn’t look at anyone as he walked down to Rider’s office. One knock got him invited in.
The prez was behind the desk holding his boy. The kid was quiet and quiet things unnerved Lawless but he kind of dug Knox.
“Prez, little prez,” he greeted both.
He parked his ass on a chair and motioned with his long fingers for Rider to hand the kid over.
He did and Lawless perched a chubby Knox on his lap. The kid was chewing his own fist. He’d have to be more savvy than that if he wanted to be the MC president one day, fist suckers didn’t get the chicks. People would faint to know he didn’t mind babies. Babies knew what was up even with their drooling and lack of vocabulary. Knox was a watcher; he saw all the shit that happened. The kid was gonna be leader one day so he better get good at reading a room real quick.
“To what do I owe the honor of dragging your ass down the mountain before dark?” Asked Rider.
“Came to tell you I’m taking off for a few days while it’s quiet on the Russian front.”
It wasn’t the first time he was saying this to Rider so the man in front of him only arched an eyebrow. “Wanna tell me where?”
“The less you know, Prez.”
“Then tell me is it gonna bring trouble to the door?”
Lawless smirked as the kid latched onto his pinkie finger, “Not if I can help it. Should only be gone a few days, no more than a week. Make sure the little prez here doesn’t get an old lady while I’m gone.” After a tiny fist bump with the little guy, he handed him back.
A few minutes later, he touched base with a few of the boys and he climbed onto his bike and rode out of the compound.
There were several destinations he had in mind when he arrived in Chiapas, Mexico, the next day.
The flashing neon red light announced the bar, Bad Girls from down the street as he tossed some pesos to the cab driver.
His walk was slow, he wasn’t in any kind of a rush.
Not after all this time.
He could kill on impulse without a warning. Using his bare hands or whatever was near. He was resourceful like that.
But this planning suited him. Juiced him up. Made the neurons in his brain fizz like fresh champagne.
Lawless strolled down the poor street and headed into the bar and took a seat at a lone table near the back after ordering a bottle of beer.
He had a system and the system never failed him.
This mission was years deep now and he was nearing the end of the line. A few more maggots and it was done.
The last one would be the hardest one, all concerned, but he’d leave that until he got to it.
A doorway led through to the back of the bar, displaying those annoying strings hanging in the gap. And not thirty minutes later … four minutes early if he checked his watch, the guy he was here to see, came through it.
He caught sight of Lawless, paused a step and then proceeded through the tables.
There was not one single thing to be nervous about—and he wasn’t but he was hyper more than usual. This shit was old news to him. He’d killed more than the average American had hot dinners. It was a job and sport and he didn’t feel a thing either way about it.
But somewhere along the journey, it became personal for Lawless. So while he didn’t think anything would go wrong, he felt amped inside his buzzing veins and misfiring neurons.
In another life he would have made a good warlord riding into battle.
Someone who thrived on the hunt and the kill.
His blood hummed and though he didn’t change his facial expression at all, he saw the man flinch as he got closer.
“Philip Holmes?”
“That’s me.”
Francisco Cantú. A pretty standard name for a walking dead Mexican.
But then, the guy introducing himself to Lawless didn’t know he was slurping his last few thousand breaths.
It sucked to be him.
In broken English he said. “You want to come outside where it’s quiet?”
Lawless rose, following behind with smaller strides to compensate for their considerable height difference. It was gonna be no fun offing this guy.
But then, he wasn’t here for recreational fun, was he?
Bad maggot had a debt to pay.
Outside, the bar music faded.
The guy checked over his shoulder, a nervous twitch to his whole body. Lawless wished this was an ambush to rob an American.
Alas not and he was so disappointed there would be no fight. He wouldn’t have minded having a play first.
Francisco Cantú led him into a corrugated steel shack some fifty yards from the bar and it was Lawless who closed the door behind them after ducking his head to get inside. Only a single bulb hanging from the ceiling cast a dim light.
“You want three, yes?”
“Yeah.”
At that, the guy dipped his hand into a brown chest on the floor and came out with three bricks of cocaine. Lawless took them automatically, though they were not what he was here for.
The guy named the price.
Mexico made cheap fucking coke.
If Lawless had been here to buy his former hobby he would have been laughing all the way home.
He didn’t make mistakes.
He knew more about this guy then he probably did about himself. Like what Francisco Cantú did for his main source of business and it had nothing to do with pushing powder up his nose. He was a family man, with teen daughters. That somehow sickened Lawless more knowing this guy trafficked girls the same age.
It would have been nice to fuck him up in so many bad ways before he went in for the kill. But with a full bar steps away, time was of the essence. And he still had one place left to visit before he could go home.
His knife work was swift.
Francisco Ca
ntú didn’t even see the blade in Lawless’ palm when he took it across his throat.
He grinned seeing the look of shock on his face. His hand automatically lifted to his throat to keep all that gushing blood on the inside of his body.
To be a spiteful cunt, Lawless slashed the three bricks and dropped them at the guys feet. Ruined by his plasma dripping out like rain.
Francisco Cantú fell to his knees.
Gurgling blood out of his pitiful mouth.
It was a shame he couldn’t have given him a slower death.
“Your debt is three years in the making. Consider it paid.” He told him in perfect Spanish.
He closed the door over when he left. Casual as you like he walked around the front of the bar and headed to his next destination.
It didn’t take him long and when he arrived at a row of low income housing, he went with his plan and found the back entrance.
He never went into any murder without knowing first all the exit strategies.
Lawless wasn’t afraid of prison.
He wasn’t even afraid of dying.
Which made him extremely dangerous.
Or demented.
It was probably a fine line.
What’s he gonna do? He figured every genius was slightly wrong in the head to know all that they do.
Because of his eidetic memory, as he strung the guy up by the limbs, he shifted through his vast brain and found the very conversation that still motivated Lawless on this three year mission.
The terror.
The tears.
The heartbreak of the girl sobbing.
This man with his naughty pleading eyes so filled with his own fear had a hand in the making of that girl’s story. Now Lawless was here to make that debt void.
Lawless enjoyed when they struggled like a thanksgiving turkey.
He even shuck his coat. Because he intended to take his time with this one.
This one had been high up on his list for a long fucking time.
The middleman was always an important man.
The man muffled behind the duct tape, imploring Lawless with his wild bloodshot eyes.
“Did you ever hear of the story about lingchi? It’s a Chinese custom from way back in the day, around 900 CE, give or take a year. That’s common era for the dummies in the back. Check your history books, man. It’s fascinating.” Rolling up his black Henley sleeves one at a time, he circled the hanging meat. “Now those people knew how to exact punishment.”