Page 12 of Dust to Dust

While I’m sure most included a bathroom or two, I could pretty much bet their showers didn’t resemble ours with its numerous jets that sent high pressure water to rinse away blood and bodily fluids.

After stripping naked, I stepped into the stall and let the water beat against my body. I had exactly half an hour before I was expected at Alainn, which meant beautiful in Irish. It was the gentlemen's club my three brothers and I owned. Every Thursday at noon, we met to go over the weekly financials.

Although our darkened souls resided in Boston’s underworld, we kept a legitimate front through our business holdings, which included commercial real estate as well our newly opened nightclub, Bandia.

Once I finished with the shower, I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my waist.

When I glanced in the mirror, the familiar disgust filled me at my reflection. My gaze trailed the puckered scars that ran down the side of my face. Time had faded them from the angry red welts they’d first been.

It had been two long years since the car bomb that had been rigged for my father had almost killed me. Instead of a physical death, I’d experienced an emotional one since life as I knew it had irrevocably changed.

I would never look at life the same since no one would look at me the same. When you’d spent twenty-seven years being what the world considered conventionally handsome, it came as a great shock when you no longer were. While I’d never really been vain, I had enjoyed the attention.

And then it was gone.

At 6’5, I’d always been an imposing motherfucker. But I’d never really experienced true fear and outright revulsion in another’s eyes until I had my scars.

The greatest agony hadn’t come in my physical deformity. It had been losing Rian. While time might’ve faded my scars, they did little to ease the ache in my chest at his memory. The only comfort I took in his death came from the medical examiner who ruled he had been killed instantly. The thoughts of him burning alive while I couldn't save him was too much to bear.

At the same time, it didn’t truly lessen my grief or anyone else’s. Some nights I woke to the anguished wails of my uncle Seamus as he crouched beside the burning car. I’d been told he’d done the same thing at Rian’s funeral. His grief was so intense that Callum and Dare had been forced to carry him up the church aisle.

Other nights I’d wake to the haunted face of my aunt Elena. She remained sedated for the first year of Rian’s loss. He was her only child–the miracle baby she and Seamus never thought they could have. And then on the anniversary of his death, she took one of Seamus’s pistols and shot herself.

I didn’t get to pay my last respects at the funeral. I remained heavily medicated in the burn unit of the ICU. I stayed there for a tortuous month of therapy. Doctors tried telling me I was lucky. That with numerous reconstructive surgeries I could almost be as I was before.

I told them to fuck off.

I was done with the antiseptic smell of hospitals. The uncertainty of treatments. And the narcotics were starting to take hold of me.

And then there were other nights when I woke to fiery torment burning along my left side. The doctors called it “phantom pain”, and it was only in my mind. I didn’t know how anything in my mind could be just as painful as what I’d experienced in the moment. But it was a special kind of agony.

Somedays I didn’t know why I kept putting one foot in front of the other. But then I would look at my brothers. I gleaned strength from them, and in turn I gave them strength.

There wasn’t anything in the world I wouldn’t do for them. It was the reason why I was about to drag myself downtown to crunch numbers, which was something I fucking loathed.

After slipping on a fresh suit, I didn’t give my reflection a final glance. Instead, I flicked off the light and left.

Even though it was barely noon, Alainn had a teeming lunch crowd, most of which were made up of businessmen. If it had been Dare or Callum, they would’ve made their way through the main room, exchanging pleasantries with some of the big spenders. But the thought of that made my skin crawl.

Instead, I took the back stairs up to our office. Since we were all co-owners, it possessed one desk, but it included a large mahogany table like you’d see in a boardroom. When I slipped inside, I wasn’t surprised to already find Kellan sitting at the table.

With his head buried in his laptop, he didn’t look up. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” I replied as I walked over to the drink cart. “Where’s Dare?” I asked, as I poured myself a whiskey.

“Getting blown in the bathroom,” Kellan replied nonchalantly as if Dare were merely on the phone.

As if to corroborate Kellan’s story, a low groan came from the expansive private bath followed by a guttural, “Fuck yes!”

I snorted. “It doesn’t bother you?”

Kellan glanced up. “I’ve learned to tune him out.”

“Aye, I know what you mean,” I chuckled. After throwing back a sip of whiskey, I asked, “What about Callum?”

“He was interviewing warehouse supervisors.”

“Again?”

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