If You Could Only See

Chapter 2

Mason~

"Sonofabitch." Bending over, I rubbed the sting out of my right shin.

"Oh, hey. Sorry about that."

I looked up at the sound of my younger brother's voice. "What the hell are all these boxes doing in the living room, Aiden?"

Aiden smirked. "The twins told the movers to just unload everything in the living room, and that they'd put it all away later. I'm also not breaking my back with this shit all by myself."

I closed my eyes, then let out a deep breath. I had spent eighteen years of my life living in a house with my three brothers, finally making my escape when I'd left for Blaineview. However, now I was right back where I had escaped from.

Now, don't get me wrong; I loved my brothers. There was nothing that I wouldn't do for them, and there was nothing that they wouldn't do for me. Still, we were still four grown men living together, and that dynamic always had the potential to turn annoying.

Early on, we'd all known that we'd be attending Blaineview for college. Our father was an alumnus, and he contributed his entire empire to the education that he'd gotten here. However, I suspected that his success was attributed more to the fact that his parents-and their parents before them-had already been wealthy and established, so my father hadn't had to do much to secure his 'empire', very much like me and my brothers were doing now. The only difference was that I wasn't an only child as my father had been and his father before him. The conditions placed on me to take over Buchanan Industries had also been placed on each of my brothers, and that was perfectly okay with me.

Despite being the oldest, I had no desire to run myself into the ground, trying to maintain BI's standards and growth alone. I didn't mind being in charge, and I wasn't afraid of hard work, but I refused to be so business oriented that I ended up neglecting my wife and raising our children like they were in military boot camp later down the line.

Besides, whatever I could bring to the table would be ten times better with my brothers beside me. We all had our strengths, and we all had our weaknesses, as evident by the constant reminders by our father. In fact, we knew our weaknesses very well.

Now, as for me, I had a photographic memory and could multi-task with ease. I had the ability to grab and take control of anything that was thrown at me, which was probably why I'd never knocked the shit out of my father before. I'd always been able to handle whatever he could heap onto my shoulders, and that included the shoulders of my brothers. After all, someone had to protect them from the sadistic bastard.

The flip side to my coin was that it was hard for me to identify with emotions. I was cold and hard, and I struggled with connecting to people.

At twenty-one-years-old, Aiden was the second oldest...or I guess, technically the middle child, considering that our two youngest brothers were twins. Aiden's gift was his ability to do math in his head. He could calculate numbers, odds, and situational outcomes with his robotic mind, and it was really a neat thing to witness.

The flip side to his coin was the female creation. Aiden had spent his teenage years struggling between keeping focused on our father's vision and sinking in between a female's thighs.

The twins were eighteen, and our mother should have named them Lucifer and Dante, instead of Gabriel and Michael because angels they were not.

Gabriel was the oldest by three minutes, making Michael the youngest. Gabriel's contribution to my father's Buchanan Industries vision was that the kid could read people. It was uncanny and kind of eerie how he could spend ten minutes in someone's company, and then tell you everything about the person's character. Growing up, he had played a big part in keeping Aiden away from any planned 'accidents'. Gabriel could spot a practiced, conniving, gold-digging whore from a mile away.