Page 4 of If You Could Only Believe
I closed out the offending email and did my best to focus on the other, more pressing emails that actually had to do with my job. But all the while, I couldn’t shake the faint tick, tick, tick, tick reverberating in the back of my head.
Mondays sucked.
Chapter 2
Michael~
I sat in a chair that cost more than it was worth as I looked around my perfectly decorated office, with its dark oak book shelves and matching standing bar. The same dark oak that the desk and the small conference table were carved out of.
The table sat on the left side of the room while the bookshelves and bar were on the right. In front of the desk sat two armchairs that had been carefully selected to match the array of browns and tans that colored the room. The chairs surrounding the conference table were the same taupe shade as the carpet, but the two armchairs had been chosen to match the desk chair.
The floor to ceiling window bathed the conference table with the rare Indiana sun, but it was equipped with frosting capabilities if I needed to keep that brightness out. There were also blinds to close it off completely, if need be.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been in this office, but it is the first time I have occupied it in the capacity of being fully immersed in my role at Buchanan Industries.
Gabriel and I officially started in our roles at BI a month ago, but we had spent that month familiarizing ourselves with our departments and our direct employees. Now we were finally in full boss mode and it felt liberating. Like I could finally take a breath and start the rest of my life.
Buchanan Industries was founded by my father’s father’s father or something like that, and while historically BI had been headed up by only one Buchanan, our father was the first Buchanan to go against the grain and get himself four sons instead of the traditional one.
Mason was the oldest and the true leader and controller of Buchanan Industries. He let my father pretend to still be involved, but he really wasn’t. My father was-isa real sonofabitch, and even though Mason’s kept him in his place these past four or five years, it didn’t erase the first 18 years of his abuse and my mother’s cold neglect, even if Mom is a way better person these days.
Mason was also a genius with a photographic memory and the ability to handle whatever issue or trouble that might be thrown his way. However, with that genius and photographic memory came the true makings of a sociopath. If it didn’t involve our brothers or their wives, Mason was hard pressed to feel connected to people. He had no empathy for humans in general. The only assurance we had that he wasn’t truly a full-blown psychopath was you could see his emotions plain as day whenever he was around his wife, Shane.
My other brothers, Aiden and Gabriel, loved their wives, but Mason…Mason adored Shane on a whole other level. It was staggering to witness. Of course, Shane was special…so there was that.
Aiden was the second oldest, and head of Finance at BI. Aiden wasn’t at Mason’s level of genius, but he was smart as all fuck and he could do math in his head. His brain was like a computer that could calculate odd, situations, outcomes and anything else that required a solution.
While Aiden’s specialty was his computer brain, his weakness when we were growing up had been women. Aiden loved women and thought men should spend their lives cherishing everything about them. While he still appreciated the female species, his wife, Denise, was now the only woman in his atmosphere. She had a security with Aiden most women would never have. If Aiden loved women, then helivedfor his wife.
Then, there was my twin, Gabriel. He was the oldest by three fucking minutes, but the way he acted, sometimes you’d think he was older by years. Gabriel was my identical twin. Absolutely identical. Where we all had the signature Buchanan black hair, Mason’s eyes were grey, while Aiden’s, Gabriel’s and my eyes were green. We got Mom’s colored orbs, while Mason got Dad’s, something I don’t think he ever cared for.
Gabriel was head of Marketing and Clientele. He had an uncanny knack for being able to read people as if they were open books. He could tell from a simple handshake if someone was full of shit or not. His gut instincts were always spot on when it came to who we should let into our lives.
Gabe was also loyal as fuck. Now, most people would think that was a good thing, but growing up, our father manipulated Gabriel’s perception of family loyalty, but once Gabe was on your side, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for you; even catch a prison case.
His wife, Justice, was further proof of that. He met her sophomore year in high school, started dating her junior year and he married her a couple of weeks ago. He’s never been with anyone else, and it would never occur to him to even think that way. Even when we were in college and she stayed back home, he never touched another girl.
Shane had Mason’s psychopathic devotion, Denise had Aiden’s complete adoration and Justice had Gabriel’s unwavering faithfulness. I truly hoped my sisters-in-law knew what they had in my brothers.
As for me, I was head of Human Resources because, supposedly, my calm demeanor was ideal for human relations. Growing up in our household, I had always managed to maintain a level head when shit was going south.
I had no choice. If I hadn’t found a way to compartmentalize, I would have gone crazy years ago.
For whatever reason-because I never asked-my father took special pride in working me over the worst. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was technically the youngest, or if he saw my calm demeanor as a challenge of sorts.
Whatever the reason, my scars are the only way a person can tell Gabriel and me apart. And I had lots of them. Only a couple of them were large enough to grab notice if I was shirtless, but most of them were little nicks and scratches here and there.
My brothers all did their best to protect me, but to be honest, they were just trying to survive themselves. My father didn’t spare any of us. And since we hadn’t lived in each other’s pockets, my father often got a hold of me when they weren’t around.
What my father failed to realize was that everyone is different. You can take five people and show them the exact same film or have them read the exact same book, and they will each get something different out of the experience.
Mason came out with psychopathic tendencies. Aiden managed to come out a decent guy, if not a little aggressive. Gabriel came out with an unreasonable intensity, sometimes. And me...well, I made it out with severe anger issues.
My disposition was cool, calm and collected…until it wasn’t. And when it wasn’t, shit got violent. And by that, I meanIgot violent.
I didn’t lose my temper often-thank God-but when I did, it wasn’t pretty and the person on the receiving end of it made sure to never be on the receiving end of it ever again.
There were a couple of times, during my childhood, that my father had to write out checks to keep me out of juvenile detention.
