Why I Had To Kill My Brother

by B Regan Asher

  I loved the arrangement because I would be a full partner in a portion of the business. In fact, it was this partnership that made the deal work for me. But I was still concerned about the charity aspect. Was my 25% share fare given that my brother would be providing all the startup capital? I raised the issue with my brother several times during my visit, each time being assured that it was a very fair deal for both of us. He said that because he needed my expertise and because he also needed someone he could trust absolutely, he felt the 25% share was equitable.

  I agreed to the deal but made a conscious decision to over contribute to the partnership. I was a somewhat uncomfortable with taking a salary while my brother contributed the capital so I decided I would do my best to contribute additional resources over and above what we had agreed to in order that my extra contribution would be worth about what my brother was contributing in cash. It was a subjective calculation based on an estimated hourly rate, and it meant that I would have to work 80 to 100 hours a week, but it made me feel more like a real partner. This contribution I did not discuss with my brother. It was just something I felt I had to do.

  I also decided that I would never ask for the salary we had agreed to for me. If and when my brother found it convenient to arrange payments, I would accept it. But I was not comfortable asking for it. I also decided that because the business plan was my brother’s and because the marketing contacts were my brothers and because the whole damned idea was my brothers, I would accede to his wisdom wherever there was an impasse. Also, as was my custom with my father, I also decided that I would take care to check with him regarding any significant decisions, especially those regarding financial matters so that we could agree on the best course of action.

  Finally, I decided that I would not argue or negotiate with him about any issues; rather, I would accept his judgement as much as possible unless it was a technical issue on which I was expert. This I felt was just good manners given that he had created the opportunity.

  Chapter 4 - Business with My Brother

  Within a month from my original Greensboro trip, we had started working together and I took the new opportunity very seriously. Over the next year I worked the 80 to 100 hours per week that I had promised myself, on occasion as required working even more. I travelled to Greensboro for a full week regularly, getting up at 3am to catch the 6am flight which, after a connection, landed in Greensboro just before noon.

  My brother also had some minor technical issues with his old business for which he had asked my help. It was a horrible exercise for me because it was work that I detested, but I made the best of it, unwilling to complain. Besides, it was income from the old business that was financing the new one. In helping him with various issues for his old business, I also found issues with his suppliers which I felt duty bound to help him correct, my concern being to always look out for my brother’s interests.

  The original business plan had forecast profitability after three months but, after a year, it was clear that profitability was going to take a lot longer. The long hours I worked and the stress of trying to solve our technical problems, which were taking much longer to solve than had been expected, took a toll on my health. I got sick several times and once contracted pneumonia. But I plugged on and was happy to be working with my brother and to be helping him. I gave no consideration to finances at all until something changed.

  Chapter 5 - Breaking Up

  What changed was the law. The United States government announced a proposed regulation of the industry we were in. (Until this point the industry our business was in was unregulated.) It was not a disaster but it quickly began to look as if our business structure would have to be altered. And this is where everything seemed to unravel.

  After working together for almost a year and a half my brother told me during a telephone conversation that we would have to change the ownership structure of the company from 50/50 to 75/25 since he would consolidate our company and sister future company in which he would have owned 100%. Now, if you haven’t been paying close attention, this may sound reasonable. But there are two problems with what happened here. First and foremost, my brother did not ask my opinion. Because I had already decided from the beginning of the venture that I did not want to argue or fight with my brother, I was unable to raise the issue. I was very insulted by his complete disregard for my point of view. After all, this was not an operational decision, this was a restructuring. No matter what view my brother held, he needed to ask for my input since it affected the ownership structure, my position in the project and my legal rights. There really was no other way to look at his unilateral decision to restructure.

  But there was a second problem. The new ownership structure was different from what we had agreed to together. To me it was very different. In the original version I was a full partner in the technical/development part of the business. Now I would be a minority partner in the overall business. If this was how a full partner was treated, how would a minority partner be treated in future? And, being someone who analyzes everything, I asked myself if I would have joined the business if the 75/25 version were offered to me. I can not be 100% sure what I would have done but my conclusion was that I would not have joined my brother’s enterprise. So my brother was, in effect, pushing me out of the business by not considering me at all.

  I simmered on his restructuring plan with the feeling that I would have to quit the partnership. Then my brother made another suggested change to the ownership structure. He felt we needed a third partner in order to help with certain legal issues. The third partner would have a certification that we would require to meet the new legal requirements. Again, without asking my opinion, he dictated how this partnership would work. The new partner would receive 5% of the company. That was not really a problem for me if it was in fact necessary. What contributed to the demise of our partnership was when my brother advised that I would contribute 2% to the new partner and he would contribute 3%. Now, again, because I analyze everything, I calculated that my 2% contribution was in fact 8% of my 25% stake whereas my brother’s 3% contribution was 4% of his 75% stake. In other words, my brother wanted me to contribute twice what he was contributing. True, these are small numbers, but the principle was important to me. And I was thoroughly insulted.

  I simmered for another month until I could make a decision on what to do. I felt I only had two choices: (1) stay in the company knowing that my brother would make decisions that directly affect me without consulting me or (2) leave. The third choice, confront my brother directly, was not an option. By this point I knew my brother too well. If I raised the issue he would just argue with me. And he would not hear what I was saying. I felt that staying in the company would be dishonorable. My heart would not be in it because I had lost respect for my brother and I no longer trusted him to do the right thing. I would be staying only to continue receiving the basic salary until I could find something else. I felt that protecting my financial well being in this way would be deceitful. I could not do it. So I had no choice but to leave.

  In leaving I would be forfeiting a lot of work that I had contributed but for which I had not been remunerated. But this was the price of doing the right thing. There was, really, no alternative.

  I advised my brother of my decision but, in order to avoid a confrontation, I did not advise him of the real reason. I simply advised him that it was time for me to move on. Unsurprisingly, he did not understand and for several weeks kept asking why I was leaving. Even at this point, although my brother took decisions without considering my point of view, I felt that he was unaware of the effect of his decisions on me. And I felt that his decisions were made without truly considering that they might be unfair. I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  Chapter 6 - The Nature of the Beast

  Finally, after being asked so many times for a reason for leaving, I felt I had to tell my brother something. Up until this point, I simply said that it was time for me to leave and blamed my decision on s
o many years working for our father. But my brother wanted a different answer. So I explained that I had been insulted by his unilateral changes to the ownership structure and also by the split he had devised in our contributions to the new partner.

  Now this was where I began to realize that I was never a partner and would never have been a partner. My brother proceeded to lecture me on how reasonable he had been in giving me 25% in the new company, how it was more than fair and that he could not see how I could find fault with it. Regarding the allocation of equity new partner, he said there was no way to make a perfect allocation and that if I had contributed more than him using his suggested split, he would have contributed more under a different percentage. With that answer, I suspected that there was more at play here than just a casual indifference to the details. He did not understand that I was upset by not being consulted. He also felt that somehow having me contribute double what he contributed was reasonable when there were several other, less unequal alternatives. The most obvious alternative would have been to have us contribute in exactly the same ratios; there was no reason why full percentages be retained for ownership. But, even if full percentages were what he desired, the other alternative was for my brother to contribute 4% and me to contribute 1%. That meant that he would contribute 1.3 times what I was contributing, a good deal different from having me contribute two times his contribution. The two were certainly not equivalent.

  So I left the company and I signed over my portion to my brother. I never brought up the subject of additional remuneration or any other type of compensation. I simply did not want an argument. That was before I understood the truth.

  Chapter 7 - Marginalization

  The truth was that the change in the law was an excuse for my brother to marginalize me. A greedy pig he was, and he must have decided at some point that he did not like the idea of me having 50% of the joint company or even 25% of the combined company. And the legal changes gave him an excuse to push me down (or out). I also discovered that I was just a resource to my brother, someone to be called upon for help with any issue even when that issue was deliberately self-inflicted for he knew that I would be available to help later. I would never have believed that my brother could be so calculating with a family member until several months after I had signed over my half of the company.

  After I had left the company, my brother called several times asking for help with a low level problem: his corporate e-mail. These issues would have been easily resolved by simply hiring the right service but he never made the change. After the first call for help, I outlined for him a couple simple steps he could take to solve the problem, which he assured me he would do. By the second call for help he had still taken no action and it took me almost two days to patch a solution that give him e-mail by routing it through my server. Losing two days for no good reason when I was unemployed and needed to concentrate on finding a new source of income was verify irritating to me since, again, my brother did not consider my position. I again outlined for my brother what he needed to do to get reliable e-mail and he promised to make the changes right away. (I should note that to this day his e-mail is still being routed through my server. I also continue to pay for his anti-spam service since he never found another one.) I should also note that, were he not my brother, I would have simply refused to help solve a problem which was unrelated to anything I was involved with at that point.

  Soon after the e-mail issues, my brother called asking how we could get working together again. I explained that I was unwilling to make a proposal because I was concerned that any arrangement work for him. If he would make a proposal then I would consider it and if it worked for both of us then we would have a deal.

  This was where I found out the truth. My brother’s proposal was that I set up a company and provide services to him for an hourly fee. Apparently, now, my brother had no more need for the pretence of partnership. He would ensure that I received what he told me was an extremely fair portion of the profits: 10%. Now, I am not here to argue what a fair share of the profits for me should be. It might be 10%, it might be 25% or it might be 50%, who knows? But one thing is for sure, we had originally agreed to 25% and he was now lecturing me how 10% was more than fair. Considering what had happened with the restructuring and the equity split toward the new partner, with every opportunity my brother managed to whittle down my share from the original agreed arrangement. Never did it go up, only down. What was I to conclude but that my brother was screwing me?

  That was the last business conversation we had, other than some occasional calls for technical help which I was still loathe to refuse (although I don’t know why).

  Chapter 8 - Afterwards

  After the conversation with my brother where I was offered a 10% share of the profits, my problems really began. I finally realized that everything my brother did was deliberate. Up until that point I thought that my brother’s unfair treatment of me was accidental, that he simply didn’t think about me or my point of view. That didn’t make him a good person but it didn’t make him a bad one either. Now I knew that he was deliberately taking advantage of my good nature. Unfortunately, as I would soon discover, his actions hurt me more broadly that our business relationship.

  My outlook had always been that I could depend on family but this viewpoint was now shattered. My disappointment was compounded when my second sister also recently disappointed me, although her behaviour was less severe than what I had suffered with my brother. I now felt I had no siblings. I could still count on my parents but that was little consolation. My view of the world was shattered.

  My finances were now in disarray because for the last year I have had no income. And my disappointment in my brother now weighed more heavily on me than the money. Apparently I have been clenching my teeth at night so severely that I cracked three teeth. And I discovered that cracked teeth are very difficult to fix. It is possible to stop the pain with a root canal and then to put a crown on the tooth but, even then, if the crack moves too far down the tooth, the tooth must be extracted. To add insult to injury, the root canal and crown cost almost $3000 per tooth. With no income and no insurance this just compounds my financial problems.

  I also have difficulty sleeping at night, obsessed as I am about how my brother treated me. During the day I have had problems concentrating, partly from a lack of sleep but also because I burned myself out after a year and a half of working 80 to 100 hours a week. I have been depressed about the whole episode and also about losing my sense of self. I have gone from a brother to an only child and I have found it a difficult transition to make.

  After almost a year of simmering about all these problems I realized that there are only two ways of resolving my feelings. The best way would have been if my brother had matured, realized what he had done and apologized. I think that would have solved my problem if he had made the realization on his own. The only other way I can think of for resolution is for my brother to be punished for his actions. Given how he dealt with me, I am confident that he has harmed others over the years and has probably also broken the law. I have therefore hoped for either a civil or criminal law suit to be brought against him. It may be just what he needed to be set on the right course again. He might actually realize what a loathsome person he has been. But, more than likely, he would simply blame the system and carry on much as he was before.

  Chapter 9 - Retribution

  I began thinking about what he might now do to other people. Perhaps he felt he treated me relatively well because I was his brother. Perhaps he would have treated a stranger much worse. How many families might he devastate because he could make more money that way? How much more anguish could he pour onto other partners, associates or clients? How does that kind of a person get punished?

  It was at this point, almost a year after my departure, that I stopped thinking of him as a brother and started thinking of him as an ex-brother. I also started thinking about how to have him punished. But the more I thought about punishi
ng him, the more I realized that he would probably escape any such attempt. He knew good lawyers and he had often told me how he preferred lawyers who had worked in government departments because they could wangle out of difficulty through the old boy network. I realized that someone like my brother was virtually untouchable.

  Then I realized what I had to do. I had to kill him. I had to kill him for vengeance but also to punish him, as if he were sentenced to death by a court. I was not killing him for money or fame or lust. I was killing him as a service to the community and (in some small way) as a cure for my own illness which had all but consumed me.

  So I took a month to plan the killing. I discovered when his family would be away through my parents. I remembered his gun in his bedside table which made the plan come together all that much faster. And I set out for both justice and retribution.

  Chapter 10 - Greensboro

  After I had killed him, his living room was a mess and I felt sorry for the state in which my sister-in-law would find her husband. But I could not stay to clean up. The black leather gloves I had been wearing would be ditched hundreds of miles from here. I would drive back to DC and return the rental car and I would be home before sunrise tomorrow. I felt not a single twinge of regret or remorse as I stood up and looked around the room, nodded to myself in satisfaction and left the house never to return.