In my family, money was never a neutral tool but was instead used as a weapon for leverage and emotional manipulation. My mother used it to guilt people into visiting her while Sienna used it to rank her friends and neighbors.
I knew that if I told them I was the source of their new lifestyle, every holiday would become a negotiation for more funds. They would resent me for having more than they did while simultaneously expecting me to solve every problem they encountered.
So I created the myth of Great-Uncle Bartholomew who had supposedly lived a reclusive life in Europe and left us a fortune. It was a story that they accepted immediately because it allowed them to feel like they were part of a grand legacy.
“It is just so typical of our family to have an eccentric billionaire hidden away in the shadows,” Sienna had said when I first told her the news. She had fallen in love with the idea of being old money even though the money was actually quite new.
The trust I funded was so generous that it bordered on the absurd. Sienna received ten thousand dollars every month while Justin and our mother received slightly smaller amounts for their personal expenses.