Without Me Your Prophecy Dies

My brother convinced our parents he was touched by God.

When he was four, he had a vision: I, the eldest son, had to be cast out to an austere monastic boarding cloister in the northern timber for eighteen years so our family’s empire could ascend to heaven.

The market rallied. The ports opened. The prophecy seemed to hold.

Then came the prophecy that ended me. He claimed any child I ever fathered would carry a congenital curse destined to tear down the Carlisle dynasty.

So my own father had me drugged, wheeled into an off-the-books private surgical suite in Cook County, and surgically…