My family told me not to come over on New Year’s Eve because “I’d just make everyone uncomfortable,” so I spent the night alone in my apartment. But at 12:01 a.m., my brother called—his voice shaking. “What did you do? Dad just saw the news, and he’s having trouble breathing…”

My brother, Lucas, was groomed for the throne. Five years my senior, he was the architectural ideal of a CEO: tall, effortlessly charming, the kind of man who could walk into a boardroom and make every person feel like the most important vacancy in his schedule. He wore Tom Ford suits as if they were second skin. He played golf with senators. He was everything our parents wanted in an heir.

I was the glitch in the code.

I preferred Python to polo. I viewed social hierarchies as inefficient algorithms. When I was accepted into MIT for computer science, my parents smiled for the photo op, but I heard my mother whisper to a friend at the country club, “It’s a phase, darling. She’ll grow out of the computer thing and do something practical.”

I graduated top of my class, specializing in AI-driven medical diagnostics. My family didn’t attend the ceremony.

“Lucas has a charity golf tournament,” my mother had explained over the phone, her voice light. “He needs us there for networking, sweetie. You understand, don’t you? It’s for the business.”

I understood. I understood when I moved into a cramped apartment with two roommates while Lucas was gifted a penthouse in Back Bay. I understood when family dinners transformed into strategy sessions for Reynolds Medical Group, where they discussed quarterly reports while I pushed peas around a Wedgewood plate, silent and invisible.

I learned the family theorem early: In the Reynolds equation, brilliance was less valuable than charm, innovation was less valuable than tradition, and I was infinitely less valuable than Lucas.

I just didn’t realize how disposable I was until March 2022.

I was on the brink of something revolutionary. My two co-founders and I had developed a neural network architecture capable of analyzing medical imaging data with speed and accuracy that made current market standards look like abacuses. It was early detection for diseases that usually killed patients before doctors even knew what to look for. We called it Synapse Loop.

Continue reading…