“Still Jobless, Still Figuring It Out,” My Brother Toasted at a Rooftop Party — Minutes Later a Harassment Complaint Hit My Phone, and by Monday He Learned the Company He’d Been Mocking Belonged to Me

The initials matched my brother’s.

I didn’t cry, and I didn’t feel the hot surge of rage people expect in moments like that, because clarity is colder than anger and far more effective, and as I stood there touching the small enamel pin on my blazer—the one habit I’d never quite shaken—I understood with unsettling certainty that the night Bryce chose to make me small would be the night I stopped protecting him from himself.

This had never really been about that lounge, or that toast, or even that email, because our dynamic had been written years earlier in kitchens and living rooms where Bryce’s accomplishments took up walls while mine lived in drawers, in school auditoriums where he stood under spotlights powered by work I did quietly behind the scenes, in family gatherings where his teasing was labeled confidence and my discomfort was dismissed as sensitivity. Bryce learned early that charm could erase consequences, and I learned early that peace was my responsibility even when it cost me space to breathe.

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