My father gave me a country house and my brother a luxury apartment in New York. When my mother saw what I had built, she said, “You have 72 hours to give this place back to us. Your brother will take over.”

My father gave me a country house and my brother a luxury apartment in New York, and everyone in the family understood the message long before anyone dared to say it out loud.

My brother, Adrian, got a glass-walled apartment in Manhattan with a doorman, skyline views, and marble floors that made my mother sigh as if she had personally …