Reddit Stories - The BELOVED SIBLING took money and VANISHED for a span of three years.

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #siblings #family #betrayal #disappearance #moneySummary: The BELOVED SIBLING took money and VANISHED for a span of three years, leaving behind a trail of questions and heartache. The family grappled with betrayal, loss, and uncertainty, longing for closure and hoping for a reunion that seemed increasingly unlikely.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, siblings, family, betrayal, disappearance, money, heartache, closure, reunion, uncertainty, questions, beloved, vanished, threeyears, trail, grappledBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. The beloved sibling took money and vanished for a span of three years. Upon returning, our guardians declared that he would be the sole heir to their possessions, despite my dedicated efforts to care for them. I, 30M, have an older brother Caleb, 33M, and I really don't like him. We've never gotten along and never will. Unfortunately for me, he is the golden child for my parents, just because he used to be a good kid when he was younger.

I don't know what that has to do with the current situation because right now, he's just a gambling addict with no concern for people around him, including our parents. He went no contact with our family about three years back, and with good reason, because he had embezzled money from the company to pay off his personal debts. Then he cut us all off. Instead of reporting him, my parents just decided to fire him and never spoke of it, again.

They tried their best to hush it all up like it had never even happened. I had to step in to rebuild the business because he had pretty much left it in shambles. I had a business degree, but I wasn't willing to work with my family because then I knew that I would have to work under my brother, and I did not find that acceptable. After he left, I thought that I had a chance to inherit the business, so I quit my previous job to step in and help my dad out. He showed me how grateful he was for everything that I had done by announcing to the family that my brother would be inheriting the company when he retired in a couple of years. This announcement came, at a dinner party a few weeks ago that he had been hosting specifically to celebrate my brother's return to the family and welcome him back with open arms, even after all that he had done. Don't ask me why they did that. I thought they were blind and stupid, but I didn't think that this would affect the business, so I didn't speak up.

About a month ago, my brother randomly reached out to my parents again and apologized to them for everything that he had put them through. He also thanked them for never reporting him and said that he had been going through a very dark time. He had been out of money and was desperate to pay back all his debts because otherwise he would have to face the consequences, so he really had no option. I really don't buy this, because he always had the option of not getting into gambling at all. Anyway, my parents actually ended up falling for all that emotional BS and responded to him by forgiving him for everything in telling him that he was welcome to come back to the family. I was obviously against it, and I even tried to hint that to my father, but he

told me that as a father, he was ready to forgive whatever his children did. I couldn't argue with that sentimental crap, because, I just didn't want to, so I let it go. Also, at the time, I was pretty sure that even if he was willing to accept him back into the family, of course my parents wouldn't be stupid enough to let him come back to the business again after what he had done. But then, a few days after that, he announced at the dinner party that after his retirement, my brother would be taking over everything, and I just lost it. I was very upset and made it clear that I would not be working under my brother at any cost, so if he was rejoining the business, I was ready to quit. My parents tried to pacify me.

They told me that we could run the business together as brothers, but that made me even more upset, and I ended up screaming at them, telling them that they were messing everything up and that I don't even consider Caleb my brother. After my outburst, I left their place with my wife and kids, and as soon as I got home, I sent my dad my formal resignation. I didn't have anything else lined up, but I knew that I had done good work in the past three years, and even before that, so if I started applying to places, then I would soon be able to get a job. If not that, I could always start my own business with my savings. I spoke to my wife about it

after we got back home, and she told me that my outburst was completely justified. She also, said that she wouldn't recommend hiring anybody like my brother because, given his past, he was clearly unstable and unreliable for them to even consider putting him in the high-stakes position of a CEO. It was just stupid. That made me even more sure of my decision. So later on, when my parents called me up and tried to get me to come back, I made it clear to them that I was not returning until and unless I was promised that he would not be joining the company, let alone taking over. They tried to argue, telling me that he was my brother and that I owed him a second chance because we were family, but I wasn't hearing them

out at all. I told them that if they could promise me what I wanted, then I was not even interested in talking to them. We had a bit of a back and forth for a couple of days, but then they stopped trying to get to me, and I accepted their decision. It was really upsetting because in the past three years, I had worked really hard to undo all the damage that my brother had done to the business while he had been working. I don't even understand how my father had allowed him to stay. He had absolutely no sense of how a business should be run, but I'm guessing my dad just didn't want to take on too much workload or micromanage my brother at the risk of offending him, so he just stayed quiet and let him ruin his own life's hard work.

And now he was about to let it happen once again. But, thankfully, Caleb decided to show his true colors to my parents last evening. Last night, I received a phone call from my parents pretty late, and at first I ignored it, but then they kept trying to call me again and again, so I finally answered, and they were hysterical. Somehow I was able to understand that Caleb hadn't actually come back to make things right with them. He just needed money. Apparently, he hadn't even quit gambling.

He was just trying to make it seem like he was, but once again he was knee-deep in debt and had also been fired from several jobs, so he literally had nowhere else to go. all he could afford was the flight ticket here so he could come to see his parents and ask them for help but when he saw them again he couldn't afford to let them down once more and so he kept it a secret until now but since my parents were doing so much for him he just wanted them to help him clear his debts once more it was an insane amount of money and obviously my parents declined because there was no way they could let all that money go all at once Caleb didn't like that so he lost his temper and had a huge fight, after which he left.

I guess my parents learned their lesson, so they called me up to apologize and to tell me that I was right about everything. They shouldn't have given him a second chance. Now they're begging me to come back to work because they want to keep the business and the family, and I've always done a good job, they've never denied that, so I'm obviously the only person they would consider after this. But given what had happened recently, how it had been so easy for them to overlook everything that I had done and announced that my brother would take over the company after my

dad's retirement, I was not taking any chances. So last night, while they were requesting me to come back and take back my resignation, I told them that I would be back only if my dad promoted me to CEO now. I was not willing to wait for him to retire. I wanted him to start the paperwork this week itself because I was just not willing to take any chances anymore. If they're not ready to do that, I have already applied to a couple of places, and I had enough savings for a couple of months, so I was completely fine not going back to the family business. My parents did not find that to be an acceptable solution and were pretty outraged that I was even suggesting something like this, so they insisted that I come back and said that,

when the time comes, my dad will definitely let me take over everything. It was a promise that they were making, but only a verbal one, so I told them that it had to be either my way or the highway, and then I hung up. After I disconnected the phone call, my mother started texting me, but I told her that they could sleep on it for one day and then they had to let me know their decision. It was a tough one, but after what I had just been through because of my brother's return, I was not going to let anything and everything slide just because they were my family. I thought I was being fair enough, and so did my wife. But this morning, when my mother called me up, she was crying on the phone, and she told me that she knew that my dad had made a mistake by announcing that he would let my brother take over, and it had even taken her by surprise.

But he was just being a father. He was just thinking about how in the earlier days, before my brother started gambling, he was actually serious about his work, and back then, since I used to work elsewhere, my dad had promised him that he would let him take over when he retired. It has been a purely nostalgia-based decision, and of course they should have been a little more practical about things, but it was a mistake, and as a family, I should have forgiven that mistake. Then she told me that it was also humiliating for my dad to hear that I wanted him to give up the CEO position so I could take over right now, since that would be technically forcing him into early retirement, and he was not ready to let go of his lifetime's work at the moment.

He was obviously not willing to work under me because he is the one who has built this company from the ground up, and neither does he want me working for anyone else anymore because this is the family business, it should stay in the family. My mom told me that my dad wasn't even ready to speak to me right now because he hadn't stopped crying since last night, and all he could do was blame himself for everything that had gone wrong. She told me that he had been drinking himself blind all night and he finally passed out around four in the morning on the couch itself.

She said that she hasn't ever seen him upset like this, and she told me that I'm the only one who can fix it. While we were speaking on the phone, she sounded pretty miserable too, and now I'm really confused about what to do. I spoke to my wife about this, and both of us feel really guilty about what's happening, but we also think that it's important for us to stand our ground right now. So Ida for demanding that my father give up the position of CEO to me this week. Update 1, thanks for all the supportive comments. My wife and I have decided that I'm going to stick to my demands. I'm not asking for anything unreasonable. I am not happy that this is making them so upset, but well, I've already given up three years of my life working on my family business,

and if I'm planning on giving up even more, which I really do want to because I've obviously developed a good relationship with the employees and continuing seems to be the better option rather than starting somewhere new. Then the least I can ask for is the security that I'll have an undisputed claim on the CEO position eventually. It's been three days since my part and I took this time to think about what I want to do, and I decided that I do want to rejoin the family business. I've already put in a lot of time and work there, and just to be clear, I don't want to return because of my parents. I want to go back because I actually do enjoy working in that company. The fact that it would make my parents happy is just an added

bonus. That's not the major reason why I'm doing it. The only thing standing in my way now is the fact that my dad is not willing to retire at the moment, and until he retires, I'm not going to get to take over entirely. For the record, he's in his late 50s, so he still has a couple of good years left in him before he finally has to retire. If I'm being honest, it's not just the position of the CEO that this is about. It's also the ownership stake as a shareholder and all that jazz, you get what I mean. So I'm not demanding too much. I'm just asking for what I'm old. After thinking about it for the past three days, I finally decided to speak to my parents about it today. I felt bad about what they were going through, but I had to

stand my ground, so I went over to their place in the evening and told them that I was not backing down. My parents seemed very disheartened, and at first my dad didn't even say anything. It was just my mother who was talking again. She told me that I was getting too greedy in that, just because they... Hi, I'm Darren Marler. Host of the Weird Darkness podcast. I want to talk about the most important tool in my podcast belt.

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She told me that I needed to trust my family and, that, the fact that I didn't was very disrespectful to them. I was arguing with her, but then she said that I wouldn't even be in this position and get to work in the family business had it not been for my father, who had asked me to help out when Caleb had left initially. She really thought she had me with that one, but obviously not. I got really annoyed by that comment, and I told her that my dad had asked me to help out because he needed that help from me since he wanted to keep things in the family and have everything hushed up. I had done him a favor back then, not the other way around, and the way she was putting it made it sound otherwise, so I didn't appreciate that. That shut her up, and finally my dad intervened and accepted that he was the one who needed a favor back then, and right now he

needed me to do him a favor once more. I could hear that he was literally just a couple of seconds away from crying, so I tried not to be too hard on him, but I told him very firmly that whatever I had said, I meant it. I explained to him very kindly that I was more than willing to come back to the family business because at the end of the day, in the past three years, I'd had a really good time there. I had developed a close relationship with the employees, but that hadn't been the case with my earlier workplace because it never felt like my own. I had also put a lot of time and effort into rebuilding and restructuring the company after my brother had left, so it's not like it was easy for me to just get up and leave. But at some point, I had to take a stand for myself, and I had to think about my future too.

I told him quite frankly that the way he had just announced that my brother would be taking over after his retirement without even taking my feelings into consideration or even consulting with me was very humiliating, and I just felt betrayed. Naturally, after that, it would be very difficult for me to pretend like everything was fine and just come back like nothing had ever happened. I also finally brought up how, for my entire life, my brother had been their priority and not me. I thought that since we were talking about these things now anyway, it would be better for me to just let it all out at once. So I told them that throughout my life, especially when we were kids, I had always felt sidelined by Caleb because they never gave me enough importance. When my dad asked Caleb to join the company after he graduated from college but didn't ask me when I did, I knew that his priorities were always going to be different. In fact, even three years ago, the only reason I had joined the family business and fixed everything that Caleb had made go wrong was because one day I hoped to take over. It wasn't a secret that in any other company, I would have to work twice as hard, but this was my dad's company, so I could realistically hope to inherit the business one day.

I know it's nepotism and whatever, but it is what it is, and that's why I joined in the first place. Because given how my parents had treated me ever since my childhood, it was obviously not out of love for my family, and it's about time that they knew that, because you reap what you sow, after all. So now, if they wanted me to trust them again, they had to do what I asked, and if they were not willing to do that, I was done with them. I was polite but firm about what I said, and after I was done talking, both my parents were just silent for a couple of minutes. My mom was the first to break the silence and tell me that she was really sorry about everything that I had been through, and she had never really thought that they were neglecting me too much.

I couldn't tell if she was sincere or not, but it doesn't matter, it's in the past, and I just wanted to talk about the business instead of emotional family matters, so I waited for my dad to say something. Then finally he said that he was also really apologetic for not giving me the business. the kind of attention and affection that I needed as a child. They acknowledged the fact that they had always treated my brother better than me, and it was quite satisfying in a way because finally it felt like I was getting somewhere with them. At least they were acknowledging the fact that they had made a mistake by raising us both, and that in itself was a huge achievement

for me. Anyway, I told them that it did not matter anymore. What mattered now was what they intended to do in the future. Then they went silent for a couple of seconds more, and And by then I was getting impatient, so I told them I really needed a decision, and my dad told me that unfortunately he was not ready to retire and hand over the business to me just yet. He had spent a really long time building this business, and he did acknowledge that whatever he had done to me was wrong and, that, I had every right to demand that I be made CEO, but it didn't seem reasonable right now. However, he was willing to come to a common ground with me if I would be open to that. That sounded quite interesting, and we have decided to speak to our lawyers respectively because what he suggested makes sense. He said that he can have his lawyer draw up the paperwork to sort of have a contract that says that I will be taking over the company once he retires, and it will include all the important details and stuff. I can have my lawyer go over it, and if it seems acceptable to me, we can go ahead that way.

That made sense to me, so that's what we will be doing now. Update 2. Hi, so it's been two weeks since my last update, and I've had my lawyer look over the paperwork that my dad sent me, and the terms are fine, so that's what we're going through, and I'm going to get back to work in the company in about a week or so. But that's on the professional front. On the personal front, we still have a lot to deal with. Now that we are still going to be working together, there is a lot that we have to talk about and sort things out. A lot of people in the comments were not happy about the fact that I had decided to go back to my family, but honestly, at the end of the day, this was a decision that I made for my sake. Getting revenge and whatever is all great, but this is more practical, to be honest. Besides, I have a son who goes to private school. I cannot just afford to sit back at home for months and wait for a satisfactory job offer to fall into my lap with the same expectations that I could have from my dad's company, or start building something of my own from scratch. My wife works too, but obviously we need two incomes since we have

gotten used to a certain lifestyle. I wouldn't say that I've had to swallow my pride to get back to my parents and a company because I did get things done on my terms, and I think from my previous post it was pretty clear that if they hadn't agreed to my terms, then I would have left. It was as simple as that, and I've not had to compromise on anything, so being a doormat is out of the question, that's just not how I look at it at all. I personally feel that I made the most practical choice, and that's completely fine. Besides, ever since I stood up to my parents the other day at their house, I stood my ground and I told them how badly they had treated me in the past, which is why I don't want to trust them anymore. They have also started being more

respectful of me and my boundaries. So I think it's safe to say that slowly but surely, things are changing in our relationship. Even if they don't get completely fixed eventually, it doesn't matter because my goal was to get to the CEO position, that's it, and as long as I've achieved that, it doesn't matter to me what my parents think. It might sound a bit harsh, but that's the truth. Update 3, hey, so it has been about three months since my last update, and once I got back to work, I got busy again, and I wasn't able to post much here. Anyway, things have been going well at the company. I was absent for a couple of weeks, so I had to explain that, and my dad and I chose to say that I had taken an impromptu vacation. That was the safest option, which wouldn't

have led to too many questions. Professionally, my dad and I get along well, and on a more personal front as well, we are trying to work out our problems. My family and I try to have dinner with my parents every two weeks. Of course, my son loves his grandparents, so that also helps. So far, we haven't exactly spoken about that incident with my brother, but last week both my son and my wife had plans with their friends, so only I showed up at dinner with my parents. Then, after a while, we got to talking about my brother, and they confided in me that in the past couple of months, he had made several attempts to reach out to them and ask them for money because he was desperate. But they had made it very clear to him that he was not getting

anything out of them. He had dug this hole for himself, he had to get himself out somehow as well. They were not going to enable his behavior anymore, and I thought that it was pretty good on their part because I'm pretty sure that earlier they would have fallen for his begging easily. My parents told me that obviously it had been very difficult for them to say no to Caleb, and they were very upset about what he was going through because they had always had very high expectations from him, and it made sense because, like I said, he used to be a pretty bright student. I don't know how he got into any of this at all, but anyway, I could tell that they were very upset about it. I felt kind of jealous, so I didn't say anything, but then they

told me that even more than that, they regretted the fact that they hadn't given me the same kind of attention growing up, and because of that, I ended up growing away from them, and now they didn't know how to fix it. They were trying, but it still didn't feel enough. All of a sudden, my mom just broke down and started crying. She started sobbing like a baby while apologizing to me, telling me that she had been a terrible mother and my dad had also failed as a father, and no matter how much they wanted to change the past, they just couldn't. It sucked watching her cry like that. I couldn't help but get a little emotional myself. Usually, I try not to get myself too emotionally invested in my parents because in the past it has always led to heartbreak for me.

this time though I tried to let myself get a little emotionally vulnerable with them and I told my parents that what mattered right now was that at least they were trying to fix the past they had screwed up but here I was willing to give them a second chance and they were willing to take that chance and at least try to make everything right in all honesty there was no telling if we could fix everything in our relationship because it all goes so deep but the efforts they were putting in right now that's what counted for me at the moment Then I told my mom not to cry about it, and I consoled her, and then we went back to having dinner. But even then, the rest of the time that I spent with them was pretty emotional. Before I left, my dad told me that he was really thankful that I was giving them this chance to at least fix things with me because they felt like somehow they had failed both their kids.

I didn't know what to say because, to be honest, it felt kind of true. I guess if my brother had led a more disciplined life and my parents had been a little hard on him, he wouldn't have developed such terrible habits. I'm not saying that it's all their fault, he's an adult and he should have known better too, but they had enabled him, and now he was in a really dark place. But it's all done now, can't do anything about it, and that's what I told my parents as well, that living in the past is not going to be good for anyone. They seemed to understand what I was getting at, and later on, when I came back home, I spoke to my wife about this as well, and she told me that she was glad we were getting along and

addressing these things now because this was at least better than having a strained relationship and pretending that everything was fine. At least we were acknowledging the fact that everything was not fine, and we were actively working on it. Granted, we don't know what's going to happen in the future, but it's the present that counts. It sounds a bit corny, but it's true, and hopefully things with my family will work out in the future because that would make me really happy. I don't want to continue resenting my parents or being suspicious of them forever. I really want things to get better. As long as they're putting the effort that they are right now, I guess I can see that happening.

Anyway, apart from that, I still have my work to think about, and my family is always going to be by my side, so whatever happens, I'll be fine.