PARTIALITY

After my bachelor’s degree, I went straight into a master’s in Corporate Finance, then landed an internship at an investment bank in Frankfurt’s financial district — home to the headquarters of the European Central Bank and a cluster of major financial institutions.

After the internship, I was kept on full-time as an investment analyst.

The starting salary wasn’t much, but I worked hard, studying for my CFA charter in the evenings on my own dime, telling no one at home — because I knew exactly what I’d be asked if I did: “How much did that cost?

Why not put that money toward your brother instead?”

I still sent most of my salary home every month, even though I was twenty-three, employed, fully capable of deciding my own life.

But the habit of “giving way to your brother” had burrowed so deep into me it had become reflex.

I didn’t dare do otherwise.

Lukas was twenty by then.

After his design course, he couldn’t land a steady job, so he stayed home doing freelance logo work on gig platforms, income unpredictable.

Every time he needed a new computer, licensed software, a graphics tablet, my mother would call: “Send a bit more, would you — Lukas needs it, you’re his sister, help him out.”

I helped.

Every single time.

Some months I sent home seventy percent of my pay, keeping just enough for rent on a small flat in Sachsenhausen and the barest groceries.

At twenty-five, I passed CFA Level II.

The bank took notice and put me on an analysis team for a cross-border merger between a German conglomerate and an investment fund based in Luxembourg.

I did well enough that the chairman on the counterparty side — I’d later learn he headed one of the largest private financial groups in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) — personally called to praise the work, and asked if I’d come work directly for him.

I said yes, and moved to his firm, on one condition I set for myself: my family would not know where I worked, what my title was, or what I earned.

I only told my mother I’d “changed jobs, a bit more stable now.”

Why the secrecy?

Because I was exhausted by a pattern I knew too well: every time I achieved something, what came back wasn’t congratulations — it was a list of things Lukas needed.

I wanted, even just once, to have a piece of my life that was mine alone, untouchable.