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We were a committee of three brothers, but one of us was bad Bad in the sense that one of us was selfish Selfish in the sense that the bad brother among us cared only for money, and confused the money he had amassed for his superiority The bad brother’s belief that he was superior was delusional in many ways, but perhaps most obviously because all the bad brother’s money had come from our father, and while me and my other good brother also had money from our father, me and the good brother could see that this father-money was a thing of luck, and not proof of anything except that we three brothers were all likely to drink fine local wine and eat expensive creamy cheese    The bad brother was, of course, most beloved by our mother Our mother spoke longingly of the bad brother’s excellent fashion choices and keen business sense (which the bad brother did not, in fact, possess) and also how all of the girls that the bad brother had considered for wife-hood were not good enough for the bad brother, because, in our mother’s eyes, the bad brother was the best man that had ever lived    At times, when our bad brother was not present, our mother talked only of the bad brother, which annoyed my good brother and I, but we suspected that our mother knew, deep down, that our bad brother was a bad brother, but our mother could not bring herself to say it out loud in the air for fear that God, or someone else with mighty judgment, might hear    My good brother suspected that our bad brother was trying to kill our mother Our bad brother had done very bad things before (like steal from our father and us, his other two brothers), so it did not seem out of the question that our bad selfish brother might also try and kill our mother And, our bad brother knew that he was the most beloved by our mother, and so had the most powerful key, in our mother’s old