After a moment I exhaled slowly. “Okay. Enough of this matter.” I lifted a sheet of paper. “We had our accounting department conduct a detailed audit of the last five years of your financial books. They’ve brought something to my attention. There seems to be a discrepancy in your finances.
“About three years ago there was a sizable nonitemized disbursement to one of your employees. If my memory doesn’t fail me, his name is Benjamin.”
I noticed both of them squirm.
“This Benjamin also has the last name of Jacobson so may I assume he’s one of your family?”
“Yes, sir,” the brothers said almost in unison.
“He’s our brother,” Rupert said.
“Another brother? How many of you are there?”
“Twelve brothers, sir,” Simon said. “And one sister.”
“What a family,” I said, shaking my head as if in amazement. “But back to the company. The amount of the disbursement was thirty-six thousand dollars. What can you tell me about this?”
“He borrowed the money,” Rupert said.
“Borrowed from a public held company?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you a bank as well as an agency?”
“No, sir,” Rupert said.
“I don’t need to tell you that’s not good business practice. But, why then wasn’t this disbursement originally recorded as a loan? In fact, it would appear that there was an attempt to conceal it.”
Both brothers sat silently.
“Is this something that your father was involved with?”
“No, sir,” Rupert blurted out.
“Then your father, CEO, was unaware of what was going on at his own firm.”
Rupert looked down for a moment, then back to me. “Mr. Joseph, I know this looks bad. But it’s not my father’s fault. This whole thing was a fiasco, but it was a fluke—a one-time event. Please keep this in the context of decades of company success.”
“Noted,” I said. I sat back and looked at them for a moment. I honestly felt bad for them. For their desperation. “I noticed a strange coincidence here. The time of this ‘loan’ coincides with your brother Joseph’s departure from the firm. Was he somehow involved in this matter?”
“Yes,” Simon said.
His answer surprised me. “He was?”
“It’s just that I used that incident to coerce him to leave the firm.”
“How did you do that?”
“He wanted to just pay the money back for his brother. But I told him that if he didn’t leave the state I would file legal action against Ben. Ben is his full brother.”
“F-o-o-l or f-u-l-l brother?” I asked.
“The latter,” Rupert said.
“So, this Joseph is guilty of attempting to conceal what may be considered a fraudulent act. And he is currently working at our agency. Unfortunately, I’ll have to respond to that.”
Both brothers blanched.
“Mr. Joseph,” Rupert said, “the only thing my brother Joseph is guilty of is mercy. He had nothing to do with any of this. We put him in a horrible position. If anyone should be fired, it’s me. This is my failure. I never should have involved him in this affair.” He paused with emotion. “Let him keep his job. Please don’t punish him for my actions.”
“Unfortunately, that is the way the world works,” I said. “Right or wrong, others are always affected by our actions.”
“Then I ask you to let me pay for my mistake.”
Simon looked up. “Make that two of us. The entire thing was my idea.”
I gazed at them for a long time, realizing that, in a way, their course had been worse than mine. I wondered how much guilt they had carried for the last three years.
“Does your father know the truth about why his son left?”
They both shook their heads.
“He was so upset,” Rupert said. “We were afraid he would just dissolve the agency and throw us out of his life. We deserved that, but he didn’t deserve that.”
I thought over his words. “So let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you’re both willing to sacrifice your jobs for this brother Joseph?”
They were both quiet, then Rupert said, “If it comes to that. Yes, I am.”
“And you?” I asked Simon.
He nodded sadly. “Yes, sir.”
Their answers filled me with emotion. “So tell me,” I said softly. “If your brother Joseph was right here in this room, right now, what would you say to him?”
Simon’s voice broke with emotion. “I would ask his forgiveness.”
“And you?” I asked Rupert.
He nodded, too emotional to speak. “The same.”