乔布斯留下的遗产和纷争：前女友要求其为其“不光彩行为”支付2500万美元

    乔布斯辉煌的56年人生中有过很多爱恨纠缠的故事，但其中持续时间最长且最令他难堪的，应该是与初恋女友、女儿丽莎的生母克里斯安·布伦南的恩怨。

    1972年，17岁的乔布斯与布伦南在加州库比蒂诺的霍姆斯特德高中读书时结识。而因为乔布斯拒绝承认父亲的身份、他对待女儿丽莎的方式以及他提供的有限的经济支持，使布伦南与乔布斯的恩怨纠葛一直持续到乔布斯去世，长达四十多年。布伦南在2013年的一本回忆录《咬一口苹果》（The Bite in the Apple）中痛斥乔布斯，并讲述自己受到了“他的残忍对待”。

    但在两人不堪回首的往事当中，有一部分目前仍鲜为人知。那是在布伦南的回忆录截止的时间之后，当时她的前男友已经达到了声望和财富上的巅峰。布伦南要求当时已是亿万富翁的乔布斯向她支付2,500万美元，为自己的“不光彩行为忏悔”，还要求他向当时27岁的女儿支付500万美元。

    现年60岁的布伦南在一封未注明日期、单倍行距、两页纸的信件中提出了上述要求。她声称自己在2005年12月将信寄给了乔布斯。后来，她向《财富》杂志提供了一份信件的副本。自称是“经过蜕变的”画家和雕塑家的布伦南，在当时经济拮据，而且她成年后的生活状况一直没有改善。而当时50岁的乔布斯，担任苹果公司和皮克斯动画的CEO，身家估计为30亿美元。

    布伦南对乔布斯写道：“我在异常艰难的条件下将我们的女儿抚养成人，我们本不需要经历这样的磨难。很显然，更令人迷惑和难堪的是，你有那么多钱……有些事情是不完整的……我相信，通过金钱可以获得体面，让我得到解脱。就是这么简单。”

    布伦南称，乔布斯对她的要求视而不见。几个月后，她开始撰写回忆录，描述他们之间的关系。

    向乔布斯写信要钱三年多后，布伦南再次进行了尝试。2009年，疾病缠身、穷困潦倒的布伦南，借住在朋友家，因此她再次联系了乔布斯。这一次，布伦南提出用停止出书（她表示，丽莎也不希望她出版）来换取经济和解。

    根据布伦南提供给《财富》杂志的电子邮件，她曾在2009年9月26日对乔布斯写道：“我最后一次请求你，为我设立一个信托机构，支持我的生活。我不想与你发生冲突，但我必须做一些事情。我病了三年，已经别无选择……没有人会对这本书里的我们两个产生好印象，而且这会给丽莎造成伤害，她不应该受到这样的对待。如何选择由你决定。请考虑一下为我提供10，000美元，帮我度过几个月时间，并为我设立一个信托机构。我们现在没法直接谈，因为我病得很重，而且情绪不稳定……鉴于我目前的情况，我必须尽快获得金钱来维持生计，要么通过你要么通过出书。”

    乔布斯当天便回复称：“我不会被要挟。你的情况与我没有丝毫关系。”并且他将邮件抄送给了当时31岁的丽莎。

    （丽莎在电子邮件中拒绝对这件事发表意见。乔布斯的遗孀劳伦·鲍威尔·乔布斯的发言人称，她对此也不作任何评论。）

    高中时，乔布斯与布伦南因为对反主流文化精神志趣相投而陷入爱河，两人经历了长达五年分分合合的恋情。他们没有结婚，但大部分时间住在一起。布伦南在18岁时怀孕，但根据两人的协议，她做了流产。23岁的时候，布伦南再次怀孕。

    Among the many love-hate relationships that Steve Jobs engendered during his remarkable 56 years on earth, none endured as long—nor was as fraught—as his connection with Chrisann Brennan, Jobs’ first girlfriend and the mother of his daughter Lisa.

    The pair met at age 17 in 1972, as students at Homestead High School in Cupertino, Calif., and Brennan’s stormy dealings with Jobs—over his initial denials of paternity, his treatment of Lisa, and his limited financial support—continued until his death nearly four decades later. Brennan offered her unsparing take on Jobs—and becoming an “object of his cruelty”—in a 2013 memoir, entitled The Bite in the Apple.

    But one till-now-unrevealed chapter of their tortured history unfolded after the period covered by Brennan’s book, during the time when her ex- was achieving his highest renown and wealth. It’s the story of how she asked Jobs, by then a billionaire, to repent for his “dishonorable behavior” with a $25 million payment to her—and another $5 million for their daughter, then 27.

    Brennan, now 60, made her request in an undated, single-spaced, two-page letter, which she says she sent to Jobs in December 2005. She later provided a copy to Fortune (click here to read Brennan’s letter). A self-described “transmutational” painter and sculptor, Brennan was struggling financially then, as she had throughout her adult life. Jobs, then 50 and the CEO of both Apple AAPL 0.22% and Pixar, was worth an estimated $3 billion.

    “I have raised our daughter under circumstances that were all together too tough and tougher than they needed to be,” Brennan wrote Jobs. “Obviously it was all the more confusing and difficult because you had so much money….something is incomplete….I believe that decency and closure can be achieved through money. It is very simple.”

    Jobs ignored her request, Brennan says. Months later, she began writing a memoir about their relationship.

    More than three years after writing Jobs and asking for money, Brennan tried again. In 2009—sick, out of money, and living with friends—she contacted him again. This time Brennan offered to shelve the book (which she says Lisa didn’t want her to publish anyway) in exchange for a financial settlement.

    “I am asking you for the last time to please set up a trust for me for my life,” Brennan wrote Jobs on Sept. 26, 2009, according to emails she provided to Fortune. “I do not want to cause conflict with you but I must do something. I have been ill for 3 years and I just do not have a choice anymore….No one is going to be impressed with either of us in this book and it will hurt Lisa who never deserved any of this. The choice is yours. Please consider providing me with $10,000 for a few months and working out a trust. You and I cannot talk because I am too ill and on a hair trigger…. Given my circumstance, I am moving as fast as I can to have the money I need to live, it is either you or the book.”

    “I don’t react well to blackmail,” Jobs wrote back that day, copying Lisa, then 31. “I will have no part in any of this.”

    (In an email, Lisa declined a request to comment for this story. A spokesperson for Laurene Powell Jobs, the Apple co-founder’s widow, said she would also have no comment.)

    After falling in love in high school, Jobs and Brennan, kindred counterculture spirits, had an on-again, off-again romance over five years. They never married, but lived together for parts of that time. He got her pregnant at age 18—by their agreement, she had an abortion—then again, when she was 23.