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.

    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。

    Lisa was born in May 1978. Jobs, who had launched Apple and was already wealthy, would give his daughter’s name to one of Apple’s first personal computers. Yet he went to great lengths to deny paternity for more than two years, while Brennan cleaned houses, waited tables, and went on welfare. At one point, Jobs even swore in a signed court document that he couldn’t be Lisa’s father because he was “sterile and infertile,” and lacked “the physical capacity to procreate a child.” (He had three more children after marrying Powell in 1991.)

    After a lawsuit forced Jobs to take a paternity test, leading to a court order to provide child support and reimburse the state for its welfare costs, Jobs began paying $500 a month. Apple went public a month later, giving Jobs a personal net worth of more than $225 million. While Jobs rarely visited his daughter for years, bought a mansion, and drove a Mercedes, Brennan struggled to make ends meet. In a published essay, Lisa, who became a writer, later recalled how her father “would stop by our house some days, a deity among us for a few tingling moments or hours.”

    Brennan says later Jobs apologized for the way he’d treated her and Lisa. After developing a closer relationship with his daughter—who legally changed her name to Lisa Brennan-Jobs at age nine—he increased his support “in small increments,” eventually to $4,000 a month, says Brennan. “He was cheap as he could be. He under-provided for everything. It was always like pulling teeth to get him to step up.”

    Over the years after their daughter’s birth, Jobs bought Brennan two cars and a $400,000 house, paid Lisa’s private school tuition, and at times offered other financial help. Despite this, Brennan filed for bankruptcy in 1996. During high school, Lisa lived with her father (and his family) for the first time. In a second essay, Lisa wrote: “Growing up I’d been very poor, very rich, and sometimes in the middle.”

    Jobs’ money—and his favor—could be withdrawn at a moment’s notice. After a summertime conflict with Lisa, back home from Harvard, Jobs stopped supporting her and refused to pay her college tuition. Lisa moved in with a married couple down the street, who covered the tuition; Jobs didn’t repay them for years.

    One e-book edition of Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of Jobs quotes him saying that he didn’t attend his daughter’s 2000 Harvard graduation because Lisa “didn’t even invite me.” In fact, according to Brennan and two other sources, his daughter did invite him and he did attend. (According to a newspaper account at the time, Jobs used his daughter’s graduation to get excused from jury duty.)

    After Brennan pointed out to Jobs that his official Apple biography described him as living in Silicon Valley “with his wife and three children”—“Lisa was so upset,” says Brennan—he changed it in July 2001 to “three of his four children.” In December 2004, it was changed back to “three children.”

    In 2005, Brennan was again in financial distress. Although she and Jobs rarely spoke at that point, she wrote him, asking for an “acknowledgement gift” large enough to end her money troubles forever.

    “By raising our daughter and raising her well, I have provided you with a means to having a relationship with her now,” wrote Brennan, explaining why she believed she deserved the payment. “I never turned her against you. I think you might have taken this for granted, but it should mean a great deal to you…

    “I think you have made a lot of money for a lot of people over the years yet I wonder if anyone has done as much for you as I have with Lisa and done so without the full and sustained support that this work has realistically required.”

    Brennan said she had arrived at the figure of “$25 million net” after years of consideration. She also requested $5 million for Lisa, and said she planned to give their daughter another $5 million out of her payment.

    “It may make sense that when one goes through a traumatic experience over so many years that there is a need for truth and reconciliation for real closure to take place. This letter is the truth and money and appreciation represent reconciliation. I should have received the peaceful experiences that wealth provides so I could provide for Lisa as she was growing up….To me this balances what I have done for you.”

    “I am requesting we close this chapter forever,” Brennan added. “Money is the only meaningful thing that can do it at this point. All the years that I have lost as a result of a sort of theft from dishonorable behavior can heal and be forgiven.”

    Brennan says Jobs never responded to her letter.

    Her 2009 payment request, however—offered as an alternative to publishing her memoir—brought his immediate, angry response.

    “I am not trying to black mail you,” Brennan replied. “Please try to see that I would prefer to resolve things and that I have asked you, maybe poorly, to help before. I have been without a home for over a year and I [am] ill and I am fried. It would be convenient for me to die but even this does not happen. I am stuck with a body and a life, I need to do something.”

    Lisa’s own relationship with Jobs remained volatile into adulthood, leading to long periods where they didn’t speak to one another. But Lisa was at her father’s bedside when Jobs died at home in Palo Alto, on October 5, 2011, at 56.

    Brennan’s conflict continued with his widow. Days after Jobs’ death, from pancreatic cancer, Brennan published an essay in Rolling Stone, where she recalled their early, free-spirited romance—as well as the “all-too-often despotic jerk Steve turned into as he rose to meet the world.” This, Brennan says, got her “uninvited” from a private memorial service for Jobs on the Stanford campus.

    In January 2014, she wrote Laurene Powell Jobs a certified letter, urging her to do what he wouldn’t, through a generous settlement from his estate.

    “Your loyalty to Steve does not mean loyalty to his hatreds,” Brennan wrote. “….I simply never deserved the years of poverty and justifications he built up against me…

    “You are in a position to help me without harm to your own life situation and children…..If you can find your way to helping so that I, as Lisa’s mother, can live in dignity and peace, we don’t need to tell anyone….this could be very quietly and legally done.”

    In his estate, Jobs left their daughter a multi-million-dollar inheritance, which Lisa has used to help support her, according to Brennan. But Brennan says she never received a response to her letter from Powell Jobs. She ended her plea to Steve Jobs’ widow this way: “It is awkward between us for many reasons, but I do want you to know that I deeply appreciate what you must have gone through during all the years of Steve’s illness and then his death. I know you loved him very much. In truth, so did I.”

    1978年5月，丽莎出生。当时，乔布斯创建了苹果公司，已经非常富有，他以女儿的名字来命名第一台苹果个人电脑。但在超过两年时间里，他一直在想方设法否认父亲的身份，与此同时，布伦南却在做保洁员和餐厅服务员，并且要接受政府救济。乔布斯甚至在一份签字的法院公文中发誓，他不可能是丽莎的生父，因为他“无法生育”，不具备“生育孩子的身体能力。”（他在1991年与鲍威尔结婚后生了三个孩子。）

    一次诉讼迫使乔布斯进行了亲子鉴定，法院据此责令他支付孩子的抚养费，并赔偿国家的福利支出，从那时候开始，乔布斯每月支付500美元。一个月后，苹果公司上市，乔布斯的个人净值超过2.25亿美元。虽然乔布斯多年来会偶尔去看望女儿，并且买了一处房产和一辆奔驰汽车，但布伦南依旧经济拮据，入不敷出。后来，已经成为作家的丽莎在一篇文章中回忆称，她的父亲“隔一些日子便会来我们家，就像下凡的天神一样，在家里待几分钟或者几个小时。”

    布伦南说，乔布斯后来曾为自己对待她和丽莎的方式道歉。布伦南称，随着与女儿的关系愈加亲密，乔布斯也开始“少量地”增加抚养费，最后达到每个月4,000美元。他们的女儿在九岁时正式更名为丽莎·布伦南-乔布斯。“他非常小气。各个方面都是如此。要让他多支付抚养费非常困难。”

    女儿出生几年后，乔布斯为布伦南买过两辆车和一栋价值40万美元的房子，为丽莎支付了私立学校的学费，不时还会提供其他经济支持。尽管如此，布伦南还是在1996年申请了破产。高中期间，丽莎第一次与父亲（和他的家人）住在一起。在第二篇文章中，丽莎写道：“在我成长的过程，我曾经非常贫穷，也非常富有，有时候介于二者中间。”

    但乔布斯可能随时收回他的钱和好感。一年夏天，乔布斯与丽莎出现矛盾，从哈佛大学回到家后，他便停止了对女儿的资助，并拒绝支付她的大学学费。丽莎不得不搬到了街道尽头的一对夫妇家中，他们为她支付了学费；乔布斯多年来一直没有偿还这笔费用。

    沃尔特·艾萨克森在经授权的乔布斯自传电子版中提到，乔布斯曾说他不会出席女儿2000年哈佛大学毕业典礼，因为丽莎“根本没有邀请我”。事实上，据布伦南和另外两位知情人士透露，丽莎邀请了乔布斯而且乔布斯也出席了典礼。（根据当时一份报纸的报道，乔布斯曾用女儿的毕业典礼为借口来逃避陪审员义务。）

    布伦南曾向乔布斯指出，他的苹果公司官方个人简介中形容他在硅谷“与妻子和三个孩子住在一起”，“丽莎为此非常生气”——于是在2001年7月，乔布斯将其改为“四个孩子中的三个”。2004年12月，又被修改回“三个孩子”。

    2005年，布伦南再次陷入财务困境。虽然当时她和乔布斯鲜有联系，但她还是写信给乔布斯，要求他提供一大笔“谢礼”，帮她永远摆脱经济困境。

    布伦南写道：“我抚养女儿长大，并将她培养成才，并且我现在为你提供了一条途径，帮你与她保持和睦的父女关系。”她解释了自己为什么应该得到这笔钱。“我从未让她与你为敌。我想你可能一直认为这是理所当然的，但这对你应该有重要的意义……”

    “多年来，你帮助很多人赚到了许多钱，但是否有人曾像我和丽莎那样为你付出这么多，而且我做这一切，并没获得实际需要的任何充分的、持续的支持。”

    布伦南称，经过多年的考虑，她认为最终的数字为“2,500万美元”。并且她要求乔布斯支付给丽莎500万美元，她也会从自己得到的部分中再拿出500万美元给他们的女儿。

    “一个人经历过如此长时间的悲惨遭遇，需要用真相和和解才能实现真正的解脱。这封信便是真相，而钱和感激则代表了和解。我本应该获得财富带来的平和的生活，供养丽莎成长……我认为，这笔钱足以弥补我为你所做的一切。”

    布伦南补充道：“我请求我们将这一页永久地翻过去。目前，金钱是唯一有意义的方式。多年来，因为一个窃贼的不光彩行为让我失去的一切，都可以得到弥补和谅解。”

    布伦南说乔布斯没有回信。

    但她在2009年的要求，即要么付钱要么出版回忆录，立刻引来了乔布斯愤怒的回应。

    布伦南回复称：“我并不是想勒索你。请你明白，我更愿意解决问题，而且我之前曾经请求你的帮助，或许方式有些不妥。我无家可归已经一年时间，而且疾病缠身，没有工作。可能死了对我来说更好，但我还没死成。我无法摆脱这幅躯体和这样的生活，我需要做些什么。”

    即便丽莎长大成人之后，她与乔布斯的关系也时好时坏，两人曾有很长时间没有联系。但2011年10月5日，56岁的乔布斯在帕洛阿尔托的家中去世时，丽莎便陪伴在乔布斯的身边。

    但布伦南与乔布斯遗孀的冲突仍在继续。乔布斯因胰腺癌去世几天之后，布伦南在《滚石》杂志上发表了一篇文章，回忆了早年与乔布斯自由奔放的恋情，以及“随着乔布斯的成功，他如何变成一个专横的恶人”。布伦南称，这篇文章导致她“没有获邀”参加在斯坦福大学校园为乔布斯举办的私人追悼会。

    2014年1月，她给劳伦·鲍威尔·乔布斯写了一封挂号信，要求她完成乔布斯未做的事情，慷慨地从他的遗产中拿出一部分与她进行和解。

    布伦南写道：“你对史蒂夫的忠诚并不意味着也要忠于他的仇恨。……我不应该经受这些年的贫困，以及他为了对付我我给出的那些理由……”

    “你有机会帮助我，并且不会影响到你自己的生活和孩子……如果你能帮助我，作为丽莎的母亲，我可以得到体面平和的生活，我们不需要告诉任何人……这一切可以在私底下根据法律完成。”

    乔布斯在遗嘱中为他们的女儿留下了数百万美元的遗产，据布伦南表示，丽莎一直在用这笔钱资助她的生活。但布伦南表示，她始终没有收到鲍威尔·乔布斯的回信。在给乔布斯遗孀的信件结尾，她这样写道：“出于许多原因，我们之间的关系有些尴尬，但我真心希望你能明白，史蒂夫患病多年以及他的离世让你经历的痛苦，我非常理解。我知道你非常爱他。事实上，我也爱他。”（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓