If you want to truly understand Dan Gilbert, ask him about fatherhood.

"I did not have a close relationship with my dad," the titan of finance and Detroit real estate told me. "My dad was a World War II military guy, and then he owned a bar in Detroit." Gilbert's rat-a-tat cadence made it hard for me to keep up with his hot flurry of thoughts and images.

Including this chilling story:

"My dad is 12 years old, and his brother is 10. (He) was born and raised in Detroit, a very poor neighborhood. He is delivering newspapers with his brother, and it's a foggy day, and his 10-year-old brother gets run over, and it's a priest who runs him over and kills him. It wasn't the priest's fault, and the priest is doing last rites over the body …"

Gilbert looked up from the table in his office at Quicken Loans, the mortgage company that launched his business empire and has driven a resurgence in downtown Detroit. He stared me in the eyes and continued.

"The worst part of the story: His immigrant father from Russia. He put his finger in his face and said, 'You killed your brother. You should have watched your brother.'" Gilbert shook his head in sympathy for his long-deceased dad, who would have turned 100 years old this year.

"You can imagine what my grandfather did to my father," Gilbert said. "So you can understand how anybody who experiences that kind of trauma would have a hard time getting close to anybody, including his kids."

In our hourlong conversation, Gilbert never did connect the dots. He never did tell me (nor has he told any journalist, as far as I can tell) how his Russian grandfather warped his father, or how his father, the owner of a bar at Seven Mile Road and Woodward, treated Gilbert's two half-siblings and brother.

He did say he was determined to be closer to his own five children: "It's almost like correcting course, and it's like correcting nature — getting back to equilibrium." Gilbert also suggested his upbringing played an indirect role in his business success.

"When you talk to successful entrepreneurs," he said, "95 percent of them come from a messed-up childhood."