Chapter 7 - The Beneficiary
Malcolm did not raise his voice.
That frightened Tasha more.
“What beneficiary form?”
“My life insurance at work?” he asked.
“No.”
“My retirement account?”
Tasha did not answer.
Andre swore.
Malcolm stepped closer.
“Tasha.”
“Your emergency savings account.”
“That doesn’t have a beneficiary form.”
“I mean the investment account.”
Malcolm stared.
He had opened a brokerage account four years earlier and contributed small amounts automatically. It held roughly twenty-six thousand dollars.
He rarely touched it.
“You changed my beneficiary?”
“I added myself.”
“You already were the beneficiary.”
Tasha looked confused.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were.”
Her expression changed.
Malcolm took out his phone.
He logged into the account.
His beneficiary information showed Tasha at one hundred percent.
Date updated: nineteen months earlier.
He frowned.
“That’s when we changed it together.”
Tasha shook her head.
“No. I changed it before that.”
Malcolm looked up.
“What?”
“You originally had Andre.”
Andre blinked.
Malcolm remembered.
Years earlier, before he and Tasha were serious, he had named Andre.
Later, Malcolm had intentionally changed it to Tasha.
“You changed it before I did?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“You left your account open.”
Malcolm laughed once in disbelief.
“So you committed fraud to create something I later chose voluntarily.”
“I didn’t think of it as fraud.”
“That seems to be a recurring problem.”
“I knew you were going to change it eventually.”
“You don’t get credit because your unauthorized decision happened to match a later authorized one.”
“I was your girlfriend.”
“You were not my legal proxy.”
Tasha looked at Andre.
“You’ve always been his emergency contact for everything.”
Andre said, “And I never logged into his accounts and replaced people.”
Malcolm closed the app.
“What form is in the envelope?”
Tasha pointed toward a folder.
Andre retrieved it.
The paper was an old printed beneficiary-change confirmation.
It proved what Tasha had admitted.
But there was also another document behind it.
A rental application.
Malcolm read the address.
It was not their apartment.
It belonged to a townhouse complex across town.
Applicant: Tasha Reed.
Secondary occupant: Malcolm Reed.
Application date: two years earlier.
He looked at her.
“What is this?”
Tasha’s face went rigid.
“That fell through.”
“You applied for a townhouse?”
“I thought we needed more space.”
“You put me as an occupant.”
“You would’ve lived there.”
“I never saw this.”
“The rent was too high.”
“That’s why it fell through?”
“Yes.”
“Not because I didn’t know?”
Tasha stared.
Malcolm read further.
Income section.
His salary.
His employer.
His phone number.
Then he reached the credit authorization.
A signature resembling his.
Andre took the document.
“You need copies of all this.”
Tasha snapped, “Stop talking like he’s building a court case.”
Andre looked directly at her.
“He should be.”
“You want to destroy us.”
“No. You did that yourself.”
“Andre,” Malcolm said.
His brother stopped.
Tasha’s shoulders shook.
Malcolm felt something complicated watching her.
Grief.
Anger.
And beneath both, the ghost of affection.
He had loved this woman.
He still did, in some damaged involuntary place.
That was what made betrayal different from ordinary harm.
Strangers could hurt you.
Only people you trusted could rearrange your understanding of your own life.
Malcolm sat on one of the storage boxes.
“When did this start?”
Tasha wiped her cheeks.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
She leaned against the dresser.
“Grantham.”
“Why then?”
“Because you were going to leave.”
“I asked you to come.”
“You were excited before you even asked me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It meant the future was already yours. I was just being invited into it.”
Malcolm stared.
“That’s how relationships work sometimes. One person gets an opportunity, then both people discuss it.”
“You didn’t discuss whether you wanted it.”
“Of course I wanted it.”
“Exactly.”
“So I was supposed to want less first?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then make me.”
Tasha looked toward the metal door.
“My father got promoted when I was fourteen.”
Malcolm knew parts of the story.
Her father had moved to another state.
Her parents’ marriage had ended within a year.
“He started traveling,” Tasha continued. “New clothes. New friends. New everything. My mother kept saying success had changed him.”
“That was your father.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Tasha looked at him.
“Because for three years you’ve been punishing me for what he did.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Neither is deleting my offer letter because somebody else left your mother.”
Her face tightened.
“I was scared.”
“You were scared the first time.”
Malcolm pointed toward the boxes.
“What do you call the second time?”
She said nothing.
“The tenth?”
Nothing.
“The fortieth?”
Tasha began to cry again.
“Control,” Malcolm said.
She shook her head.
“Yes.”
“I never wanted to control you.”
“You wanted to control the outcome. You didn’t care what choices you had to steal from me to get it.”
Tasha sank into the chair.
Malcolm looked around the storage unit.
His old notebooks.
His letters.
The fraudulent lease.
The rental application.
None of it had been created by one emotional morning.
This was a pattern.
And patterns had systems.
Malcolm stood.
“Give me every password you know.”
Tasha stared.
“What?”
“My email. Banking. Work portals. Anything.”
“I don’t know your work password.”
“Everything else.”
“I’ll write them down.”
“No.”
He held out his phone.
“Tell me what you’ve accessed.”
She hesitated.
Then listed his email.
Joint banking.
Brokerage account.
Utilities.
Apartment portal.
One credit-card account.
His old cloud storage.
Malcolm changed each password in front of her.
He activated two-factor authentication.
Removed remembered devices.
Signed out all sessions.
When he reached his cloud account, a security page displayed connected devices.
His phone.
His laptop.
An old tablet in the apartment.
And one device he did not recognize.
Tasha-iPad-Pro.
Last active: that morning.
Malcolm looked at her.
“You told me your iPad broke last year.”
“It did.”
“Then what is that?”
Tasha looked away.
Andre slowly turned toward the back of the storage unit.
There was a slim black case partly hidden beneath a blanket.
He pulled it free.
Inside was an iPad.
Charged.
Active.
Malcolm pressed the home button.
The screen lit.
A notes application was open.
One document sat at the top.
Its title was:
M — OPTIONS
Malcolm touched it.
Tasha lunged forward.
“No.”
Andre blocked her path without touching her.
Malcolm opened the note.
There were company names.
Dates.
Passwords.
Recruiters.
Salary ranges.
And beside each opportunity, Tasha had written one of three words.
SAFE.
RISK.
Or:
LEAVE.
Bellweather had been marked in red.
LEAVE.
At the bottom was a fourth category Malcolm had never imagined.
IF HE FINDS OUT.
Beneath it were seven numbered steps.
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And Step One had already happened that morning.
Move the money.
