Chapter 20 - The Missing Sixty
The photocopied check was real.
Or at least the bank confirmed the routing and account format were consistent with the period.
Vanessa refused to assume the anonymous note was truthful.
They needed source records.
Howard Bell’s company had long since changed banks.
Formal discovery in the divorce could reach transactions involving marital claims, but nine-year-old third-party records might be difficult.
Then Howard contacted Cedric.
He wanted to speak.
This time Vanessa insisted attorneys be present.
Howard joined a video conference with his lawyer.
He was sixty-two, polished, cautious, and irritated.
“I’m doing this because Marcus dragged old business into my company again.”
Tasha asked, “Did you fund KJ Supplies?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Marcus owed me.”
“That sounds backward.”
Howard smiled without humor.
“He owed me eighty thousand from before the indictment. We had investments together. When he was incarcerated, he claimed he could rebuild a legitimate operation and repay me.”
“So you gave him more money?”
“I financed inventory channels I expected to control.”
Vanessa asked for clarity.
Howard continued.
“I put twenty-seven thousand into the vendor entity run by the young woman.”
“Kiara.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know she was related to Tasha?”
“No.”
“Did you know Marcus was romantically involved with her?”
“No.”
“What did you expect?”
“Repayment through future legitimate work.”
Tasha asked about the forty-thousand-dollar check.
Howard went quiet.
“That was not debt.”
“What was it?”
“Marcus’s share of a property investment.”
“Second Line Holdings existed?”
“Informally. We used the name.”
“Where did the money go?”
“I paid him one hundred thousand total.”
Tasha felt Vanessa become more alert.
“When?” Vanessa asked.
“Before the federal investigation.”
“In what form?”
“Forty thousand by check. Sixty in cashier’s checks.”
“Was that disclosed in the criminal case?”
Howard’s lawyer interrupted.
“My client will not speculate about another defendant’s disclosures.”
Fair.
Tasha asked, “Why did Marcus owe you eighty later if you had paid him one hundred?”
Howard looked at her.
“Because he invested my money in another project and lost it.”
“After you paid him?”
“Yes.”
The relationships were tangled.
Not a simple hidden fortune.
A network of private deals, losses, debt, and money moving between people who treated documentation as flexible.
“Did Marcus ever tell you he had sixty thousand hidden?”
“No.”
“Then why would somebody write ‘ask where the other sixty went’?”
Howard frowned.
“I don’t know.”
Vanessa showed him the note.
Howard stared.
“That handwriting isn’t mine.”
“Do you know whose?”
He looked longer.
“No.”
The anonymous envelope remained unexplained.
But Howard produced old records showing the one-hundred-thousand-dollar payout.
Marcus’s known accounts from the period reflected only part of it.
Where the rest went was unclear.
Tasha no longer cared about solving every mystery unless it affected her now.
That was growth.
Old Tasha would have chased every dollar to prove a theory.
New Tasha asked Camille one question.
“Does this affect current marital assets?”
“Potentially, if old funds remained somewhere or were used to capitalize current entities.”
“Can you prove that?”
“Not yet.”
“Then keep looking.”
She went back to work.
Chapter twenty of her crisis, she thought, though real life did not announce chapters.
The major shift happened quietly.
Marcus stopped calling.
Weeks passed.
His lawyers communicated.
Probation continued reviewing financial records.
The divorce entered discovery.
Kiara reached twenty-four weeks of pregnancy.
The baby moved constantly.
Denise became incapable of talking about anything else.
“He kicked during church.”
“He kicked during lunch.”
“He kicked when I said Marcus’s name.”
Tasha raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t make the fetus take sides.”
Denise laughed.
They needed laughter.
One Sunday Kiara asked Tasha to meet at a park.
No lawyers.
No documents.
Just family.
Tasha almost refused.
Then she went.
Kiara looked visibly pregnant now.
She wore a long coat and carried two cups of tea.
“I remembered your order.”
“Thank you.”
They walked.
After several minutes Kiara said, “I don’t expect us to go back.”
“Back where?”
“To how we were.”
“We can’t.”
“I know.”
Tasha glanced at her.
“Why did you want to meet?”
“Because every conversation we’ve had has been about Marcus or money.”
“That’s because you got pregnant by my husband while helping move money.”
Kiara nodded.
“I deserved that.”
Tasha sighed.
“I’m tired of hurting you just because I can.”
Kiara’s eyes filled.
“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry without asking you to forgive me.”
Tasha waited.
“I betrayed you,” Kiara said. “I was jealous of you. I let Marcus tell me that wanting what you had was the same as becoming my own person.”
Tasha listened.
“I also lied to myself. I told myself your marriage was already dead. I told myself the business money was complicated, not wrong. I told myself if Marcus loved me, that made what we did meaningful.”
She looked at Tasha.
“It didn’t.”
“The relationship meant something to you.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“I know.”
They walked farther.
Kiara placed a hand on her stomach.
“I’m going to raise him knowing the truth someday.”
Tasha stopped.
“What truth?”
“That his parents did something terrible to people they loved.”
Tasha considered.
“Do not make that child carry adult guilt.”
Kiara began crying.
“I don’t know how to tell him anything.”
“You have years.”
“What if Marcus tells him I kept them apart?”
“Then document your choices. Be fair. Let courts handle rights if necessary.”
Kiara nodded.
Then she handed Tasha a sealed envelope.
“What is this?”
“A copy of something Marcus sent me from prison.”
Tasha almost refused.
“Why now?”
“Because I didn’t understand it until the black book.”
Tasha opened it.
Inside was a photocopy of a handwritten page.
Marcus had drawn boxes representing accounts and companies.
At the center:
T HOME EQUITY.
An arrow pointed toward Second Line.
From Second Line, another arrow pointed toward:
K / CHILD / EXIT.
Tasha stared.
Date: seven months before release.
“Child?”
Kiara whispered, “He was planning for a baby before he came home.”
Tasha looked at her.
“With you?”
Kiara nodded.
“He told me if we were serious, we should build a family.”
There was no longer any plausible claim that the pregnancy had transformed the situation.
Marcus had imagined the child while Tasha was still counting down his release.
The affair’s deepest betrayal was not sex.
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It was architecture.
They had been designing a future using Tasha’s loyalty as construction material.
