I Caught My Daughter-In-law Using My Late Wife’s Sanctuary For Her Affair. She Didn’t Know I Was A Retired Attorney Watching From The Woods. How Do I Tell My Son She Also Stole $40,000?

I didn’t know how to begin. How do you tell your son that his wife has been betraying him?

That the woman he loves, the mother of his children, has been lying to him every single day? I started with the lake house.

I told him about driving up there to meet the contractor, about hearing the laughter, about seeing Victoria through the window. David’s face went pale.

He started shaking his head before I even finished.

“No,”

he said.

“That’s not possible. Victoria would never do that.”

I showed him the photographs. He stared at them for a long time.

His hands were trembling. I watched my son’s heart break in real time, and it nearly destroyed me.

When he finally spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.

“How long?”

he asked.

I told him everything Frank had discovered: the eighteen months, the hotels, the trip to Chicago. Bradley Thornton and his wife and his financial troubles.

And then I told him about the money. David looked at me like I had stabbed him.

“$40,000,”

he kept repeating it.

“$40,000.”

I showed him the bank records, the withdrawal patterns, the way Victoria had timed everything to coincide with his business trips. David stood up and walked to the window.

He stood there for a long time, looking out at the backyard where he had played as a child. Where he had learned to throw a baseball.

Where he had brought Victoria to meet his mother for the first time. Finally, he turned around.

“What do I do, Dad?”

I told him about Patricia Mendes, about the legal strategy, about how we could protect him and the children. David nodded slowly.

He looked older somehow, like he had aged ten years in the past hour.

“I want to talk to her first,”

he said.

“I need to hear it from her.”

I understood, but I asked him to wait just a few more days. We needed to make sure everything was in place.

We needed to secure the remaining finances. We needed to document the current state of all the accounts before Victoria had any chance to move things around.

David agreed. He trusted me; he had always trusted me.

Over the next week, Patricia and I worked quickly. We subpoenaed bank records.

We documented the joint accounts and David’s separate retirement funds. We gathered every piece of evidence into a comprehensive file.

Patricia also discovered something else. Bradley Thornton’s firm was not just under investigation; they were facing a federal inquiry for mishandling client funds.

Bradley was potentially looking at criminal charges. His affair with Victoria was the least of his problems.

One Phone Call

I decided to make one more phone call. Not to Victoria, not to David, but to someone else entirely.

I called Jennifer Thornton, Bradley’s wife. She answered on the third ring.

Her voice was pleasant, unsuspecting. She probably thought I was trying to sell her something.

I introduced myself. I told her I was sorry to bother her, but I had information about her husband that I thought she should know.

I told her I had evidence of an ongoing affair between Bradley and a woman named Victoria. There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

When Jennifer finally spoke, her voice was ice cold. She asked me to send her the evidence.

She gave me an email address. I sent her a selection of the photographs, the hotel receipts, the trip to Chicago.

Jennifer called me back two hours later. She thanked me.

Her voice was shaking, but she thanked me. She said she had suspected something for months but couldn’t prove it.

She said this explained so many things: the late nights, the business trips, the second mortgage she had questioned. She asked me what I was going to do.

I told her my son was going to confront his wife. I told her about the money Victoria had been stealing.

Jennifer laughed bitterly.

“Of course,”

she said.

“Of course Victoria was giving him money. Bradley had been bleeding them dry for months. He had even taken money from their children’s college funds.”

We talked for almost an hour, two parents united by betrayal. Trying to figure out how to protect our children and grandchildren from the fallout.

By the end of the call, we had agreed on something. We would coordinate.

We would confront our spouses at the same time. That way, neither Victoria nor Bradley would have a chance to warn the other.

They would both be blindsided, just like we had been. We set a date: Sunday evening, one week away.

The longest week of my life. David came to my house on Saturday night.

He was staying with me so Victoria wouldn’t suspect anything. He had told her he was visiting an old college friend who was in town.

We sat up late that night, talking. David told me about his marriage, about how things had seemed fine on the surface.

About how Victoria had always been a good mother, a good wife, or so he thought. He asked me if I thought she had ever loved him.

I didn’t know how to answer that. I told him that people are complicated, that love and betrayal can exist in the same heart.

That what mattered now was not the past but the future. His future, the children’s future.

David nodded. He seemed calmer than I expected, more resigned.

Maybe the shock had worn off and left only determination in its place. Sunday morning, we drove to Columbus together.

Patricia met us at David’s house at 4:00. We went over the plan one more time.

David would confront Victoria alone. Patricia and I would wait in the study, ready to step in if needed.

I had already texted Jennifer Thornton. She was going to confront Bradley at the same time at their home across town.

Victoria arrived home at 5:30. She had been at her mother’s house with the kids.

Emma and Michael ran inside first, excited to see their father. David hugged them tightly, longer than usual.

I watched from the hallway, and I saw tears in his eyes that he quickly blinked away. Victoria came in a few minutes later, carrying grocery bags.

She smiled when she saw David.

“You’re home early,”

she said.

“I thought you were staying at your dad’s another night.”

David said the kids needed to go to the playroom. Victoria looked confused but agreed.

Once Emma and Michael were safely upstairs, David turned to face his wife.

“We need to talk,”

he said.

Victoria’s smile faltered slightly.

“About what?”

David didn’t answer. He just walked into the living room and sat down on the couch.

Victoria followed, still looking confused. She sat across from him in the armchair.