My Daughter Is In A Coma After Her Husband Cut Her Brake Lines For A $10m Payout. He Didn’t Know She Was Pregnant With His Child. I Am A Billionaire With A Very Particular Set Of Skills. How Should I Execute My Revenge?

The Truth Revealed

Three days after his arrest, Derek was released on bail posted by his mother. She had mortgaged her home in Connecticut to pay for it. I felt a moment of sympathy for the woman. She was innocent in all this, but her son was not.

I visited Rebecca that day. She was recovering well, stronger every day. The baby was healthy. The doctors were optimistic.,

“Daddy, I need to know something,” she said as I sat beside her bed. “Where is Derek, really? I know you’ve been protecting me, but I need to know.”

I took a deep breath. I had hoped to spare her the worst of it, but she deserved the truth.

“Derek has been arrested, sweetheart. For embezzlement and fraud.”

I paused.

“And there’s evidence that your accident wasn’t an accident. Someone tampered with your brakes.”

She was quiet for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper.

“He tried to kill me?”

“Yes.”

“Why? I loved him. I gave up everything for him. My career, my friends, my life in Boston. I supported him when the business was struggling. I believed in him when no one else did. Why would he?”

“There’s a woman, Vanessa Callaway. They’ve been together for years, apparently. And there was a life insurance policy. $10 million.”

The light went out of my daughter’s eyes. I watched something inside her break. And I wanted to find Derek Mercer and tear him apart with my bare hands. But that would have been too easy, too quick.,

“What happens now?” Rebecca asked.

“Now we make sure he never hurts anyone again.”

Justice and Vengeance

Derek’s trial was a media circus. The handsome investment banker who tried to murder his pregnant wife for insurance money. The newspapers ate it up. The cable news channels ran segments every night. Derek’s face was everywhere, and not in the way he had always dreamed.

The evidence was overwhelming. The tampered brakes, the affair documented in hundreds of emails, the offshore accounts, the life insurance policy. Graham Foster, his former partner, testified against him in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Derek’s lawyers tried everything. They claimed the brake evidence was circumstantial. They argued that the affair was irrelevant to the criminal charges. They painted Derek as a desperate man who made bad financial decisions but never intended to hurt anyone.

The jury didn’t buy it. Guilty on all counts. Attempted murder, fraud, money laundering, conspiracy. The judge sentenced Derek Mercer to 35 years in federal prison. He would be eligible for parole in 20.,

But the criminal case was only part of his punishment. The civil lawsuit filed on Rebecca’s behalf invoked the prenuptial agreement’s punitive damages clause. Derek was found liable for $62 million in damages, more than anyone expected.

His assets, frozen since the beginning of the investigation, were seized to satisfy the judgment. The yacht he had been celebrating on was sold. The Porsche he loved so much was auctioned. The house in Malibu, bought with stolen money, was liquidated. Every last penny was taken from him.

And then there was Vanessa Callaway. Her Ponzi scheme collapsed spectacularly once the investigation went public. Her investors, suddenly aware that their money was gone, filed a class action lawsuit. She was indicted on 47 counts of securities fraud. She pleaded guilty to avoid trial and received a 15-year sentence. Derek’s new beginning had ended before it even started.

The Final Plea

Six months later, I received a letter. It was from Derek, written on prison stationary. His handwriting was cramped, desperate.,

“Mr. Thornton, I know I have no right to ask anything of you. I know what I did was unforgivable. But I need you to understand. I never meant for any of this to happen. I loved Rebecca in my own way. The affair, the money, it all just spiraled out of control. I’m not a monster. I made mistakes. Terrible mistakes. But I don’t deserve to die in here. Please talk to your daughter. Ask her to speak on my behalf at my parole hearing. Ask her to show mercy. Derek.”

I read the letter twice. Then I wrote my response.

“Derek, my daughter is raising your child. A beautiful little girl named Emma. She has your eyes. Every day Rebecca looks at that child and is reminded of the man who tried to kill her. You didn’t just make mistakes. You made choices. You chose to deceive. You chose to steal. You chose to betray. You chose to cut those brake lines and send my daughter off a cliff. You are exactly where you belong. Marcus Thornton.”

I never heard from him again.

A New Life

Two years have passed since that night when the phone rang at 3:47 in the morning. Rebecca has rebuilt her life. She returned to law, joining a firm in Boston that specializes in helping domestic violence victims. She bought a house near mine, and I get to see my granddaughter every day.

Emma is three now. She’s learning to read, just like her mother did at that age. She loves stories. She loves climbing onto my lap and demanding that I read her favorite books over and over again.

Sometimes late at night, I think about Derek Mercer sitting in his prison cell. I think about everything he lost: his freedom, his money, his future, his daughter whom he will never know. And I think about what he said in that letter, that he didn’t deserve to die in there.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe death would have been too easy, too quick. This way, he has to live with what he did. Every single day for the next 20 years, he has to wake up and remember.

He has to remember the woman he betrayed, the life he destroyed, the fortune he squandered, the daughter he will never hold. He has to live with the knowledge that while he rots in a concrete box, his little girl is being raised by the man he tried to destroy. That she will grow up calling someone else daddy. That she will never know his name except as a warning.,

That is justice. That is vengeance.

Rebecca asked me once if I felt guilty about what I did to Derek. If I ever regretted bringing the full weight of my resources down on a man who was, after all, already facing criminal charges.

“The law would have punished him,” she said. “The police, the prosecutors, they were doing their job. Did you really need to do more?”

I thought about it for a long time before I answered.

“The law punishes crimes,” I said. “But the law doesn’t understand betrayal. The law doesn’t understand what it means to trust someone with your entire heart and have them try to stop that heart from beating. The law doesn’t understand what it means to be a father.”

I looked at my daughter, healthy and strong and beautiful. I looked at my granddaughter playing on the floor at our feet.

“Derek Mercer tried to take everything from you. Everything. He didn’t deserve a measured response. He didn’t deserve mercy, or fairness, or the benefit of the doubt. He deserved to understand in the depths of his soul what it feels like to lose everything.”

Rebecca was quiet for a moment. Then she took my hand.

“Thank you, Daddy.”

“For what?”

“For being there. For fighting for me. For making sure that man will never hurt anyone again.”

I squeezed her hand.

“That’s what fathers do, sweetheart. We protect our children no matter what, no matter who, no matter the cost.”

The Legacy

Outside, the sun was setting over Boston Harbor. My granddaughter was laughing at something on television. My daughter was safe and happy and whole. And somewhere in a California prison, Derek Mercer was eating dinner from a metal tray, wearing an orange jumpsuit, counting the days until a parole hearing that would never go his way.

Not while I’m still breathing.

Some people might say that revenge is wrong, that it’s better to forgive and move on, that holding on to anger only hurts yourself. Those people have never had someone try to murder their child.,

I don’t regret what I did. I would do it again in a heartbeat. And if anyone ever threatens my family again, they will learn the same lesson that Derek Mercer learned. You can run, but you cannot hide. You can lie, but the truth always comes out.

You can steal, but everything can be taken back. And when you hurt the people I love, I will find you. I will break you. I will leave you with nothing but the memory of what you did and the knowledge of what it cost you.

That is my promise. That is my legacy. That is the hallowed vengeance of a father’s love.

Emma ran up to me just now, a picture book clutched in her tiny hands.

“Grandpa, read me a story.”

I lifted her onto my lap and opened the book. It was about a princess who was rescued from a tower by her father, the king.

“Once upon a time,” I began. “There was a beautiful princess who was very brave.”

My daughter looked over at us and smiled. She was safe. She was happy. She was loved. And that’s all that matters.,