My Wife Of 26 Years Framed Me To Die In Prison. I Found Her Secret Stash In Our Basement And Realized She’s Working With A Serial Conman. Now, I’m Planning A Date Night She’ll Never Forget. How Should I Execute My Revenge?

“Mom knows. About the $85,000. About Damian blackmailing me. She’s known from the beginning.”

The room tilted.

“What?”

“Damian told me last month. He said, ‘Mom was the one who suggested using me to get to you.’ She knew about my debts. She told him exactly how to manipulate me.”

Marlo’s voice rose, desperate.

“She’s been helping him this whole time, Dad. She’s been planning this for months.”

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The walls of my own living room closed in around me.

Margot knew. So Marlo left that morning around 11:00.

Said she needed to go get something. Didn’t tell me what.

Just left. And I sat there in that kitchen.

Same kitchen where we’d had birthday dinners, Christmas mornings, normal family stuff. Wondering if she’d actually come back.

Two hours. Two hours I waited.

Then the doorbell rang. She stood there holding this tiny black USB drive.

Like something you’d forget in your pocket. But it wasn’t just a flash drive.

It was everything.

“I got it,”

She said. That’s all.

Just, “I got it.” We went inside, sat at the table, and she handed it to me like she was handing over a grenade.

“Six months of emails,”

She said. Her voice was shaking.

“Between Mom and Damian. The whole plan. Everything they did. Everything they were going to do.”

I plugged it into my laptop. The files loaded.

Folders, subfolders, hundreds of documents. I clicked the first email.

August 15th last year. And there it was.

From: Margot Whitfield To: Damian Cross Subject: Ready “I’m tired of him. Let’s do this.”

That was it. Seven words.

“I’m tired of him.” Twenty-six years of marriage.

Twenty-six years and she summed it up in seven words. I just… I stared at that screen.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

Marlo touched my arm.

“Dad…?”

I clicked the next email. Damian’s response:

“Give me six months. I’ll make sure he loses everything.” Six months.

He wrote that in August and here we were in February. Right on schedule.

I scrolled through more emails. September, October, November.

Each one worse than the last. They talked about my bank accounts like I wasn’t even a person.

Just numbers, assets, things to liquidate. Margot had written most of it.

The details, the timeline, where to plant the evidence, when to call the cops. Damian just refined it.

Made it cleaner. Professional.

They’d been planning this for months while I was… God, while I was telling her I loved her. While we were planning that trip to Cape Cod.

While I thought we were fine.

“Dad?”

Marlo’s voice cut through.

“There’s audio. You need to hear it.”

I didn’t want to, but I clicked the file anyway. Static, then Damian’s voice.

That same smooth, calm voice.

“Your father will be arrested within the month.”

Pause.

“The evidence is planted. The accounts are flagged. Once the police find what we’ve left, he’s finished.”

Marlo’s voice in the background, crying.

“What if he figures it out?”

Damian laughed. Actually laughed.

“He won’t. And even if he does, too late. They’ll see the offshore accounts, the forged documents, the cash. They’ll see a guilty man trying to cover his tracks.”

Another pause.

“Your mother will testify he’s been erratic. You’ll testify he’s been distant. And Graham Whitfield will spend the next 10 years in prison.”

“What happens to me?”

Marlo asked.

“You will… you keep your license, keep your job, as long as you do exactly what I say. Because if you don’t, sweetheart, that video goes to the state bar and you’ll be right there next to Daddy.”

I stopped the recording. The kitchen was dead silent.

I’d known intellectually I’d known that Damian was manipulating her. But hearing it, hearing him laugh while threatening my daughter, something in me shifted.

Got colder. Harder.

“There’s more,”

Marlo whispered.

“Another file. He talks about the others.”

I opened it, clicked play. Damian’s voice again, casual, like he was discussing the weather.

“Mitchell was easy. Architects are all the same: trusting, sentimental, too busy with their work to notice their wives cheating. Prescott was harder. Real estate guys are paranoid. But once I had his daughter on camera, he folded like everyone else.”

Pause.

“How many times have you done this?”

Marlo asked.