At My Own Wedding, My Dad Took The Microphone, Said: “Raise Your Glass To The Daughter Who Finally Found Someone Desperate Enough To Marry Her.” People Laughed. My Fiancé Didn’t. He Opened A Video On The Projector And Said: “Let’s Talk About What You Did Instead”

I stood there in my apartment, shaking, wondering why I still let him get to me after all these years.

Two days later, I got a package at my door. Inside was a check for $3,200 and a note in elegant handwriting.

For the bride.

Every woman deserves to feel beautiful on her wedding day.

—Margaret

Margaret Webb, Marcus’s mother. She’d heard about the phone call—Marcus must have told her—and she’d quietly, without any fanfare, bought me my wedding dress.

I cried for twenty minutes. Not because of the money. Because it was the first time someone in a parental role had given me something without making me feel like I owed them for it.

The same month Marcus found the bank statements, he found something else.

He’d been researching my father’s business dealings, looking for patterns, inconsistencies—anything that might explain where $47,000 had really gone. What he found instead was a name.

Vanessa Cole.

She’d worked as an accountant at Foster Motors from 2013 to 2018. She’d divorced her husband in 2019 after twelve years of marriage. And according to the court records Marcus pulled, the reason for the divorce was listed as infidelity: spouse’s affair with employer.

Marcus reached out to her through a mutual professional contact. He explained who he was, who I was, and why he was asking questions.

She agreed to meet him at a coffee shop in Folsom.

“Six years,” she told him, stirring her latte with a trembling hand. “Six years he promised he’d leave his wife. Six years I believed him.”

She showed Marcus her phone, screenshots of text messages she’d saved, dated from 2014 to 2019.

Meet me at the hotel tonight.
—Richard, March 2015

I’ll leave her soon. Just wait for me.
—Richard, November 2016

I love you, not her.
—Richard, June 2018

“I lost my marriage because of him,” Vanessa said. “Twelve years, two kids—gone. And he just moved on like I was nothing.”

Marcus asked if she’d be willing to let him use the screenshots.

“For what?” she asked.

“To make sure he can’t hurt anyone else the way he hurt you.”

Vanessa was quiet for a long moment, then she nodded.

“I’ve been waiting five years for someone to believe me. Use whatever you need.”

Marcus drove home that night with a folder full of evidence and a plan forming in his mind.

August 2024, one month before the wedding, Marcus sat me down at our kitchen table on a Tuesday evening. He had a folder in his hands—manila, unmarked, thick with papers.

“There’s something I need to show you,” he said. “And I need you to know that whatever you decide to do with this information, I’ll support you.”

He opened the folder.

The first document was a bank statement. August 15th, 2013. $47,000 withdrawn from an account in my name and transferred to a personal checking account.

“Richard M. Foster.”

I stared at it for a full minute before I could speak.

“This is… this is my college fund.”

“Yes.”

“He took it?”

“Yes.”

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