Chapter 4

At three in the morning, the villa finally went quiet.

Everyone had drunk themselves into a stupor and shuffled off to their rooms.

Diego was lying beside me, dead asleep, a faint snore rising and falling from his chest.

I stared at the ceiling with wide-open eyes, lying still in the dark, waiting.

When I was absolutely certain he was out cold, I carefully sat up and reached for his phone on the nightstand.

The passcode was my birthday.

The irony was almost funny , he used my birthday to lock a phone full of betrayal.

The screen lit up. I went straight to his hidden notes folder.

Inside was not just the video. There was an entire album of photos.

I went through them one by one.

Hotel beds. Our living room couch. The backseat of his car. Sophia's apartment.

Positions and messages that turned my stomach. Explicit. Shameless. Relentless.

The earliest photo was dated a year and a half ago.

A year and a half. Back then, I had just come out of a minor surgery and was recovering at home.

Sophia had come over every single day with homemade soup. She'd hold my hand and say, "Chloe, you have to get better soon."

Diego had come home on time every evening, rubbed my feet, and told me, "Chloe, you've been through so much."

And while I had been at my most vulnerable, most grateful, most trusting , they had been doing this, right under my nose.

My hands were shaking badly, but I bit down on my lip and didn't make a sound.

After going through the album, I backed out and opened his Twitter.

Something told me there was more.

Why had Wallace been so completely brazen about telling me to look the other way? Why had all twenty people in that room reacted so instantly, so uniformly, the moment the video went up?

I scrolled down through his message list. My eyes landed on a group chat titled "Weekend Squad."

Twenty-two members. Everyone who had been at the villa tonight.

I opened the chat and scrolled up through the history, my fingers going cold.

It was like a fist closing around my heart , studded with nails. Every page I scrolled up, the nails pressed deeper.

The group had been created a year ago.

What was inside shattered everything I thought I knew.

The earliest message was from Wallace.

Wallace: Holy shit! Diego, you actually got with Sophia?? Legend, bro!!

Diego: Keep it down. Don't let Chloe catch on.

Friend A: Relax, Chloe is totally love-blind. Feed her two sweet lines and she believes whatever you want.

Friend B: Right? She seems sharp in every other way, but when it comes to relationships she's completely clueless.

Sophia: Oh stop it, you guys are making me blush~

They were treating this like a spectator sport , sitting in the stands, entertained, watching Diego and Sophia's affair play out as though it were a show put on for their amusement.

They had turned it into a game.

Friend C: Tonight at the bar, I'll get Chloe drunk so you two can slip away. I got you.

Diego: Thanks man. Dinner's on me next time.

Wallace: Sophia, pace yourself, don't get too wild.

Sophia: Rude~ And like you don't have your own little situation going on, Wallace. We're both just doing our thing.

Reading those words, my stomach lurched over and over.

So Wallace didn't care at all that Sophia had been sleeping with Diego. Because in this circle, that was simply how things were , rotten all the way through.

I kept scrolling. And then I found something that crushed the last fragment of hope I hadn't realized I was still holding.

They had placed bets on me.

Friend D: Alright, I'm opening a pool , how long before Chloe figures it out? I say within six months. A hundred bucks.

Friend E: One year. Five hundred.

Wallace: I say she NEVER figures it out. A thousand. Diego's got her completely wrapped around his finger. Didn't she get that job because of Diego's connections? Without him she's nothing.

I almost laughed out loud.

That job was mine. I had ground through countless sleepless nights and delivered three breakout projects before I ever earned that director title.

All Diego ever did was pass along my résumé before my first interview.

And in their eyes, everything I had built and everything I had earned was just a gift Diego had handed me.

I scrolled to the messages from earlier that same night , sent just after the video incident.

Wallace: @everyone , All clear! Chloe bought the AI deepfake story! Everyone can breathe again lol

What followed was a wave of "Wallace is the GOAT" and "Diego should win an Oscar" memes and reaction GIFs.

Sophia: I honestly thought Chloe was going to lose it on me tonight. My heart was pounding.

Friend F: As if she'd do anything. She's so obsessed with Diego, even if she knew, she'd just swallow it.

Diego: Alright, enough. Tonight was a close call , everyone be more careful going forward. Wallace, quick thinking tonight. I owe you one.

Wallace: Don't mention it. But hey Diego, that video you made was pretty good , send it to me privately for… appreciation purposes?

The filth went on from there.

I looked at those familiar profile pictures on the screen , people I had genuinely cared about, treated to dinners, shown up for when they needed help.

They had all become monsters wearing human faces.

I didn't cry. In the face of a rage this absolute, tears felt like a waste.

I pulled out my own phone and, screen by screen, page by page, photographed every single chat message, every photo, every video in the album.

It took half an hour. When I was done, I backed everything up to three separate cloud accounts.

Then I put Diego's phone back exactly where it had been.

I lay back down. Closed my eyes.

In the dark, my mind was razor-sharp.

You think I'm naive. You think I'm easy to manage.

You love watching this play out so much.

Fine. Let's play.

I was going to show every single one of them what happens when you push a patient person all the way to the edge.