Chapter 4

Three in the morning.

The villa had finally gone quiet.

Everyone had drunk themselves sideways and retreated to their rooms.

Sophie lay next to me, sleeping deeply, even snoring faintly.

I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, waiting in the dark.

When I was certain she was completely out, I carefully sat up and reached for her phone on the nightstand.

Her passcode was my birthday.

The irony was almost funny.

She used my birthday as her password, while hiding the secrets of her betrayal inside that same phone.

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

There was more than just the video. There was an entire album's worth of photos.

I scrolled through them one by one.

Hotel beds. Our living room couch. The backseat of a car. Ryan's apartment.

Explicit images. Intimate exchanges that turned my stomach.

The earliest photo had a timestamp from a year and a half ago.

A year and a half.

That was when I had just come out of a minor surgery. I was home recovering.

Ryan would come over every day with fruit, patting his chest and saying: "Ethan, just rest up. Anything you need, just say the word."

Sophie would come home right on time after work every evening, making soup, telling me: "You've been through so much."

So at the time I was most vulnerable, most grateful, most full of feeling for both of them -- they were sneaking around right under my nose.

I clenched my fist until my nails cut into my palm. But I kept iron control over myself and didn't make a single sound.

When I finished going through the album, I backed out and opened her Snapchat.

My gut told me this went deeper than I'd assumed.

Why had Cassie been so completely unbothered when she came to talk to me? Why had all twenty-something people in that room reacted in such perfect unison the moment that video appeared?

I scrolled down the chat list and my eyes landed on a group chat called "Weekend Squad."

Twenty-two members.

Everyone who had been at the villa tonight.

I opened it and scrolled back through the message history with cold fingers.

It felt like a spiked fist had closed around my heart. Every page I turned, the spikes went in a little deeper.

This group had been created a year ago.

What was inside it shattered everything I thought I knew.

The oldest messages were from Cassie.

Cassie: "Oh my GOD, Sophie -- you actually got with Ryan?? You legend!!"

Sophie: "Keep it down, don't let Ethan find out."

Friend A: "Please, Ethan is so whipped. Two words from you and he'll believe anything."

Friend B: "Right? He seems sharp but he's a complete idiot when it comes to feelings."

Ryan: "Okay okay, stop, this is embarrassing lol~"

They were treating the whole thing like a reality show, openly watching and commenting on my wife's affair with my best friend without a shred of guilt.

They had even turned it into a kind of game.

Friend C: "At the karaoke thing next week, I'll get Ethan wasted so you two can have some alone time lol"

Sophie: "You're the best, I'll treat you to dinner sometime."

Cassie: "Ryan, just don't go too overboard on my end, okay? Haha"

Ryan: "Relax~ You've got your person too, Cassie. We're all playing our own games here."

My stomach was heaving as I read.

So Cassie genuinely didn't care that Ryan was sleeping with Sophie -- because in this circle, that was just how everyone operated. The whole thing was rotten to the core.

I kept scrolling back, and found something that made my blood boil even hotter.

They had made bets on me.

Friend D: "Let's start a pool -- how long before Ethan figures it out? I say within six months. Twenty bucks."

Friend E: "I'll say a year. Fifty dollars."

Cassie: "I'm betting he never finds out. A hundred. Sophie has him completely wrapped around her finger. He got that job of his because of Sophie's connections, right? Without her, he's nothing."

I almost laughed.

My job. The director position I had bled for -- pulling all-nighters, grinding through three breakout projects to earn my way up.

Sophie had forwarded my resume once before I joined the company. That was it.

In their eyes, every ounce of work I had put in, every result I had fought for -- it was all some gift from Sophie.

I scrolled to tonight's messages.

The ones sent after the projector incident.

Cassie: "@everyone Crisis averted. Ethan actually bought the AI face swap story. Everyone can sleep easy tonight!"

Below that: a string of "Cassie you legend" and "Sophie deserves an Oscar" reaction GIFs and stickers.

Ryan: "I genuinely thought I was about to get destroyed tonight. Scared the hell out of me."

Friend F: "Please, like he'd do anything. He's so in love with Sophie, he'd just swallow it even if he knew."

Sophie: "Alright, drop it. Tonight was a fluke. Everyone be more careful going forward. Cassie, you saved us tonight."

Cassie: "What are sisters for. But Sophie, that video production quality though -- send it to me privately sometime? For appreciation purposes?"

Filth. Absolute filth.

I stared at the familiar profile pictures on that screen. People I had treated with genuine warmth. People I had bought dinners for. People I had gone out of my way to help.

Every single one of them had become something monstrous.

I didn't spiral.

Rage at that level had actually made me icily, mechanically calm.

I pulled out my own phone, and went through Sophie's screen, photo by photo and page by page -- every message thread, every photo, every video. I documented all of it.

It took a full thirty minutes.

I backed everything up to three separate cloud accounts.

When it was done, I placed Sophie's phone back exactly where it had been.

I lay back down and closed my eyes.

In the dark, my mind was sharper than it had ever been.

So you all think I'm slow. Think I'm easy to handle.

So you like watching a good show.

Then let's give you one worth watching.

I was going to make sure every one of them understood exactly what happens when you back someone decent all the way into a corner.