"And there are others, too. Do you really think he was the first? Do you really think this was some kind of isolated incident?" The words hit me like a slap across the face, but I kept my expression neutral.
"Others?" "Oh, honey," she said, and her voice was pure poison. "You have no idea how long this has been going on. Leo was just the most recent, the most convenient, but there have been others."
"Lots of others." And there it was, the final revelation that turned my carefully planned revenge from a surgical strike into something much more comprehensive. I looked at my broken, hospitalized, soon-to-be ex-wife and realized that Phase Four was going to be much more extensive than I'd originally planned. You know what they say about the internet never forgetting?
Well, turns out that's especially true when your cheating wife and her lover get carted off to the hospital in the most humiliating position imaginable, and half your building has smartphones with HD video capability. Mrs. Patterson from 3B had really outdone herself. The woman who usually spent her time recording her cats doing mundane things had somehow managed to capture the entire ambulance scene in glorious 4K detail. The video was a masterpiece of accidental cinematography.
It had everything from the initial confusion of the paramedics to the moment when they realized they needed a bigger stretcher, all the way through to the final shot of Leo and Marissa being wheeled out like some kind of pornographic sculpture. The best part? You could clearly see both their faces. I'd gotten a copy from Mrs. Patterson under the pretense of wanting to make sure Marissa was okay, which she bought because I'd perfected the concerned-husband act over the past few days.
What she didn't know was that I had much bigger plans for her amateur filmmaking than just checking on my wife's well-being. Within six hours of getting the video, I'd created accounts on every major social-media platform. TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, the whole digital ecosystem where shame goes to multiply like bacteria in a petri dish. The video was uploaded with carefully crafted captions that told just enough of the story to make it go viral without actually getting me sued for defamation.
"When Cheating Goes Horribly Wrong" was the caption that really took off. Simple, direct, and guaranteed to make people hit the share button faster than you could say karma. Ah, the internet. As it turns out, it has an endless appetite for watching other people's lives implode in spectacular fashion.
Within 12 hours, the video had been viewed over half a million times. By day two, it was trending on three different platforms. By day three, it had spawned reaction videos, compilation clips, and even a few remix versions set to popular songs. But the real magic happened when people started recognizing them.
"Holy— that's Leo from Flex Fitness" was one of the first comments that got my attention. Apparently, Leo was some kind of Instagram fitness influencer with a decent following who marketed himself as a relationship coach and lifestyle guru. The irony was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Within hours, someone had doxxed him completely.
His full name, his gym, his Instagram account, his business website, everything laid bare for the internet to examine and judge. And judge they did. His gym fired him before the week was out. Apparently, being internet-famous for getting glued to a married woman during an affair wasn't the kind of publicity they were looking for.