A Joint Revenge by the Men She Fooled

Right before bed, I stumbled across a post titled: [My wife has a second family on the side. What do I do?] Something made me click on it. According to the poster, his wife had grown busier over the past year, always traveling for work at the company's branch office. The money she handed over had grown too, and at first, it hadn't worried him. He'd just felt grateful that she was working so hard for their family. Then he saw a post about a man trying on a suit, and he recognized his wife's hand and the back of her figure in the photo at once. He was desperate, and he wanted to know what other people thought he should do. I scrolled further down, curious to see the true face of the woman he was calling a cheat. The next moment, my blood ran cold. Because even with the picture blurred out, I could tell it was the exact photo he'd used, the same one from my own post the week before. Chapter 1 I stared at the photo on my phone screen, unable to look away. The poster had blurred out the background, leaving only the back of a man in a bespoke suit, and the hand resting at his waist. That hand was slender and pale, with a plain platinum band on the ring finger. Someone else might not have recognized it. I couldn't have mistaken it for anything else. I'd spent an entire afternoon at the counter last month picking out that exact ring. The clerk had told me it was a new couple's design, meant to symbolize "the one promise." Melanie Parker had laughed as she slipped it on, then kissed my forehead and said, "Freddie, marrying you is the kind of fortune I must have earned over several lifetimes." And now that ring, the one that was supposed to carry "the one promise," was sitting in some stranger's post accusing his wife of cheating. I forced myself to stay calm and clicked on the poster's profile. His page was clean, almost entirely photos of his daughter. There was a little girl, maybe two years old, laughing with two small dimples, a baby spoon in her hand and pumpkin puree smeared all over her face. The caption read: [Baby said "dada" today. Too bad someone's on another business trip and missed it.] Further down, there was a photo of a home-cooked spread he'd made: honey-glazed pork ribs, sautéed green beans, and a pot of creamy fish chowder. The caption read: [Someone said she'd be home this weekend. Then she called to say she had to entertain a client instead. The food's gone cold. Can't bring myself to throw it out, though.] Every single post felt like a pinprick lodged in my chest. It didn't hurt exactly. It just kept bleeding, one small puncture after another. I couldn't stop myself. I kept scrolling. Finally, I reached a post from over a year ago. It was a photo of an ultrasound printout, with one line of caption: [We're about to become a family of three! Time for me to give my whole heart to the person I love!] Someone had liked that post. Their profile picture was a backlit silhouette. I'd asked Melanie once why she used a picture like that, and she'd told me it just felt more atmospheric. Now that same profile picture, the one I knew better than my own, was sitting in another man's social circle, like a silent slap across my face. The bedroom was quiet, the only sound the faint hum of the central air conditioner. On the nightstand sat a framed photo of Melanie and me, taken last winter skiing in Switzerland. I'd bundled her whole body into my coat, and only our two faces, red from the cold, poked out. We looked like a pair of idiots, grinning like that. At the time, I'd thought it was what love was supposed to look like. Looking at it now, all I felt was the bitter irony of it. Chapter 2 Melanie and I met at a corporate cocktail reception. I'd just come back from finishing my MBA overseas, and my father wanted me to start from the ground up and learn the business firsthand. I was representing my department at an industry mixer that day, and Melanie was a project lead at another company. She wasn't the kind of beautiful that stopped a room, but she carried herself with an unmistakable polish, and the way she spoke, never fawning, never cold, made her stand out. Later, she started pursuing me. Her attentiveness was so quiet and constant that I fell completely under its spell. When I worked late into the night, she'd be waiting outside the office right on time, always with a cup of hot cocoa warmed to just the right temperature. Once, I mentioned in passing that I wanted a soufflé from some trendy little bakery. She waited two hours in line for it, and it was still warm when she brought it to my office. When my stomach acted up, she didn't just tell me to drink more water. She showed up outside my building with hot soup and stomach medicine in hand. Everyone around me said, "Freddie, you've struck gold." I believed it too. Melanie came from an ordinary family, but my father always said that as long as someone was good to you, their background didn't matter. So after a year together, I proposed. And now, I was the villain everyone wanted to string up: the other man in someone else's marriage. I didn't sleep at all that night. I had someone dig up everything on Melanie and the husband I hadn't known existed. The man's name was Sean Hudson. He'd grown up in an orphanage, met Melanie in college, and had quit his job to stay home once they'd had a child. I thought it over, and the next day, I had my secretary set up a meeting with him. He was thinner than I'd pictured, wearing a shirt washed pale from overuse, his hair falling loosely over his forehead, his face worn with fatigue and unease. He held a little girl, maybe two years old, in his arms. She was well-behaved, playing quietly with a toy car. The moment he saw me, his expression went from confusion to shock to fury. "It's you?" His voice shook. "You're the one who…" "It's me." I looked back at him steadily, without looking away. He shot to his feet, his eyes going red, his voice rising. "You home-wrecker! Give me back my wife!" The child in his arms flinched at the noise and started wailing. The café's waitstaff glanced over, their eyes bright with gossip. I picked up my coffee and took an unhurried sip before looking up at him. "Mr. Hudson, sit down first. You're scaring the baby." "Don't you dare play the good guy with me!" Sean's eyes were bloodshot. He rocked the crying child while grinding out through clenched teeth, "When you were stealing someone else's wife, did it ever occur to you that he had a kid too?" "I didn't steal your wife. Your wife came after me." I set down my cup and looked at him. "I'm not here to gloat, and I'm not here to fight with you. There's no need to treat me like an enemy. I want to ask you something. "Do you always have to have someone give your wife back to you like this? This time it was me. Next time, who's it going to be?" He seemed to freeze at the question, opening his mouth without a single word coming out. I kept my eyes on him and said it plainly, one word at a time. "There's no such thing as one act of cheating. Once someone crosses that line, it happens over and over. I think you already know that." Sean's head dropped slowly, and he went quiet. We were both adults. Who could possibly not understand that? And yet, he seemed to think he had no choice. The pain etched across his face caught on something in my chest, like a small thorn. I took a slow breath and looked at him, my eyes serious. "We're both victims here. "Melanie deceived both of us at the same time. She let you believe she was out there working herself to the bone for this family. She let me believe I was the only one. "The one at fault is her, Melanie, not us. "Do you want to give her a lesson she'll never forget for the rest of her life? I'll help you take back everything that's yours. "I'll make sure she never recovers from this. Can you live with that?" He jerked his head up, staring at me like he couldn't quite believe what he'd just heard. Then, all the resolve he'd managed to gather deflated at once, like a balloon pierced by a needle. The next moment, he pressed his hands over his face, his shoulders trembling, and something in my chest twisted at the sight. Given everything he'd been through, he must have spent all these years fighting just to hold his life together, and even then, no one had thought to appreciate a man that resilient. I handed him a tissue. He took it, his voice hoarse. "How could I not be able to live with it? The second I found out she'd betrayed me, I wanted her dead. "But my child is still so young, and other than her, I have no one else to lean on. "Mr. Starr, if everything you've told me is true, I'll help you with everything I have." He took a deep breath and steadied himself. I patted his shoulder. "Don't worry. She'll get exactly what she deserves." Chapter 3 From that day on, Sean and I began working together in secret. We agreed to keep every conversation confined to a newly registered, encrypted messaging account, and to only reach each other during my one-hour lunch break. Sean's job was to keep Melanie steady, to keep playing the devoted, oblivious husband. Mine was to carry on with Melanie exactly as before: planning the wedding, picking out suits, booking the venue, drawing up the guest list. Melanie noticed nothing. She kept moving between the two of us without a hitch. Monday through Friday, she was my perfect fiancée, tasting menus with me, touring venues, choosing favors for guests, posting our sweet couple photos for everyone to see. On weekends, she was Sean's model wife, taking their daughter to the park, cleaning the house top to bottom, and wiring the household money to his account like clockwork. She even took a call once while we were out to dinner. I heard her say, in the gentlest voice imaginable, "Yes, I sent you an extra two thousand this month. Buy yourself some clothes. Stop being so frugal all the time." She hung up and smiled at me. "Just accounting, reporting on some work." I smiled back at her. Inside, I was laughing coldly. Did she have any idea how sickening it was to watch her perform like that? Sean and I began deliberately chipping away at her nerves. We'd time our messages to hit at the exact same moment. Melanie always answered mine first and left Sean waiting. But the instant she finished replying to me, Sean would call her. "Hey, are you busy?" "No… no." There was always a flicker of panic in Melanie's voice, followed by her dropping it low. "What's going on?" "Nothing. I just missed you." Sean's voice stayed low and warm. "When are you coming back from your trip?" I'd sit there listening, watching a fine sheen of sweat break out across her forehead, and something like sweet revenge would rise in my chest. Every so often, I needed to visit Melanie's "branch office" to collect evidence. Sean would tell me her schedule ahead of time, then call her home right when she was supposed to be at the office. Melanie never dared refuse him. She knew he had no one else to lean on. Meanwhile, my own people would use the gap to slip into her "branch office," really the apartment she'd rented to keep up the act with me, and gather proof of her bigamy. The evidence turned out to be more damning than I'd expected. Melanie had probably never imagined that someone would investigate both of her identities at once. She used two different social media accounts and two different phone numbers to keep us apart. But she'd overlooked plenty of details. For one, half the money in the account she used to pay Sean came from the "startup fund" my father had given her. For another, the resort hotel she'd taken Sean to was the exact same one she'd taken me to, just a week apart. And in front of Sean, she played the exhausted wife constantly traveling for work, while in front of me, she played the single, wealthy, accomplished young woman on the rise. I organized every piece of evidence and stored it in an encrypted folder. Sean was her fallback, her guarantee of a stable life. I was her stepping stone, her ladder up into a different class, the spice and thrill in an otherwise ordinary life. She drifted between the two of us, soaking up double the love, double the adoration, double the devotion. She thought she was clever enough to play everyone like a fool. She forgot that a fire like that never stays hidden for long. Chapter 4 The wedding day arrived quickly. It was set at the most luxurious five-star hotel in the city. Melanie had invited practically everyone she knew: college classmates, coworkers, business partners from her industry, and every aunt and uncle from her hometown she could think of. She was more excited for this wedding than anyone. To her, it wasn't just a wedding. It was her official coronation into high society. She stood at the ballroom entrance in the couture gown I'd paid over ten thousand dollars to have custom-made for her, her hair pinned into a flawless updo, her face glowing with satisfaction. Her bridesmaids crowded around her, giggling and teasing. "After today, you're officially the young lady of the Starr family!" Melanie laughed and swatted at them. "Don't be ridiculous," she said, though she couldn't hide the pride in her eyes. I sat in the groom's suite while the stylist finished my hair. In the mirror, I looked sharp in my tailored suit, every bit the confident groom. But where Melanie couldn't see, my eyes had gone cold. Sean had already arrived downstairs. He wore the groomsman's suit I'd had made for him, the baby in his arms, flanked by two men my aide, Walter Marshall, had arranged. Walter: [Mr. Starr, we're here.] Me: [Good.] I set my phone down and looked at myself in the mirror, and let a smile spread across my face. 'Melanie, your good days are about to run out.' At exactly eleven o'clock, the ceremony began. The ballroom was packed with guests, the crystal chandeliers throwing off brilliant light, flowers and balloons filling every corner. The officiant ran through the same opening lines every officiant uses. Melanie stood at the end of the aisle, watching me, her eyes full of anticipation and love. At least in that moment, her love was real. It just wasn't worth what it cost. The wedding march began, and I walked slowly down the aisle. Applause rolled through the room, and everyone rose to their feet, watching us with warm, hopeful eyes. I reached Melanie, and my father looked between us. "Melanie, I'm handing over my son to you." "Dad, don't worry. I'll love Freddie with my whole life." Her voice even caught, just slightly. 'What a performance.' I laughed coldly to myself. The officiant moved through the ceremony, the vows, the exchange of rings, everything going smoothly. Until he announced, "And now, let's welcome the groomsmen to the stage!" Five groomsmen filed out from the side door and took their places. Melanie glanced at them, a little confused, and whispered to me, "Freddie, wasn't there supposed to be one more?" "You're right." I smiled at her, then took the microphone from the officiant. "Everyone, thank you for coming to celebrate my wedding to Melanie." My voice carried through the speakers, filling the entire ballroom. "Now, I'd like to welcome the most important groomsman of the day. He's also a gift I'm giving myself, and a gift I'm giving Melanie." I raised my hand and pointed toward the ballroom's closed front doors. "Bring him in." The doors swung slowly open. Every head in the room turned to look. Sean walked in, one careful step at a time, dressed in a dark groomsman's suit, the baby held close in his arms.