Silence flickered across the game room.
“Unlike you…”
The words landed with a thud in Rakesh’s skull. He felt a defensive flush heat his face. It ceded, mingling with guilt. He had broken his promise to Diana, had broken their bond of trust.
“It’s sad,” she said, after a prolonged silence, “Between the two of you… Gael’s the only one I can trust.”
The words stabbed her husband like razored ice. Rakesh finally looked over at Gael.
The star’s disposition surprised him.
Gael seemed contorted in a state of immense internal conflict. Suddenly, he leapt out of his seat and swore.
“Fuck!” he half-shouted. The word came as though loosed from a stoppered bottle.
The muscled star stood. He paced.
Both Diana and her husband looked on, trying to comprehend the outburst. Gael wheeled around and turned to them.
—
THE SCREEN FLASHES TO:
Gerbera petals flutter across the grass…
—
“No,” he said. “No…”
“Gael, what are you –”
“You can’t trust me, Diana,” he said. He looked her in the eyes. “You cannot. Trust. Me.”
—
CUT TO:
In the half-light of the Arcana night, Gael watches a college-aged Diana make love to another man…
—
“You being here,” Gael went on, “Is no accident.”
Befuddlement radiated across the couple’s faces.
“When we were together…” his voice shuddered. “You were the best thing that ever happened to me. I thought it would be that way forever…”
—
FLASH!
— Young Diana is in her bedroom, her phone glued to her ear.
A SPLIT SCREEN bleeds in: Young Gael is on the other side.
The two gush and blush, speaking all night, youthful and flirting.
FLASH!
— A balcony. Inky black sea laps the rocky shore far below.
Gael and Diana kiss, deeply.
FLASH!
— The two make blissful love under the sheets.
Diana climaxes. Gael climaxes. The couple lay there in each other’s arms, catching their breath and glowing.
BACK TO THE PRESENT —
—
“But then you went off to college… and you cheated on me.”
Diana’s full lips dropped open. They shut again. Her facial muscles quivered, seemingly unable to compute their expected functions.
“I watched it happen,” Gael went on. “And I also know it happened more times than that one. Many more times…”
Rakesh looked at his wife on the couch, sharing in her flummox. Diana stared at her ex in a stupefied daze.
“And then you went and dumped me…”
—
FLASH!
A young Gael is on the phone, tears spilling down his face.
—
“And I never knew why. Never understood it…”
—
FLASH!
Young Gael is seated on a window ledge, staring dully out at the view. His gaze hardens. His jaw clenches.
—
“But I swore to myself — one day, I would have my revenge.”
—
The screen FLASHES as —
— Gael pores over scripts…
— Gael sweats through an early shift at a cafeteria, pouring coffee…
— Gael works his chops at acting class after acting class…
(VOICEOVER)
“Bit by bit…”
— Gael mixes drinks at a late-night dive…
— Gael tapes audition after audition…
— Reads rejection letter after rejection letter…
— Delivers lines on the set of a commercial…
(VOICEOVER)
“Role by role…”
— JUMP CUTS of Gael on various TV sets…
(VOICEOVER)
“I started to build my career.”
— Gael scrolls social media. He clocks pictures of Rakesh and Diana —
– On holiday.
– Moving in.
– Smiles beaming, at their wedding.
He stares.
(VOICEOVER)
“… while the two of you settled down. And then…”
— Gael pads out of a lavish trailer onto a major studio set.
(VOICEOVER)
“My big break.”
— A clapper SNAPS shut and clears frame. A swaggering Gael plays the lead in a studio film.
(VOICEOVER)
“It had taken well over a decade. But finally, I had the success I’d always craved…”
FLASH!
— Gael rides down Sunset Boulevard in a shiny blue Bentley convertible. Two stunning women share their car with him, hair aflutter in the summer breeze.
(VOICEOVER)
“Fame… And beautiful women… And hundreds of millions of dollars…”
FLASH!
— Flashbulbs pop and camera shutters click at a post-Oscars press conference.
(VOICEOVER)
“And most of all, I made sure you knew exactly who I had become…”
— Gael raises three Oscar statues up in the air. Flashbulbs explode.
(VOICEOVER)
“I made absolutely sure of it… Made a mega-hit movie, number-one in the world for twelve weeks straight. Got three Oscars. People, and seven other magazines, all called me The Sexiest Man Alive. I was –”
Rakesh interrupted, loudly.
—
“Jesus! Are you just gonna brag to us all night?”
Gael’s eyes darted to him. For the first time Rakesh had seen, the cocky movie star looked ever-so-slightly sheepish.
“I, er, I was doing that again, wasn’t I?” Gael said. “Forgive me. Occupational hazard. And… I guess I’ve waited a long time for this moment. What I’m saying is that… finally, the stage was set. For my revenge.”
The banker’s face darkened.
What did he mean ‘revenge’?
—
A PROJECTOR’S BEAM FLASHES —
Gael is dressed in a fitted techno-punk outfit. He shows two other caped superheroes code on a holographic screen. It’s a scene from a movie.
(VOICEOVER)
“When I made The Defenders with Marvel, they hired a consultant to walk me through the cryptography stuff.”
Gael pores over screens full of code with a nondescript young man.
—
“Cryptography stuff?” Diana asked, not without an edge as, at last, she found her voice again. “You mean like –”
“A hacker,” Gael said.
—
Codes, eMacs, bits and data and numerical modules, all flash by on the screen.
(VOICEOVER)
“And as I picked up more and more from him… I got an idea.”
Diana’s social media page fills the screen again. CLICK. Rakesh’s page. CLICK. Reams of code scroll by brightly…
—
“With his help, I ran a cobalt protocol on your socials. Basically, a tracker app. I tracked your IP’s. I gained access. I had… surveillance.”
Diana’s eyes saucered.
“I was looking for intel,” Gael went on. “Anything. Something that would give me an opening. Any crack to storm the castle and begin executing my plan…”
To Rakesh, the movie star’s eyes seemed to mist over with an obsessive haze. Something in his zealous glare felt crazed. The hairs on Rakesh’s neck stood up.
He asked Gael through dry lips, “What did you find?”
—
A splash page floods the screen: Blue sky and dazzling white beaches. The palm-fringed coasts of a small Pacific paradise named Isla Miranda.
—
Gael looked at Rakesh like he was a child.
“I found the Hotwife Games.”
Of course, thought Rakesh.
“And I couldn’t believe it. I’d waited so long, looking for so many years. Your marriage seemed as solid as a rock. So steady, so untouchable. And then — this? A competition for slutty wives! And you’d actually signed up for it! Once I got over my shock, I knew — this was my chance.”
Somehow, before the handsome movie star could even lay the rest out, Diana knew what was coming.
Episodic jigsaw pieces seemed to fall into place, filling holes and linking edges. All those little, niggling doubts, those half-explained moments and dangling suspicions — they each resolved into sharp clarity in Diana’s mind.
“I was going to be on the show,” Gael said. “So… I called my business managers. I went against every piece of advice they had for me. I spent millions — many millions — to acquire Sinstar Enterprises, the conglomerate behind the show’s production.”
Another jigsaw piece slammed into place. That logo, the many-pointed Alsation gerbera — That’s why I saw it all over the set of the Games, thought Diana. Gael rebranded his Sinstar company… to remind himself of her. My favorite flower.
“I had everything in place. Now, I could rig the whole contest.”
“Rig…?”
Rakesh’s voice trailed off.
—
FLASH!
Gael is naked in his master bathroom, his phone glued to his ear. He looks ashen. We’ve seen this scene before.
GAEL
“Diana… did what at The Hotwife Games?”
(VOICEOVER)
“Towards the end of Day One, I was informed she was almost out of the race. Which would kill all my chances.”
PUSH IN on Gael, who has had a brainwave…