Is Elon Musk's 'affair' with Sergey Brin's wife the most colossal act of treachery?

After the tumult of this quixotic year so far – in which he’s admitted to secretly fathering twins with a colleague, swooped in to buy Twitter, run away from the deal, then seen his child seek to change their name because they want nothing to do with him – you might think that can’t possibly be another twist in Elon Musk’s astonishing life story.

Yet there is. For yesterday, the Wall Street Journal aired what is surely the ultimate story betrayal at billionaire level: that Musk, the world’s richest man, had a ‘brief’ affair with the wife of his long-standing friend and sometime business ally Sergey Brin.

Brin is the world’s seventh richest man.

The affair, according to the WSJ, happened in December last year and has led to the swift collapse of Brin’s marriage to stunning brunette Nicole Shanahan, Brin’s second wife and the mother of his young daughter.