“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say Courtney’s folks don’t like the bad press. Her dad’s got connections. He’s worried about how this makes them look. Word is they’re trying to dig into you.”
I sat up straighter.
“What does that even mean? I’m not famous. I’m not rich. I’m not—”
“They don’t care. They’re used to power working for them. They think if they can discredit you, maybe they can rewrite the story, make you look unstable, bitter, that sort of thing. I figured you should know.”
I thanked him, hung up, and sat in total silence.
Discredit me for what?
For refusing to fund my own humiliation.
That night, I started locking everything down. Set my social profiles to private, change passwords, doublech checkck my financial accounts, because even if it sounded paranoid, I wasn’t going to be the guy who shrugged it off and then got blindsided.
Then, just when I thought the worst of it had passed, I got an envelope in the mail.
Plain white.
No return address.
Inside, a printed screenshot of my Instagram post and a typed message.
“This isn’t over. Some things are bigger than you. Choose wisely.”
I stared at that typed message for a long time.
The paper was thick, high quality, the kind used for resumes or courtroom letters.
No handwriting, no return address, just that line centered an ominous.
“This isn’t over. Some things are bigger than you. Choose wisely.”
It felt like the kind of vague, arrogant warning someone gives when they think intimidation works better than logic.
And honestly, for a second, it did shake me.
The fact that someone had taken the time to print a screenshot and physically mail it felt so theatrical, so specific, that I realized this wasn’t just someone venting their frustration.
This was a warning shot.
I knew immediately where it had come from.
Courtney’s father, Rick, was a former district manager for some Fortune 500 company.
I’d only ever seen him in photos, all of which looked like LinkedIn profile pictures with just a little too much smuggness behind the smile.
Jake had mentioned once that Rick ran his family like a business.
And I finally understood what that meant.
Control, image, leverage, everything had to serve a narrative.