More followed. Warnings disguised as advice. Suggestions that digging further would only hurt him again. Sam read them all carefully, noting phrasing, timing, and tone. Fear had a pattern too, and these messages weren’t meant to scare him away, they were meant to wear him down.
Sam remembered exactly what this had cost him before. The silence after publication. The doors that closed without explanation. The way truth could isolate a person faster than any lie. He felt the old hesitation rise, then settle. He had already lost once. He wasn’t willing to lose Fortune, too.