The first death threat arrives with a heart emoji.
I stare at the subject line in my inbox—"die slow :)"—and let my cursor hover just long enough to feel my stomach tilt. The apartment is silent except for Nora’s furious typing on the couch, keys rattling like she’s trying to beat the internet into submission.
"Please tell me that one is at least spelled correctly," she says without looking up.
"Nope," I answer. "S-L-O. They forgot the W."
"Illiterate and homicidal," she mutters. "A winning demo." She finally drags her gaze up to my monitor. "Report and block. And maybe stop reading past the subject lines?"
I should. I don’t.
The email opens in a clean white box, my own video thumbnail reflected at the top: my face, framed by crappy fairy lights, mid-eye roll. The title in bold beneath it: "Alec Vance Is a Fake Prince (And Hollywood Knows It)."
"Harper," Nora warns.
"I’m just—" I skim anyway. The message is a wall of caps lock, creative slurs for my height, and an impressive array of threats involving my camera and orifices it should never meet. At the bottom, a lone red heart.
"It’s almost…on brand for a romance fandom," I say, voice thinner than I want.
Nora snaps my laptop halfway shut with a decisive clap. "Okay, that’s enough doom-scrolling for one morning. Views are still climbing, sponsors haven’t bailed, and Variety quoted you. We’re in the good column. Stop looking for the brick that’s about to fall on your head."
I slide the laptop back open, because of course I do. "If a brick is falling, I’d kinda like to see it coming."
Nora’s phone pings on the coffee table. Both of us freeze.
She snatches it up, eyes flicking across the screen. Something in her shoulders tightens. "Well," she says. "Ask and the brick shall appear."
"What?" My fingers tangle in the frayed hem of my oversized hoodie. "What is it?"
"It’s…" She hesitates, then exhales. "It’s an email from a Warner-Hart corporate account. To our business address. Requesting a ‘conversation regarding your recent content about Mr. Alec Vance.’" She air-quotes hard enough to sprain something.
My heart thumps once, too loud. Warner-Hart. Evelyn Hart’s empire. Alec’s studio.
"Requesting like…in the friendly sense?" I ask. "Or requesting like, ‘hand over your kidneys’?"
"They don’t mention organs." Nora scrolls. "They just copied a lawyer with more syllables in his name than I trust. And they attached an NDA."
A thin film of sweat prickles the back of my neck. "Oh. So definitely the kidneys."
For a moment, the room feels too small. The fairy lights I strung along the ceiling last Christmas buzz faintly, haloing the chipped walls in warm gold. My whole life fits in this studio: the thrift-store couch, the wobbly ring light, the tripod perpetually aimed at the desk where I dismantle Movies That Should Know Better. Low-budget honesty, high-quality outrage. Safe.
And now the machine I’ve been throwing stones at wants to talk.
"We can ignore it," Nora says, surprising me. "They’re trying to scare you. You didn’t say anything that isn’t backed up by marketing material and clips. Fair use is on our side. We lawyer up if we have to. I’ll call Kiran."
I swallow. My video still plays muted on my second monitor, comments zipping past in a fluorescent blur. People calling me brave, people calling me bitter, people calling me a goblin for daring to suggest the King of Romance might be more cardboard than charming.
