Chapter 3: The Podcast Heard Round the City
The chirp of a sparrow outside the window was his alarm. Tony opened his eyes to the familiar crack in the ceiling plaster of his childhood room. For one disorienting second, he expected the weight of Jeannie’s leg thrown over his, the smell of her coconut shampoo. Then the memory descended, not as a crashing wave, but as a cold, settled fact. It was already waiting for him.
He breathed in through his nose, held it, exhaled through his mouth. Four-count. The old rhythm. He got up, made the bed with hospital corners, and dressed in the clean clothes from his go-bag: charcoal slacks, a simple grey Henley. He packed his phone, wallet, and a single, sharpened pencil into his pockets.
In the kitchen, Dan-Woo was moving through a slow Tai Chi form in the garden, a silhouette against the dawn. Travis was at the table, two steaming mugs of black coffee already set out. The local newspaper was folded beside him.
“Sleep?” Travis asked, not looking up from his reading.
“Enough,” Tony said, taking a seat. The coffee was bitter and perfect.
“David Jensen called on the landline fifteen minutes ago. Woke me up. Said to tell you the name is Miranda Vance. Her office opens at eight. He’s already briefed her. She’s expecting your call.” Travis slid a torn piece of notepad paper across the table. A phone number was written in precise block letters. “He said she’s a ‘pit bull in a pencil skirt’ and the only person in this city Dale Gale is genuinely afraid of.”
Tony took the paper, a flicker of grim satisfaction in his chest. “Good.”
“He also said your brother is live. On his podcast. Right now.” This time, Travis looked up, his blue eyes intent. “You might want to listen.”
A knot of dread formed below Tony’s sternum. He pulled out his phone, which he’d kept on silent. There were seventeen missed calls, mostly from numbers he didn’t recognize, and a cascade of text notifications. He ignored them, opened his podcast app, and found Jimmy’s live stream: “THE JIMMY NELSON SHOW – UNSCHEDULED.”
He hit play and set the phone on the table between them.
Jimmy’s voice came through, stripped of its usual comedic bounce. It was low, clear, and vibrated with a cold fury that Tony had never heard in his little brother before.
“...so let’s get the names out of the way first, because accountability requires names,” Jimmy was saying. The audio was pristine, no background noise. He was in his booth. “Max Glover. Starting quarterback. You’re a predator. Dee Gale. Sofia Lawrence. You’re not friends. You’re social chemists, and you mixed a poison for someone who trusted you. Dale Gale. Larry Lawrence. You sat there. You enabled. You’re cowards.”
Tony froze, the mug halfway to his lips.
“This isn’t gossip. This is a statement of fact,” Jimmy continued, his pace measured, lethal. “Last night, on their fifth wedding anniversary, a man I admire more than anyone was systematically betrayed by his wife and by every single person he considered a friend at that table. It was a coordinated setup. The goal was to get his wife, Jeannie, drunk on fantasy and literally deliver her to Max Glover’s penthouse, while simultaneously trying to get the husband, Tony, too intoxicated and manipulated to intervene.”
Travis listened, his face granite.
“The husband,” Jimmy said, and his voice cracked for the first time, “my brother, didn’t play along. He wasn’t drunk. He saw the play. And when two of Max Glover’s offensive linemen tried to physically stop him from leaving to follow his wife, he disabled them both in under six seconds. He didn’t throw a punch. He used nerve strikes and pressure points. Because he was trained by our grandfathers, a Green Beret and a Hapkido master, and because he’s not a violent man, but he is a man who knows how to defend what’s his. Until last night, he believed his marriage was worth defending.”
Tony closed his eyes. Jimmy was throwing every piece of their private history into the public square.
“He walked away from that table. He told them all he was done. He left with the only two people in that group who still have a soul, David and Lauren Jensen. His wife went to the penthouse. She made her choice. My brother changed the locks on his home. That’s where the story ends for him. He’s moving on. But I’m not him.”
The tone shifted. It became darker, more intimate.
“So, Max. You like targeting married women? You like having your goons handle the husbands? Good to know. Dee, Sofia—you think swinging and open relationships are the pinnacle of human connection? Fine. But you don’t get to kidnap someone else’s marriage and force it into your mold. You manipulated a woman you called a friend into an act of profound self-destruction, for your own amusement. That’s not liberation. That’s sociopathy.”
Jimmy took an audible breath. “And to the listeners, the fans… this is why I’m telling you this. Because this stuff thrives in darkness. It thrives on whispered plans and the assumption that good men will be too ashamed, too broken, too polite to call it what it is. It’s not ‘complicated.’ It’s not a ‘modern arrangement.’ It’s a betrayal. It’s cruel. And every one of the people I named needs to sit in the light of that fact for a while. The download link for this episode is in the show notes. Share it. Let’s give them all the attention they deserve.”
The live stream ended. The app showed the episode had been running for twenty-two minutes. The listener count was already in the six figures.
Tony’s phone immediately buzzed with an incoming call. DAVID. He answered.
“You heard?” David’s voice was tight with adrenaline.
“Just now.”
“It’s everywhere. Sports blogs picked it up in five minutes. Local news is scrambling. Jimmy didn’t just light a fire, Tony. He napalmed the whole valley.” David paused. “Are you okay with this?”
Tony looked at the steam rising from his coffee. He thought of Jeannie’s smile as she left with Max. He thought of Dee’s predatory gleam. “Yes,” he said, and meant it. “He’s not wrong.”
“Miranda Vance’s office opens in forty minutes. I’ll text you the address. Go. Now. Before the vultures find you. And Tony? Don’t look at the news. Just don’t.”
They hung up. Travis was watching him. “Your brother loves you.”
“I know,” Tony said. “He just turned my divorce into a public spectacle.”
“No,” Dan-Woo said softly, entering from the garden, his hands tucked into his sleeves. “He turned their corruption into a public spectacle. There is a difference. You are the injured party. The narrative is now yours. A shrewd lawyer can use this.”
Tony nodded, standing. The plan was the same. The steps were just louder now. He had to move before the noise trapped him. “I’ll call you from her office.”
At the same time, in a luxury high-rise, Max Glover was jerked from a deep sleep by his agent screaming through the phone.
“What the fuck did you do, Max? What the actual fuck?”
Max groaned, pushing a naked, sleeping woman’s hair off his face. Not Jeannie. Someone from after. “The fuck are you talking about, Karl?”
“A podcast! Some nobody tech geek just named you, specifically, as a predator who targets married women and uses your teammates as muscle to handle husbands! He described the penthouse, Max! He named the wife! It’s trending number one in the city! The team PR director is having an aneurysm!”
Max sat up, the fog clearing. “That’s bullshit. It’s a lie. She was willing. It’s a disgruntled husband spreading lies.”
“He’s not the husband, you idiot! It’s the husband’s brother! And he’s not lying, because he described the two guys you were with last night by their jersey numbers, and he said the husband put them down with, and I quote, ‘nerve strikes and pressure points’! That’s not a lie you make up, Max! That’s a specific, verifiable fact! Did two of your linemen get fucked up last night or not?”
Max’s blood ran cold. He remembered the two men stumbling back to the VIP section, pale and shaking, unable to lift their beers. “They… they said they tripped.”
“They lied! To save face! Now the whole world knows they got their asses handed to them by a fucking architect!” Karl was hyperventilating. “I’m sending a car. You are not to speak to anyone. My lawyers are drafting a denial. You are to say you never met any woman named Jeannie Nelson. Do you understand? This ends now. You ghost her, you ghost this whole situation, or your endorsement deals are toast.”
Max looked at the woman sleeping beside him, her makeup smeared. He felt a sudden, intense wave of disgust. “Fine.Whatever. Handle it.”
He slammed the phone down and stared at the cityscape. The pristine, controlled narrative of his life had a crack in it. Someone had just hit him with a sledgehammer from a direction he never saw coming.
In the Jensens’ guest room, Jeannie woke to the sound of hushed, frantic arguing downstairs. Her head throbbed. The memory of the penthouse, of Max’s hands, of the cab ride, of the dark, locked house, descended in a nauseating rush. She fumbled for her phone.
It was dead. She’d never plugged it in.
She crept to the door, hearing David’s low, angry voice. “…can’t protect her from this, Lauren. Jimmy’s not wrong. She did this.”
“I know she did it! But she’s broken, David. Look at her!”
“And whose fault is that? Not Tony’s. Not yours. Hers. And Dee’s. And Sofia’s.”
Jeannie’s heart hammered. She found a charging cable on the dresser, plugged her phone in, and waited. The screen came to life, and it exploded. Hundreds of notifications. Instagram tags. Twitter mentions. Texts from numbers she didn’t know. The trending topic: #GloverGaleGate.
With trembling fingers, she opened a link. It was a sports news aggregator. The headline: “Podcaster Alleys QB Max Glover in Vicious ‘Married Woman’ Setup Scandal.” Her own name was in the third paragraph. A screenshot of Jimmy’s podcast description included the phrase “his wife, Jeannie.”
She scrolled. Comments flooded in.
“Scumbag quarterback. Knew it.”
“The friends are the real monsters here.”
“That wife is trash.”
“The husband is a badass. Nerve strikes? Legend.”
A text from Sofia popped up: JEANNIE CALL ME NOW THIS IS A NIGHTMARE!
Another from Dee, thirty minutes earlier: You need to get ahead of this. We need a unified story. Call me.
And one from an unknown number: Hey slut, heard you got passed around last night. Your husband’s brother told the whole world. You must be so proud.
Jeannie dropped the phone like it was on fire. She backed into the room, her hands over her mouth. The fantasy wasn’t a secret anymore. It was a meme. It was public fodder. Tony’s pain, her shame, their dead marriage—it was all trending. And Jimmy, sweet, funny Jimmy, had been the one to publish it.
The final, delicate fiction she’d clung to—that she could fix this, that it could be a private wound—evaporated. There was no containing this. The wall between her two lives wasn’t just breached; it had been livestreamed.
At 8:02 a.m., Tony walked into the sleek, minimalist offices of Vance & Bryce, Family Law. A severe-looking woman with a razor-cut black bob and ice-gray eyes rose from behind a reception desk. “Mr. Nelson. Vance is ready for you. Straight back, last door on the right.”
Miranda Vance’s office had a view of the river. She was younger than he expected, maybe forty-five, dressed in a precisely tailored cream suit. She didn’t smile. She stood and offered a handshake that was firm and brief.
“Tony. David Jensen speaks highly of you. Sit. We have no time for small talk.” She gestured to a chair. “I’ve reviewed the basics David provided. Now I need the granular details. Everything. From the first moment you sensed something was off at that club to the moment you changed the locks. Then we will discuss your brother’s podcast, which has just changed the entire strategic landscape.”
Tony sat. He folded his hands in his lap. He began speaking, his voice steady and unemotional. He laid out the facts like blueprints. The peculiar tension. The excessive drinks. The arrival of Max Glover. The way Jeannie’s eyes tracked him. The whispered conversations. The two large men blocking his path. The specific techniques he used—he named them, the cheon-gwon and toi-chil. Her choice to leave. Dee’s proposition.
Miranda listened, taking swift notes on a legal pad, interrupting only for clarifying points. When he finished, she set her pen down.
“You are an exceptional witness,” she said, a hint of professional admiration in her tone. “Your recall is forensic. Your emotional control is a gift. The podcast, while未经授权, provides independent corroboration of the setup and establishes public sympathy squarely with you. It also puts immense pressure on the other parties.”
She leaned forward. “Here is my plan. By noon today, I will have a filed petition for dissolution. We will request exclusive use of the marital home, which you’ve already secured. We will subpoena the club’s security footage from last night. We will send preservation letters to Dee, Sofia, and Max Glover, warning them not to destroy any relevant communications. The public narrative is your shield. We will use it to demand a favorable financial settlement quickly, before the team’s lawyers can construct a fortress around Glover.”
“Jeannie?” Tony asked, the name feeling strange in his mouth.
“Is legally adverse to you now,” Miranda stated bluntly. “Her interests and yours are opposed. My advice is to have zero contact. Any communication goes through me. Her friends have exposed her to monumental liability, both socially and potentially financially if Glover’s team decides to sue for defamation. She is not your concern.”
Tony nodded. It was clean. Surgical. “Do it.”
“One more thing,” Miranda said, her eyes sharp. “Your brother. He’s a loose cannon. His heart is in the right place, but from this moment on, he says nothing else publicly without running it by me. The next podcast could inadvertently give them a defense. Tell him.”
“I will.”
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.
Miranda’s landline rang. She answered, listened for a moment. “Yes. Put him through.” She covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Dale Gale. Calling for you. On my line. Do you want to take it?”
Tony felt the cold, structural anger settle into a perfect, focused point. He reached out his hand. “Yes.”
He put the phone to his ear. “Dale.”
“Tony. Jesus, man. Jimmy’s podcast… that’s not… we need to talk.” Dale’s voice was strained, a slurry of panic and false bonhomie. “This is all a huge misunderstanding. Dee’s devastated. We were just trying to give Jeannie a fun night. It got out of hand. We can fix this. The four of us, let’s have lunch. We can sort this out, brother to brother.”
Tony listened to the desperate performance. He saw Dale at the club, laughing too loud, clapping him on the back, his eyes avoiding Tony’s as Jeannie left. Brother to brother.
“There’s nothing to sort out, Dale,” Tony said, his voice quiet, final. “You’re not my brother. You’re opposing counsel. Any further communication should go through my lawyer, Miranda Vance. You have her number.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He handed the phone back to Miranda, who placed it in the cradle, a faint, approving twist to her lips.
“Excellent,” she said. “Now, let’s begin.”
“Now, let’s begin.” Miranda said, pulling a fresh legal pad toward her.
Back in his soundproof booth, Jimmy watched the digital listener count climb toward seven figures. His hands trembled, not from fear, but from a surging, electric rage that needed a new outlet. The comments and tags were a blur. Then his DMs exploded.
It wasn’t just text. Videos started flooding in. Dozens of them. Sent from anonymous accounts and from fans.
The first video preview thumbnail made his stomach lurch. It was a shaky, dark shot of a VIP booth, timestamped last night. His own table. He clicked it.
The audio was muddled with bass from the club’s sound system, but the voices carved through. Dee’s face, flushed with excitement, filled the frame as she held the phone, clearly recording secretly in her lap. It was pointed at Sofia and Larry.
“He just told us all to lose his number. Permanently,” Dee hissed, her earlier drunk glee entirely gone. Her eyes were wide, sharp with a fear that looked like anger. “He’s not playing. He’s not crying in his beer. He just… detached.”
Sofia swirled her drink, her expression unreadable. “So the night’s a bust. For us. Jeannie’s with Max. She’s getting exactly what she wanted.”
“That’s not the point!” Dee snapped, leaning in. “The point was both of them. The point was liberation, not just her getting a trophy fuck. If Tony’s out, really out, then she’ll just slink back to him tomorrow ashamed and we lose them both forever. The whole thing collapses back into boring monogamy.”
Larry shrugged, a weird, twitchy smile on his face. “I dunno. Watching him walk away like that… it was kind of hot. The intensity. He didn’t even look at you, Dee. That’s power.”
Dale’s larger form shifted into the frame, his face uncharacteristically somber. “It wasn’t hot, Larry. It was a disaster. He’s my friend. Or was. This wasn’t supposed to…”
“Wasn’t supposed to what?” Dee cut him off, swiveling her fiery gaze to her husband. “Wasn’t supposed to get real? It is real. This is the work. You think breaking a person’s boundaries is clean? It’s messy. He’s in the mess now. That’s when the real change happens.”
Sofia nodded slowly, a strategist assessing a failed campaign. “Dee’s right. This is a setback, not a defeat. Jeannie will be high on Max tomorrow, but she’ll be terrified of losing Tony. That’s a lever. We can use that fear. We can guide her. She can beg for forgiveness and suggest… new ways to reconnect. To make it up to him. Ways that include us.”
Larry’s breathing audible on the mic. “She could tell Tony it was a mistake, that she got swept up, but that she saw how… appealing other possibilities could be. She could offer him a hall pass. She could offer him… you.”
He looked directly at Dee when he said it.
Dale flinched. “Whoa, okay, no. That’s enough. This is done. We tried. It failed. We need to cut our losses and apologize.”
“Apologize?” Dee’s laugh was a short, vicious bark. “And admit we were wrong? Never. We have a better vision for them. They’re just too scared to see it. Tony needs to be… unclenched. And a night with the right woman, a woman who knows what she’s doing, would unclench him permanently. Jeannie would give permission if she was scared enough. She’d hand him over to me on a silver platter just to keep him.”
The video ended. Jimmy sat in the silence of his booth, the soundproof foam absorbing his sharp exhale. They were still plotting, even after Tony walked away. They were planning to use Jeannie’s guilt to pimp her own husband out to Dee. The clinical, manipulative audacity of it stole his breath.
He scrolled. Another video, from a different angle, likely another patron. This one showed the moment Tony disabled the second lineman. It was clear, stunning. The huge man lunged, Tony sidestepped, his fingers jabbing like a piston into the man’s neck. The giant crumpled without a sound.
The comments under this video were a river of fire. Memes were already being made. GIFs of the takedown. The hashtag #NelsonNerveStrike was trending.
His studio landline rang, screeching in the quiet. He let it go to voicemail. His cell buzzed. Unknown number. He silenced it. A direct message pinged on his podcast dashboard. It was from Lauren Jensen.
Lauren: Jimmy, it’s Lauren. Tony’s with Miranda Vance. He knows about the podcast. He’s okay with it. But you need to stop. Send any videos you get directly to Miranda. Do not post anything else. You’re giving them ammunition to claim harassment. Please.
He typed back, his fingers cold. I just saw them. In a video. Plotting to have Dee sleep with Tony to ‘fix’ things. After last night. They haven’t stopped.
Three dots appeared. Then her reply. I know. David just got a frantic call from Dale. He’s panicking. He says Dee and Sofia are ‘unhinged’. He wants to meet. Send the video to David. Now. Then disconnect.
Jimmy forwarded the video file. He then methodically began downloading every piece of evidence sent to him, saving it to an encrypted drive. His hands had stopped trembling. The initial rage had refined into a cold, purposeful resolve. He was no longer just a brother defending his family. He was an archivist, collecting the receipts of their annihilation.
Across the city, in the polished silence of Miranda Vance’s office, Tony’s phone buzzed with a text from David. It was a link to the video file, followed by a message: Dale wants to talk. He’s freaking out. Says the women have lost it. Wants to cut a deal. Your call.
Tony showed the phone to Miranda. She watched the video, her expression never changing. When it finished, she leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers.
“This is a gift,” she said, her voice cool. “This is conspiracy to facilitate adultery and intended marital coercion. This isn’t about hurt feelings anymore. This is actionable. Dale Gale is a divorce attorney. He knows exactly how damaging this is. He’s trying to preempt a civil suit.”
“A suit?” Tony asked.
“Against Dee and Sofia for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Possibly against Dale and Larry for conspiracy. The financial discovery alone would ruin them. This video is a confession.” She tapped her pen on the desk. “Let him freak out. Let him marinate in his panic. We will not meet him today. We will let the podcast and these videos circulate for twenty-four hours. Let the public condemnation solidify. Let his professional reputation crumble. Then, we will have him served. He will give us everything we want for Jeannie, and sign a sworn affidavit detailing the entire plot, in exchange for us not suing his wife into poverty.”
She looked at Tony, her gray eyes assessing. “It’s brutal. But it is the most efficient path to a resolution. It uses their own weapons against them.”
Tony thought of Dale’s call, the false brotherhood in his voice. He thought of Dee in the video, speaking about him like he was a project to be dismantled and reassembled. He nodded. “Do it.”
As he left the office, the morning sun felt alien on his skin. The world was moving on, cars honking, people chatting on phones. His private catastrophe was now a public spectacle, a weapon, a legal strategy. He was operating on a blueprint of cold justice, but a hollow ache persisted beneath his sternum, a silent memorial for what he had believed his life to be just twenty-four hours before.
His phone buzzed again. Not David this time. It was a number with a 212 area code.New York. He let it go to voicemail.
A minute later, a voicemail notification appeared. He played it, holding the phone to his ear as he walked.
“Mr. Nelson, this is Karl Renfro, with Renfro Management. I represent Max Glover. We need to speak, urgently, about this destructive narrative that’s being propagated. We are prepared to discuss a substantial confidentiality agreement to make this go away for everyone. Please call me back.”