​Have you ever watched a fly that’s caught in a spider’s web? How it tangles itself up all the more when it tries to fight its way out? The more it struggles and kicks, the more a prisoner it becomes. The few flies that do escape do so by just quietly flying away. I was in a web and it seemed the more I kicked, the more I became entangled.

So I decided just to quietly fly away. Just leave town. Torn between Texas and California, I flipped a coin and California won.

My name is Kolton Phelps. I was co-owner of Sunburst Products, Inc., a company that manufactured skin-care products, which I recently lost to creditors in bankruptcy. In the process I came dangerously close to going to prison.

The day my lawyer had the criminal charges against me dismissed for failure of the complainant to appear in court, I bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. Jake Bufferum, it seemed, lost interest in putting me in jail once he learned he had successfully destroyed me otherwise. “I think that hard-headed, stuck-up bastard has suffered enough,” Jake is reported as saying when he heard that my wife Kelly had thrown me out. Bufferum was my arch enemy and my business partner from hell.

I hope Jake Bufferum doesn’t get wind of this, but what lies ahead frightens the hell out of me.