Please unlink this MacBook Air from my apple ID

The tech and ability is there. I just need to find someone at Apple willing to help. Who do I need to speak to in order to have any trace of a "MacBook Air" erased from my Apple ID. I purchased a MacBook Air from the local Best Buy and returned it a week later; Before I returned it I logged out of anything I could and then I did a factory reset. I literally went back to the local Best Buy and verified that the MacBook Air is indeed reset and my info is removed from it. Also, this MacBook Air does NOT show up under my "devices" tab anywhere: Find My, iCloud, AppleID/Apple.com etc. So now for the current problem: After resetting my iPhone 11, entering my Apple ID and password, creating a passcode to unlock my iPhone, on the very next screen I'm being prompted to "enter the password I used to unlock xxxxx's MacBook Air". I entered the password I thought I used but it said that's not it. I'm afraid that in my last move my recovery key became MIA, so I can't use that, and I can't reset my recovery key because in order to get a new recovery key it prompts me to enter "the password I used to unlock xxxxx's MacBook Air"!!! I shouldn't even have to use my recovery key in order to completely restore my iPhone because I shouldn't have to enter a password for a device I don't own in order to restore my iPhone! I've already spoke to Apple support about this three times, the first two people didn't know why that was happening, and the last person said they can't help me. Again, the tech is there you just have to find someone willing to help... <smh>