Jennica and I have worked together for ten years. I knew her in college, and she was by my side when I had my first company, and now she’s here again with Haven. She’s an unstoppable force and like an older sister to me. A second older sister, since I have one already.

“Butter?” Carson shoots her a quizzical gaze.

“Butter good. Butter yummy,” Jennica says. “And I want Kate to be a hot guy with a sexy British butter voice. Switch her to Daniel for me, please.”

Carson shrugs and tips his goateed chin at me. “We can’t compete.”

“Hey, speak for yourself. I have a deep baritone that’s like sexy American butter.”

Jennica cracks up. “Flynn, you should use that voice to go as a bad boy to the masquerade ball.” She snaps her fingers. “Wait. I have a better idea. Why don’t you go as a bad boy piece of code? Just get a leather jacket, some boots, and write some crap code on a T-shirt. Speaking of, I’m going as a Polaroid.”

I pretend I’m deeply annoyed. “Why’d you tell me? Now I can’t guess what you are when I see you.”

“If you couldn’t tell I’m a Polaroid, then I’d be doing it wrong. Steve is going to be a Snapchat filter,” she adds, mentioning her husband.

“I already have a costume. Plus, I find bad code so morally offensive, I’m not sure I’d choose that. But my costume does rock,” I say, proud of what I picked out.

“Tell us.” Jennica grins.

“I’m going as ID theft,” Carson blurts, and I spin and stare at him.

Dread drops into my stomach. “What did you say?”

Carson nods excitedly. “I have one hundred name tags, and I’m going to slap them all over me with different people’s names.”

And there goes my idea.

“That’s a great plan,” I say with a forced smile.

“What about you?” he asks innocently, since he doesn’t know he picked my idea.

“Guess you’ll all just have to wait and see.” I rub my palms together, moving on. “Now, let’s review the final tweaks in Haven.”

“No one can come close to Haven.” Carson walks us through the updates he’s made to the automation system that’s rolling out next week. “Haven is far better than anything else on the market. And it’s absolutely better than ShopForAnything,” he says, meeting my gaze. There’s a touch of nerves in his eyes, and I get it—I feel them sometimes too. Our newest competitor is merciless, and I have to guard our company from its pending ambush.

I can’t fail because I have hundreds of employees depending on me to succeed, people counting on me for paychecks, for jobs, to make sure the company doesn’t become ShopForAnything’s cornflakes.

I won’t let us fail. I’m well aware that while I might be fine and dandy in the nest-egg-for-generations department, I have people who rely on me for their daily bread. What motivates me every day at work isn’t making more money to pad my coffers. It’s building something new and taking care of the people who make it possible.