At exactly 8:17 on a Friday night, a woman named Sloane Mercer lifted her glass and poured an entire Coke over my head while more than forty thousand people watched online. Her friend Evan Caldwell had bet her five hundred dollars that she could make the “big waitress” jump, and when the ice hit my shoulder, they laughed like I was part of the entertainment. What neither of them knew was that a man they desperately needed for a billion-dollar business deal was already pulling into the parking lot.

"Sloane Mercer!" I screamed over the deafening roar of the jet engines.

The figure on the tarmac froze. Sloane turned around, her hair flying wildly across her face, her eyes wide with animalistic panic as she saw me cutting through the snow toward her like an avenging angel.

"Stay away from me!" Sloane shrieked, stumbling backward against the metal stairs of the charter plane. She reached into her duffel bag and pulled out a heavy gold-plated revolver—an antique piece she must have grabbed from her family's estate before fleeing.

The pilot inside the cockpit slammed the door shut, locking it from the inside, and began taxiing the plane backward, abandoning her on the freezing runway.

I didn't stop. I kept walking forward, my boots crunching against the icy asphalt, my wool coat whipping violently behind me.

"Go ahead, Sloane!" I called out, my voice cutting cleanly through the wind and engine noise. "Shoot me! Go on! Put another bullet in the Bennett family! Let the whole world watch you finish what your grandfather started!"

Sloane’s hands shook so violently she could barely keep the heavy barrel pointed at my chest. Tears streamed down her face, freezing instantly against her skin. "You ruined everything! You took my life! You took my name!"

"You never had a name, Sloane!" I shouted, stepping within ten feet of her. "You only had a shadow cast by stolen money! You thought a glass of Coke on a Friday night was the worst thing you could ever do to someone? You were a coward then, and you're a coward now!"

"Shut up! Shut up!" Sloane screamed, her finger tightening on the trigger.

Before she could pull it, a dark blur tackled her from the side. Daniel, having sprinted behind me with lightning speed, slammed into Sloane, sending her crashing onto the hard asphalt. The revolver flew from her grip, skidding across the ice and disappearing into the darkness beyond the runway lights.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Red and blue police lights flashed wildly across the horizon as federal marshals and local state troopers converged on the airstrip from every direction.

Daniel pulled Sloane up by her arms, forcing her hands behind her back as federal agents swarmed in with zip-ties and handcuffs.