She did not know it was half of something.

She had assumed the ragged edge was only age, a piece worn away, the way everything from the beginning of her life had worn away.

It never occurred to her that somewhere a matching half existed, that the ragged edge was not damage but a promise, a shape designed to fit exactly against another.

She had built an entire life on that little handful of facts, and on the love of the woman who’d found her, and she had decided long ago that it was enough.

Tonight, standing in a corner she’d been ordered into, she pressed her thumb to the worn silver and held on, the way she always did when she felt small, not knowing that within the hour the worn edge would find the only thing in the world it had ever been meant to touch.

Chapter 5 — The Perfect Executive