Victoria Sterling learned that her wallet was missing in the middle of a congratulations she could barely hear.
Her chief financial officer was speaking about the numbers, a reporter was calling her name from the curb, and someone from the investment bank had already sent a photograph of the signing ceremony to every major business publication in the country.
Around her, the city moved through a bright afternoon of honking cars, reflected sunlight, and impatient pedestrians. She reached into her handbag for the small leather wallet that had followed her through nearly every important day of her adult life, and her fingers touched nothing but empty lining.
She stopped beneath the awning of the glass tower. For a moment, even the traffic seemed to recede. She checked the inner compartment, the side pocket, and the zipper pouch, then opened the bag wide enough to see a narrow split in its lining near the bottom. The wallet was gone, and with it went more than fifty thousand dollars in cash, a passport, her driver's license, two bank cards, and a black charge card that could purchase almost anything the world might put in front of her. Yet none of those things was what made her stomach turn cold.
In the wallet's smallest pocket was a ring made of pale gold, its single blue stone dulled at one corner by decades of wear. It had belonged to her mother, who was gone, and Victoria carried it rather than wearing it because she feared losing the delicate setting. Behind the ring she kept a faded photograph of her mother, her father, and herself at the age of seven, standing in front of a beach cottage that no longer existed. Victoria had entire rooms filled with valuable objects, but those two small things were the only possessions she could not replace with a telephone call.
"Ms. Sterling?" Ethan Reyes said beside her. Her executive assistant had learned to recognize the difference between Victoria thinking and Victoria discovering a problem. "Is something wrong?"
"My wallet is missing." She heard how controlled her voice sounded and disliked it. "I want the building's security footage from the entrance and the lobby. Ask the driver to check the car. Have my bank cards frozen, but do not make a scene in front of the reporters."
Ethan nodded and began working his phone. He was thirty-one, quick-minded, and more observant than most of the executives who paid themselves ten times his salary. He did not ask whether she had misplaced it, and he did not offer the easy reassurance that someone would surely find it. The expression on her face told him this was not simply about cash.
The reporters kept shouting her name. A camera caught her profile as she moved toward the waiting town car, her charcoal suit immaculate and her dark hair pinned in a smooth knot. Victoria lifted a hand in acknowledgment because she knew how photographs could be interpreted when a powerful woman failed to smile. The driver opened the door, and she sat inside without looking back at the stretch of pavement beside the rear wheel. That was where the wallet had fallen when the torn lining opened as she climbed out earlier that afternoon.