A five-year-old girl walked barefoot through a hospital hallway carrying a cardboard box filled with the only things she owned.

Matthew felt his knees grow weak. The man who had negotiated billion-dollar corporate buyouts without flinching sank slowly onto his knees on the cold hospital tile, bringing himself down to the little girl’s eye level.

Sarah looked at the tall stranger in the dark tailored suit. She didn't know who he was, but she saw the way his hands shook and the raw, agonizing grief burning in his eyes. Without a word, she held the cardboard box out to him, assuming he was another doctor who needed to be convinced.

“Are you going to fix her?” Sarah asked quietly, her tiny voice cracking. “You can have my pink hairbrush too. It’s very soft. Mommy uses it on my hair every morning.”

Matthew’s hands trembled violently as he reached into the box. He didn't look at the plastic brush or the golden-haired fabric doll. His fingers brushed past the cracked porcelain tea set and settled on a small item lying at the very bottom.

It was a braided string bracelet made of cheap cotton twine and rough wooden beads, painted silver and blue.

Matthew pulled it out, staring at it through a sudden, scalding blur of tears.

Six years ago, on a rainy night in a tiny college apartment, Matthew had sat on the floor with Anne. He had just been disowned by his aristocratic family for refusing to leave Anne to take over Sullivan Enterprises. They had been dead broke, eating cheap soup by candlelight. That night, Anne had woven two matching bracelets out of twine and wooden beads she bought for two dollars at a craft store.

“As long as you wear yours and I wear mine,” Anne had whispered, kissing his forehead, “we’ll never truly be apart. No matter what your family says.”

Matthew reached beneath his starched white cuff, pulling back his three-hundred-thousand-dollar Swiss watch. Bound tightly around his left wrist was the exact twin of the bracelet in his hand—faded, frayed, but never once removed in six years.