Wrong Turn
2026 Words
After a long, scalding bath, Ryan sat down to breakfast alone, just as he always did. The table was set with precision, the meal prepared flawlessly, yet something felt off. The food tasted different, not because anything was wrong with it, but because he wasn’t really tasting it at all.
His thoughts drifted, unbidden. After barely touching his meal, Ryan picked up his phone and called his assistant.
“The meeting is rescheduled,” he said flatly.
There was a brief pause. “Sir, the board has been waiting for over an hour.”
“Then they can continue waiting,” Ryan replied. “Or leave.”
He ended the call without further explanation.
Normally, this would have been the hour he reviewed contracts, dissecting clauses, calculating risks, and making decisions that shaped markets. Today, the documents remained untouched. Numbers blurred together, meaningless.
Instead, exhaustion settled over him, heavy and unfamiliar.
He returned to his bedroom and lay down, fully dressed, staring at the ceiling. No matter how hard he tried to clear his mind, one image kept returning, Claire’s stubborn presence, her reckless kindness, and the way she gave without ever asking if she could afford it.
She had disrupted something in him. And as sleep finally claimed him, Ryan realized with quiet certainty that whatever this was, it was far from over.
He slept longer than he had in days. When he finally woke, the room was bathed in soft afternoon light, the kind that slipped through tall curtains and painted everything gold. For a moment, he lay still, disoriented. The weight in his chest was unfamiliar, not the sharp edge of grief or the constant tension of control, but something quieter. Lingering.
His first coherent thought wasn’t business. It wasn’t profit margins or hostile takeovers.
It was Claire. The realization irritated him more than it should have.
He sat up, rubbing a hand over his face, and glanced at the clock. He’d missed half the day. Normally, that alone would have sent his staff scrambling, phones ringing nonstop. Instead, there was an eerie calm. Orders had been followed. The world hadn’t ended in his absence.
That fact unsettled him.
Ryan rose and crossed the room, pulling the curtains wider. Outside, the estate was pristine as ever, controlled, perfect, and untouched. Nothing like the cracked walls and dim light of Claire’s apartment. Nothing like the life she lived.
And yet, that was where his mind kept drifting. He turned away from the window and reached for his phone.
"Find out where she works," Ryan instructed his contact when the line connected, his voice level, cold, and purely businesslike, as if this were no different from ordering a background check on a rival executive. "Her current jobs. All of them."
There was a fractional pause on the other end. "Sir... the report detailed her employment history. May I ask..."
"No," Ryan cut in, then ended the call without another word.
On the other end of the encrypted line, Vincent stared at the phone in his hand with a flash of genuine annoyance. The detailed report he had personally handed Ryan just hours ago contained everything: all of Claire McAvoy's current places of employment had been carefully written. Now he was being asked to do it all over again. But with Ryan Pierce, there was no asking questions, only immediate, unquestioning execution.
Ryan told himself it was caution. Curiosity and a loose end he couldn’t ignore.
But deep down, he knew the truth. He wanted to see her again.
The realization settled quietly, without drama, and that somehow made it worse. He didn’t know how Claire would react if she ever discovered who he really was, what he owned, what he controlled, what kind of man he is. More importantly, he had lied to her the night before. And Ryan Pierce didn’t lie casually. A lie, once told, had to be maintained. Backing out now would raise questions he wasn’t prepared to answer.
***
On the other side of town, the moment the line went dead, Vincent didn't pause. He knew better than to question an illogical order; to Ryan Pierce, a redundant request was simply a test of efficiency.
He slammed his briefcase shut, the sound echoing sharply in the quiet, empty meeting room. He snatched up his primary satellite phone and barked into the receiver: "Rerun the employment list for McAvoy. Current locations only. I want confirmation on the diner, the library, and the cleaning agency, and I want it confirmed now. Send me photographic proof of the signage within the hour. And double-check the shift times, every minute must be verified."
Vincent ran a hand through his carefully styled hair, the sudden stress evident in the tightness around his eyes. He had spent his entire career mastering the art of preemptive action, anticipating Ryan's needs. To be ordered to confirm data he already possessed felt like a severe, unspoken rebuke. He didn't know why Ryan needed to confirm Claire McAvoy's minimum-wage jobs, but he knew this: failing to produce instantaneous, faultless re-verification was not an option.
Two hours later, the new verified report sat in front of Ryan, who carefully read through while planning his next move.
By evening, Ryan had made his decision. He left the mansion dressed immaculately, slipping into one of his exotic cars with the intent to drive anywhere but back to that part of the city. Five minutes later, he turned around and returned through the gates, his jaw set.
“I need the clothes I wore last night,” he said the moment he stepped inside.
Wayne blinked. “Sir… those were already sent to be cleaned. They were meant for donation, just like you ordered.”
“Bring them back.” he said, "And get me a dozen of the exact same kind,"
Confusion flickered across the butler’s face, but he nodded and moved quickly. Within minutes, the simple black shirt and pants were retrieved, clean, folded, and entirely out of place in a house like this.
What baffled the staff was when Ryan emerged from his room wearing them again.
The same plain clothes. The same anonymity.
“Don’t wait up for me,” Ryan said as he passed Wayne, his tone final. “I won’t be home tonight.”
He didn’t look back. Moments later, he slid into the smallest, least impressive car in his collection, cheap by his standards, extravagant by anyone else’s, and drove off into the night, heading straight toward a lie he fully intended to live.
Having found out the time Claire finished her last job of the day, Ryan chose the bus station as the place to wait for her. It was neutral ground, public, and harmless. Waiting for her in the alley where they’d met would raise questions, and showing up at her apartment uninvited would make him exactly what he wasn’t trying to be.
A creep.
But here, out in the open, he could pretend it was coincidence. That he hadn’t planned this at all. That he just happened to be there when she arrived.
The thought almost made him laugh.
Ingenious, he told himself dryly.
Then, just as quickly, the amusement faded.
What am I doing? How had my life, once ruled by schedules, profits, and absolute control, devolved into waiting at a bus stop for a woman who owned nothing but her stubborn kindness?
The question had no answer that satisfied him.
As the minutes stretched into a tense, agonizing wait, Ryan’s attention sharpened to a predator's focus. He watched every bus pull in, every door hiss open with a sigh of air brakes, every tired, indifferent passenger step onto the pavement. Each time Claire wasn’t among them, a strange cocktail of emotions, irritation, relief, disappointment, dipped inside him. He couldn’t untangle the feeling.
Three times he made the attempt to leave, to walk away and return to the seamless luxury of his life, to forget about this messy complication. But he never got past three paces before the invisible tether yanked him back toward the bus stop.
Then a darker thought crept in, sharp and uninvited.
What if she helped someone else the way she’d helped him? What if, right now, she was offering another stranger shelter, another piece of herself she couldn’t afford to give, and he wasn't there to observe it?
The idea sat poorly with him, twisting into a coil of sudden, unfamiliar possessiveness that tightened his jaw. So he stayed where he was, restless and alert, his eyes tracking each arriving bus, waiting, watching, far more invested than his rational mind was willing to admit.
Finally, just as the frustration was about to boil over, Ryan felt the dead weight of the decision settle in.
Maybe this is a sign, he told himself, the thought offering a false sense of peace.
A sign to walk away. A sign to forget her.
He turned, finally ready to heed the sign and walk away, when he saw her.
Claire stepped off the last bus, moving with the tired haste of someone who had worked too many hours.
She was dressed exactly as she had been the night before: an oversized, shapeless T-shirt, baggy, faded jeans that swallowed her tiny frame, her hair hastily twisted into a loose, escaping knot at the back of her head. A plain brown grocery bag was clutched tightly to her chest like a shield.
So that’s why she’s late, Ryan realized instantly. Grocery shopping.
A long, silent breath he hadn't known he was holding slipped free. A quiet, unwelcome wave of profound relief washed through him. He hadn't known how tense he was until the moment she materialized.
Then, instinct, the hard-wired control that governed his life, kicked in.
He straightened, wiped his expression clean, and slipped into the role he’d rehearsed in his head, lost, uncertain, just another man passing through. He turned slightly, as though unsure of his direction, scanning the area like he didn’t belong there.
Claire didn’t notice him at first. She walked past, eyes tired, mind clearly elsewhere.
For a heartbeat, Ryan thought she might keep going. Then she slowed.
Not because she recognized him, at least not at first, but because something about his hesitation caught her attention. Claire glanced back, her brows knitting together in faint confusion. Her gaze slid over him once… then stopped.
Recognition flickered.
“You?” she said, surprise soft but genuine.
Ryan turned, feigning the same mild shock. “Oh—hey.”
For a second, she simply stared at him, as if trying to decide whether he was real or just another trick of exhaustion. Then she adjusted the grocery bag in her arms.
“I thought you’d already found your friend,” she said.
“Not yet,” Ryan replied, scratching the back of his neck, playing the part perfectly. “I… guess I took a wrong turn.”
Her mouth tightened with concern.
“This area isn’t great at night,” she said, glancing around instinctively. “You shouldn’t be wandering.”
The irony almost made him smile.
“I was just heading...” he gestured vaguely down the street, “...that way.”
Claire sighed, the sound heavy with weariness rather than annoyance. “That’s the long route.”
She hesitated, then shifted her grip on the bag. “Come on. At least walk with me until we reach the main road.”
Ryan fell into step beside her, careful to match her pace. The streetlights buzzed overhead, casting uneven shadows as they walked.
“You didn’t have to wait around,” she added after a moment. “You could’ve gotten hurt.”
“I’m harder to break than I look,” he said lightly.
She snorted before she could stop herself. “Everyone thinks that.”
They walked on, the silence comfortable, fragile.
Ryan kept his expression neutral, but inside, something had already gone terribly wrong.
He wasn’t just relieved to see her. He was glad she’d come back.
- Writer
