All Chapters of Love Unexpected, The Billionaire's Disguise : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

By five a.m. Claire was finally going back down. She had finished the fifty-fifth floor with some minutes to spare, enough time to do a final pass of the boardroom and still make the five-thirty cutoff. That was the rule and she had memorized it on her first night: all night float staff out of the building before the first day employee arrived. If you were still there when the lifts started filling with suits, don't bother coming back.She had no intention of not coming back. She pushed her cart toward the service elevator and rode it down to the basement bunker, already thinking about what she would do for the rest of day before the next shift, she thought about the corner stall where the good coffee cart set up even at this hour, and the particular satisfaction of a shift finished without incident. The promise of payday was the only thing keeping Claire’s feet moving. Two more days. Even with her wages being skimmed from Lydia and Zelda’s checks, the amount was a small fortune compa

Claire calmly walked toward the exit, never once looking back to see the panic setting in behind her.​Tyler stood exactly where she had left him, watching her go. For the first time in a very long while, he had no next move prepared. He hadn't built in a contingency plan because he genuinely hadn’t expected her to refuse, not after the financial windfall he had practically thrown at her feet. Most people would have hesitated, asked questions, or at least entertained the possibility but Claire had done none of that.​Now, Tyler hadn’t just made himself look desperate; he had set a short fuse on his boss's temper. Ryan was going to be... Tyler searched for the right word, discarding angry and livid before landing on unhappy. Ryan was going to be unhappy in that specific, devastating way he got when someone he trusted exercised poor judgment in a situation that actually mattered.​He cursed his own eagerness. He should have just confirm her identity quietly, go home, and handle it the f

It took Ryan's security detail seven hours to realize she was gone. The first six, Paul had filed under sleeping off the night shift, a reasonable assumption, a closed curtain, no movement at the window. It was the seventh hour that changed things. A routine check of the building perimeter. The rear door slightly ajar in a way that could have been careless but wasn't. The interior of the flat looked undisturbed on the surface and wrong underneath it, a chair at an angle, a glass on its side, the small accumulated evidence of a struggle that someone had been in a hurry to minimize.And on the kitchen floor, half beneath the counter, the Pierce Capital staff keycard. Paul photographed it and called Marcus. Marcus called Ryan.Ryan's first thought, when Marcus described the scene, was that she had left deliberately and had decided she no longer needed the keycard. He held that thought for approximately thirty seconds, long enough to examine it properly. Then he let it go.Claire McAvoy d

RYANI closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, the weight of my own deception settling heavily on my chest.​It was time. I couldn’t go on with the lie anymore; it had already spun too far out of my control. It was better she heard the truth from my own lips than risk her discovering it elsewhere. Prolonging the illusion any longer would only make the inevitable crash catastrophic.​I opened my eyes, took a deep breath, and looked her dead in the eye.​"Claire, I need to tell you something." I paused, searching her gaze, trying to gauge just how much her fractured world could handle right now. She was watching me with a razor-sharp focus. If there was ever a moment to strip away the armor, it had to be now. I braced myself. "I’m not... I'm not exactly the person you think I am."​Claire stared at me for a split second. Then, a tiny, faint smile played at the corner of her lips, almost as if she were trying to lighten the suffocating gravity in the room.​"What do you mean?" she ask

CLAIREWhen Ryan told me he was taking me to his place, I didn’t argue. A logical, sane voice in the back of my head was screaming that I should. Why his place? Why couldn't he just drop me off at my own apartment, instead but a stubborn, hyper-vigilant part of me kept those words firmly sealed in my throat. I was exhausted, soaked, and the threat of those men was too real. Besides, I told myself this was tactical. If we got to his apartment and he tried anything, or if I felt even a fraction of an inch unsafe, I could just overpower him and run. ​I glanced sideways under my lashes, silently assessing his frame. He was undeniably big, all broad shoulders, heavy chest, and a quiet, lethal grace that belonged to someone who knew how to command. But I wasn't intimidated. I was convinced I could take him if it came down to a physical fight; I’d taken down men larger and meaner than him back when I was running for my life, and I still knew exactly where to strike to make a big man drop.St