When He Lies

Ryan Quinn signs the bill for a bottle of champagne he doesn’t want and watches his reflection blur in the glass. Tonight he’s not a CIA operative. He’s a jaded billionaire with money to burn and a taste for trouble—exactly the kind of man the monsters he hunts like to collect.

His assignment is simple on paper: slip into a criminal circle, play the bored tycoon, use whatever—and whoever—it takes to get close. The perfect bait arrives in a shimmer of silk and wide, guileless eyes.

Simone Sailor. All soft smiles and fluttered lashes, the kind of woman men call “sweetheart” and promptly forget to take seriously.

They never see the quiet inventory she takes of the room. The way she clocks exits, cameras, wristwatches, diamonds. Simone calls herself a retrieval specialist. It sounds cleaner than thief, and it makes it easier to sleep after she’s delivered someone’s precious “lost” property back to a very unforgiving family.

Ryan thinks he’s choosing her. Simone knows she’s choosing him.

He believes she’s his ticket into a deadly inner circle. She intends to use his cover, his money, and his body heat as a shield while she lifts a set of very valuable trinkets from under a cartel’s nose. She’s never missed before. Not once.

But somewhere between the practiced brush of her hand on his arm and the first real shiver his touch sends through her, the con slips. One stolen kiss, one heartbeat of distraction, and she’s caught mid-heist—with Ryan standing too close to be innocent.

In a world where exposure means a bullet, their lies stop being a game and start being the only thin, fragile line between both of their names and an unmarked grave.