She talks people alive for a living. He buries problems with money. When billionaire Roman Ashworth's seventeen-year-old sister is kidnapped, he is forced to hire the one person he despises: Wren Halloway, a former FBI crisis negotiator who reads lies the way other people read faces. Wren hates him right back — his company's contractors got her fiancé killed five years ago. But the kidnapper's demands stop being about money, the clock keeps shrinking, and the voice on the phone speaks a phrase only a dead man knew. To save Evie, Wren must out-negotiate the one man who taught her everything — and Roman must trust the woman whose profession he blames for his mother's death. A high-stakes game of leverage, secrets, and slow-burn hate-to-love where every word is a weapon.