“Make a fucking list of names,” Ryan ordered. “There are only so many suspects here. When I find out who did this, I’m going to rip their throat out and bury them.”

“We’ve all touched the envelope so prints are out. I don’t think going to the authorities with it would be wise.” Mike shook his head.

“We can speculate all we want. Unless someone brags or confesses, I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

Ryan stood, grabbed the little envelope thing with his fingers, and stormed off to the bathroom. I heard the toilet flush a few times.

The evidence was gone.

Ryan came back, staring at Mike as if he could magically come up with answers.

Mike was just as aggravated. “I don’t know, man. Someone was trying to set you up. If one of us had been caught with that, we’d be looking at international jail time.” Ryan scoffed. “No shit.”

Mike ran his hand over his head. “Well, the good news is you found it before we tried to leave the country. We came in on a com-mercial flight, so that means the drugs had to be purchased here. Unless we contact the authorities, we have no way of launching an investigation, and you just flushed the evidence.”

“It was in my backpack,” I uttered somberly, holding back tears while I searched Ryan’s pockets for planted drugs. I turned his pocket inside out, feeling as if someone had just done the same thing to me.

“I would have gone to jail.” The thought cracked me. Tears blurred my vision while deep. burning sobs rolled up my throat. Visions of being handcuffed again, hauled away like some druggie to be locked away in some foreign women’s prison for years—I couldn’t deal with that.

I’d endured so much, knowing what it felt like to be placed under arrest, seeing Ryan being carted away from me in the back of a police car, the stress, the loss, the lies, the sacrifices.

It was finally too much. Too much.

Ryan fell to his knees next to me on the floor. “Hey, hey, baby. It will be okay. Shh.” I was shaking so hard, I couldn’t breathe.

How much more of this could I endure? “Cocaine, Ryan? I can’t. I want to go home. Take me home.”

Ryan wrapped me in his arms, pulling me between his thighs. “Shh. I’ll take you home.” He kissed my hair repeatedly, rocking me.

“It’s you and me, babe. You and me.

Everything else is getting cut off. I promise.

No more. I won’t put you through this ever again.” I heard his words but I couldn’t believe them. What was to stop another Lauren or Nicole or even a disgruntled manager from repeating this nonsense?

Nothing.

When Ryan said we needed some air to clear our heads, he wasn’t kidding. He warmed my body as he leaned into me to share the view out of my side of the helicopter after insisting that we follow through on our vacation instead of heading back to the States. He hadn’t let go of my hand since we left the hotel in Rome. I think he was afraid I was going to end things with him.

This trip to Polignano a Mare was definitely a distraction.

Ryan was on edge, pacing around our room after we’d checked into the hotel. I opened the doors, finding some breathing space out on the balcony.

Ryan wrapped his arms around my stomach. “Nice view.”

Staring out at the vast Mediterranean Sea, that was an understatement. “It’s pretty spectacular. Thank you. It was a good idea to come here. Thank you for bringing me here.” He kissed my neck, lingering for a bit.

“Don’t leave me, Taryn.”

I looked up into his eyes, shocked by his words, seeing the fear in his eyes. It gripped my heart.

“You’ve been so quiet. I’m scared to imagine what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Ryan. I love you.”

He sighed and met my lips for a kiss.

“Thank God. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re my heart, Taryn. My heart. I don’t know who did this to us, but I swear I will find out. There will be retribution.”

I shook my head. “Nothing good ever comes from revenge. And any attempt at re-taliation will surely bring more problems.

No, our best bet is to just let it drop.”

He rested his forehead on my shoulder. “I can’t.”

“Oh sweetheart, you have to. News like this gets out and your picture will be splattered all over the press again. No. No more. We’ve been humiliated enough and I’m sure something will happen to put us back in the news regardless. You’ll sneeze, I’ll have a jealous fit when you have to kiss another actress—it’s always something.”