Page 1 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

CHAPTER 1I’m Going to Kill Him

Rome

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

I want to commit a homicide.

Why, you ask? Bear with me for a second, and I’ll explain.

I write books for a living. But the thing is, I never meant to write a book in the first place. I know that sounds nuts—who writes an entire novel by accident?—but that’s what happened. Ten years ago, after a life-changing trip to Italy during a crisp January, I wrote a book.

And okay, I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t Elizabeth Gilbert do that already? Was it some kind of Eat, Pray, Love knockoff?

I want to say no, but the truth is—kind of?

I mean, there were thefts, detective work, and even a murder. But there was also lots of travel, a love story, and pasta.

I’ll get to all of that.

What you need to know right now is that when I got home after a whirlwind month of adventure, I had an overwhelming urge to write down what had happened, and it spilled out of me in a feverish rush. How I met Connor Smith, how we got embroiled in solving a series of robberies that ended in a murder, how we fell in love—I sifted through everything we’d experienced and out came When in Rome.

And the things that happened in the months after that—getting an agent, selling the book at auction, being flown to New York to meet my publishing team—felt like a continuation of a dream I couldn’t seem to wake up from.

My wake-up call came six weeks before the book was scheduled to launch that November.

Because I’d forgotten one tiny detail.

I never told Connor I was writing about him. I just invited him to meet me in New York and didn’t tell him why.

If I’m being honest—and that’s what this is about, right? Confession—I thought that when I told him, he’d pick me up and twirl me around like in a scene from a movie.

That’s not what happened.

Instead, I got, well, not blackmailed exactly, but something blackmail adjacent.

Because once Connor understood that he was soon to be the star of a true-crime novel—that I’d changed everyone else’s names, including my own, to protect the guilty, but not his—he wanted 10 percent of my advance. It was that or—he told the publisher with an élan I had to admire—he’d see us in court.

Even though he didn’t have a legal leg to stand on,1 my publisher didn’t want to take the chance.2 And there was a clause in my contract that said if we went to court, I’d be on the hook for the legal fees.3

I didn’t remember even seeing that clause.

I mean, does anyone read twenty-page single-spaced contracts?

I was going to from now on, obviously. But in the meantime, what if I gave him the cut of my advance he wanted, my publisher asked. That would make it so much simpler for everyone.

So I paid.

One book, I thought. One book, and then I’d be rid of him.

Everyone who’s ever been blackmailed in the history of blackmail probably thinks that. I’ll pay once, and that’ll be enough. Spoiler alert: It’s never enough.

Not for Connor.

Because When in Rome sold beyond everyone’s wildest expectations, and Connor was there for all of it. Slipping his arm around my waist in countless photos. Showing up everywhere. Basking in the fucking glow. And then my publisher offered me an enormous amount of money to write a sequel. Maybe I could write something else someday, but for now, more Connor, please! And could you be a darling and get it done in six months so you publish a book a year? Of course you can.

Anyway, when Connor got wind of the offer, he insisted I take it. I wouldn’t want certain information about me to go public, would I? No, he didn’t think so.

He took 20 percent of my advance that time.4 And when Murder in Nice was almost as successful as the first book, my publisher wanted another. And another. And another.

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