Page 24 of The Roman's Woman (A Singular Obsession)

He took another step, and she reached for the nearest thing she could find, a heavy ashtray from the nearby table.

“I said, don’t come any closer!” she yelled, crouching so she could run in case he tried to jump her.

“Sophia, let me explain,” he pleaded, taking another step.

She didn’t hesitate. Pulling back her arm, she threw the ashtray at him with all her strength.

He tried to duck, but he was too slow. The ashtray still made contact, glancing off his head. It was enough to knock him off his feet.

He stared up at her, eyes dazed, with a little blood trickling down from his hairline. Her muscles locked in an effort not to run to him. The impulse to kneel and see if he was all right was overwhelming. But there was no time. She had to go now, before he got back up.

Gasping and sobbing, she grabbed her suitcase and sprinted for the door. She didn’t look back.

She was half-way to the airport before she burst into tears. Brushing them away brusquely with the heels of her palm, she took several deep breaths. She had to calm down, but the scene in the hotel replayed itself in her mind again and again. And what stood out was him—that stranger—sitting on the floor bleeding.

She turned to her taxi driver. “How do you call an ambulance in Italy?”

Chapter 9

A week later, Sophia dragged herself out of bed and into the bathroom of her one bedroom apartment. With forced mechanical movements, she brushed her teeth, staring at her drawn gray face.

It was quite an achievement for someone with her complexion to look pale, but she managed it pretty easily these days.

Sighing, she finished up and moved listlessly to her closet. For several minutes, she stared at her color-coded rows of dresses and shirts without seeing them. She had been back at work for a few days now. She didn’t explain why she came back early. The only person in her confidence was Kelly.

Her best friend had picked her up at the airport, prepared with a huge box of chocolates and a bottle of tequila.

It was a tradition Sophia herself had started in graduate school. She had kept chocolate, painkillers, and a bottle of tequila in her desk at work throughout her Ph.D. program. It was her emergency preparedness kit. Science was frequently a difficult and frustrating occupation and more than one of her coworkers had taken advantage of her stash. Kelly had been so taken with the idea that she adopted it as her own for her students.

Sophia had gone over the events in Italy with her best friend, trying like crazy to find an explanation for what had happened.

Who was that man in Italy, and why had he targeted her? Had he been trying to rob her somehow? Scam artists befriended you to get your personal details so they could steal your identity, didn’t they? Or did he target lonely female tourists as part of some sick game? Was that how he got off, seducing gullible women and then dining off the stories?

She could picture him now in some shady Italian bar, mocking her body with a group of other gorgeous Italian assholes.

After placing a fraud alert on her bank accounts and changing all of her passwords, she decided to put the whole mess out of her mind. But as hard as she tried, she couldn’t forget a thing.

She would close her eyes and see his smile. When she tried to sleep, his hands moved over her body, a phantom touch that kept her awake all night. It was the cruelest form of insomnia she could imagine.

The longing wouldn’t go away until she touched herself, masturbating in tears and pretending she was with him—the imaginary Gio who was a real street performer and would never dream of lying to her.

Sophia was only that weak at night. During the day she kept busy, fighting to maintain control with rigid self-discipline. However, in the space between tasks, her composure would crack. It seemed like her every emotion had heightened and run riot. Betrayal, anger, and fear were only the tip of the iceberg. She felt unbalanced and unsure of herself. How could she ever trust her own judgment again?

Stop it.

She had to get to work. That’s all that was keeping her together right now. When her mother had died, she’d buried herself in it. It was a strategy that had gotten her through some tough spots.

So why did she suspect it wasn’t going to be enough this time?

To top everything off, she was going to have to wine and dine her benefactor tonight. Alan Weisz, her research partner, had been glad she’d come back early because he’d received word that a Morgese Foundation representative was coming to tour the lab. Last night, Alan had called her in a panic. No mere lackey was visiting. Instead, it was the man himself, Mr. Morgese, the head of the foundation and CEO of the Morgese bank.

Going out tonight to make polite small talk with some old money blowhard was the last thing she wanted to do. But she didn’t have a choice. It was part of her job to charm and impress the big money guys when they came round.

More science was being funded by private donors as government budgets for science research dried up. By and large, it was a good thing, or at least a necessary one. However, the timing couldn’t be worse. It was hard to feign enthusiasm for much of anything at the moment. Having to paste a smile on her face for the whole day was going to be a headache.

Once at work, she did her best to finish some work before Mr. Morgese showed up. Some of her ongoing experiments required sampling at timed intervals, and she preferred to do it first thing in the morning. After that, she set about checking the stock of the solutions she needed for the next round.

When she found that one was low, she threw on her lab coat and safety goggles to mix up a fresh batch behind the glass walls of the hazardous chemical room. She had just finished when there was a flurry of activity near the door.

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