Page 25 of The Roman's Woman (A Singular Obsession)

Suppressing a sigh, she prepared for her meet and greet. Cleaning up, she decided to leave the lab coat on. It was always a good idea to play up to the stereotypes around the money people.

Tucking a lock of hair back into place, she pulled off her safety glasses and turned around…only to lock eyes with him.

Gio.

Her heart dropped to her knees and she blinked several times, but the apparition didn’t change. Her phantom lover was standing there in a fine bespoke suit, a small Steri-Strip bandage at his hairline.

Alan was all smiles, grinning from ear to ear and talking a mile a minute.

“Here she is,” Alan said, turning to her and gesturing. “Sophia, this is Giancarlo Morgese. Mr. Morgese, this is our neurobiologist Sophia Márquez.”

Her muscles locked, and she could feel the blood draining from her face. “No,” she whispered.

That wasn’t right. Clearly this man was an imposter. He’d already impersonated one man and here he was doing it again.

Why was he here? What the hell did he want?Why was it so cold?

She wanted to run, but she was locked in place—until he moved. He stepped forward and held out his hand. For a moment, she stared fixedly at it. A hint of her horror must have shown on her face because he stepped forward again, in front of Alan, to hide her from view. Then he took another.

Oh, God.

Spinning away instinctively, her hand flew out, knocking over an Erlenmeyer flask and a glass jug off the lab bench. She swore as the jug fell and smashed open on the floor.

“Out!” she yelled, alarmed when she realized the flask was the concentrated hydrochloric acid stock—the biggest bottle commercially available. “Everybody out!”

Hands came down on her shoulders, but she pushed them off, turning around and shoving Gio back as the fumes hit them, stinging her eyes and nose. Coughing, she pushed him again until he was past the threshold. Alan pulled Gio back enough for her to close the door. But she wasn’t on the other side of it with them.

Quickly donning the safety googles and a mask again, she went to the windows on the other side of the room and threw them open. She grabbed the hazardous spill kit and spread garden lime on the corrosive liquid on the floor, then checked her clothes for places where it might have splashed, ignoring the commotion on the other side of the glass.

Gio, or whoever he was, banged on the glass, carrying on like the world was ending.

“Sophia, get out of there!” he yelled, continuing to call out her name until the whole lab gathered around him and Alan.

Everyone was watching him, watching her. She could see them doing the math, figuring out that they knew each other. For a moment, they stared at one another, her eyes accusing, his frightened.

Whoever he was, he was scared for her.

****

After she had neutralized the spill, the custodial staff came to clean up the wet lime from the floor. A small hole had burned in her lab coat, but her clothes had been spared.

It was also fortunate that she had worn her leather boots today. They had protected her feet from the acid, but she had a persistent cough caused by the fumes. The mask hadn’t been adequate protection—or she hadn’t put in on in time to avoid a little lung irritation.

The EMTs were currently checking her out. Giancarlo Morgese had insisted.

It was his real name. She had looked him up while waiting in the ambulance. They had checked her vitals and put her on oxygen. One quick Google search later and there was his picture on the Morgese bank website. Her Gio was the CEO of one of Europe’s biggest banks—also her donor and the lab’s main source of funding.

Sophia could still hear her supervisor doing his best to calm Giancarlo down, explaining that she had done everything right. She followed protocol for a hazardous chemical spill. Closed shoes and clothing that didn’t expose too much skin were lab policy for exactly this reason.

It was a rule often broken, especially in the heat of summer, but Sophia didn’t. Not when she was doing experiments. So a real disaster had been averted. At worst, her lungs would be a little irritated and she might cough for a couple of days.

When the EMTs told her to rest, she texted her boss. She informed him she was going home for the day and to make her apologies to their illustrious guest.

And then she cried all the way home.

Chapter 10

Sophia had called her, and Kelly had rushed right over with two bottles of wine, proving why she was best friend material.

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