The Roman's Woman (A Singular Obsession Book 4) (24 page)

Sophia stormed out of Gio’s high-rise in her brand new heels. Her fury lasted all through the trip across town and up the three flights of stairs to her apartment. She yanked off her dress and threw her shoes across the room with a satisfying hard kick.

She’d most likely be on her hands and knees checking them for scuffs later because she suspected the red soles meant they were Louboutins. She should have checked before she tossed them.

Kelly had taken a good look at her wardrobe and pointed out the luxury labels. Gavin had clearly been ordered to buy her designer clothes and not tell her what they actually cost. Or he’d found the mother of all trunk sales.

Irritated with herself, and even more annoyed with Gio, she jumped in the shower, washing off her makeup with extra rough scrubbing.

After that, she turned off her cell phone and took a very large glass of wine to bed to re-watch “The Holiday” on her computer for the twentieth time.

She woke up the next day a great deal calmer. After making herself coffee, she puttered around her apartment in her flannel pajamas, studiously pretending her cell phone didn’t exist. She needed a little more time before she talked to Gio.

Forgiving him wasn’t a question. It was a matter of when. However, her stubborn streak wanted to make him stew a little. It hadn’t been terribly mature of her to walk out, but she couldn’t let him dictate to her the terms of her relationships. Elynn was right. She needed to set limits now, or he’d walk all over her.

She sat on the couch and hugged a pillow to her middle before picking up her mug and looking around. Her coffee table was dusty. It had been a while since she stayed here. And damnit—it felt tiny after Gio’s palatial penthouse.

Her apartment had always been her haven. Every piece of furniture, every picture and knickknack had been chosen with relaxation in mind. It was a cozy space, comfortable while still being orderly and neat. She was extremely attached to each and every item in the place. But as soon as Gio rolled into town with his deluxe apartment in the sky, she hadn’t looked back.

It should have felt good being surrounded by her possessions again. It didn’t. And it wasn’t because she missed the luxury of Gio’s penthouse. This place seemed…empty.

She was too much of a feminist to admit it aloud, but being alone felt strange now. Gio hadn’t taken over her life, but he had carved out a big space in it for himself. Even now when she was mad at him, she wanted to see him or hear his voice.

It wasn’t like those times she’d missed Richard. Each time her ex left town without her, for work or to see his family, she’d marked his absence and told herself she missed him. But it was nothing like this whole-body longing. She hadn’t yearned for him like she was doing now for Gio.

Ugh.
Sophia took a deep breath. This whole being-in-love thing was turning her into a big pile of mush.

And this situation wasn’t anything like her time with Richard. Gio didn’t take her for granted. It was quite the opposite, in fact. Her former relationship had chipped away at her self-worth and made her feel unattractive and unimportant. Richard had taken his cues from her own father, constantly picking at her appearance and downplaying her accomplishments.

Now she was with a man who not only delighted in her success, but he made her feel beautiful and sexy. The way he had introduced her to his friends and family, with such obvious pride, had meant everything to her. It felt good to be important to someone so accomplished and kind in their own right.

She could only hope that things would settle down the longer they were together. Gio had no reason to be jealous of Richard. Or of any other man. Yes, her ex was being oddly tenacious, but she knew that he didn’t really want to reconcile.

Could it be that Richard’s hero worship of her father was inspiring this effort to win her back? If so, it was a half-hearted attempt at best. A few phone calls, and that one text. He had dropped by the lab once to try and take her to lunch, but she had already left for an early meal with Elynn.

Hopefully, once she sold him the Chevette, it would be the end of her involvement with him. She knew Gio didn’t understand why she wanted him to have it, but in her mind her father and Richard would always be tied together. Mentally she compartmentalized them in the same box—and their possessions belonged right there with them. Getting rid of it was her clean start.

Reassuring herself that she was doing the right thing, she finally turned on her phone. Only one missed call from Gio and one text that read
Please call me when you feel like talking.

Considering how they’d left things, he was showing remarkable restraint. There was a missed call from Richard, too, probably another inquiry about getting the car’s ownership papers.

Procrastinating, she decided to check her email before calling him back. At the top of her inbox was one from Kelly with the subject “
Have you seen this?!!!
”

Concerned something was wrong with Kelly or her husband she opened it. All the message said was, “Isn’t this what your father was working on?” and there was a link to the Sociology Department’s Homepage.

There splashed at the top of the page was a feature on Richard and his new appointment as the head of the department. It was the next paragraph that had her seeing red. It was praising Richard for his groundbreaking and insightful work on the evolution of online trolling and its impact on gender identity in the internet age.

No, it can’t be.

With a sinking sensation, she clicked on the link to Richard’s most recent paper. Scanning the abstract quickly, she found her suspicions were correct.

Richard had stolen her father’s research and published it as his own. Sucking in a breath, she went back to the original article on his appointment. The story praised Richard as a bright young star. It credited his most recent advancements in the field as the reason he was chosen for the prestigious Sotheby chair of Sociology. With the position came a sizable research grant and tenure.

I don’t believe this.

How could Richard do something so unethical? And how had he gotten away with it? Didn’t the other faculty know what her father had been working on during the last days of his life?

Probably not many of them. Her father had been a perfectionist. It was likely that he hadn’t detailed his work to his colleagues until he was ready to publish it. She was an exception, but only because he didn’t see her as a real scholar. In his eyes, she was a mere experimentalist who enjoyed getting her hands dirty—not a pure abstract thinker like him.

Her father had been about to submit his research project for publication the last time she’d talked to him. It hadn’t occurred to her to check and see if he’d actually done it.

But she should have thought of it. They hadn’t been close, but she still owed it to him to ensure that his legacy as a scholar was recognized. His work had been the most important thing to him—far more important than his marriage or his daughter. If anything, the fact that he’d bored her senseless detailing his research all those Sundays while he puttered in his drafty garage, meant the damn thing would be published under his name.

Was that why Richard wanted the house? Had he known her father’s unpublished work was sitting there unclaimed? And why the hell had he wanted the car? Was it guilt? Did he think claiming all the old man’s possessions somehow made it right to plagiarize his research as well?

At the time she had been grateful when Richard agreed to take her father’s personal belongings. Anything she hadn’t wanted was going to charity anyway, and she’d decided it should all go.

Well, it seemed that her decision to avoid the painful memories of her relationship with her father was coming back to bite her in the butt.

Furious, she picked up her phone and dialed Richard.

He picked up on the second ring. “Darling! I’m so glad you called!”

“You won’t be when I’m through with you!” she said.

“
Darling
?” The tone was simultaneously hurt and condescending.

“How could you? He was your mentor, you bloody thief!”

There was complete silence on the other end of the line.

“Well? What do you have to say for yourself? And how has no one in that damn department realized you stole my father’s research?”

More silence.

“Richard, so help me God, I’m going to go over there and I’m going to kick your ass into next week if you don’t start talking right now.”

There was the sound of someone taking a fast quick breath. “Yes, come over. That’s exactly what I need you to do. I can explain everything. You’ll understand once I tell you what happened. Come over here to your father’s house. Everything will be clear. Just don’t do anything rash before you hear what I have to say.”

Even angrier now, Sophia fisted her free hand. “There is nothing you can say to explain this away!”

“Yes, there is! But I need to talk to you in person. Will you come?”

Sophia ground her teeth and exhaled slowly. “All right. I’m on my way now. But I’m warning you, Richard. I’m not letting this go.”

“I know that. I’ll be expecting you,” he said in a hollow voice.

Sophia hung up and stormed to her bedroom, pulling off her shorts and t-shirt and taking out jeans and sweater. She started to put them on and then changed her mind.

Her old clothes weren’t going to work for this confrontation. On impulse, she picked out a deep pink bodycon dress. It was part of her new wardrobe—one of the pieces that made her feel empowered. Deciding she could do with a bit of armor, she threw it on over her head. Finally she grabbed a pair of black motorcycle boots and tugged them roughly on her feet.

She was about to run out the door when she remembered Gio. Right now, their conflict was nothing in the face of Richard’s deception. She needed to let him know that he’d been right all along to distrust her ex.

God, he’s going to love that.

Letting Gio tell her, “I told you so” was going to have to wait. First she had to go kick some ass. Grabbing her phone, she typed a brief message to her know-it-all Italian before snatching up her car keys and slamming her apartment door shut behind her.

Gio should have been exhausted. He’d been up all night, unable to sleep since his argument with Sophia. Instead, he felt strangely buzzed, the lack of rest making him twitchy.

It had taken all his willpower to keep from going over to her apartment last night. One phone call, which had gone unanswered was all he allowed himself. He couldn’t push her right now. She needed time to cool off. To that end, he’d sent her a text at two in the morning before trying to rest. But sleeping alone had been impossible.

The bed felt empty without Sophia in his arms. She belonged there. It was the only thing that made sense. Deep down she knew it too, and he was sure they were going to be fine once they were past this point of contention regarding their exes.

They had to be.

His body needed more convincing. There was a rock in his stomach, a tangible reminder that he'd mishandled the whole thing.

Sophia had a point that he was being unfair. If he was being honest, he knew she had a right to deal with Richard any way she chose. But something inside of him couldn’t accept that.

His strongest instinct was to protect her, and it was telling him to keep her away from that man. Keeping her from hurt or harm was his priority. Those protective feelings had always been there, but after the incident with Lucca they had gone into overdrive.

Intellectually he knew that overstuffed shirt Richard didn’t look like a threat to anyone else. An impartial observer would probably side with Sophia. Gio was being unreasonable about him, but he couldn’t seem to stop—which was disturbing in and of itself. After a lifetime of deliberate and rational behavior, he was acting like a madman. His only justification was this gut feeling that something wasn’t right with his rival.

He spent the rest of the day trying to bury himself in work. It was a tried and true technique that had served him well in the past. Only this time it failed him completely. He kept checking his phone for messages every ten minutes, hoping against hope that Sophia had calmed down enough to speak to him again.

He was contemplating hitting the gym to work out his frustration when he heard the text alert on his phone go off. Snatching it up, he quickly scanned through Sophia’s message.

Gio, I’m sorry things got so heated last night. If it makes you feel any better Richard IS a piece of shit! You’ll never believe what he did. He stole my father’s research! I have to go read him the riot act but after, I’m going to come over so we can talk. I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.

Oddio
. He sat there staring at his phone for a long moment, letting the implications of her message sink in. For a second, he was elated. There was no way Richard was going to be able to win Sophia back now. That English idiot had just hit the last nail on his own coffin. However, his relief was short-lived.

The man had committed academic fraud. Was that illegal? Even if it wasn’t, it was unethical. The University would have no choice but to fire him if it got out. And Sophia was going over to confront him on her own.