Author's note: This is book 3 in my Kissed by the Baddest Bidder Recreated series. This one should be calmer and more romantic than Olivia and Sakiko's stories. I'm not sure how well it will read on its own if you haven't read books 1 and 2. It might be alright. (Book 1: Olivia and Eisuke. Book 2: Sakiko and Soryu.)

Feedback, good or bad, is always highly appreciated! I hope you enjoy this story.

"Daughter."
Blinking my eyes awake, I raised my head and looked up at my father. He was looming over me wearing his business suit and holding his briefcase. Frowning. I could see anger in the way his eyebrows were down and his mouth was a tight slash.
"What are you doing out here?" he asked, annoyed. His eyes were boring into me. Judging and blaming.
I took in a deep breath. I'd fallen asleep and I needed to clear my head to talk. I could feel thousands of tears dried on my face. I'd been sitting against the front door of our apartment since I'd come home from school. Waiting and crying and sleeping. Waiting and crying and sleeping again. "Mom's not in there," I said, pushing myself up to stand next to my father. "I can't get in."
My father grimaced and muttered something under his breath. He reached into his pocket for his keys. "You're filthy." His voice will filled with disgust.
"I have to pee!" As soon as the door was open I pushed past him and ran into the apartment. I'd been so afraid that I would wet my pants while I waited for my mother. I sighed with relief as I emptied my bladder and then washed my hands. Looking in the mirror, I could see that my father had been right. My face was streaked with dried tears and dust. My hair was a mess. My father did not like things to be dirty or messy. He yelled all the time because my mother hated to clean and the apartment was a huge mess. I carefully washed my face, combed my hair and tried to pat the dust off of my clothes before I went out to the living room.
My father was standing in the middle of the room holding a piece of paper. There was a strange air about him. I walked over and stood next to him. "Did Mom go out with Mrs. Yashimoto again?" It had happened many times before, but she'd always waited to let me into the apartment before she left to spend the evening with her friend.
My father didn't answer right away. He just kept staring at the piece of paper. When he finally raised his head, his eyes and his voice were cold and they both cut like a knife. "Your mother is gone. She won't be coming back. She didn't like being a housewife-," his eyes scanned over the messy room before coming to rest on me "-and she never wanted to be a mother. Especially to a difficult child like you."
A stroke of powerful shock shot through me, leaving me an empty statue that couldn't move. Slowly the emptiness inside of me began to fill will terrible feelings, sadness and fear and horror. I stared straight ahead as the hot jagged emotions collected inside of me. I fought to keep them away from my eyes. I couldn't cry. My father hated it when I cried.
"I'll have to do something about dinner," my father said angrily. He crushed the letter from my mother in his hand. I watched it crumple up into a ball. He was going to throw it away. It felt like he was throwing away my mother.
"I'll do it," I said quickly, wanting to do something to make some of his anger go away. "I can cook. I can make something."
He nodded and I hurried to the kitchen. It was a mess as usual, dirty dishes and empty or half-filled food containers all over the place. Tears slipped silently from my eyes as I cleaned the rice pot and started some rice cooking. I looked in the refrigerator and found some chicken and vegetables. I could cut them up and put them into the frying pan and cook them until they were done. My mother had made me do it many times before. She didn't like to cook. Even though I was only eight she pushed many of the tasks that she was supposed to do onto me, or she just didn't bother doing them at all.
As I moved things aside on the counter to make room to prepare the food, new thoughts and fears began to pop up in my mind. My father didn't like this mess. He hated it. He was always shouting at my mother about it and saying that he didn't even want to come home because the place was filthy. And he didn't like me either. I knew it. My mother and I argued with each other and I cried and stomped my feet. Sometimes I even screamed. When he looked at me, my father's eyes were usually filled with disgust and annoyance.
What if father left, too? What if he went to work tomorrow and just decided that he didn't want to come home anymore? I'd be all alone. All alone in the whole world. The idea was terrifying. I knew that I would have to do something to make sure that my father would never leave me.
When we sat down to eat the food that I'd made, I cleared my throat and said, "Since Mom's gone, I'll make the dinner from now on and I'll clean the house. I'll do a better job than Mom did."
"That's fine. You'll have to work harder at being a good child," my father replied. "I won't have you fussing at me the way you did with your mother. You'll have to keep yourself in line."
His words made my stomach hurt as fear churned inside of it. "Yes, Sir. I'll make sure to always be good."
"I'll give you the extra key so that you can let yourself in when you get back from school tomorrow. Be sure to follow through with your promise. It will be just the two of us from now on. If something goes wrong on your end, you'll be held responsible," he said grimly.
It sounded like the worst possible threat to me. If I did anything wrong, my father would disappear. I would have to be perfect. Keep the apartment clean, learn to cook more food, take the best possible care of my father, be a good student and a polite little girl. Not a little brat that threw tantrums. If I did all of those things, he would never have a reason to leave me all by myself.

"Have you unpacked everything, Chisato?" my father asked. "You haven't left any boxes to the side that you plan to get back to later?"
I slid the glass door open and stepped out onto my little balcony. It was freezing outside, but I needed the cold. I wanted it to freeze my frustration and cool my head before I threw my cell phone out into the night.
"Yes, Father," I said, my voice quiet and polite, betraying not a speck of anger. "Everything is unpacked and put away."
"And all of the papers have been signed? Tenkawa's taken care of everything on his end?" His voiced pushed at my eardrum, strict and rigid.
"Yes, there's nothing left to do. The new owners are moving in next week," I said, even though I'd already told him all of these things before.
"Are you watching your weight?"
"What?" His question surprised me. I'd been expecting him to ask - once again - if I'd made sure the old apartment was spotless before I left it. The apartment that I'd shared with my ex-fiance Hinata Tenkawa. The apartment that we'd bought to begin our married life with.
"Women are notorious for coping with uncontrolled emotions following a breakup by overeating," my father explained. "You must watch what you eat and keep a very close eye on your weight. No man will want you if you grow fat."
"I haven't gained any weight. I weigh myself regularly. There's a scale in the...gym." I'd almost said training room. Eisuke had had a space in the Tres Spades converted into a training room so that Olivia, Sakiko and I could take our self defense classes at the hotel. He'd done it immediately after Olivia had escaped from her guards and we'd gone to pick up Eisuke's sister. There was no telling what my father would say if he knew that I was taking self defense classes. I knew for certain that he wouldn't approve.
"A gym? You didn't tell me that you'd joined a gym," he said, sounding annoyed. "I suppose it's a good idea. Just make sure you don't build too much muscle. Men are not interested in women with muscles. Women should be feminine, soft and weak."
"Yes, Father," I said. It was time to make an excuse to end this conversation. "I should go, I've got to be at work early tomorrow for a meeting."
"Make sure you aren't speaking up too much in your meetings. Men don't like women who act like they know more than them," he instructed before hanging up.

I went back into my apartment, grabbed my coat and shoved my feet into my shoes. I'd chosen my new apartment because it was near the beach. I only had to go downstairs and walk a block and a half and I was standing on the sand, staring out at the cold waves as they crashed again and again on the shore.
I was part way through a crisis or near a life-changing breakthrough or about to hit a wall. I wasn't sure which. It had all started when I was hired as the newest concierge at the Tres Spades. It was a big jump to go from housekeeping team leader to concierge, but I'd worked very hard for it.
My life, the life that I had originally planned for myself, had gone off track when I met Hinata Tenkawa in college. He was a junior and I was a freshman and I had been so happy to have someone so mature pay attention to me. So many of the other students had seemed dangerously wild to me. I'd spent years doing my best to do everything right. Letting loose, partying, bending and breaking rules, just watching or hearing about other students doing those things was enough to make me feel like I couldn't breathe.
Hinata had been different. He'd been calm, he'd respected the rules, he'd focused on his studies. He'd reminded me of my father. Serious and steady. It had been Hinata and my father together who had decided that I should drop out when Hinata graduated. It was too soon for us to get married, but certainly I would serve Hinata better if we lived together. I could get a job and start saving for the things we would need when we got married. I could cook and clean and take care of him so that he would be able to focus on his career. I'd agreed, it had made sense, I was going to be a housewife and mother eventually anyway, why bother with finishing university?
Except, in the end, I couldn't quite do it. It had bothered me to have that half-finished degree hanging over me. I'd insisted that I needed to take online classes to complete it. Although they hadn't agreed with me and felt that I was being silly, Hinata and my father had decided to let me take the classes. It had taken a long time. Taking one or two classes at a time, but I'd finally finished my degree and was ready when the concierge position had opened up at the Tres Spades. I'd worked there for years, was very familiar with the hotel and had a great reputation. With my new degree in hotel management I met the education requirements, and everyone knew that Eisuke Ichinomiya wanted a woman hired for the position. He'd even ordered that a concierge training program for women be created because there weren't enough women in management at the hotel.
I'd been in the perfect position to be hired for the job and I'd been so proud of myself when I was hired. It had felt like a reward for years of hard work and dedication. And then Hinata had broken up with me. Ended our engagement. Looked me in the eye and told me that he couldn't handle being in a relationship with a woman who made more money than him.
Since then I'd been falling apart and finding myself on the edges of disassembling the life I'd had and learning to do my new job. It had been devastating to lose Hinata but it had also been strangely easy. It had been hard to let go of all of those plans for the future, the picture of what my entire life was going to look like. It hadn't been as hard to let go of Hinata. His reason for leaving me - because my salary was higher?! - had opened my eyes to how he really felt about me, what it was that he'd really wanted from me. He'd wanted me to be an obedient housewife and that was all. It had been surprisingly easy for me to realize that my new job was more important to me than my relationship with him. Far too easy.
Now our old apartment was sold and I was living in my new place. I was trying to build a new picture of what my future would look like. I was going to have a successful career and I was going to figure out what I wanted from life and go after it. I wasn't going to spend my life in the background supporting someone else's vision of their future.
I was also exploring the idea of cutting ties with my father. His constant efforts to control me hadn't bothered me at all before Hinata ended our engagement, but now I felt as if I was waking up from a dream and seeing my life in a whole new light. Since then every time I spoke to my father his questions and comments made me angrier and angrier. I'd been terrified to lose him for nearly twenty years. The idea of willfully removing him from my life seemed impossible. But keeping him in my life, when I was constantly rediscovering just how cancerous his influence was, seemed just as impossible. If I was going to figure out what I wanted from my life, I was going to have to stop listening to my father's vision of who and what I should be.

"Okay," I said, feeling guilty for rushing things and cutting them short. "Are you guys good? Can you work with this plan for the rest of the day and we'll talk about it again in the meeting tomorrow morning?"
I looked around at the four housekeeping staff standing before me as they mumbled "yeah" and nodded, mostly avoiding my eyes. They'd been arguing about how the work was distributed among them in the hallway, in plain view and earshot of guests. Even though we had a meeting before the shift started every morning and they were free to discuss any issue. Even though they were also encouraged to fill out employee satisfaction forms and share their problems, they still decided to practically get into a catfight in full view of the public instead of using proper means to take care of complaints.
"Make sure you behave properly in public spaces from now on," I said, keeping my voice sweet and kind. "I'm going have to have put this in your files and your team leader will be following up on this issue. I don't want to hear that anything like this has happened again. I know things can get frustrating, but there are better ways to deal with it than bickering."
My comment was met with more shuffling and mumbling. They were just waiting for me to get out of sight before they would start complaining about me and rolling their eyes. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that I had to get to a meeting and I still needed to drop by my office on the way.
I walked as quickly as I could back to my office, wishing that I could run, and prayed that no one would interrupt me on the way. I opened my office door with a sigh of relief and rushed over to sit at my desk and pull up my presentation on my computer.
I let out a screech as soon as my behind hit my office chair and jumped back up. There was something on my seat, something cold and wet had soaked into my skirt, spreading across the fabric. I wiped at the soaking wet spot with my hand and cautiously raised it to my nose to smell it. There was no scent. It must be water. Which was something of a relief, but I was still in trouble. I stared down at my chair for a moment. The fabric was black and it was difficult to see, but there was a faint outline showing that something had drenched almost the entire seat. Someone must have intentionally poured water all over the seat of my chair.
But I didn't have time to worry about who had played such an awful prank. Time was ticking. I would no longer have time to quickly review my presentation. I ejected the flash drive that it was on and hurried to one of the staff bedrooms that was just a few doors down from my office. The room was provided for concierges to sleep in when things were very busy and we were working a lot of overtime. All of the concierges also used it as a place to store an extra uniform in case of an emergency or just because we'd spent the night and needed clean clothes. I grabbed the garment bag holding my uniform out of the closet, quickly unzipped it and pulled out my uniform.
It was in shreds. Someone had taken scissors to it and turned it into a tangled mass of fabric strips. With a cry of anger and panic I threw both the bag and the ruined uniform back into the closet and slammed the door closed. Someone was really trying to mess with me.
I quickly thought through my options, which turned out to be pretty limited. I could try to dry off my behind with the hairdryer in the bathroom attached to the employee bedroom, or I could call Olivia and hope that she still had her uniforms from when she spent one day in the concierge training program.
"Yeah, I still have my uniforms," Olivia said over the phone with a naughty little laugh. "Eisuke likes me to wear them sometimes."
"Okay, I need one right now. I'm coming up to the penthouse. Call the guard in the lobby and let him know I'm on my way up. This is an emergency!" I was already running down the hallway towards the employee stairs.
The guard in the little cage in the lobby was waiting for me. He even had the elevator doors open and waiting. I ran inside with a quick, "thank you" and rode up to the penthouse where Olivia was standing at the front door with a uniform dangling from her hand.
"Come on. You can get dressed in my salon," she said as she handed the uniform over.
I grabbed the uniform and raced past her, noting as I flew through the living room that the only other person there was the scruffy man who always slept in the chair by the window. Olivia must have followed me at a walk. I had already kicked off my wet skirt and underwear and was yanking Olivia's skirt off the hanger when she walked into the room.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Someone's trying to sabotage me," I said, pulling up the skirt and quickly doing up the zipper and button. The skirt was a little big on me, but it would do.
"What? Who?" Olivia asked, her eyes getting all round.
"I don't know, I'll have to figure it out later. Right now I have a meeting to get to."
I patted my pocket, making sure the flash drive was still there, and checked my watch as I ran back out into the hallway on my way out of the penthouse. I tried to calculate how much time it might take me to get to the meeting room on the third floor. I had no idea whether I was going to make it to the meeting on time.

I was several minutes late for the meeting. I walked softly and quickly to my seat, trying not to draw attention away from the director speaking at the front of the room.
"What happened?" Hanaori leaned over and whispered. He'd let me know that he fully supported me when I started as a concierge. His daughter was planning on studying hotel management when she went to university.
"A dispute between some of the housekeeping staff," I whispered back, shaking my head to show my disapproval.
"Ha. Women," he said with a humorous smile. "That's why I manage the grounds."
As he settled back into his seat, it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't actually checked my presentation on my flash drive. I'd just grabbed it and run to fix my uniform problem. What if the uniform had just been a distraction from the real damage? I pulled out my cell phone and plugged the flash drive into it, tapping the screen with trembling fingers to pull up my presentation.
It was there. It was there and everything was right. Nothing had been tampered with. I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed back into my seat, turning my attention to the manager who stood at the front of the room talking about changes to be made in the cafeteria. Today would be the first time that I gave a presentation in a meeting, but I wasn't worried. My presentation was simple, I was mostly sharing data about reservations and guests statistics over the Christmas holiday. I'd fixed the problem with my uniform and only been a few minutes late to the meeting. I was going to count this as a success rather than a failure.

"Your skirt looks too big. Have you lost weight? Maybe you're having trouble eating since you got dumped."
I turned around to see Erika Matsuda standing in the doorway of the supply room on the fifth floor. She had a victorious smirk on her face. When my eyes met hers, she stepped inside and let the door fall closed behind her.
"What are you doing down here, Erika?" I asked, narrowing my eyes and ignoring her questions. "Shouldn't you be upstairs?"
"We ran out of some supplies up on twenty-three," she lied without a moment's hesitation, crossed her arms and looked down her nose at me. "Or - let me guess - that's Olivia's skirt? You couldn't take care of your own uniform so you had to go begging to your slutty friend?"
She was the one who had doused my chair with water and shredded my extra uniform. I'd thought so from the very beginning. There weren't many malicious employees at the Tres Spades, Erika might be the only one. She was certainly the only one that I'd ever come across.
"Olivia helped me out in a time of need. That's what friends are for," I said with a shrug and turned back to continue counting the spa kits. There'd been a discrepancy when staff did inventory the night before.
"Oh, I'm sure she helped you out," Erika said, letting venom seep into her voice. "Just like she had her boyfriend give you a promotion. But maybe I shouldn't say boyfriend, it doesn't sound right. Is sugar daddy more accurate? What happens when Ichinomiya gets a new mistress? Will you lose your job when Olivia stops providing special services to the big boss?"
With a quiet sigh I put down the tablet I was holding and turned to face Erika head on. I allowed the anger that I always kept hidden to fill my eyes and started walking towards her, backing her into the wall behind her.
"I know you think you can get away with anything you want since you're uncle's a director," I said, my voice low and threatening. "But you should remember that there's no one higher that Ichinomiya. If I breathe one word of what happened to Olivia, she'll have Eisuke fire you in a heartbeat. She won't ask for proof. She'll be happy to see you go, considering how you treated her when she worked in housekeeping."
I reached up to flick Erika's ponytail over her shoulder and straighten her collar. "I'm being really nice not reporting this. You need to remember that because next time I'm not going to feel like being nice anymore."
She stared up at me, her big eyes mutinous. I could tell by the way her lips were trembling that she was holding back the things she wanted to say to was not happy to have me putting her in her place. She didn't like to be reminded that she wasn't as important or powerful as she wanted to be.
"Now get back to your floor before I contact your concierge."

Several days later I made my way to the jewelry store in the area of the Tres Spades called the plaza. The store had reopened during the second half of November after Eisuke had ordered extensive renovations to be made to it. The new store, renamed Olivia's, had every security feature known to man and every staff member was an undercover security agent. Olivia had been managing the store since it opened and I was meeting her for lunch.
When I stepped into her office a familiar feeling of claustrophobia crept up my spine. You couldn't tell by looking at it, but the office was a panic room. With the touch of a button, or even a voice command, Olivia could make steel doors close and lock us in the room. The idea of it always creeped me out whenever I was in there.
I told myself to get used to the feeling when I saw that containers of food had been spread over Olivia's desk. It looked like she wanted to have a private conversation, otherwise we'd be eating at one of the restaurants in the hotel.
"Here's your skirt," I said, handing Olivia a shopping bag. "Thanks again for lending it to me. You really saved me."
"I wish you'd tell me who's trying to sabotage you," she said with a frown. "I know it has to be Erika."
I shrugged and avoided her eyes by focusing on the food. "There's no telling who did it, but I don't think it's going to happen again."
"If anything does happen again, I'm going to tell Eisuke to fire Erika whether you want to admit it's her or not," Olivia said angrily.
I laughed and shook my head. "Would he really do that?"
She thought about it for a minute before answering. "Well, he does like to be a really fair boss, but if I told him the things Erika did to me in the past and let him know that she was harassing you, I think that would be enough."
"Let's just hope that isn't necessary," I said.
"You're no fun," she complained. "But forget about Erika, I have a job for you."
"A job?" I asked, feeling suspicious.
"Yeah," she said. "Do you know Mamoru?"
"That bug-like guy that's always sleeping in the penthouse?" I didn't bother to keep the distaste out of my voice.
"Bug-like?" Olivia laughed in surprise. "I never thought Mamoru looked like a bug. But he is really tall. Maybe he could be a praying mantis? Why do you think he looks like a bug?"
"He doesn't look like a bug, he's just like a bug," I explained. "You know, like when you see a bug and it's so creepy but you can't stop looking at it even though it's creeping you out."
"That's really weird," she said. "What's so creepy about Mamoru?"
"He's always sleeping. Does he even have a job? Does he have a home? Does he bathe?" I answered her question with more questions.
Olivia laughed. "He does have a job. He's a police detective. And I know he has an apartment somewhere and I'm pretty sure he bathes. He never smells bad or anything."
"That guy's a police detective? Like an employed one?" I asked and frowned when she nodded. "My tax dollars are paying for that guy to sleep in the penthouse all day?"
"That's why I want your help," she answered. "Well, not that thing about the tax dollars. I think Mamoru is sleeping all day because he's super depressed about his friend who got killed in the line of duty. Apparently his death hit Mamoru really hard and they never even solved the case and found out who killed him."
"You want me to figure out who killed Mamoru's friend? Didn't Eisuke tell you to stop 'playing Charlie's Angels'?" I asked suspiciously.
"Yeeeeees, but this shouldn't be a problem. I'm not going to leave the hotel or anything, so there's nothing for Eisuke to complain about. You're still doing your internet sleuthing thing, right?" I answered with a nod and she continued, "So it's no problem. Just look into this instead of something else. If you solve this case, you could really change Mamoru's life. He's been really nice to me and I hate seeing him all depressed."
"I guess it wouldn't hurt to look into it," I said. "But I'm not going to make any promises. Especially if the guy was killed in the line of duty. The police are usually very good about investigating the death of one of their own. There probably aren't any leads that haven't been followed."
"I don't know anything about that," Olivia brushed aside my comments as if they didn't matter and passed me a scrap of paper. "Here's the information that I have. Well, it's really just the name of Mamoru's friend. Shunsuke Minami. He was a police detective."
I put the piece of paper in my pocket with a sigh, hoping Olivia wasn't dragging me into more trouble.