Chapter 12

A few weeks later, I was getting ready work in the locker room like I always did. I felt the ring on my finger, I took it off and placed it on a chain around my neck. I thought back to what happened not long after Eisuke had given me my ring. We were sat in our living room.

"Take the ring off?" he questioned.

"Yes, I can't work with this expensive ring on my finger. I'd be afraid of damaging it or loosing it plus, I can't really give massages with a ring on."

"You may not take it off." He said firmly. "That ring finger belongs to me now. There's no reason for you to not wear the ring."

I sighed and rolled my eyes, I knew he would react that way. "Eisuke, it's normal practice to not wear jewellery at work. Most people take their rings off."

"I'm not most people."

"Eisuke, I'm doing it whether you like it or not." I said.

"Fine, but only during work hours. You put it on the instant your shifts ends. That's an order."

"That's an order?" I questioned. "You can't order me around."

I didn't want to start an argument, so I came up with a compromise. Whilst at work, I would keep the ring on a chain around my neck. I tucked the necklace into my blouse and left the locker room with a wry smile.

I headed up to the penthouse to see if any of the guys wanted any treatments, but they were engaged in heated discussion.

"Good morning. I was wondering if anyone wanted any treatments today?"

"Freya, we've been waiting for you." Baba said.

"Me? Why?"

"Hurry up and show us the ring." Ota said.

"She's not even wearing it." Soryu said.

"Can't wear it on the clock." Kishi said.

I couldn't smell Eisuke's perfume, was he in the room? "Is Eisuke here?"

"He said he'd be late tonight. So, now's your chance to give us all the details." Baba said. He sounded like a teenage girl.

"Um well, I can't really wear my ring at work so, I have it on a chain instead." I said and held the necklace up away from my neck.

"I can't believe you got Eisuke to agree to that." Soryu said.

"Well, he didn't really have much of a choice." I said. I took the necklace off and showed it to the guys.

"Pfft, it's just like Boss to demand you have it on you 24-7." Baba said.

"I wouldn't be surprised if this ring costs $5 million." Ota said.

"What? $5 million, are you serious?" I gasped.

"Probably more." Baba said.

"Hmm… yeah, I guess judging by the size of the stones. It could've been more." Ota said.

I couldn't believe that it cost that much.

"You didn't know?" Kishi said.

"No, Eisuke didn't say anything about how much is cost." I said.

"He spent a whole lotta dough to make sure other women steer clear of him."

"What did you just say?"

"True. Any woman seeing this rock on her finger, would immediately give up on Boss." Baba said.

"Yep. Anyone could tell it's super expensive." Ota said.

Would Eisuke really use a ring to keep women away from him? He did tell me not to take it off during work, I wondered if that was the reason? I started to feel anxious when Eisuke walked into the room.

"What's with the expression on your face?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"It's first thing in the morning. What could you possibly be gloomy about?"

"Nothing." I said and put the necklace back on and went back to work.

"Man, Boss. I'm sure glad you didn't get sold. The hotel's yours again, and poor little rich boy Frankie got sent to the slammer." Baba said.

"But what will we do about the auctions now? Since the police know about them, surely we can't continue them." Soryu said.

"Mamoru took care of that quite nicely." Eisuke said.

"It was a huge pain to fix their investigation. Feel like I've worked for a hundred years." Kishi said.

"Glad to hear it. But the auctions will be on hold for a while till things calm down, right?" Baba said.

"Was this all part of your plan, Eisuke?" Ota asked.

"Of course it was." Eisuke said sounding confident.

"You sure got a lotta confidence." Kishi said.

"Oh? So even the Tres Spades falling down to #9 in the hotel rankings was part of your plan?" Ota said sarcastically.

"What are you going to do about the ranking?" I asked.

"We made it back up to #4 these past few weeks." Ota said.

"But Franks hotel has really been hurting since his arrest." Baba said.

"Yep. Fell off the rankings entirely." Kishi said.

"I feel kind of bad. That was his father's hotel after all." I said.

"It's the natural outcome. Must be a task to clean up the messes of his failure of a son." Eisuke said sullenly.

"I bet it really gets under your skin that your hotel still isn't #1 even though Frank's hotel is ruined, huh?" Ota said, almost goading Eisuke on.

"It has nothing to do with Frank's hotel. I never thought of him as my rival." Eisuke said.

"So you have confidence that the Tres Spades will end up number one eventually?" Baba said.

"Of course I do. And I'll do whatever it takes to get on top." Eisuke said indifferently but I could tell by his tone of voice that he was angry and wanting to fight.

"I'll do whatever I can to help." I said and then I felt all of the guys staring at me.

"Freya, you're awfully gung-ho about this." Baba said.

"'Course she is. This is her future husband, y'know." Kishi said.

I pondered the work husband, it felt strange thinking of Eisuke as my husband.

That weekend, Eisuke took me to a famous hotel in London.

"What are we doing here?" I asked.

"This is the hotel currently ranked number one. It had been stuck in the number two position until Frank's hotel fell off the rankings." Eisuke said.

"So, it finally became number one now that it's rival is gone." I said.

"Their standards must be low if he was their greatest rival. I was looking back over the ranking history, and it seems the top ten hotels didn't change much." He said.

"I'm sure they were surprised when the Tres Spades suddenly debuted at number four, huh?" I said.

Eisuke didn't answer.

"Are we here to check out our competition?" I said.

"Yes."

"Got it. I'll look at things from staff member prospective." I said.

We checked in and a staff member escorted us to our room. I was about to follow after Eisuke, when suddenly I almost ran into someone in the hallway. My cane bounced off them and I didn't move quick enough to avoid them.

"Pardon me." They said.

I recognised that voice "Hikaru?"

"Get out of the way." He said coldly and pushed past me to get into the elevator. I stood there bewildered, that was Hikaru. I was certain of it, but he was quite mean, he told me to get out of the way. Maybe he didn't recognise me?

"Hurry up." Eisuke said, he had stopped for me and was waiting for me to catch up.

"Sorry."

"Stop fidgeting." He said and took hold of my arm.

"Eisuke, I just saw Hikaru."

"Hikaru?"

"Yes, Hikaru Aihara. I worked with him at the hotel in Dubai. But then he just disappeared one day, I thought he'd quit but…"

"You're wasting a lot of energy thinking about a man other then me." He said and released my arm.

"No, it's not like that…" I said but he then marched off leaving me behind.

That night, we had dinner in the hotel dinning room.

"What's the view like?" I asked.

"You can see the Tres Spades from here and the church you escaped in to." He said.

"Ugh, I don't even want to think about that." I said. Then suddenly, the lighting in the bar changed and a bright light show began, utilizing the whole space. The bright lights hurt my eyes, I shielded them with my hands and ended up slipping on my glasses. But with the sun glasses on in a dark bar, meant I couldn't make any shapes out at all. Everything was just dark and black.

"That's bright." I said.

"Every hotel does something like this." He said.

"I bet it looks like nice though." I said.

The restaurant was quite nice, the staff were friendly and the food was good. Thinking about it, this was our first date since we came to London. I felt the ring on my finger and smiled fondly, soon we were going to be husband and wife.

Oops, I should be concentrating. We're meant to be checking out the hotel. Even though there was a light show, the room was quiet. "The guests are reacting much."

"Like I said, most hotels have these kind of light shows. They've seen this before at any number of hotels and restaurants." He said. "You're the only one making a fuss about it."

"Well, when you say it like that. Oh, the other day Soryu told me that when you guys were in boarding school, you were really bad at sewing." I said. "But you wanted to be number one so badly, that you even practiced sewing in your dorm room."

Eisuke was speechless for a moment "Soryu should've bitten his tongue."

"So did you become better at sewing?"

"Who do you think I am? I can sew better than you."

"I think anyone can sew better than me." I said. I tried to imagine Eisuke sewing and burst out laughing.

After the meal, we went back to our suite and we started to get undressed.

"What's the room like?" I asked.

"It's fine. The view is better from the Tres Spades, hence why I built it the way I did." He said.

I had concentrated so much today but thinking about it, this hotel didn't seem that much different to ours. Nothing really stood out. "Why is this hotel number one though? There must be something else. Maybe they have special accommodation for regular guests?"

"How long are you going to just sit there?"

"Huh?"

Before I could turn around, he grabbed my arm and pushed me down onto the bed.

"If you're so interested in this room, why don't we try out the bed?"

I smiled "That's a good idea." I said and put my arms round his neck.

"I doubt we'd have time to sleep though." He said, almost as a warning. He pinned both of my hands above my head and started to kiss my neck.

The next morning, I couldn't stop yawning while we left the hotel. I got barely any sleep last night, it was all Eisuke's fault.

"You look tired." He said with a chuckle.

"Yes because of someone."

"At least we got to see how comfortable the bed was." He said but then his tone changed "Take off your ring."

"What? Why?"

"Now." He said urgently, stopping in his tracks. But why now, he was so adamant before.

I hesitantly took off my ring and held in my hand, when an unfamiliar woman approached us.

"Hi, Eisuke." She said.

"Fancy seeing you here." Eisuke in his fake voice that he used to charm guests.

"I know, it must be fate meeting you here like this." She said. I watched them carefully and saw long blurry object touch his shoulder, I guessed it was her arm.

Why was she touching him?! And more to the point, Eisuke didn't do anything to stop her. If I didn't know better, he seemed to be enjoying it.

"Are you working today?" she asked.

"Yes, but I just finished." He said.

"Then join me for lunch, will you?" she said.

"Of course." He said and moved close to her. "Freya, go home."

"What?!"

"Come on Eisuke, hurry up." The woman said.

"Sorry, let's go." They both disappeared leaving me behind.

I was so confused, I just stood there speechless. What was that all about? Did he not want her to know we were engaged? But why and why was she touching him?

I pulled out my phone and rang Becca, unfortunately she was working to I rang Sophie and Lucy and organised a get together. I spent the rest of the afternoon wondering around town, before we met all met at Becca's.

"Ok, so what happened?" Becca asked and gave us a glass of wine.

"You guys fight a lot, don't you?" Sophie said.

"He seems to upset you a lot. Is he really worth it? Plus now you're engaged, you can still say no." Lucy said.

"There must be a reason. He'd never cheat on me, but I've never seen him act that way before. I love him more then anything. I want to be with him but…"

"If you have doubts, just give the ring back." Lucy said.

"No, I don't want to give the ring back." I said.

Becca then grabbed my wrist and held my hand up to her face, so she could see the ring. "It's a lovely ring. Freya, you need to confront him. Demand answers. If he doesn't give you a good enough answer, then just end it with him."

I nodded "Yes you're right." I said and downed my glass, I got ready to stand but Becca stopped me.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Uh… home?"

"Nope. We have yet to celebrate your engagement and we still haven't had a night out, so I say we do so now." She said.

"Yes, I agree. I haven't gotten drunk in ages." Lucy said.

"Same here. Let's go." Sophie said.

Becca then jumped to her feet "Plus, I have new dresses that we can all wear." She ran out of the room and returned with a handful of dresses.

I felt like I needed a good night out, I hadn't had one in ages. I agreed to go out with them. Becca helped me get dressed into a tight dress that caressed my curves, she did my hair and make up and we all went into town and went to Becca's favourite cocktail bar.

"Drink! Drink! Drink!" we all chanted as we each down shot after shot. After the 10th shot, things became fuzzy. I woke up face down on the sofa in the living room. I sat up and pressed a button on my watch, it was 9am. The sun light that came through the big windows hurt my eyes.

"Oh." I groaned and my head fell into my hands. I remember dancing and loads of drinking. How did I even get back here?

"You're finally awake." Eisuke said and he came into the room.

"Ugh… morning." I said and led back down but Eisuke wasn't happy. He stormed over to him and pulled me up so I was sat upright.

"Where were you last night? And why didn't you answer your phone? I thought I told you to always answer within three rings."

I pushed him away and stood up, I wobbled for a moment but regained my balance. "You can't tell me what to do, not what happened after yesterday."

"If you have something to say, then say it."

I clenched my fists in anger and turned to face him "Fine. Who was that woman and why did you not want her to know I was your fiancé? Is she your English girlfriend? Your bit on the side?"

"So what if she is?"

I stamped my foot "We are engaged. You're mine, I won't have some bitch beat me."

Eisuke sighed deeply "You're not very perceptive, are you? There are millions of women like her in the world. I'd never be serious about someone like her."

"Then who is she?"

"Her name is Jessica, and she's a hotel critic. She's one of the people in charge of the hotel ranking system. I just took her out to talk business, that's it." He said.

"Then why did you ask me to take off my ring?"

"It would have been problematic for her to find out I'm engaged, for many reasons." He said.

I felt a sudden relief from his explanation. I then felt bad that I got angry and decided to go out and get drunk with my friends.

"You were so jealous of her you went and got drunk? You naughty little thing, ignoring my calls like that." he said with a smirk and he started to close in on me.

"So, what did you two do together, exactly?"

"You really want to know?" he said.

"Yes. I'm going to be your wife, so I want to know everything about you."

"Then why don't we start with you knowing my body?" he said and then grabbed my wrists, but as soon as he saw my left finger, he stopped. "Where's your ring?"

"You told me to take it off, so I did." I said. I then searched for my bag, he picked it up and I got out my purse and inside was my ring.

"I only meant in front of Jessica. Put it back on." He ordered and forced the ring back onto my finger. He then whispered in my ear "I hope you're ready to get punished for doubting me."

"I-"

He pushed me down onto the sofa and ripped open my dress. Before long, our naked skin was pressed against each other.