Chapter 64: Soy Sauce and a Sugar Daddy
The apartment was quiet after the door shut.
Lexi still had her forehead on the marble. The sheer yoga pants were a crime against dignity. The tartare plate sat between them like nothing unusual had happened.
Rick rinsed the spoon, dried his hands, and checked the Patek.
"I have somewhere to be," he said.
Lexi lifted her head. Her eyes were still hazy from the food. Her voice was not.
"You cannot leave me like this. My parents think we are getting married. I am wearing see-through pants. You still owe me an explanation for the drawer."
"I owe you nineteen and twenty," Rick said. "The drawer explained itself."
He stepped into her space. Not rough. Just close enough that she had to look up. One hand settled on her hip, thumb brushing the damp waistband.
"You did well," he said. "Even with the audience."
"That is not funny."
"It’s a little funny."
He gave her ass a single firm smack that cracked through the kitchen. Lexi jumped. The sound she made was not a protest. A bright print showed through the thin black fabric immediately.
"That," Rick said, already heading for the door, "is a deposit. Don’t change before I come back. I like the pants."
"Rick. If you walk out right now I am going to review you."
He looked back over his shoulder, grinning.
"Five stars. Presentation sloppy. Flavour excellent."
Then he was gone.
Lexi stood in the kitchen for a full ten seconds after the door clicked, one hand on the island, the other hovering over the handprint on her own ass like she could not decide whether to be furious or impressed.
She looked at the tartare. She looked at the open bedroom. She looked at the cooler.
"I am going to kill him," she told the empty apartment.
She did not change.
The elevator dropped him into the garage. Cool air. Fluorescent lights. The Ducati sat waiting like it had never doubted him. He swung a leg over, and the system chimed before he could turn the key.
Ding!
[Chef Quest Triggered: The Grounding!]
[Objective: Complete one standard, anonymous food delivery to a random customer]
[Reward: +2% Chef Occupation Progress, +1000 Mischief Points]
[Failure Penalty: Tastebuds numb to salt for one month]
Rick stared at the text.
The God of Mischief wanted a man who owned a hotel, a fish market, and a slice of the Michelin board to deliver sushi like a side hustle.
"Ground my ego," he said to the empty garage. "Sure."
He opened a premium delivery app, built a throwaway rider profile in under a minute, and grabbed the first high-end ticket that popped. Sushi. Penthouse. Commercial district. Fifteen minutes if he ignored the speed limit, which he planned to.
The V4 woke up angry. He took the ramp like it had insulted him and cut into evening traffic. Neon smeared. Horns happened to other people. He stopped at a packed traditional sushi counter downtown, walked past the velvet rope and the waiting list, and took the sealed bag off the pass.
The chef behind the glass opened his mouth.
Then he saw Rick’s face and decided the bag had always been leaving.
"Name on the order?" the hostess tried.
"Doesn’t matter," Rick said. "It’s moving."
The city was loud in the way it got after dark. Rick kept the bag wedged against the tank and the speed stupid. A pair of sports cars tried to race him on the boulevard. He left them at the second light and did not look back.
Sato’s place had a line around the corner and a hostess with a tablet who believed in the line. Rick did not. He walked in, took the bag, and walked out. Someone in the line said "hey." Nobody followed it up.
By the time he hit the commercial district the order was four minutes late. He considered going faster and decided being late was part of the joke the system had written for him.
Ten minutes later he parked the Ducati on the curb of a gaudy glass tower that had spent too much money trying to look richer than the Peninsula. Gold trim. Perfume in the lobby so thick it had a personality. Two security guards started toward the bike.
They got close enough to feel the look on his face and found somewhere else to stand.
Top floor. Tacky hallway. Heavy wooden door with a gold knocker that had never been necessary.
He knocked.
The door flew open like it had been waiting to be offended.
Tiffany wore a silk robe that had cost real money and a face that had cost worse. Overfilled lips. A nose sharpened into a point. Chest sitting at an angle physics had not approved. She looked Rick up and down — black t-shirt, jeans, paper bag — and missed the two-hundred-thousand-dollar watch entirely.
"Are you kidding me?" Her voice was high and nasal. "You are five minutes late, you incompetent street rat."
Rick held the bag out.
She did not take it.
"Do you know who I am?"
"I’m guessing you’re the person who ordered the sushi," Rick said.
That was the wrong answer. Her neck went red under the powder.
"I am paying hundreds of dollars for this. You laborers think you can stroll up whenever you feel like it? You reek of the gutter. Get on your knees and apologise or I call the company and you starve on the street."
Rick’s smile was small and almost kind.
"You want the food or the speech? I can leave both in the hall."
Tiffany stepped fully into the doorway, blocking it like a toll booth.
"I have waited in this robe for twenty minutes. My time is worth more than your whole month. People like you should be grateful I even opened the door. Kneel. Kiss the floor. Then maybe I tip you."
"That’s a lot of instructions for two pieces of fish."
"It is not two pieces of fish. It is Omakase from Sato. Do you even know what that means, or did you just learn to ride a scooter last week?"
Rick glanced at the bag.
"It means you paid too much for someone else to slice it."
"I said knees, beggar. I will not take cold garbage from a thug in a t-shirt."
A neighbour’s door cracked open down the hall and closed again immediately.
Tiffany pointed at the floor with one acrylic.
"Kneel. Now. I will film it. My followers love when service people learn their place."
Rick looked at the phone she had not taken out yet, then at her.
"You should film this," he said. "It will be educational."
Rick opened the bag.
He took out the sashimi tray first. Then the two cups of soy sauce. Tiffany’s expression flickered — she thought he was about to bow. She even lifted her chin for it.
He stepped forward and turned both containers over.
Raw fish and dark soy hit her white designer heels in a wet slap. The robe hem soaked through. The carpet drank the rest. A slice of tuna slid off her toe like it wanted no part of this.
"There," Rick said. "Floor service. No extra charge."
Tiffany looked down.
Then she screamed.
It was an impressive scream. The hallway deserved a warning label.
"My shoes! Those are limited edition! You psycho! Do you have any idea what these cost?"
"Less than the watch," Rick said.
She did not hear him. She was already clawing a pink phone out of the robe with shaking acrylics.
"I am calling my sugar daddy right now! He is an executive in this city! He will have you beaten in an alley! You are a dead man walking!"
Rick was already walking back to the elevator.
"Run, you coward!" she shrieked, slipping in the soy. "My daddy is going to destroy your entire pathetic life! You will pay for this!"
The doors closed on the rest of it.
On the way down, the system chimed, sounding pleased with itself.
Ding!
[Chef Quest Completed: The Grounding!]
[Objective: Delivery completed. Disrespect not tolerated.]
[Reward: +2% Chef Occupation Progress, +1000 Mischief Points]
[Chef Class Completion: 42%]
Rick slipped his hands into his pockets and laughed once, quiet.
A gold-digger with soy on her shoes and a sugar daddy she thought was scary.
He was almost curious who the man was.
Almost.
The lobby guards were still pretending not to see the Ducati. Rick started it, rolled into the night, and let the city smear past. Lexi’s building was in one direction. The Peninsula was in another. The summit was seven days out.
Behind him, on the top floor, Tiffany was still screaming into a phone.
Whoever picked up on the other end had just inherited a very expensive problem.
Tiffany’s voice followed him down the shaft in broken pieces until the elevator killed it.
"—yes, he dumped it on me— no I do not know his name— black shirt, black bike, he laughed at me—"
Rick smiled at his own reflection in the brushed steel.
Black shirt. Black bike. Laughed at her.
If the sugar daddy had any sense, he would stay home.
If he did not, Rick would find out soon enough.
The Ducati took him back toward the river. He thought about Lexi still standing in those pants. He thought about Victoria’s hotel and Elena’s number and a summit that was no longer just a cooking contest.
Forty-two percent.
The God of Mischief kept handing him errands.
Rick kept turning them into wreckage.
He parked under the Peninsula at last, killed the engine, and sat there for a second with the city humming above him.
"Alright," he told the garage. "Who’s the daddy?"
The system, for once, did not answer.
That almost made it better.