Stay With Me

19

Two months later

Alexei looks up at the ceiling. His fingers play with the ring he never took off. Several more tattoos decorate his skin, his hair practically the same, and his beard shaven. The door opens revealing a maid. She smiles at him but he doesn't look her way.

She was gorgeous no doubt but he didn't want her. It seemed like his heart only longed for one person. He tried sleeping with someone else. The same maid was standing at his door but it didn't go past her sucking him off and even then it didn't feel the same. When all his mind could do was race back to one specific girl.

He was heartbroken. Devastated. But slowly he was getting better.

"Good morning-"

"Get out." He tells her.

Her smile drop and she had no choice but to leave. When the door close, he let out a loud sigh. Silence falls over him and he just continues fiddling with his ring.

With no sleep, he sits up and runs his fingers through his hair. Everything was going back to the way it once was.

❍

"I don't like kids," Alexei says to Natasha as she hands him the diaper bag.

"It's only for tonight. Besides one day you might have some, this is like practice." Natasha says in her accent before gasping out loud. "I think I forgot my sunscreen."

Alexei holds the diaper bag in one hand and the ten-month-old in the other carefully. The other two kids were already in his house running around. Hearing a glass break and the maids making a commotion, he groans loudly, regretting the promise he made to Nadia.

"Where are you going anyways?" Alexei asks her.

"Back to America. Damien will pick up the kids in the morning." She informs him.

"Why are you going back there?"

"Because I made many friends there. Plus I need a vacation. Smile Alexei, this will be fun." Natasha tells him before walking to the car.

Alexei walks into the house and watches the two kids running. Adrik and Simeon watch as he drops the diaper bag.

"Hey! Sit the fuck down!" Alexei shouts in Russian.

The two kids immediately stop as they look at him. The maids that were following them sigh out of relief as the two kids sit on the couch. Mumbling apologies. Alexei rolls his eyes as he walks over to his two cousins.

"It's like a kid watching three more kids." Simeon jokes causing Adrik to laugh.

Alexei rolls his eyes as he hands Adrik the baby.

"I don't change diapers so you two are staying until they're asleep," Alexei tells them.

Immediately they stop laughing.

"What?" The two asked in unison.

Alexei rolls his eyes walking away from them. They call out for him but he continues walking away until he reaches his office. Shutting the door, he rolls his eyes going to the chair. Leaning back before letting out a loud sigh.

The young Alexei who was thirteen years old didn't know how to be social. He got most of his social skills from his father and it wasn't much. He mostly just order the maids and that was it. Not saying thank you or how was your day.

Going to school wasn't much of a challenge. Even though he went to a private school, everyone knew his last name. The scariest last name. No one dared looked his way, his teachers were afraid to fail him, no one sat beside him during lunch, and no one dared talk to him.

He didn't find anything wrong with it. He prefers it this way. To just be a person without actually communicating. But he liked the power he had over people older than him. It didn't change until a couple of months later before school was closed for the summer. A transfer student from Scotland came to Russia.

Typical bully. He saw the power Alexei had over everyone. Everyone feared the slightly scrawny kid and the bully wondered why. Then one day the bully pushed the scrawny kid during lunch. Alexei fell onto the floor with his lunch ruined. The silence was loud as everyone's eyes widen in fear.

Alexei was taught to shoot a gun, throw a punch, to become a killer before he even knew what that word was. But he didn't know how to put someone in their place. So he went home and for once seek advice from his father who he wasn't so much afraid of no more.

Telling his father what happened and asking him how to deal with it, his father told him one sentence. One sentence was all Alexei needed.

"Strike fear in his heart, send a warning he will never forget."

And Alexei did just that. The next day Alexei saw the kid coming. He was taller and bigger but he lacked what Alexei had. Actual fighting skills. Before the bully can walk past him, Alexei grabs his shirt and yank him down on the ground. Before the bully can speak Alexei takes out a ziplock bag.

Casually throwing it onto the bully, he walks away. And then he heard him scream. He smirks walking away from them, after that incident, no one dared mess with him ever again.

It wasn't until later that people found out that the finger belonged to the bully little sister who Alexei took to the woods and left her there stranded. They eventually found her, but Alexei made his point. And he never worried about the bully ever again.