Two days later Alexander returned.
Ansuya had been working out ways to communicate with the outside and ways to escape back to the Mountain when she was able. She still had much to discover and escape would be a long way off, but the plan must be ready to execute at a moment’s notice, if needed.
Alexander grumbled loudly as he ignored her completely and stalked back to his room. She heard some rummaging and a door slam shut, which surprised her a little. He strode back out to the sitting room and collapsed on one of the sofas, with his legs sprawled out in front of him.
Even though her food supply had been all but depleted over the last few days and her stomach was demanding her attention she decided to play to his ego first. She knelt down next to him on the floor looking up at him, gently stroking his leg, “Tell me what happened, baby.”
“Oh nothing, nothing at all. Fucking assholes!!!!” he jumped off the couch and slammed his fists down onto an Ottoman, plunging his fists through the thing rending it in half. He didn’t even look shocked or concerned. He stood up and combed his hair with his hands roughly.
Ansuya stood up wide eyed; effecting a startled look was not hard. “Why did you just do that? What happened?” She asked again, putting a little more steel into her voice.
This seemed to calm Alexander down enough for him to look at her. His shoulders were tense and hunched forward, his mouth was set in a snarl and his eyes did not stay focused or steady on anything for long. He just stood there not speaking.
“Alexander!” Ansuya said in as strong and commanding voice as she had ever dared use with him, “You will tell me what happened, and why you are so upset, so that I can help you.”
He seemed to calm down even more then. “My Head of House wants to take away my warehouse and give it to someone else so that he can “move” me to other assignments.” He snorted to show just what he thought of that.
“Then you are being promoted, then?” Ansuya asked a bit bewildered.
“NO!!” He threw himself down into a single chair and gazed up at her, “Wolfgang would never take something away if he truly wanted to promote someone. If you are to be promoted it is your job to find someone below you to fill in the gaps that you are no longer able to fulfill with your new responsibilities and duties.”
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“It shows you have management skills and that you can recruit competent people to do jobs that you no longer have time for,” Ansuya said.
“Right,” Alexander said, “It also lets the one promoted keep some of that money, building trust between him and new underlings and the House grows stronger with the promotion. But that didn’t happen; my warehouse was taken away from me!” he jumped up again and began stalking around the room. His body was a ball of intense pent-up energy. Ansuya could see his muscle rippling under his clothes.
“I don’t even know what I did or didn’t do. All he said was, ‘Alexander, I’m moving you out of your warehouse, your duties will be taken over by someone else.’ What the fuck does that even mean?!” Alexander almost screamed.
“Alexander, you need to calm down and talk to me.” Ansuya said calmly.
“There is nothing you can do about it. There is nothing anyone can do about it. I’ll just sit here and do nothing! All I can do is wait for someone to come here to kill me, or deport me, or send me to some God forsaken icy hell hole somewhere so that Wolfgang won’t have to deal with me anymore. I don’t even know what I did!” he punctuated the rant with a fist through his wall.
“You have to calm down!” Ansuya said sternly. “It doesn’t do either of us any good for you to go around punching holes in your walls for no reason.”
“It doesn’t do me any good to even be living right now! Just screw all of this shit! I don’t even know what I was thinking! That I would ever be taken seriously or that my dreams would ever come to fruition, that I could ever become Head of my own House? I might as well just drop you on Wolfgang’s doorstep and walk away, for all the good that it’ll do me now! I might as well just fucking die for all anybody else would care!”
“THAT’S ENOUGH!” Ansuya yelled out through the condo. Alexander stopped immediately and looked at her. She was standing in the middle of the room with her arms at her sides but her eyes burned with anger. “I know you are upset but this is not the time to throw your hands in the air, give up, and wait for death. You have me and I open doors for you just by being here.”
“Not anymore,” Alexander replied petulantly.
Ansuya calmly walked up to him and smacked him square across the face. “Don’t ever try to marginalize my value to anyone, especially to you,” she said deadly quiet. “If it’s as bad as you say then we need to fix whatever you did wrong.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Alexander yelled. “Everything was going just fine. Then all of a sudden, I got this bomb dropped on me. I don’t know what to do.” He threw himself down on his sofa and held his face in his hands.
“If you didn’t do anything wrong then you must not have done enough right.” She was bathing him in pheromones. The off-balance man on the couch in front of her really didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have the dead look of having completely given up, but there was a dogged resignation about his posture, he was set to continue but he really had no idea where to go. But she knew where she needed to go. It wouldn’t take much to push him in that direction.
“Alexander,” she said softly, “If this really is a slight against you then we need to do something to bring you back in the good graces of Wolfgang.”