Alina

Antonio

When Allie drew what she saw on the men's neck, my heart stopped. It looked awfully similar to the mark of the Russian mafia.

"Do you think you could draw it for us?" she nods. "Roman, can you get a pencil and paper from my office?"

"Why me?!"

"You're closest to the door, idiot," Alina says. All of our heads snap at her.

"Baby, where did you learn that?" Bianca asks. Allie points to Domenico.

"Nico said it earlier and I heard him mumble it too." She says with a sweet smile.

Snitch.

"Hey, hey, hey. I didn't think she heard it. And what happened Allie? I thought we were something." he says with a sad expression. He's faking of course.

"Of course we are! Daddy just asked me a question. Did I get it wrong?"

"No sweetie. Your answer was perfect." I say. "Let's just not say it again princess, ok?"

She nods her head.

Roman comes back with the stuff and hands it to Allie.

"Ta-da!" She says proudly holding up her drawing. It looks more like a flower than the Russian mark, but I can still kind of see it through her drawing.
I look at the others and they seem more relaxed, I guess they picked up on it too. I think we're all trying to make ourselves see the flower and not the possibility if could be the mark of the bratva. But again, how would Allie even be around someone with the tattoo? It's impossible.

I suddenly remember a very important question.

"Princess, when is your birthday?"

"My what?" She doesn't even know what a birthday is?

"The day that you were born. You get presents and a cake with candles." Luca replies.

"Ohhhhh. Yeah, I don't know what it is."

"Why don't we make it the day you came home?" Alessandro suggests. "December 2nd." 

"Will I get cake and presents?"

"We'll buy you anything you want princess," I say.

"How about we start with some new clothes? We can't have you wearing my shirts all the time, can we?" Bianca asks as she takes her from my arms.

"But mommy I like this. It's really soft." Bianca then whispers something in her ear.

"Say yes so mommy can get a new bag." Classic.

Later...

Ok, I understand we're billionaires, but enough is enough. We've been shopping for hours. I've lost track of how much we've spent and how many stores we've been to. The amount of times we've had to send our people back to the car to put bags away because we couldn't carry them all anymore is insane. We might have to get another car for the ride home.

I can't help but remember the conversation we had with Alina earlier. It's truly heartbreaking. But also, her language. She's so eloquently spoken.

It's obvious she's not your average child. We'll have to get her IQ tested. I worry though how she got there. Her old family must've put immense pressure on her to get that far. I don't even want to know what punishment was for mistakes.

I don't know if it's good or bad that she doesn't remember much from them. It might be easier for Allie to move on and be happy with us without her past haunting her. But it seems as time goes on more and more memories are coming back.