Chapter Five - Not Home Alone

Dimitri's POV

Vi fell asleep pretty quickly, curled in a ball on the aeroplane seat. I saw the air hostess come in and smile at us. She opened her mouth to speak, but I put a finger to my lip and nodded to my little dove. Marissa, the flight attendant, opened one of the overhead lockers and pulled out a blanket which she carefully placed over the sleeping Vi.

"Can I get you anything to drink, sirs?" she whispered to us.

"A whiskey on the rocks." I said. She nodded and looked over to Adrien.

"Just a Coke for me." He said before she disappeared to ask the other passengers. "If it wasn't for her hair and eyes, I would think she was too young to be Violetta."

"She is very malnourished." I said, looking at her sleeping form. 

"She looks about 15 not 21." He sighed. "When I lifted her out of the car, she weighed nothing, and I could feel her bones. What did you see on her arms that had you looking like you wanted to kill?"

"Cigarette burns and scars," I muttered.

"What?" Adrien said, his gaze whipping around to look at me.

"Her arm is covered in scars, which was just the little I saw; we will need to get a doctor to look her over."

"What the fuck did they do to her?" He said through gritted teeth, the noise making a cooing noise come from the little bundle between us. We stilled and made sure she didn’t wake up before continuing.

"I don't know exactly, but whatever he did, he will be getting it back ten times," I growled out quietly.

"We should find out more from the Orlov's." He said, motioning his head toward the old couple at the rear of the plane. The woman was curled into her husband's side, his arm was possessively around her shoulders, and he gently stroked her arm in comfort.

"Let them sleep, we have seven hours of flight. I should call my father." I said standing. "Stay with her, don't let her out of your sight in case she wakes."

Standing, I make my way to the office that is on board the plane and shut the door behind me, sitting down, I pick up the satellite phone and call my father.

"Dimitri." Came the gruff response. "What's happening?"

"We have her," I said, I heard the relief in my voice.

"Is it her?" He asked, double-checking what I had said.

"Yes, it's the White Dove, she is coming home," I said, a sigh of relief left my father’s lips.

"How is she?"

"Not good." I sigh.

"What do you mean, not good?" He asked, and I noted the change in his voice.

"I've not seen much, but what I have seen is enough to know she hasn't been treated like she should have been."

"Explain." My father growled, getting agitated.

"Well, the piece of shit had a tracker implanted in her wrist. I had to cut it out in the car so he couldn't trace the plane. When I was bandaging her wrist on the plane, she tried to stop me from raising her sleeve. When I managed to raise it a little, her arm was littered with what looked like cigarette burns and knife wounds. Also, she is extremely malnourished; she is more bone than skin, and she looks so much younger than her age."

"Did you kill the pieces of shit?" His voice came low and menacing.

"No, we got her out of there as quickly as we could. Sergei reported that Alfonso Ilaria showed and was discussing a price for the girl, she had been ordered to be home by five. I wasn't letting her go back there."

"Good plan." His father said.

"She needs a doctor," I said. "The only skin I have seen is her hands, face and neck, and then the small part of her arm, I don't know what else there is. She has a slight limp, and I noticed she can't grip great with her left hand."

"I will have Dracos on hand for when you get here." He said, referring to Doctor Klaus Dracos, the doctor we had been working for us since he had been struck off for helping people who couldn't afford to pay.

"What about her father and brothers?" I asked. "Do we tell them before we land or wait until after the doctor has seen her?"

"I will ring Aleksandr now; we can't keep him in the dark." He said.

"I will get Adrien to call him," I said. 

"Very good." He said, there was silence for a moment, and I had to check to make sure he hadn't hung up on me. "I can't believe after seventeen years we have found her."

"She was wearing contacts, she lost one this morning, and the owners of the Cafe she works in spotted it and called us. When Adrien asked her to take them out, she said her mother told her that they were ugly, and she had to hide them as they were a stain on the family." I said, repeating what Vi had told us.

"That fucking bitch." My father seethed. "When I get my hands on her, she will regret ever being born."

“Don’t worry, I think a few people are going to take her out now that we know where she is. We just have to be strategic. Her husband is the son of a Duke, a judge and also in bed with Alfonso.” I growled.

“I should have known he’d be behind this.” He said. We weren't exactly against the Italian Mafia, but Alfonso was working to overthrow his brother, the don and he wanted to take us down with him. His brother was none the wiser to what was going on under his nose.

“I’m not sure how much he is, or if it’s just now he’s worked out who she was,” I responded as I suddenly heard a sweet voice.

“No, no please no.” Came the voice.

“Gotta go,” I said, hanging up before my father could say anything, I would explain to him later. I shot out of the office to see Vi still asleep but thrashing around with the blanket which covered her. Adrien was kneeling beside her, trying to calm her. I strode down the aisle and lifted her into my arms before sitting in my seat. “Shhhh, Little dove, you are safe now.”

I felt her start to calm as I positioned her against me so I could stroke her back. She finally settles back into a less restless sleep. Adrien sat back in his chair; his usual mask of cold indifference had shattered as he watched his sister struggle.

“She is a strong girl.” A soft, feminine voice came from behind us. They looked up to see Miranda looking fondly at the girl in my arms. “When she first came in, asking for a job, we thought she was too young and sent her away. She came back half an hour later with proof of her age. She looked at me with such an innocent look that it broke my heart. My husband and I took her in and tried to feed her up. She was so skinny and quiet.”

“Mrs Orlov, please sit down,” Adrien said motioning to the chair that was now empty between us. Her husband sat on one of the sofas nearby keeping a loving eye on his wife.

“Will you tell us what you know?” I asked as I continued to stroke my little dove's back.

“We hired her on, mostly just collecting dirty dishes and glasses and wiping tables. She barely spoke when she started with us. She became like our own child.” She said, taking a deep breath. Her husband reached over putting his hand on her shoulder to calm her before he continued.

“She would come in some days with make-up on, but you could clearly see it was hiding something; she wasn’t very good at applying it, don't think anyone actually showed her how to. She didn't even know how to make tea when she first came to us. We tried to aske her about it once, but she said it was nothing and that she liked us too much. I didn’t understand what she meant. Some days, she would be holding her side when she thought no one was looking. Her left hand has always been weak, and her limp started a few months ago.” Vitaly explained. “After the first few weeks, I looked into her. My son is one of the underbosses around here. He informed me who her stepfather was, and we knew we couldn’t do anything about it. If she had been part of the mafia, I knew my son would have helped her, but since we didn’t know who she really was, he said there wasn’t a lot we could do. He stepfather wasn’t someone they wanted to go up against at the moment, as she was no one to us.”

“What?” Adrien said. “Why would they not protect a woman in danger. We have been slowly getting rid of this crap in the group.”

“You may have, but we still have a lot of the old guard around here, although your Cousin and Mr Sergei are trying to clear it; it’s not been as easy over here.” Miranda sighed.

“If we had any clue who she was before today, we would have informed you of it sooner, Sir,” Vitaly said. I nodded.

“She needs to see a doctor; she would never talk about home, and we were careful to ask her as we wanted to keep her safe. There would be times when we asked where she wouldn’t show in weeks, and then she would suddenly appear. We think he took most of her money so she would come back when he became too much. We tried to fatten her up, but whatever she ate she brought back up, so we concentrated on keeping her fluid intake up, just so she kept hydrated.” Miranda said, tears in her eyes. “When she came in today, limping, there was blood on her sleeve. She looked up at me, and one of her contacts must have come out because that’s when I saw her real eye colour.”

“As soon as she got Violet settled, she came to me and told me. That’s when we called you. We know there is only one family line with those eyes.” Vitaly said.

“We can’t thank you enough for bringing the Printzessa back to our family,” Adrien said. “She will be looked after the way she always should have been from now on. You both will also be protected. We owe you for bringing her back to us.”

“So, she is definitely the White Dove?” Miranda asked.

“She is,” I said before turning to my closest friend. “You need to ring your father.”

As if on cue, Adrien’s phone started to ring. “Father.” He said answering it. He nodded as he listened.

“Yes, it is her. We are about five hours away from landing, we will be back in New York in the early hours of the morning.” He was silent as he listened. “No, she is sleeping, and we don’t want to wake her.” He listened a bit longer. “Father, I promise, she will be home soon. She needs to see a doctor to see what condition she is in. The bitch didn’t treat her well; she isn’t the bright little girl we lost.”

“A doctor will be there waiting for us when we arrive,” I told him and he nodded.

“Yes, Uncle has a doctor ready to meet us when we land.” He said into the phone. “Don’t tell the other three yet; we don’t want to overwhelm her.” He was quiet again. “Father, get some rest, we will be home soon.” He hung up and sighed.

“What did he say?” I asked as I felt Vi snuggle into me more, she mumbled in her sleep.

“This is the third time I have ever heard my father fall apart.” He said. “He has always been such a cold man until she was born. Knowing she was on her way back to him, he could barely get his words out.” He sighed. “What are we going to do about the Judge?”

“Well, your mother dearest, now she has been found, will not be in a good place once we take her in.” I snarled, making Vi jump in my arms. I stroked my hand through her hair calming her. “As for the Judge and Alfonso, well, we need to be rather tactical there, a Judge who is a duke, unfortunately, can’t just disappear.”

We sat back and thought through what we would do whilst we waited to land in New York.