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I shook my head. “I don’t und?—”
“You and your brothers should form your own covert ops group. I could be your guy in the chair and run the missions. Your very own Felix Smoak. Julius can help. We can find leads and vet targets, and you guys could be your own op shop.”
The laugh that slipped out was swallowed up by Julius’s soundproof walls. “Who is Felix Smoak?”
“The character is actually Felicity Smoak.” Still didn’t ring a bell, and Felix sighed in exasperation. “You’re fated mates with a bona fide nerd now. We’re gonna need to work on your pop culture references. Felicity Smoak, aka Overwatch, is the Green Arrow’s girl in the chair. She does all the research and runsremote support for the team’s missions. Not exactly how she was portrayed in the DC comics, but the Arrowverse is perfection, so straying from the source material is acceptable in this case. But we’re getting off topic.” Felix shuffled some papers around and came up with an old envelope from a utility bill that had chicken scratch on the back. He held it out to me. “I’m serious. Look.”
“I can’t read this. Is this your handwriting?”
Felix snatched the paper back. “You can call yourselves ORCA. The Organization for the Return of Criminals and Assets. Which is also funny since you’re all?—”
“Sea pandas?” I finished, and Felix smiled.
“Not what I was going to say, but exactly! We could find jobs that play to all your strengths.”
“And what if I don’t want to be in the field anymore?” Maybe this was my chance to slow down or to do what I was good at in a different way.
“Then you don’t have to be. We can work together. You and I can find the clients. I know you still have contacts.”
He was right, and this wasn’t the worst idea. I was kind of surprised none of the four of us had thought about it before.
We all tended to work a smidge outside the lines of legal, but we’d never been caught with our hands in the cookie jar. And sometimes we did help each other out—Julius hacking banks to help me follow the money and track down a skip, Cal watching an important shipment for Quin, Quin getting a target Julius was following to invest in stolen art.
The more I thought about it, the more Felix’s idea made sense. “I don’t hate it. I’ll think about it, and we can talk to my brothers.”
“We?”
“It’s your idea. They’ll probably be more likely to agree if it comes from you.”
Felix beamed. “Good.” He stood, then straddled my lap, settling his body against mine and leaning his head against my chest.
I really didn’t hate Felix’s idea, and I had a feeling my brothers wouldn’t either. Our family had made a name for ourselves skirting the lines of the law.
But if we were going to do this, Felix was going to have to tell us more about what was going on because our first mission was going to be keeping him safe and helping him solve whatever case he’d been working on that had put him in someone’s crosshairs.
For now, though, in my arms and softly snoring against my chest, he was safe. For tonight, that was more than good enough.
We could deal with the rest tomorrow.
And we would.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
FELIX
“Damn it,Nero. It’s too early for a family meeting.” Cal rubbed his eyes and trudged to the coffeepot, the last to join us in the kitchen.
“It’s almost ten.” Quin sipped from his coffee cup and glared imperiously at his twin over the rim.
“Some of us need our beauty sleep. You should try it. Might help. Then maybe you could get your ugly ass laid. Oh, wait. Someone would have to remove the stick first.” Cal held the large mug he’d filled to his lips and drank deeply.
“Fuck you. We’re identical.” Quin waited until Cal lowered his cup and flipped him off from his spot at the island.
I watched the exchange while Nero stood silently scowling, leaning against the counter near the sink, his arms crossed over his chest, his black T-shirt straining to contain his delicious biceps, waiting for his brothers to stop bickering.
Julius cleared his throat. “Since we’re all here, I think Felix needs to explain why he called this meeting in the first place.”
