Page 46 of Sicilian Savior

“Piper,” he sighed, making no attempt to hide the stars in his eyes. “How do you get more beautiful every time I see you? It’s not even right.”

“Good genes. Good makeup. Luck.” She shrugged then leaned forward to look closer at the screen. “Your neck looks thicker. Have you been working out?”

Wes lit up and grinned. “You noticed. You likey?”

Piper lifted an eyebrow, tipping her head. “You gonna show me what’s below so I can get a better look. I haven’t seen anything other than your face in a lot of years. You were just a scrawny kid back then.”

“Oh, I’ll show you what’s below.” Wes waggled his eyebrows.

“Would you two quit flirting!” Marcus rolled his eyes. “Jesus fuck.”

It seemed strange to be sitting in a room full of the most lethal people in the world just listening to them joke and laugh. It felt more like he’d introduced me to his old college friends than a group of deadly spies.

Piper laughed. “We’re just joking around, Dad.”

“Oh, yeah!” Knox grinned. “You’re gonna be a dad for real now! Not just our ‘dad.’” He made fingers like quotation marks.

“You are?” I looked over to the man with the sharp, amber eyes so intense I could barely look into them.

“I am.” He smiled, those hard eyes softening. “Irene is due within the month. Which is why this mission needs to go smoothly. No errors. In and out. I promised her I’d be home soon.”

Wes’s eyes widened as he leaned closer to the screen. “I can’t believe you made a person. Isn’t that weird? Like... you really made a person.”

Knox snorted. “Let’s just hope the person you made takes after its mother more than you.”

“She will hopefully look like her mother, too.” Marcus smiled, and I saw more softness in him as he spoke of his wife and child.

Piper sat up. “It’s a girl? Hell, yeah! Girl power. Aunty Piper is gonna teach her so much cool shit.”

“You made a person.” Wes shook his head. “That’s just fucking crazy. A real, live person. Nuts, dude.”

Knox chuckled. “Just don’t go making a person yourself, Pretty Boy. We only need one of your ass in the world.”

“But it’s a nice ass.” He grinned, flicking his eyes to Piper. “You want to see it, Piper? I’ve been doing a ton of squats.”

She pursed her lips together and lifted her head as if to peer down the screen.

“Anytime you want to see south of my neck, you just say the word, Baby.”

Knox chuckled and shook his head. “You couldn’t handle her, Pretty Boy. Piper would eat you for breakfast.”

“Not a bad way to go,” Wes joked.

“Okay. The mission.” Marcus, clearly the leader of this crew, put a stop to the playful banter. “Irene will kill me if I miss the birth of our little girl, so let’s get Lucia’s son back so we can all go back to retirement.”

“Yes. Let’s hear this plan,” Knox said, closing his hand over my thigh.

Marcus started spitting out terms I didn’t understand but getting into the specifics of a plan that had me dropping my jaw as I listened.

When he finished, he glanced around at all of us. “Anyone see any issues in the plan?”

“Nope,” Piper said quickly, and Wes echoed the word.

Knox shook his head. “Brilliant as always. God, I love your big brain.” He reached over and ruffled Marcus’s short hair.

Marcus batted his hand away. “Stop it, you big oaf. And you’ll note we’re not doing a surface-to-air extraction this time. My freaking neck still hurts when it rains.”

Knox laughed, then sucked the air through his teeth. “Yeah. I was just telling Lucia about that one. But hey, I got us all out alive, and that’s all that matters.”