Chapter 8

EIGHT

"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."

"He's not even family. Why does he get to call a meeting?" Cal whined, obviously still pissed Nero had literally rolled him out of bed, duvet and all.

Nero growled, and Cal held up his hands in surrender. "Sorry, sorry. I forgot. You having a mate is just… weird." Another growl from Nero. "Not that you're weird, Felix, just this whole thing."

Nero took a step away from the counter and toward his brother, who darted around the island to hide behind his twin.

"Don't come over here. I'm not going to protect you, asshole." Quin leaned to the side, giving Nero full access.

"Children, can we please get to the point?" Julius sighed heavily. "Honestly, how am I, the youngest, the most mature?"

Nero took a second to collect himself, then sat at the kitchen table and pushed a chair out for me. His brothers took the hint and found seats around the table.

I looked at my mate. "Where should I start?"

"ORCA." He nodded in encouragement.

"Yes, Felix. We're all orcas. Including the bastard you claim is your mate." Cal rolled his eyes, and Nero growled again. The sound sent a jolt of desire down my spine that landed somewhere near my balls. Maybe I'd been too hasty calling this meeting. Nero and I could be upstairs enjoying some quality time right now if I?—

A big hand squeezed my thigh, pulling me out of my naughty fantasies. I felt Nero's eyes on me, and I glanced up at him from under my lashes. He leaned forward, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, which did nothing to stop the blood that was already flowing toward my cock and making my dick perk up.

"Later," he whispered. "I promise." He turned his hand palm up on my thigh, and I laced our fingers together. "This is important. I want you safe."

A throat cleared, probably Cal's, and Nero sat back, our fingers still intertwined.

Closing my eyes, I shook my head and tried to corral my thoughts, then cleared my throat. "Not orca. O. R. C. A. Or the Organization for the Return of Criminals and Assets."

Quin and Julius nodded while Cal repeated the acronym and lined up the letters. Then he nodded too. "I like where this is going. Tell me more."

Nero took over, explaining that I'd hacked Julius's supposedly unhackable files and uncovered a lot of information about each of them and their family. Julius looked simultaneously impressed and annoyed, but before he could say anything, Nero forged ahead, outlining my idea to form our own covert ops group, specializing in the return of stolen goods and, as a nod to Nero's bounty-hunting profession, the return of criminals who'd jumped bail to their rightful place within the justice system.

"I'm in." Cal hadn't hesitated for even a second, leaning back in his chair and rocking it onto two legs. "I've been trying to get Nero to cut me in on his bounty-hunting gig for years."

"Me too." Julius sat forward with his hands folded neatly on the table. "Not about wanting to be a bounty hunter. I'm not a fieldwork kind of guy, but I am good at following the money."

Everyone at the table turned to look at Quin. While on the outside he appeared the most respectable of the brothers, his hands were the dirtiest. He'd forged a number of high-profile art pieces—some of which hung in world-renowned museums, the curators none the wiser—and his skill in multiple mediums, including sculpture, made him highly sought after. Add in the fact that his gallery served as what amounted to a fence that saw stolen art returned to where it belonged, and he had reason to be skeptical of the plan. Nero wasn't even sure if Quin would be valuable to a team like the one I was suggesting, but something told me he was going to be essential.

Quin sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, but when he opened his mouth to respond, Call cut him off. "We should call Hade. See if he wants in."

"Hade?" I looked at Nero. I hadn't run across a Hade in any of Julius's files.

Nero rolled his eyes. "Our cousin Hadrian."

"He's not in the files you hacked." Julius folded his arms over his chest and gave me a look that said he was trying to figure me out. Which was fair since I was trying to figure him and his brothers out too.

I counted their names off on my fingers. "Hadrian, Nero, Quintillus, Julius, and Cali?—"

"Don't say it. I swear to God, Felix. I don't care if you're Nero's mate, I will kill you where you sit." Cal looked like he would too.

"I was just wondering why you're all named after Roman emperors."

"Our grandmother," the brothers said in unison, all rolling their eyes. Well, at least they agreed on something.

"So are we clueing Hade or not?"

Nero shook his head, but I shrugged. "If you think he would want to be involved, sure. Why not?"

Cal rocked his chair up onto a single leg. "Hade can drive, pilot, or captain any vessel or vehicle you put in front of him. Can't hurt to have a getaway driver on standby if we need one."

"He's a loose cannon." Nero glared at his brother, still balanced precariously on a single chair leg.

"So am I." Cal winked.

"I'm guessing you have an idea for our first case." Quin's question basically gave our plan the go-ahead.

"Yes." Nero's jaw went tight. "We're going to find the people who are after Felix."

Cal rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Obviously."

"Before we dive into this, don't you want to know what Felix was doing that put him in danger?" Quin removed his glasses and buffed them clean with a monogrammed handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.

His twin shrugged. "Nope. Doesn't matter to me."

"I want to know." Julius stood and slid his slim silver laptop off the island, bringing it back to his seat.

I looked at Nero, and he nodded, then squeezed my fingers under the table.

Taking a deep breath, I launched into the story. "I was digging into a case for the FBI, but the agent who is my handler was worried someone in the bureau might have loose lips?—"

"A mole?" Julius asked.

"The FBI?" Nero's fingers tightened around mine.

I nodded. "They weren't sure, so the feds ‘loaned' me to the SPD to make it look like I was working on something else. I was supposed to be trying to see what I could find out about a missing art thief."

Julius and Nero shared a significant look, and then Julius asked, "Who?"

"Her real name's Amanda Vanderkaamp. She disappeared from her WITSEC location in Amsterdam two months ago. No one was supposed to know where or who she really was, but someone had all those details."

The brothers let out breaths I wasn't sure any of them knew they'd been holding, and the legs of Cal's chair hit the floor with a thud.

"What do the feds want with a missing art thief?" Nero asked.

"I don't know. I only ever get part of the story. I was only supposed to find out where she was."

"So how did whoever find you? If you're good enough to work for the FBI, you're smart enough to cover your tracks."

I gave Julius an unimpressed glare. If only he knew how I'd ended up working as a gray hat for the feds in the first place. But that was a story I'd share another day. "Thanks. I think."

He held his hands up in surrender, then went back to his computer, no doubt trying to find out how I'd gotten into his encrypted files.

"I don't know what happened. I was digging into Amanda's financials, trying to see if I could find payoffs or anomalies, and just as I started to see a pattern and tried digging into her finances before her arrest, I got the email with the target on my head, sent it to McMahon, and he pulled me off the job and came to pick me up. I told you the rest from there last night. I honestly have no idea what I found, but someone sure as shit didn't want me going any further."

Quin looked at Nero. "You know McMahon, right? You think he's the mole?"

Nero shook his head. "He's a detective with major crimes for the SPD, not a fed. But no, I don't think it's him. Why call in a favor and have me guard Felix if he was really after whatever information Felix could find?"

"To throw everyone off the scent." Cal sucked his teeth, considering that angle.

McMahon was a by the book cop, and for as long as I'd known him, he'd always been kind to me. I couldn't see him as the mole. "No, I don't think so. McMahon didn't know what I was actually doing. My FBI handler told him I was looking into a money-laundering case for organized crimes. He shouldn't know anything about Vanderkaamp."

Julius still looked unconvinced. "We need to know what you found that tipped off whoever is behind this that you're involved. We need to figure out how they knew it was you, especially because you're damn good at erasing your fingerprints. I can't even tell you were in my files."

"I agree."

"Wait." Nero put a hand on my shoulder. "You're off the case?"

"On paper, yes, but that doesn't mean I can't do some more digging. Besides, I work for ORCA now."

"Felix…"

Julius smirked. "Don't worry, big brother. I'll help keep him safe online. You worry about keeping him alive." He nodded at Cal. "Cal can help. It'll be fine. Besides, if art thieves are going missing, it's in our best interest to be informed, don't you think?"

Nero glared at his brother. "Fine, but I don't like it."

"You don't have to, but I have a feeling Felix would rather not wait for the SPD or the FBI to figure out who's after him."

I shrugged, indicating Quin was right.

"So let's back up." Julius's fingers flew across his laptop keys. "You said digging into this Amanda Vanderkaamp's financials triggered the threat against you?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"But you don't know why?" Julius glanced up from his keyboard.

I shook my head. "No. I had just found a file on an archived FBI server that detailed her financial transactions from before her arrest."

"What made you dig that far back in her history?" Quin's question made me pause to retrace my digital steps.

"If you were working for the FBI, why did you need to hack their files?" Cal seemed confused.

Julius and I shared a look and a smile. "Because it's good to keep one's skills sharp. And it's a fun challenge. Asking for access to archived information that's considered sensitive, classified, or beyond the scope of what my handler considers my job requires a shit ton of paperwork for them to ultimately say no anyway. Part of my role as a ‘consultant' is to identify any security issues and report them to the cybersecurity team. I was killing all the birds with one stone and cutting through a bunch of bureaucratic red tape."

"You didn't answer my question." Quin looked at me with shred eyes.

"I'm not really sure. There were a number of deposits made to Amanda's accounts under her new name that felt suspicious. I traced the account numbers to an account in the Caymans, which traced back to a shell company in the Netherlands that allegedly transports art around the world, which ultimately led me nowhere. It felt important and definitely illegal. I wanted to know if Amanda had ever received similar payments from the same company in the past."

The brothers all nodded, Cal rocking back in his chair again.

"I think we need to start by retracing your steps and see where that leads us. If there really is a mole in the FBI or even the SPD, they might not recognize my digital footprint like they recognize yours. Let's see if we can get past where you got locked out."

"I agree with Julius." Quin inclined his head toward his younger brother. "You obviously found something someone didn't want you to see. Retracing your steps so far feels like our only lead."

"What am I supposed to do while you nerds play on your computers?"

Nero kicked Cal's chair, and he fell forward again. "If you're serious about working on the bounty-hunting side of this business, you're going to get started studying for your PI license."

Cal stuck out his bottom lip. "But I don't need a PI license to be a bounty hunter."

Nero slid his fingers away from mine and crossed his arms. "You do if you're working for me."

"Fine. But I'm not going to like it."

"You don't have to." Nero uncrossed his arms and took my hand under the table again. "Before we get started, my mate and I need to spend some time alone." He stood and pulled me with him, effectively ending the family meeting.

When he towed me all the way upstairs and backed me up against the wall just inside his closed bedroom door, I couldn't say I was mad about it.