They stood, pigtails askew, hands clasped, looking festive in their red, white and blue dresses, staring down at their handiwork.
Lucas had to remind himself to breathe in and out slowly. He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t mad at his precious baby girls, with theirdark hair and huge jade green eyes. It wasn’t their fault they were being raised in a house full of goddamn psychopaths.
It was his.
It was his fault for falling in love with the most beautiful, most intelligent, most terrifying psychopath of the whole Mulvaney family. It was his fault for letting him put a ring on it. It was his fault for breeding with him and not being more careful about whose genetic material ended up winning the race to Cricket’s eggs.
Someone snickered from behind him. He snapped his head around glaring at each of them in turn. Cricket stood in a navy blue bathing suit and a white sarong, not looking nearly as bothered as she should about her children’s budding psychopathy. August was in swim trunks and nothing else, a detail that snagged his brain away from the problem at hand longer than it should have. Long enough for his husband to hook one dark brow up and smirk.
Asshole.
Adam and Noah were behind him. It was probably Adam who’d laughed. Jericho sat on the pool chair next to his children, Atticus perched between his knees wearing a long sleeved sun shirt that matched Jett’s, zinc smeared across his nose, also like Jett. Despite not sharing a single drop of blood, Jett somehow looked just like Atticus and Jagger looked just like Jericho. Maybe there was such a thing as fate. How else could two such perfect siblings fall into their laps?
Felix and Zane were also in attendance, Zane wore plain black swim trunks and a tank top with Asa’s company logo emblazoned on it. Felix wore white linen pants, a red crop top and a white cardigan, his hair pulled back in a ponytail. From a distance, he looked impeccable, but Lucas’s gaze went straight to the spit up stain on his shoulder. A gift from either West or Oscar.
Today, they’d dressed Oscar in navy and West in red, which helped all those who didn’t see them every day, tell them apart quicker than checking to see which of their pudgy baby faces was slightly leaner. Oscar had come out a whole two pounds bigger than West, despite them being identical.
Oscar squawked indignantly from where he was perched on Felix’s hip, facing outward like he’d been caught mid-run. Zane held West, who was a much more willing captive, his head resting on Zane’s shoulder, his thumb in his mouth. They weren’t a year yet, but both were already walking. Much to their fathers’ dismay.
Lucas turned back to his own two tiny felons. “Did your uncles teach you this?”
Adelyn’s gaze slid to Arabella’s and they stared at each other in that way that told Lucas they were communicating silently. Arabella, despite being wrestled into the world six minutes after her sister, was almost always the ringleader of whatever shenanigans the Mulvaney children got into, and Adelyn always looked to her for guidance.
Christ, they were August’s children through and through.
Lucas sighed. “You know I could just reach out and touch you and know everything you’ve done, right?”
That cracked the surface a tiny bit, the girl’s breaking eye contact with each other before Arabella said, “But snitches get stitches.”
Adam barked out a laugh. There was the sound of skin slapping skin and then Adam yelped. “What? It’s not my fault it’s funny when little kids say weird shit like that.”
“It’s not weird. It’s psychotic,” Noah said in the world’s worst stage whisper.
Adam snorted. “Well, yeah, their dad’s a psychopath. The worst of us.”
Lucas looked back just in time to catch August leveling a malicious look at his brother, before dropping into a crouch beside the girls.
“Who taught you that?” August asked. When the girls started to look at each other once more, August put his hand between them at eye level, voice lowering into that low tone he used to let the girl’s know he was displeased. “We’ll know if you’re lying. And you don’t want to lie to us.”
Unfortunately, it was also the voice he used with Lucas when he was very much not displeasing him, which often made listening to August discipline their children…uncomfortable.
Adelyn kicked the toe of her sandal against the terrazzo tile surrounding the pool.
“Is it really worth missing dessert?” Lucas asked, voice stern.
“It was me.”
Lucas and August looked over at five-year-old Jagger, who sat in his oversize chair with his brother, face as placid as lake water.
“You taught them this?” August asked, pointing to the doll on the ground.
Jagger shook his head. “No. I taught them that snitches get stitches.”
“Snitches end in ditches,” Jett added, folding his arms over his chest and making a mean face.
Atticus leveled a glare at Jericho, who held his hands up. “Don’t look at me like that, Freckles. I didn’t teach them that.” He looked at Jagger. “Where did you two hear that?”
“That’s what Nico told Seven,” Jagger said.
