Page 70 of Pack Baby for the Bratva
She reached up and kissed me on my mouth, then rested her head on my shoulder.
Across the aisle, Ivan was fully reclined with Mac strapped to his chest in a carrier. The carrier had been my suggestion. Ivan had called it excessive for a ten-day-old. Mac had disagreed by vomiting on Ivan's shirt thirty seconds into the first attempt. The carrier arrived the next morning.
Ivan was asleep now, one hand splayed across Mac's back, snoring in a rhythm he adopted when he was genuinely resting rather than pretending to rest. Fergus, who had claimed my lap the moment we boarded and had not moved since. His opinion of air travel appeared to be that it was acceptable only if someone else did the flying and he was provided with a suitable human to lie on.
Artem was kneeling beside Ivan's seat in a Tom Ford suit, explaining something to Mac in a low murmur.
I listened.
"—which is why the Glock is superior for close-range work but entirely inappropriate for a child your age. We will revisit this when you are four."
Ivan's eyes stayed closed. "You're briefing the baby on sidearms."
"He's attentive."
"He's asleep."
"Subconscious absorption."
Maeve leaned across the armrest. "Is he talking to him?"
"Luckily, he has moved past firearms," I said. "He is now promising a pony."
"A pony."
“A stallion,” Artem murmured. “No son of mine will learn to ride on a pony.”
"No doubt it will be armored, and have had combat training," Mary added.
Maeve's laugh was bright and genuine and still too rare, though it had become more frequent since the night she'd stood barefoot on the stairs and told Artem she was marrying him whether he liked it or not.
Mac stirred. His face, once comfortable, was now, through some cosmic injustice, slightly less comfortable.
Artem moved before anyone else. One hand under the head, one under the body, lifting Mac out of the carrier with the precision of a man who had once learned to field-strip a rifle in the dark and had since applied the same methodology to infant handling.
Ivan surfaced. "I had him."
"You were asleep."
"I just spoke t you.”
“You fell asleep.”
“I was guarding him subconsciously."
"Your subconscious was drooling on his hat."
Maeve covered her mouth as her shoulders shook.
Mac released a single outraged squeak.
"Ah," Artem said, already rising. "Nappy."
Maeve blinked. "You can tell from one squeak?"
"I have been studying his patterns."
"He's ten days old, Artem, not an emerging market."
