Page 63 of Her Silver Fox Mountain Men

“Make me understand,” Roman replies. He’s taking it the hardest. His blue eyes are dark and stormy, his jaw locked, and he can’t even look at me. I can almost feel the anger coursing through his veins. “You were going to do what, exactly? Disappear in the night? Like nothing ever happened?”

“You don’t understand! I don’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice!” he snarls, startling me.

The tears flow freely down my cheeks. Oliver gives him a nudge, quietly demanding that he restrain himself. I let my gaze wander over their bare chests, taking in as much detail as possible.

Who knows if I’ll ever see them again.

“I don’t want to leave, and certainly not like this, but—”

“Dammit, Elise, whatever the matter is, you can tell us. Make it make sense, please,” James interjects, emotions flaring brightly in his tormented gaze.

“You owe us the truth,” Oliver adds.

“The truth is ugly!” I cry out. “The truth shouldn’t be your problem. I can’t saddle you with any of it.”

James shakes his head. “We’re the ones who decide that. Tell us. Everything.”

“Start at the beginning,” Roman says. “And don’t fucking lie.”

I’m guessing he must’ve figured out at least a couple of lies I’ve told so far. I can’t blame him for feeling so angry and betrayed.

I shudder, running a hand through my hair. My palms are clammy. “It all started when I was eight years old. My brother was just a toddler. He’d barely turned two when our parents died. My father was an accountant for Lev Konstantinov, head of the Chicago Bratva.”

The blood drains from their faces but they remain quiet as I take a deep breath and tell them my story before I shut down completely.

“When my parents died, I thought it was just another terrible random act of violence, a shooting in the neighborhood where my parents were collateral damage. Mikey, my brother, was too little to understand. Turns out, I was too little, as well. Lev took us in.”

I continue. “We were never officially adopted but Lev became our legal guardian. We had a home, a family, clothes on our backs, good food on the table. We were never without. His eldest son, Igor, was twenty at the time. About eleven years later, we were engaged, then married.”

“Fuck me sideways, you’re married?” Oliver blurts out.

“It wasn’t really my choice. I mean, yeah, I had choices,” I say, giving Roman a heavy sideways glance, “but the Konstantinovswere all I ever knew. I understood who they were and what they were capable of, and I pretended I didn’t have anything to do with that. Lev made sure that Mike and I were kept out of it.

“Igor was kind and sweet. As soon as I turned eighteen, he made his feelings known. Honestly, he was the first man I ever let get close to me, the only man I knew besides Lev. Lev put the thought in my head over the years that, someday, Igor and I would be married, that I’d have a home of my own, that I’d become a Konstantinov. I believed him. I believedthem, and for a while, it was okay. Mike was able to receive a premium education, just as I was. We were never without, and a life away from all of that didn’t make sense. We’d already lost our parents. I stayed and I tried to love Igor; I really did.”

“What happened?” James asks, his brow furrowed.

“As the years went by, doubt kept growing inside of me. I started to feel like nothing was really what it seemed. Maybe it was my intuition, maybe my subconscious was finally seeing the signs that had been there all along—signs that I, as a child, couldn’t have spotted. Maybe it’s why I was so careful not to get pregnant while Igor and I were together. I saw how cruel he could be to others, including his brother Andrei and his sister Kara. Slowly but surely, the mask came off.

“Igor is a fucking monster. Always has been. And my father found out.”

Roman scoffs, shaking his head. “You’re telling me that twenty-year-old Igor killed your parents?”

“Not with his bare hands, but he orchestrated the assassination. There were rumors. I picked up on them here and there. A dinner with the Grinkovs. Brunch with Dmitri Jr., the Gorovboss. I was always present by Igor’s side, smiling and looking pretty along with the other Bratva wives. Then I started paying attention,reallypaying attention. Listening. Watching. And everything became painfully clear. I’d married a monster.”

“And your brother?” Oliver asks.

“He’s at college now and still in the Konstantinov fold. He doesn’t know the truth. I figured it would be safer for him. I couldn’t fight those bastards alone, and the law is crooked in Chicago. I couldn’t trust anybody. I tried and It almost killed me.”

“And?” James prompts me to continue.

“Igor realized that I was picking up on the truth. He got violent with me. He thought it would be enough to terrorize me into submission. I played my part because I needed the truth. I had to know. So, every morning, right after he’d go out for his meetings, I’d sneak into his home office and rummage through his papers, all of his bookshelves and cabinets. Eventually, I found a secret safe. It took me a while, but I managed to get it open.”

“What did you find in there?”

I can still see it, as if I’m still holding it in my trembling hands.

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