Page 74 of Her Silver Fox Mountain Men

He shakes his head. “Not yet. They’re still looking for her. Phone number is now disconnected but I reckon that’s common practice in the Bratva. Emails keep bouncing back. My guess is she’s gone into hiding.”

“Maybe she believes she was the target at Candy’s,” I say.

“Chip said she was looking for something,” Oliver offers. His brow furrows as he goes through Chip’s text messages. “They accompanied her to every bank branch within a fifty-mile radius from the minute they were assigned to her. Chip saw her slip cash to every manager, though she wouldn’t tell him why.”

“Did she hit every bank within the radius?”

“No. She left out three, two of which were in Rustic,” he says.

“That means she’s yet to find whatever or whoever she was looking for,” James concludes.

I think about it for a moment. “Elise said she hid the evidence about Igor somewhere safe.”

“We should wake her up,” James gives me a nod. “I bet that’s what Kara’s looking for.”

A knock on the front door has me shooting up to my feet, a sense of alarm instantly taking over. My muscles feel tight as I head into the entryway. Assuming it’s one of our security guys, I reach for the doorknob, just as Lang—our tech expert—comes rushing in from the kitchen.

“Stop!” he calls out, immediately taking out his service weapon, a 9mm Glock.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I hiss, my hand instinctively moving to my own holstered gun.

“I don’t know how he got past security,” Lang says, a distressed expression on his face.

Oliver and James rush into the hallway, equally alarmed, their guns already out. “What’s going on?” I ask them.

“Be ready for anything,” James calmly tells me.

I follow his advice and unholster my weapon, finger next to the trigger, the safety off as I slowly open the front door.

Igor fucking Konstantinov stands on the porch, sharply dressed and smirking with way too much confidence as he holds up a bouquet of red roses and a heart-shaped box of chocolates. His platinum blonde hair is slicked back, his cold blue eyes gleam with cockiness.

“Hey fellas,” he says, his tone eerily smooth and calm.

He wears a suit of shimmering grey, a white cashmere scarf hung loosely around his neck, each steady exhale causing steam to roll from his mouth and nose.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I ask, my tone cold and impatient, my gun pointed at his smug face. “How the hell didyou get past security?”

“You’re not the only ones with hi-tech resources,” Igor arrogantly replies.

A voice crackles through Lang’s radio. “We’ve got two men down! Front gate. I repeat, two men down!”

“You’ll have a lot more if you so much as think about retaliating,” Igor snarls, looking at James. “Tell them to stand down and let me say my piece. Otherwise, the entire force of the Bratva will come spilling out of these woods and kill all of you.”

“Or I could just blow your brains out right here, right now, and be done with it,” I reply.

“Roman, don’t,” James calmly advises. I hate his fucking self-restraint sometimes. “It’s what he wants. We don’t want to go to war with the entire family.”

“A war is precisely what will happen if you try to interfere with me getting my wife back,” Igor says. “So as of now, here’s where we are, gentlemen. You fellas are mixed up in something that’s way above your resources. One of you is fucking my wife. I’m willing to look past all of that provided you deliver her to me.”

“Or what?” James asks.

My trigger finger itches. Badly. But he’s right. I can’t just blow this fucker’s brains out. He took down two of our men, and while Lang is on the radio with the rest of our crew to keep them in their spots and avoid additional bloodshed, we can’t confirm or deny that Igor’s people are out there waiting for the signal.

“Or else you will all die. Including your lovely red-haired daughters,” Igor replies. “Tricia and Ainsley, is it? Beautiful girls. It would be a shame, really.”

“You should know it’s not wise to threaten a man’s children,” James warns him.

“I won’t have to if you give me my wife back.”

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