Page 75 of Her Silver Fox Mountain Men

I cut him off. “She’s not your wife anymore.”

“Legally, she still very much is,” Igor says and gives me a cocky grin. “So, go on upstairs, wake her up, and bring her down. Once she’s in my possession, you’ll never see my face again.”

“Are you delusional or just too arrogant for your own good?” Oliver asks. “There’s no way in hell we’re handing her over to you.”

Sighing as if he’s bored, he says, “Fine, you some need time apparently. You have twenty-four hours.”

“Excuse me?” I hiss.

“Twenty-four hours to deliver Elise to me. If you do not comply, there’s not a single agency within the U.S. government that can keep you safe from my family. No one steals from the Bratva and survives.”

“We don’t take kindly to threats,” James coldly replies.

“Don’t think of it as a threat; think of it as a guarantee,” Igor snaps. “Trust me, the number of men I’ve got stationed out in these woods right now doesn’t equal half of what’s coming if I don’t get my wife back. Twenty-four hours, gentlemen, or you all die.”

When he turns to walk away, I briefly scan the front of the house. I can’t see the gate through this thick fog, but I’m sure he and his men took advantage of the weather and the low visibility when they decided to pull this stunt. I reckon we would’ve had moreagents down and a full-on siege of the whole ridge were it not for the mist.

I wonder if he’s bluffing about the number of men he has in the shadows.

“We can’t risk it,” Oliver whispers as if reading my goddamn mind.

Just as he’s about to go down the porch steps, Igor stops and turns around. “Which one of you is it, then?” he asks with a bitter half-smile.

“Which one of us is what?” James replies.

The air feels so thick, I could cut through it with a knife.

“The prick who’s fucking my wife,” Igor answers.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I think I deserve to know.”

He’s angry, seething beneath the surface but in no position to push us. Even if he does have men in the woods—enough to kill all of us—we could still blow his brains out before they would get to us. He’s pushing a limit here because his narcissistic ego demands it.

“All of us,” I say.

Igor laughs nervously.

“Sometimes it’s just one on one,” Oliver chimes in, picking up on my angle. “Other nights we share her, treating her like the goddess she is. We make it work. She loves it.”

“It was obvious she didn’t know what it was like to be pampered and loved by a real man before. She welcomed the three of us into her life, her bed, and her heart with open arms,” I add.

The look on Igor’s face tells me he would gladly kill us all right then and there. It’s evidenced by his locked jaw and the throbbing vein in his pale temple. He doesn’t do anything, though, which further makes me wonder how much of everything he’s just threatened us with is actually real.

“Then I hope you all enjoyed her,” he finally says. “I will have to reeducate her once we’re back home, however.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I demand.

“What happens in the bedroom between my wife and me is none of your business,” he replies, then heads down the porch steps without looking back at us. “Twenty-four hours, gentlemen. Do not keep the Bratva waiting one second beyond.”

“Get Janice on the phone, right now,” James tells Oliver as soon as Igor is out of earshot. “And get Tori here from Boulder. We need all hands on deck.”

“What the fuck do we do?” I turn around as soon as Igor dissolves into the white mist. “Let me go after the bastard—”

“No,” James says. “We have to be smart about this. We can’t allow emotions to get in the way.”

“I’ll wake Elise up,” I grumble, hating what I’m about to tell her.

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