Page 93 of Her Silver Fox Mountain Men

Igor growls from the front seat as he continues to look through the ledger. “You stupid bitch, do you have any idea how badly you screwed up when you stole this?”

“It’s evidence of what you did to my parents,” I coldly reply.

“A different era is coming, Elise. The Bratva’s going to be under new leadership soon enough. My father won’t know what hit him and this ledger… this is the ammunition I need to get some of his lieutenants aligned with my agenda.”

I gasp. “So this wasn’t about proof regarding my parents’ murder?”

“It’s about that, too, but the ledger itself… Elise, you’ve made my work ten times harder than it should’ve been,” Igor says. “You stupid, selfish bitch.”

“You killed my parents so your father wouldn’t find out that you were stealing from him. Who’s stupid and selfish here?”

“I swear, the more you talk, the less I’ll feel bad about what’s going to happen next.” He exhales sharply, shoving the ledger and the manila envelope into the glovebox compartment. “Pull up that road,” he tells Piotr.

I glance ahead. “That’s a dirt road leading up the north ridge of the mountain. It’s too rocky and steep for this kind of car.”

“Will you just shut the fuck up for once?” Igor replies. “Just shut up. We’re not going far, anyway. It’ll all be over soon.”

My blood freezes. My joints hurt. My body trembles in anticipation of the worst that’s yet to come. I’m scared. I want to stay calm and keep a cool head, but I don’t know if anybody’s going to be able to save me, if they’ll get to me in time. I’m hanging from a loose and unraveling thread, and it could all be over in the blink of an eye unless I figure out a way to stall Igor.

“You’re just going to kill me, just like that?”

“You left me no other choice, Elise,” Igor grumbles.

“Could you blame me? You lied to me. You took me as your wife, we shared a bed. I gave you my body, my heart, and you—”

“Your heart? Come on, Elise. We both know you never really loved me. I could feel it,” he sighs. “I would’ve let you stay gone, to be honest, if only you hadn’t stolen from me.”

“You killed my family!” I scream. “My mom and dad. Michael looked up to you. He took to you as he would a brother. You broke bread with us, you absolute piece of shit. You laughed and cried with us, even though you knew you were the one responsible for all the pain and misery we had to heal from.”

“Don’t think for a second that I enjoyed doing that,” Igor says. “I didn’t want to kill anybody. But your dad didn’t really give me a choice. Had he gone straight to Papa with his ledger, I would’ve been fucked. I would’ve been shipped off to Siberia’s most remote gulag and left there to rot.”

“My father offered you a chance to come clean, didn’t he?” I ask, trying to imagine how that entire conversation must’ve unfolded. “He wanted to do right by you and Lev. He probably knew it would break Lev’s heart if they had to pull you into his private study and watch you lie your ass off before they slapped you over the face with that ledger.”

“Mr. Goody Two-Shoes. Like I said, he didn’t give me a choice.”

“You keep saying that but we both know you did have a choice,” I insist.

The silence that falls between us is so heavy that I can barely breathe. Igor knows I speak the truth.

“What are you trying to pull exactly? You want to overthrow Lev? Is that what this is about?” I ask.

Alarm bells ring loud in the back of my head as we pull up outside a small, seemingly abandoned cabin on the side of the mountain road.

“You don’t need to know about any of that. It doesn’t concern you anymore,” Igor replies.

“Come on, let’s get it over with and fly back to Chicago before Lev catches on,” Piotr says, turning the engine off. “You should’ve just killed her back at the bank.”

“No. I want to spend a couple more minutes with my wife, if you don’t mind,” Igor snaps. “I did love her at one time.” He looks atme. “It’s true, I really did love you.”

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” I reply. I start struggling as soon as his goons try to drag me out of the car with them. “Get off me!”

“Stop screaming,” Piotr groans, rolling his eyes. “No one can hear you up here anyway.”

“Let go of me!”

Igor takes out his gun and points it at my face, rage burning hot in his eyes. “Will you be fucking quiet for once, Elise? I’m trying to say goodbye here.”

I freeze. So much for buying time. He’s going to kill me.

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