Her Silver Fox Mountain Men (Lucky Lady Reverse Harems)

Chapter 26

26

Roman

C ome morning, the mist has thickened.

It lingers over the mountain ridge and dresses the sky in a dull grey, sending shivers down my spine whenever I take a deep breath. I check my reflection in the hallway mirror before joining Oliver and James in the living room. The fine lines around my eyes and the specks of grey in my hair are marks of time passing, but there’s a fire in my gaze I haven’t seen in a while—a drive to fight hell itself for what I want, for what I deserve.

Elise.

The angel with blonde hair, warm blue eyes, and our child growing in her womb.

“Where’s our girl?” James asks as I walk into the living room.

“Sound asleep.”

He nods toward the coffee table where a steaming mug is waiting for me, along with a plate of assorted pastries and a bowl of fruit. “Help yourself; we’ll need the caffeine and the carbs,” he says.

“The twins are with Janice for the day,” Oliver chimes in. “We called the school and let them know they wouldn’t be coming in today. Got a crew watching Jan’s place, too.”

“It’s all so surreal,” I reply, sitting down next to him before taking a long sip of coffee. “This was supposed to be our safe haven.”

“It still is,” James sighs, “provided we sort out this Igor Konstantinov business.”

“Any news on Kara?” I ask.

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 did you 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.”

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 more agents 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.