Mile High Ex’s Brother (Forbidden Silver Foxes #22)

Katerina

The suitcase is open on my bed when Lev ruins my life.

At first, I don’t understand that’s even what he’s doing.

I’m busy folding a cream silk blouse over my arm, trying to decide if it’ll wrinkle too badly on the flight, when my phone buzzes beside the jewelry case. The screen lights up with his name.

Lev.

I smile before I can stop myself.

It’s pathetic, that smile. Soft, automatic, loyal. The kind of smile a woman gives a man who’s planned a trip to meet his family halfway across the world. I’ve never left the States in my life. Heck, till last month, I didn’t even have a passport.

And now, here I am.

I answer with the blouse still in my hand.

“Please tell me You’re packed,” I say. “Because if you’re calling to ask whether suits count as formal wear, I’m hanging up.”

There’s a pause.

Not a normal pause. Not Lev pretending to be dramatic. Not Lev checking another message while I speak.

A dead, ugly pause.

My fingers tighten around the silk. “Lev?”

“I need to come over.”

I glance at the suitcase. Half-packed. Gold heels tucked into one corner. A red dress still lying across the chair because I’ve been too nervous to decide if It’s too bold for dinner with the Morozovs.

I bite my lip. “Now?”

“Yes.”

His voice is wrong.

Flat. Careful. As if he’s reading from a card.

My smile disappears. “It’s almost ten.”

“I know.”

“The flight is tomorrow morning.”

“I know, Katerina.”

He almost never uses my full name unless He’s annoyed with me. Usually, I’m Katya. Baby. Krasivaya when he remembers to be charming. Katerina is reserved for arguments, obligations, and moments when he wants distance between us.

A strange chill moves through me. “Is everything okay?”

Another pause.

Then, softer, “I’m outside.”

I turn toward the window before I can think.

The street below is dark except for the lamps burning along the driveway and the headlights of a black Mercedes idling by the curb. Lev’s car.

I can see the faint glow of his phone through the windshield.

My heart starts to beat faster. “I’ll come down,” I say.

“No. I’ll come up.”

The line goes dead.

For a moment, I stand in the center of my bedroom with the blouse hanging from my hand and the open suitcase at my feet.

Tomorrow, I’m supposed to fly to Russia.

Tomorrow, I’m supposed to become real to his family. Not just a name. Not just the Markov daughter Andrei Morozov approved from a distance. Not just the girl in photographs beside Lev at charity dinners and engagement parties.

His fiancée. His future wife.

My stomach pulls tight.

I place the blouse in the suitcase, then remove it again because my hands need something to do. I smooth the fabric once. Twice. Three times.

Downstairs, the doorbell rings.

I hear Marina, our housekeeper, moving through the hall. A murmur of voices follows, low and polite. Then footsteps on the stairs.

I turn as Lev appears in the doorway.

He looks beautiful, as per usual.

That’s the cruelest thing about him. Even now, with his blond hair slightly windblown and his black coat open over a white shirt, he looks like every foolish promise I ever believed. Clean jaw. Pale eyes. Mouth made for apologies he never means.

His gaze drops first to the suitcase.

Then to me.

“Katya.”

I fold my arms over my stomach. “You’re scaring me.”

He steps inside but does not come close enough to touch me.

That tells me everything before he says a single word.

“Don’t do that,” I whisper.

His expression flickers. “Do what?”

“Stand there and look at me like I’m a wounded animal. What’s wrong?”

My body knows before my mind does.

The room tilts, just a little.

He drags a hand over his mouth. “I didn’t want to do this over the phone.”

“Oh, how noble of you,” I snap, already fighting to hold back my emotions.

“Katya.”

“No.” I laugh once, and it sounds wrong even to me. “No, do not say my name like that. Tell me what is happening.”

His eyes move around the room instead of staying on me. The suitcase. The dresses. The passport on my vanity. The engagement ring on my finger.

He doesn’t even glance at the ring.

A cold pressure fills my chest.

“The trip,” he says. “You shouldn’t come.”

I blink.

For one stupid second, my brain offers me mercy. Maybe there’s a threat. Maybe something’s happened in Moscow. Maybe the Morozovs are fighting, and he’s trying to keep me safe.

“What do you mean, I shouldn’t come?”

He exhales. “I mean the trip is no longer necessary.”

“No longer necessary,” I repeat.

He flinches. “Yeah.”

“The trip to meet your family,” I say slowly. “The trip your father insisted on. The trip I have been preparing for, for three months. The trip your mother sent me a schedule for. That trip?”

“Yes.”

I stare at him.

Lev shifts his weight. He looks uncomfortable now, almost irritated even.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I wait.

He says nothing else.

“You’re sorry,” I repeat. “For what?”

His jaw tightens. “Don’t make this harder.”

Something inside me goes still.

“Oh,” I say. “So, this is my fault now, even though I have no idea what you’re talking about?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You walk into my bedroom the night before we are supposed to leave for Russia and tell me I shouldn’t come, but I’m making it harder?”

“I came here because I respect you.”

The laugh that leaves me is small and sharp enough to cut. “Respect me? You’re telling me nothing right now.”

He looks at the floor.

I take a step toward him. “Look at me.”

His eyes lift, flickering with some emotion that resembles guilt.

I know that before he says it. I know it in the way his shoulders are already braced, like he expects a scene. Like he has practiced surviving this conversation. Like he has told himself I will cry, and he will endure it, and then he will leave feeling tragic instead of cruel.

My mouth goes dry. “Is there someone else?”

Lev closes his eyes.

My heart drops so fast I feel sick. “Oh my God.”

“It wasn’t planned.”

“Who?”

“Katya.”

“Who?”

He swallows audibly, his eyes dropping to his shoes, but he doesn’t say anything—yet again.

A thought enters my mind so ugly, so impossible, that I reject it instantly.

Then I see his face.

“Who is it?” I demand, my voice sharp and fragile. The blouse slips from my fingers and falls onto the floor.

“Vika,” he almost whispers. He says my stepsister’s name like it hurts him.

And for a second, the whole room becomes too bright. The gold lamp by my bed. The polished mirror. The open suitcase. The neat rows of lingerie I bought because I thought my fiancé would want me in Russia. The velvet box containing earrings his mother had sent for me to wear at dinner.

All of it turns into something that feels humiliating.

My skin feels too tight. “Vika,” I utter my sister’s name.

Lev takes a step toward me. “It just… happened.”

I step back so quickly my hip hits the vanity. “Don’t.”

He stops.

“Don’t you dare come closer to me.”

His face hardens, just slightly. There he is—the real Lev, under all that polish. The man who likes obedience better than emotion.

“I know you’re hurt.”

“You know I’m hurt?” I look at him, almost amazed. “You’re ending our engagement the night before our flight because you’ve been sleeping with my stepsister, and you know I’m hurt?”

“We didn’t mean for it to happen like this.”

“We?”

His mouth tightens.

The word hangs between us.

We.

So they’ve talked about me. Together. In whispers. In bed. In the dark. Maybe they have pitied me. Maybe Vika has tilted her pretty little face and asked if I will be devastated. Maybe Lev has kissed her shoulder and told her I’m stronger than I look.

My stomach turns, sickness and rage mixing. “How long have you been fucking her?”

Lev looks away again.

I feel my face go hot. “How long?”

“A few months.”

I grip the edge of the vanity behind me. “Get out.”

“Katya, please.”

“Get out.”

“You deserve an explanation.”

“No,” I say. “I deserved loyalty. I deserved honesty. I deserved to not be made a fool in my own home.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he says. “We’re going to talk to everyone. Irina already said—”

A bitter smile pulls at my mouth. “Of course, Irina knows. Her daughter steals my fiancé and somehow, she’s the victim, yes?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“How was it then, Lev?”

His face twists with frustration. “You and I were arranged before we were anything else. You know that.”

“There was family expectation. With Vika it’s different, I fell in love with her.”

I look down at the diamond on my finger. It’s large, tasteful, but also cold. I used to love its weight. I used to turn my hand in the light and feel chosen.

Now it looks like a collar.

I pull it off.

Lev’s face changes. “Katya.”

I hold it out to him.“Take it.”

He shakes his head. “It belongs to you.”

I smile, but there’s no softness left in it. “No. It belongs to whatever lie you told when you gave it to me.”

His nostrils flare. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“That’s what men say when they want forgiveness without consequences.”

He deserves me screaming. He deserves the lamp from my bedside table thrown at his beautiful face. He deserves my nails in his skin and my father’s men dragging him out by the throat.

But I do none of that.

That’s the humiliating part.

I just stand there in my half-packed bedroom, wearing silk sleep shorts and a camisole, with dresses spread over the chair and my passport on the vanity, and I hand back the engagement ring like a woman with manners.

Like a woman who has not just been gutted.

He finally opens his palm.

I drop the ring into it without a single sound.

Lev closes his fingers around it.

“You should go,” I say.

He exhales. “Katya, please.”

“I said ‘go.’”

His jaw tightens with irritation. He always has so little patience for the aftermath of his own cruelty.

He walks to the door, then pauses like he expects me to stop him. Like some small, pathetic part of him wants me to beg. It makes me hate him more.

But I do absolutely nothing.

Finally, he steps into the hall.

A moment later, I hear his footsteps on the stairs.

The front door opens, closes, and the house goes quiet.

I stand in the center of my bedroom until my legs start to shake.