Victoria had barely stepped inside the apartment when her husband, Igor, met her in the hallway wearing the smug expression of a man who believed he had already won. The betrayal she had known nothing about seemed to hang in the air, mingling with the scent of another woman’s perfume that had soaked into his shirt. The money their parents had invested in this two-bedroom apartment five years earlier, when Victoria and Igor had married straight out of university, suddenly took on an entirely different meaning.
“Let’s not make a scene, all right?” Igor folded his arms across his chest. “I have another woman. I’ve been seeing her for almost a year. I want her to move in here with me, so pack your things and get out.”
Victoria slowly removed her shoes and carefully placed her handbag on the console table.
Igor’s mother, her mother-in-law, had always loved telling everyone at family gatherings how she and her husband had “bought the children an apartment.” Apparently, Igor had heard the story so many times that he had started believing it completely. Now he was looking at Victoria as though she were nothing more than an unwanted tenant.
“Are you deaf?” Igor raised his voice. “I’m telling you to leave. This is my apartment. My mother paid for it. Your mother contributed a few pennies, and that was it.”
Victoria walked into the living room and sat down in an armchair, crossing one leg over the other.
For five years, she had been building a career while Igor played the role of the successful provider. She now supervised two employees, and that was only the beginning. Her salary had already surpassed that of the man who was, for the moment, still her husband.
“Go on, Igor,” she said with a smile. “Please continue. This is fascinating.”
“What else is there to say?” He threw his hands into the air. “You’re as cold as ice. All you ever care about is work, work, work. I needed warmth, so I found it somewhere else.”
“Warmth,” Victoria repeated with a thoughtful nod. “And how long have you been keeping yourself warm?”
“Almost a year. I already told you!” Igor jerked his shoulder irritably. “And don’t look at me like that. This is your fault. I’m still a young man. I need attention, not your schedules, reports, and endless meetings.”
Victoria took out her phone but did not look at the screen. She simply placed it on the armrest beside her.
Igor failed to notice the gesture. He was far too carried away by the sound of his own voice.
“So she’s going to move in here?” Victoria asked with genuine curiosity.
“In the next few days.” Igor lifted his chin triumphantly. “The divorce is just a formality. A month or two, and it’ll all be over. So don’t start any hysterics. Pack your things and go back to your mother.”
“Wait.” Victoria raised one finger. “I just want to clarify something. Are you certain this apartment belongs to you? Or to your mother?”
Igor rolled his eyes like a tired adult being forced to explain something obvious to a child.
“Vika, don’t be stupid. My parents bought this place. Your mother contributed some symbolic amount, probably enough for wallpaper and curtains. We both know that.”
“You have an interesting memory,” Victoria said, leaning back in the chair. “Very selective. Like a goldfish in reverse. You remember things that never happened.”
“Don’t play games with me!” His voice rose to an almost shrill pitch. “My mother told everyone how she and my father worked themselves to the bone so we could have this apartment!”
“Telling stories and paying money are two different things, Igor. They’re not even the same verb.”
Igor’s face turned crimson.
He had clearly expected Victoria to cry, scream, beg him to reconsider, or collapse in despair. Instead, she was sitting there with a faint smile, as though she were watching an amusing stage performance.
“I’m not going to stand here arguing with you!” He pointed a finger at her. “Pack your things. You have two days.”
Victoria picked up her phone and dialed a number.
Igor frowned.
“Who are you calling?”
“Your mother. I’d like to clarify a few details about the apartment.”
“Go ahead.” He smirked. “She’ll tell you exactly what I did. We paid for this place.”
The phone rang several times before a woman answered.
“Hello? Vika?”
“Good evening, Nina Petrovna. You’re on speakerphone, and Igor is here with me. Could you please tell us what percentage of the apartment’s purchase price your family contributed?”
There was a pause.
Victoria watched the confidence on Igor’s face begin to melt like snow beneath the spring sun. Something about his mother’s silence clearly disturbed him.
“Vika, dear,” Nina Petrovna said cautiously, “why are you asking?”
“Please answer the question. Your son claims that you paid for nearly the entire apartment and that my mother contributed almost nothing.”
A heavy sigh came through the speaker.
“Igor, what have you been telling her?” Nina Petrovna’s voice became stern. “We paid twenty percent. The remaining eighty percent came from Tamara, Victoria’s mother.”
Igor’s face went slack, as though someone had struck him with a sack of cement.
He opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again.
“Mom, what are you talking about? You always said…”
“I said we helped you buy the apartment, and that was true. Twenty percent is still meaningful help. What exactly did you imagine?”
Victoria raised one finger again.
“Nina Petrovna, there is one more thing. Three months ago, you sold your share to my mother. Is that correct?”
Silence followed.
Then another sigh.
“Yes, Vika. Tamara offered to buy us out. We needed the money, as you know. She offered a very fair price. I’m grateful she agreed to help us.”
Igor grabbed his head with both hands.
“Mom! You sold it? Without me? You didn’t even tell me?”
“Why would I need your permission?” Nina Petrovna sounded genuinely surprised. “That share belonged to your father and me. It had nothing to do with you. The apartment was registered in Victoria’s name.”
Victoria placed the phone on the coffee table without ending the call.
Igor stood in the middle of the room like a monument to his own stupidity. All his arrogance had vanished, leaving behind confusion and the first signs of fear.
“Wait.” He licked his dry lips. “So the apartment…”
“Now belongs entirely to my mother,” Victoria said, spreading her hands. “The same woman who never bragged about it at family dinners. She simply paid quietly.”
“But we’re married!” Igor seized upon the thought like a drowning man grabbing a piece of driftwood. “It’s marital property!”
“Igor, you weren’t listening. The apartment belongs to my mother, not to me. My mother. Technically, both of us are living on her property. The difference is that I am the owner’s daughter. What exactly are you?”
He turned pale.
“You planned this,” he said hoarsely. “Three months ago… You already knew about me and… about Lera?”
“That is the first time I’ve heard her name,” Victoria replied with a shrug. “Three months ago, I had no idea you were cheating. My mother simply wanted to organize the paperwork and make everything straightforward. She likes things to be in order.”
Igor’s mother’s voice suddenly came through the speaker.
“Igor! Is it true? You have a mistress?”
He flinched as though he had been struck by an electric current. He had forgotten she was still listening.
“Mom, it’s… complicated.”
“Complicated?” Nina Petrovna exclaimed. “You idiot! You traded Victoria for some woman, and then you tried to throw your wife out of an apartment that doesn’t even belong to you?”
“Technically, it belongs to her mother,” Victoria added.
“Vika, sweetheart,” her mother-in-law said apologetically, “please forgive my fool of a son. I raised him, of course, but sometimes even I wonder what exactly I managed to raise.”
“Mom!” Igor’s face reddened again. “You could at least support me!”
“Support you in what? Trying to throw your wife into the street from someone else’s home? Imagining yourself the owner because of some nonsense you invented? Igor, come home. We need to talk.”
Victoria picked up the phone.
“Thank you for being honest, Nina Petrovna. I appreciate it.”
“Vika,” the older woman said, her voice trembling slightly, “are you two… getting divorced?”
“Your son announced it to me a few minutes ago. He has been seeing someone else for almost a year. So yes, we are getting divorced.”
Igor stepped forward abruptly.
“Wait. Maybe I was too emotional.”
“Too emotional?” Victoria lifted one eyebrow. “For an entire year? Every day you spent with Lera was just an extended burst of emotion?”
“Vika, let’s talk about this.”
“A discussion is when two people speak. What we just had was a monologue. Yours. The one about ‘pack your things,’ ‘this is my apartment,’ and ‘get out.’ It was quite a performance. Very convincing.”
She rose from the armchair and walked toward him until they were standing face-to-face.
Igor instinctively took a step backward.
“Do you know what amazes me most?” she asked calmly, almost gently. “You didn’t even try to lie with dignity. You didn’t come up with some speech about how we had grown apart. You didn’t pretend to be torn or heartbroken. You simply walked in and announced that I had to disappear because you had found a new toy. That goes beyond arrogance. It’s a special kind of talent.”
“You’re mocking me,” Igor said through clenched teeth. “You’re deliberately humiliating me.”
“Humiliating you?” Victoria laughed. “Igor, you handled that perfectly well on your own. I didn’t even have time to do anything. You announced your affair, demanded that I leave someone else’s apartment, and then called your mother, who confirmed every detail. I just sat here and watched. Like a night at the theater. The only thing missing was popcorn.”
He clenched his jaw.
“And where am I supposed to go now? Back to my mother?”
“Where else? To Lera?” Victoria tilted her head. “Although, come to think of it, she clearly doesn’t have an apartment of her own. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have planned to move her in here. It really is impressive. You intended to live with your new girlfriend in an apartment owned by your old wife’s mother. That is a remarkable level of shamelessness.”
“Shut up!”
“No, I won’t. Five minutes ago, you were shouting that I had to get out. Now it’s my turn to speak, and your turn to listen.”
Victoria walked over to the window and turned her back to him.
“Five years, Igor. I worked twelve-hour days. I built my career. I believed I was doing it for us and for our future. Meanwhile, you were building a different future with Lera, using my mother’s apartment as the foundation.”
“This is your fault!” he blurted out. “You didn’t care about me. You hardly noticed I existed!”
“I didn’t notice you?” Victoria turned around. “I cooked dinner. I washed and ironed your shirts. I remembered your friends’ birthdays. I tolerated their drinking nights. I inflated that ridiculous air mattress for Anton when he stayed here for a week after his divorce. Is that what you call ignoring you?”
Igor looked away.
“That was just household stuff. I needed something else.”
“What exactly? Admiration? Applause because you managed to get out of bed in the morning? A medal for taking out the trash once a week?”
“Go to hell!”
Victoria walked to the wardrobe and took a folded air mattress from the top shelf.
“Here.” She tossed it to Igor. “You’ll sleep on this tonight. In the living room. Tomorrow morning, you’ll leave for your mother’s place, or Lera’s. I don’t care which.”
He caught the mattress and stared at it as though it were an object from another planet.
“You’re serious?”
“Completely. I’m not throwing you out in the middle of the night. That would be petty. But you will not sleep in my bedroom, and by tomorrow you will no longer be living here. This is not open for discussion.”
“Vika,” he said, suddenly sounding pitiful, “maybe we can speak calmly, without all this emotion.”
“Without emotion?” She gave a disbelieving laugh. “You just confessed to a year-long affair, insulted my mother, ordered me out of my own home, and now you want to discuss things calmly? Do you even hear yourself?”
He sank onto the sofa, still clutching the air mattress.
“I didn’t think it would turn out like this.”
“How did you think it would turn out?” Victoria sat on the arm of the chair opposite him. “Let’s reconstruct your brilliant plan. You announce that you have been cheating. I burst into tears and beg you to stay. You nobly allow me to pack a suitcase. I disappear into the night. Lera moves in, and the two of you live happily ever after in a free apartment. Is that about right?”
He remained silent.
“Do you know what the saddest part is?” she continued. “You never even bothered to check the documents. In five years of marriage, you never once asked whose name was on the apartment. Your mother’s stories were enough for you because they supported the version you liked. You were the rightful heir, and I was the unwanted dependent. It must have been comforting.”
“I thought…”
“No, Igor. You didn’t think. That is the whole problem. You didn’t think when you started seeing Lera. You didn’t think when you decided to throw me out. You didn’t think before opening your mouth tonight. You never think. You simply do whatever you feel like doing, like a spoiled child. Except you are thirty years old.”
Igor finally looked up at her.
“So what happens now?”
“Now we get divorced. That is what you wanted, isn’t it? Or have you changed your mind already?”
He hesitated.
Victoria could almost see the gears turning inside his head. The apartment was gone. His mother was furious. Lera had nowhere for them to live. His wife’s career was moving forward. The situation had changed dramatically.
“Maybe we should give ourselves some time,” he said, attempting a weak smile. “Cool down and think about everything.”
“Time?” Victoria stood. “Igor, you gave yourself an entire year with another woman. Now you want me to think? After everything you have done? After calling me cold and emotionless? After planning to bring your mistress into my home?”
“Vika…”
“No.” She shook her head. “I accept your decision. Divorce. Since you were brave enough to announce it, we will make it official. Honestly and cleanly. I won’t take revenge. I won’t cause scenes or try to ruin your life. You will simply leave, and that will be the end of it. But don’t ask me to pretend that none of this happened.”
Igor sat hunched on the sofa. All his arrogance and confidence had disappeared. He was now only a confused man who had badly misjudged his position.
“I’m an idiot,” he said quietly.
“At last, something we can agree on.”
Victoria walked toward the bedroom door.
“The pump for the mattress is in the box. Take a blanket from the hallway closet. I expect you to be ready to leave in the morning.”
She paused in the doorway.
“And Igor, don’t try to come into my room tonight to make peace. The door will be locked. Tomorrow, our new lives begin. Separately, exactly as you wanted.”
The bedroom door closed.
Igor remained alone in the darkening living room, gripping the air mattress in his hands like a symbol of his new life—the very life he had chosen for himself.
Somehow, it looked nothing like the future he had imagined.