Yulia placed three empty velvet jewelry boxes on the table. Carefully, one beside the other, as though they were pieces of evidence.
Igor did not even flinch. He remained on the sofa, scrolling through something on his phone as though none of this concerned him.
“Where are they?” she asked evenly.
Igor finally looked up. For several seconds, he stared at the boxes, then at his wife. Something resembling boredom flickered in his eyes.
“What are you talking about?”
“My grandmother’s sapphire earrings. The ring my mother gave me for my thirtieth birthday. The bracelet. Where are they, Igor?”
He set his phone aside, stretched, and cracked his back. Then he stood, walked into the kitchen, and poured himself a glass of filtered water.
Yulia remained where she was, waiting.
“I sold your jewelry,” he said as he returned to the living room. “I needed the money.”
He said it casually, as though he were talking about a trip to the store or paying a utility bill. There was no guilt in his voice, not even an attempt to explain himself.
Yulia said nothing.
She remembered finding him near her dressing table a month earlier. He had been holding her grandmother’s earrings and photographing them with his phone.
When she asked what he was doing, he had muttered something about the lighting and wanting to take a nice picture.
She had not thought much of it at the time.
Now everything made sense.
“And you decided you could simply take them and sell them?”
“Yulia,” he sighed, “don’t start. I’m in a difficult situation. You can see how complicated things have been. I had a problem that needed solving.”
“What problem? Those pieces were worth more than two hundred thousand rubles. They were part of my family history. They weren’t yours.”
Igor grimaced.
“Family history. What difference does it make whether those memories are sitting in a box or belonging to someone else? You never even wore them.”
Yulia restrained herself.
It was not time yet.
“I gave you an opportunity to tell me the truth,” she said quietly. “Two weeks ago, I asked whether we were having financial problems. You told me everything was under control.”
“It was under control.”
“Selling my belongings behind my back is what you call being in control?”
Igor lowered himself onto the sofa and spread his hands.
“Listen, these are temporary difficulties. I’ll repay you. I’ll buy you new earrings, even better ones. Just don’t turn this into some tragedy.”
She looked at him and saw a man she had believed she knew for eleven years.
A man with whom she had made plans, shared a home, and survived both losses and victories.
But the person sitting in front of her now felt like a stranger.
“You haven’t even apologized,” she said.
“For what? For trying to get myself out of trouble? Yulia, you don’t understand how serious this is.”
“Then explain it.”
He looked away.
“Not now. Later.”
“No. Now.”
Igor remained silent.
Yulia sat down across from him and folded her hands in her lap.
She waited.
“All right,” he finally said. “I took out a loan two years ago. My mother needed help repairing the country house. The roof had to be replaced, the heating system needed work… I didn’t want to burden you with it.”
“A loan. Two years ago. And you never told me.”
“I planned to repay it myself. But then things went wrong. The interest increased. I had to take out another loan to cover the first one. Then another.”
Yulia closed her eyes for a moment.
“How much?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“How much, Igor?”
“Around seven hundred thousand. At first. It’s less now.”
She slowly exhaled.
“Seven hundred thousand rubles. You went seven hundred thousand into debt and never said a word to me.”
“I was handling it!”
“Handling it? You stole my jewelry. Is that what you call handling it?”
He leapt to his feet.
“I didn’t steal it! I sold it! Those are two different things!”
“Not to me.”
Igor began pacing across the room. His movements were nervous and erratic.
Yulia followed him with her eyes.
“You don’t understand,” he muttered. “My account was frozen. Letters keep arriving. Every week. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You could have talked to me.”
“And heard what? A lecture about financial responsibility? Another speech about how careless I am?”
“You would have heard that I was willing to help.”
He stopped and stared at her in disbelief.
“Help? How? Do you happen to have an extra seven hundred thousand lying around?”
Yulia did not answer.
She stood, walked over to the chest of drawers, and took several documents from the top drawer.
Then she placed them on the table in front of him.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Read them.”
He picked up the papers and began turning the pages.
A property sale agreement.
A certificate of ownership.
A transfer and acceptance document.
Bank statements.
“I don’t understand,” he said slowly. “This is… this is my land. The house in Beryozovka.”
“Yes.”
“So what? You collected the documents? Why?”
Yulia sat down again.
“I sold something too. Using the power of attorney you gave me.”
Igor stared at her.
His expression began to change. Confusion gave way to disbelief, then to alarm.
“What do you mean, you sold it? You couldn’t have. That’s my house.”
“The house for which you gave me general power of attorney three years ago. At the notary’s office. Do you remember?”
He remembered.
Of course he did.
At the time, he had wanted to sell the property for next to nothing. An acquaintance had offered him four hundred thousand rubles for the land and the house together.
Yulia had stopped him. She had told him it was foolish, that land near the city was increasing in value every year.
He had agreed to wait.
Then he had given her power of attorney so that she could handle everything connected with the property—the taxes, the paperwork, and communication with the neighbors.
“You… you sold my house?”
“Our house. Legally, it was marital property. You bought the land after we were already married.”
“I bought it with my money!”
“Money you earned while we were living as husband and wife. Legally, that income belonged to both of us.”
Igor threw the folder onto the sofa.
He marched toward the window, turned around, and began pacing again.
“You had no right! This is… this is…”
“I had every right. You gave me general power of attorney. You signed it yourself.”
“I signed it so you could deal with the documents, not sell the property!”
“The document says I had the right to sell it, gift it, or exchange it. Did you even read what you signed?”
He froze.
Yulia watched his face change.
First came anger.
Then confusion.
And finally fear.
He was beginning to understand the scale of what had happened.
“How much?” he asked hoarsely.
“Two million four hundred thousand.”
Igor laughed.
It was a short, nervous sound.
“More than two million? For that shack?”
“The land is twelve hundred square meters and only fifteen kilometers from the city. The house is ninety square meters, two stories. Utilities are connected, and the road is paved. Two million four hundred thousand was the market price.”
He was still laughing, but the sound gradually faded.
“And where is the money?”
“I divided it the way the law requires. Fifty-fifty.”
“So… one million two hundred thousand is mine?”
“It was yours. I transferred it to your account.”
He went still.
Then he slowly turned toward her.
“My account? The one that…”
“The one that was frozen. Yes. You just told me you had debts. Now you have fewer of them.”
Igor grabbed his phone.
With trembling fingers, he opened his banking application.
He stared at the screen for a long time.
Yulia watched the color drain from his face.
“They took it,” he whispered. “Almost all of it. There’s only… only eighty thousand left.”
“Then your debt was more than a million. You told me it was seven hundred thousand.”
He did not respond.
He sank to the floor where he stood.
His phone slipped from his hand.
“You destroyed me,” he said hollowly.
“No. I acted fairly. You sold my jewelry. I sold property that belonged to both of us. You took something without asking. I divided everything according to the law.”
“This isn’t fairness. It’s revenge.”
Yulia shook her head.
“Revenge would have been keeping all of the money. I gave you half. It isn’t my fault you owed more than you received.”
He lifted his eyes toward her.
There was hatred in them.
Pure and concentrated.
“You knew,” he said. “You deliberately sent the money to the frozen account.”
“Of course I knew. You said the letters were arriving every week. I saw the envelopes.”
“You could have withdrawn the money in cash. You could have handed it to me personally.”
“I could have. I chose not to.”
He jumped to his feet and stepped toward her.
He stopped less than half a meter away.
“For eleven years… For eleven years, I stayed beside you! I put up with your moods, your relatives, your endless complaints!”
“What complaints, Igor? Remind me.”
“Nothing was ever good enough! I put the dishes in the wrong place, hung my clothes incorrectly, chose the wrong friends!”
Yulia stood and looked him directly in the eyes.
“You’re confusing complaints with requests. I asked you to do things. You refused to listen. Those are not the same.”
“And that gave you the right to take away the last thing I had?”
“Take it away?” She gave a humorless smile. “You took everything from yourself when you went into debt, lied to me, and sold the only things I had left from my grandmother to patch a hole you dug with your own hands.”
Igor stepped back.
He sat on the sofa and buried his face in his hands.
Yulia remained standing.
“What am I supposed to do now?” he asked quietly. “Eighty thousand will last three or four months. Then what? Am I supposed to end up on the street?”
“That’s no longer my problem.”
“Yulia…” He looked up at her. “Please. I was wrong. I admit it. But you can’t just…”
“I can.”
“Eleven years! We’ve been through so much together. Do you remember when we moved into this apartment? When we did all the renovations ourselves? When we brought your mother home from the hospital?”
“I remember. I also remember how, three days ago, you looked me in the eyes and told me everything was fine. You said I worried too much. You told me to relax and trust you. All the while, you had stolen my jewelry and sold it.”
“I was trying to protect you!”
“From what? The truth? Or from having the chance to make a decision with you?”
He fell silent.
Yulia walked to the wardrobe and pulled out a travel bag.
“You’re leaving?” Panic crept into his voice.
“Yes.”
“Where will you go?”
“Somewhere of my own. I have money. One million two hundred thousand. I’ll rent an apartment first. Later, I’ll buy a place.”
“And me? What will happen to me?”
Yulia stopped.
She looked at the man with whom she had spent more than a decade.
At his frightened eyes.
At the hands he no longer knew what to do with.
“You’ll figure it out,” she said. “You always claimed you could manage everything by yourself. So manage.”
“Yulia, please… Give me one more chance. I’ll fix this. I’ll find a way to get the jewelry back. I’ll earn the money.”
“You already had another chance. Two weeks ago, when I asked you directly whether something was wrong. You lied.”
“I was afraid!”
“So was I. I was terrified when I realized I was living with a man who could take something that belonged to me without even blinking. A man who could look me in the eyes and insist everything was fine while selling my jewelry behind my back.”
Igor rose and stepped closer.
“You never loved me, did you? These eleven years were all a lie?”
Yulia began placing several items from the chest of drawers into the bag.
Her movements were calm and methodical.
“I did love you. That’s why this hurts so much. Had I never loved you, none of this would matter.”
“Then stay! Let’s try again!”
“No.”
“Why?”
She zipped the bag shut and turned toward him.
“Because even now, you don’t understand what you did. You think I’m leaving because of the money. Because of the jewelry. Because of the house.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
“Because you chose to lie. Not once, but dozens of times. Every day, you made the choice to deceive me. And when you were finally cornered, you didn’t apologize. You told me, ‘Don’t start.’”
Igor opened his mouth to argue, but she raised one hand.
“Don’t. I’m tired of listening to explanations. You stole from me. You lied to me. You showed no remorse. Three facts. They don’t require a debate.”
“I didn’t steal anything! I only took it temporarily!”
“The jewelry is gone. The money is gone. What would you call that?”
He had no answer.
Yulia put on her coat and picked up the bag.
She placed her keys on the shelf beside the entrance.
“The rent is paid through the end of the month,” she said. “After that, it’s your responsibility.”
“You’re seriously leaving like this? After everything?”
“After everything, yes.”
Igor stood in the doorway of the living room and watched her.
His eyes were filled with equal parts anger and despair.
“You’re cruel.”
“No. I’m fair. You received exactly what your actions earned you.”
She stepped onto the landing.
Igor followed her.
“Wait! At least tell me where you’re going. How am I supposed to find you?”
“Why would you need to find me?”
“So we can… talk. So I can explain.”
“We’ve already said everything. I heard you. You heard me. There’s nothing left to discuss.”
She started walking down the stairs.
Igor shouted after her.
“You didn’t even give me a chance to make things right!”
Yulia stopped and turned around.
“I did. Two weeks ago. You used that chance to lie again.”
Then she continued down.
Her footsteps echoed through the stairwell.
Igor remained in the doorway, watching her leave without moving.
“Yulia!” he called when she had already reached the ground floor.
She did not answer.
The entrance door slammed shut.
Outside, a light snow was falling.
Yulia drew in a deep breath of cold air, took out her phone, and ordered a taxi.
As she waited for the car, she thought about what she had done.
There was not a trace of regret.
Only a strange emptiness where love had once been.
Igor remained standing in the apartment doorway, staring at the vacant staircase.
The phone in his pocket vibrated.
A new notification from the bank.
Another automatic deduction connected to the enforcement proceedings.
Five thousand more had been taken.
Seventy-five thousand remained.
He returned to the apartment and sat down on the sofa.
His gaze settled on the velvet boxes that were still lined up across the table.
Three empty boxes.
Three steps downward.
Somewhere across the city, Yulia climbed into a taxi.
She gave the driver the address of a hotel and watched the familiar streets pass beyond the window.
She did not cry.
She did not smile.
She simply kept moving toward a new life that had already begun.
Igor took out his phone and opened his contacts.
He scrolled down to the letter Y.
His finger hovered over the call button.
He stared at the screen for a long, long time.
Then he placed the phone on the sofa, leaned back, and closed his eyes.
The rented apartment fell silent.
Snow drifted beyond the window.
Igor sat alone.
And now, there was no one left for him to deceive.