The evening, rich with the scents of freshness, hung in the air after a brief but fierce summer rain. The city, washed to a shine, seemed to breathe more deeply, absorbing the spicy, almost electric smell of ozone. Drops still tapped on the windowsills, the asphalt steamed, giving off the warmth of the day, and somewhere in the distance, above the rooftops, heavy clouds gathered, as if hesitating to leave.
Mark entered the apartment, leaving traces of water and fatigue behind him. Tossing his wet coat onto the sofa—with a rough, almost contemptuous gesture, as if the fabric itself was repulsive to him—he went to the kitchen. There, in the warm, cozy light, stood Anya. Her movements were measured, like a musical piece she alone could hear. She carefully distributed mushroom risotto onto plates, and the air was filled with the rich aroma of broth, sautéed mushrooms, and butter.
“Smells good,” he said, opening the fridge. “I just hope you didn’t decide to spice up dinner with mushrooms from the forest edge? We already don’t have enough money for treatment if something grows where it shouldn’t.”
Anya slowly turned to him, holding a plate in her hands. Her gaze was calm, but something lurked inside it—something she had learned to hide over the years. His words were, as always, on a thin, almost invisible line—between care and reproach. Only now that line had long ceased to be a boundary. He crossed it with enviable regularity, as if testing how much she could endure.
“These mushrooms are from the supermarket, Mark. Ordinary champignons. No dangers. Only safety and comfort, just the way you like it.”
“Good,” he said, taking a bottle of mineral water, pouring himself a full glass and drinking it down in one gulp. “Today at the office I saw the new price list from the insurance company. You have no idea how much one day in the hospital costs now. It’s just a nightmare.”
She silently placed the plate in front of him. He was not hungry. He did not want to eat. He wanted to start a conversation that had long become a ritual. It was a prelude—to something bigger, to something painful. Anya knew all his preludes. She had learned them like an actress learns her monologues. Only in this play, she was not allowed to improvise.
They sat down at the table. Silence hung between them, dense like fog. Only the clatter of forks against the ceramic disturbed it, and the flame of the candle Anya had lit, hoping to add some coziness. But there was no coziness. The candle flickered as if sensing the tension filling the room.
“I was thinking,” Mark began, pushing aside his half-empty plate. “Your paintings… that’s just a hobby, right? You’re not planning to make money from it?”
Anya lifted her eyes. Her hands, resting on her lap, clenched slightly, but her face remained impassive. She knew what answer he expected. But not the one he was going to get.
“I sold two last week.”
He smirked—not cruelly, but condescendingly, like an adult listening to a child’s story about a sandcastle. But there was no warmth in his eyes.
“Sold? Anya, that’s not earning. That’s pocket money I give you myself, just in a different form. You buy paints with my money, canvases with my money. And then you get lucky, and some housewife buys your smudge to cover a hole in the wallpaper.”
Each of his words was precise. He struck exactly, without missing. He knew where it hurt more.
“That’s not smudge, Mark.”
“Oh? Then what is it? Art?” He laughed, no longer holding back. “You sit at home all day, warm and comfortable, which I provide. I work my ass off from morning till night to pay for this apartment, this food, your clothes! And you just… exist.”
His voice sharpened. He stood up from the table, looming over her. The air in the kitchen seemed to thicken, becoming dense and heavy. Breathing became difficult.
“I don’t understand what you want,” she said quietly. Her voice was even, and that seemed to infuriate him even more.
“What do I want?” he shouted, and in his voice rang those very notes she had been expecting. “I want you to stop being dead weight! To appreciate what you have! You’re a poor talentless nobody living off me!”
A phrase that had become the leitmotif of their last year. The final chord in his daily symphony of reproaches.
Anya did not flinch. She slowly picked up her phone lying next to the plate. Her fingers confidently swiped across the screen. Mark froze, watching her actions in confusion. He expected tears, screams, hysteria. But not this. Not this icy, almost contemptuous calm.
She quickly typed something and hit “send.” At that same moment, a short notification sound rang on his phone lying on the sofa in the living room.
“What’s that?” he asked, puzzled.
“Just a link,” Anya replied, rising from the table. She looked him straight in the eyes, and in her gaze there was no fear or offense. Only fatigue. “Look. I think you’ll find it interesting.”
Mark snorted and went to the living room to get his phone. He expected anything—an article about family values, stupid quizzes, silly memes. But when he clicked the link, a page opened before him. A strict, minimalist design in gray-blue tones. No ads. In the top corner—the logo: intertwined letters V and F. And beneath it, the headline: “Volkova Fund.”
“The Volkova Fund?” he laughed loudly. “Seriously, Anya? You made a website? Probably with my money?”
She did not answer. Her silence began to irritate him. He stared at the screen again, deciding to examine this “joke” more closely.
“Support for young talents,” “Grants for studying abroad,” “Funding for contemporary art exhibitions.” Everything looked too… real.
He clicked the “About Us” tab. A photo of Anya looked back—a professional portrait he had never seen. A strict hairstyle, a business suit, a confident and somewhat detached look of a woman used to making decisions.
Under the photo was text: “Anna Volkova, founder of the fund, youngest heir of a financial-industrial group…”
Mark stopped reading. The words blurred before his eyes. Stanford? Family business? He shook his head, trying to dispel the hallucination. It was some crazy, well-thought-out prank.
“What kind of nonsense is this?” he shouted.
Anya entered the room, wiping her hands with a towel. She stopped a few steps from him.
“Why don’t you believe me? You always know people so well.”
Her calm tone was maddening. He feverishly searched for a catch. Opened the news section of the site. Headlines from various magazines: “Volkova Fund invests 15 million in a new cultural center.” “Anna Volkova on the list of the most influential philanthropists under 30.”
He clicked one of the links—it led to a real magazine website. The article was there, with photos.
Blood drained from his face. He felt the floor disappear beneath his feet. The apartment he considered “his fortress” suddenly seemed like cardboard scenery. His expensive suit—a cheap rag. His whole life, his achievements, his confidence—all shriveled to the size of a speck of dust.
He remembered her strange habits: how she never asked for money, how indifferently she looked at the windows of expensive stores, how once, listening to his boasting about a profitable deal, she asked a single question that uncovered an error in his calculations costing him a bonus.
Back then he dismissed it as a coincidence.
Mark lifted his eyes from the phone. He looked at the woman with whom he had lived for a year. The woman he methodically humiliated every day, reveling in his power and importance.
“Why?” he whispered. It was the only question he could squeeze out.
“I wanted to see what would happen if I had nothing. Except myself,” she answered simply. “I wanted to know what I am worth. And what the one beside me is worth.”
He slowly sank onto the sofa. The phone fell from his weakened fingers. He looked at her and for the first time in a year truly saw her. Not his “poor talentless nobody,” but someone else. Someone frighteningly big and real.
And he saw himself through her eyes for the first time. And that sight was unbearable.
Mark sat on the sofa, unable to move. His world, so clear and orderly, where he was the king and she his submissive subject, collapsed in an instant.
He stared at her face as if trying to see behind the mask of calm a hint of a game, a farce, a cruel joke. But there was nothing. Only silence, only truth laid out before him like an icy plain. No hint of mockery, no shadow of sarcasm. Only pure, unvarnished truth.
“Anya…” he began, and his voice sounded pitiful, like the moan of the dying. “I… I didn’t know. I thought…”
“You didn’t think, Mark,” she interrupted softly but with unwavering certainty. “You just enjoyed the power. You loved the feeling that you are the one who gives. Who saves. Who decides. It flattered your ego. You felt like a hero, though in reality, you were just a spectator sitting in the front row, applauding yourself.”
She went to the window and, pulling the thin curtain off the hook, flung it open. Night air burst in—fresh, filled with moisture and city light. The city lights reflected in the glass, and in that shimmering light Anya looked like someone else’s dream.
“This year was an experiment,” she said without turning. “I wanted to understand if a person can love not status, not money, not opportunities, but just… a person. Their essence. Their talent, even if it doesn’t bring millions yet. Even if it doesn’t shine, ring, or sparkle.”
Mark slowly rose from the sofa. His legs trembled as if he was standing on the ground for the first time after a long swim on deceptive waves. He took a step toward her, then another—and suddenly, as if struck down, he collapsed to his knees. Not theatrically, not with pathos, but simply from helplessness. From the weight that had fallen upon him. He grasped her legs, burying his face in the fabric of her simple home dress, as if trying to find comfort in her warmth, which he himself had destroyed.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, and his shoulders shook with silent sobs. “Anya, forgive me. I was such an idiot. Such a blind bastard. I will fix everything, do you hear? I will prove to you… I will change everything. I will be different. I will become worthy of you.”
She did not push him away. She just placed her hand on his head—light, almost weightless, like a farewell. Like a touch through time.
“There’s nothing to fix anymore, Mark. The experiment is over.”
He raised his tear-streaked face to her. His eyes swam with horror and desperate hope, like a person standing on the edge of an abyss still believing they will be held back.
“What do you mean ‘over’? We… we can start over! Now everything will be different!”
“Different?” she smiled sadly, and there was not a trace of malice in that smile. Only fatigue. And understanding. “You think? I think you’ll just change tactics. Become the most caring, the most understanding. You’ll admire every one of my paintings. But I will know that you admire not me, but the state of my bank account. I’ve been through this before.”
She carefully freed herself from his embrace and stepped back. Her voice became firmer but not colder—more like a sentence she had long passed on herself.
“By the way, this apartment is mine. Not inherited from grandma, as I told you. Like the car you drive to your ‘important’ job. It was my gift. My driver will pick you up in an hour. He’ll take you to your old apartment. You can collect your things tomorrow. My assistants will pack everything.”
Each of her words was a nail driven into the lid of his coffin. He sat on the floor, looking up at her like a beaten dog, unable to utter a word.
“A year, Mark. I gave you a whole year to see me. Not my money, not my background, but me. But you preferred to see a poor talentless nobody. Well, that’s your choice. And my choice is to live on. Without you.”
Anya took a small bag from the armchair that he had never noticed before. It was packed in advance. As if she knew this evening would come. She approached the door, glanced back for a moment.
“Goodbye, Mark. And thank you for the lesson. Now I know exactly what I am worth. And what your words are worth.”
The door closed behind her quietly, almost silently. And he remained kneeling in the middle of the huge living room, which suddenly became alien. Cold. Unreal.
He was alone. In a deafening emptiness that neither his ambitions nor his trampled pride could fill. He lost. Not money. Not status. He lost himself.
Three years passed.
Three long, hard years during which Mark changed three jobs, two social circles, and gained one understanding of himself. He was no longer a successful manager at a large company. He lost not only access to Anya’s resources but also the inner core he thought kept him afloat.
Now he worked as a senior consultant in a small real estate agency. Wore cheaper suits, rode the subway, and lived in the very apartment he once proudly left to move in with Anya.
Every evening, coming home, he saw the ghost of his lost life. He could not get rid of thoughts of her. Of her eyes. Of her voice. Of her painting he once called “smudge.”
That evening, as usual, he was scrolling through news on his phone, standing in a crowded subway car. His finger paused on a familiar face. It was Anya. She was smiling from the screen, standing in front of a huge, bright canvas. The headline read: “Anna Volkova. Solo: first personal exhibition at the ‘New Look’ gallery.”
Something inside him trembled. He got off at his station and, instead of turning home, walked in the opposite direction.
The gallery was only a couple of blocks away. He didn’t know why he was going there. Maybe he wanted to make sure it was real. Or maybe he just wanted to hurt himself again.
He entered. The spacious hall was flooded with light and filled with people. They moved from painting to painting, whispered quietly, drank champagne. Mark felt like a stranger at this celebration of life.
He took off his inexpensive coat and moved along the wall.
The paintings were incredible. Bold, deep, full of color and emotion. This was not “smudge to cover a hole in the wallpaper.” This was real art. He saw in these canvases everything he hadn’t noticed in her: her strength, her vulnerability, her irony, her soul.
Then he saw her herself.
Anya stood in the center of the hall, in a simple but elegant black dress. She did not look like an heir to millions. She looked like an artist. She was animatedly discussing something with a gray-haired man, laughing, and that laughter was so light and free. Next to her stood another man, who looked at her with undisguised admiration. He was not sycophantic or trying to impress. He was simply there. And in his presence, she seemed even more whole.
Mark froze behind a column, watching her. Suddenly he realized his experiment had failed from the start.
He thought he was testing her. But in reality, she was testing him. She had given him a unique chance—to see a treasure without knowing its price. To love a woman, not her wealth.
He was so close. He held the key to everything one could dream of. But his petty, vain soul did not let him see anything but the opportunity to assert himself at another’s expense.
Anya happened to turn her head his way. Their eyes met for a split second. There was no hatred or contempt in her eyes. Only a fleeting recognition, like seeing a long-forgotten classmate. She slightly nodded—a polite gesture toward a stranger—and turned back to her guests.
For her, he was already the past. A closed chapter. And for him, she would forever remain the future he himself had stolen from himself.
Mark silently turned and left the gallery into the street. A cold wind hit his face. He raised his coat collar and trudged toward home, realizing with brutal clarity one simple thing:
He didn’t just lose a wealthy woman.
He lost the only woman who gave him a chance to become better.
And he blew that chance.