— What’s wrong with your face?
Roman tossed his keys onto the hallway table and walked into the kitchen. Sveta was sitting at the table, resting her head on her hand, staring at a single spot. An untouched cup of cold tea stood before her. She wasn’t crying, no. Her face looked like a mask — frozen, pale, with dark circles under her eyes, as if all her energy had been drained at once. It was worse than tears. It was like a scorched field after a fire.
— Nothing. Just tired, — her voice was even, almost mechanical, stripped of any intonation.
Roman recognized that tone. It appeared when something truly awful had happened, and she was trying to hide it, to process it alone so as not to burden him. He came up behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders and gently squeezed. Her shoulders were tense as stone.
— Sveta, I can see that something’s wrong. Tell me.
She was silent for a minute, gathering strength. Then she slowly raised her eyes to him. There was no resentment or weakness in them, only cold, utterly drained anger.
— Your mother called.
Roman straightened. The muscles in his back tensed under his shirt. He didn’t ask any unnecessary questions. He just waited.
— She demands that we pay her back. Fifty thousand. Said it’s our debt for the wedding.
Thick confusion hung in the kitchen. Roman frowned, trying to catch logic that wasn’t there. He walked around the table and sat opposite his wife, looking into her eyes as if trying to find an unspoken answer.
— What debt? She didn’t lift a finger to help. All she did was criticize the color of the napkins and your choice of dress. She even deliberately refused the gift.
— That’s her reason, — Sveta gave a crooked smile, and that smile looked terrible on her face. — She said she spent too many nerves on us. And this is moral compensation. For having to endure “that flighty girl,” meaning me.
Roman’s face flushed. He abruptly stood, grabbed his phone from the table, and without a word dialed his mother’s number. Sveta didn’t even try to stop him. She just watched as his fingers pressed hard into the smartphone’s body, veins bulging on his temples.
— Hello! — came a cheerful, self-satisfied voice of Klavdiya Petrovna on the line, full of life energy she had obviously just replenished at his wife’s expense.
— Mom, what’s going on? — he began without greeting, his voice low and choked with anger. — What debt?
— Oh, it’s you, son! — there was not a hint of embarrassment in his mother’s voice. — Finally your precious one condescended to tell you. I thought she’d quietly run to her girlfriends to borrow money so you wouldn’t find out. The debt is the usual one. For my suffering.
Roman shook his head in disbelief at what he was hearing. It was like a bad play in the theater of the absurd.
— Mom, why do you think we owe you anything for our wedding? You didn’t put in a single kopek!
— Actually, dear…
— You only criticized everything we did!
— Exactly! — hissed Klavdiya Petrovna on the phone, and her voice instantly turned from self-satisfied to venomous. — I looked at all that circus of yours, at your fancy little lady, and my heart bled! I didn’t sleep nights, thinking what a mistake you were making! It was torture! And for torture you must be paid! Fifty thousand is still merciful for my gray hairs!
He listened to this stream of nonsense, and the rage inside him shifted to icy calm. He glanced at his wife. She looked at him, and in her eyes he read silent support. Arguing was useless. Action was needed.
— Understood, — he said coldly, cutting off his mother’s next tirade. — So, compensation. Got it. Don’t call here anymore. Ever. I will contact you myself.
And he hung up without waiting for a reply.
They didn’t discuss the call. Roman saw that Sveta tried to behave normally, but her movements had become sharp, and her smile didn’t reach her eyes. They both understood this was not the end. It was only the first attack, a probe. Roman’s silence was met not by another call but by a personal intrusion.
On Saturday morning, while they drank coffee in the living room enjoying a rare day off, the lock in the front door clicked twice. Roman and Sveta froze, exchanging a look. They had no one who could open their door so confidently except her.
At the living room doorway stood Klavdiya Petrovna. She was fully dressed: a strict suit, impeccable hairstyle, and a thin layer of makeup resembling war paint. She didn’t look angry or hurt. On the contrary, her face radiated cold, inspecting calm. She slowly scanned the room with a assessing look, lingering on a stack of books on the coffee table and the half-finished coffee cups.
— I thought at least it would be tidy here, — she said evenly, as if commenting on the weather. It wasn’t a question or reproach, just a statement of fact worse than any criticism.
Roman slowly put his cup on the table. The sound of porcelain touching wood rang unnaturally loud in the morning silence.
— What are you doing here? — he asked, with not a trace of sonly warmth in his voice.
— I came to see how my son lives, — Klavdiya Petrovna stepped into the room, her heels tapping the laminate floor. She completely ignored Sveta, as if she were a piece of furniture. — And at the same time, to look into the eyes of the woman who is turning him against his own mother.
Only now did she turn her head to Sveta. Her look was heavy, like a press.
— I was waiting for your call, dear. I thought you might have a shred of conscience. But you apparently decided you caught a golden fish and now you can do anything. Thought you could hide behind Roman’s broad back, and the problem would go away?
Sveta straightened on the sofa. The mask of tiredness fell from her face, giving way to focused, harsh anger.
— We don’t owe you anything, Klavdiya Petrovna. Not a kopek.
— Don’t owe? — the mother-in-law feigned slight surprise, raising her perfectly shaped eyebrow. — You live in the apartment I helped him choose. You drive the car I gave money for. Do you think all this fell from the sky? No. My son gave you all this. And when I see how he spends his life and resources on… you, I have every right to demand compensation for moral damage.
She said this so matter-of-factly and confidently that for a moment her words carried the weight of a twisted, monstrous logic.
Roman stood up from his chair. He didn’t yell. He just stood between his mother and wife, physically blocking Sveta from her gaze.
— Enough. You didn’t come to see how I live. You came to continue your circus. If you need money so much, I’ll give it to you. Right now. But after that, you disappear from our lives.
— I don’t want your money! — for the first time, shrill notes crept into her voice. — I want her to pay! Out of her own pocket! So she understands that in life you have to pay for everything! Especially for taking the only son away from a mother!
Roman looked at her for a long time, studying her as if seeing her for the first time. And at that moment he understood that arguing with her, appealing to logic or conscience, was like trying to put out fire with gasoline. She didn’t hear words. She understood only power.
— The key, — he said quietly and clearly.
Klavdiya Petrovna didn’t understand.
— What do you mean “key”?
— The key to our apartment. Put it on the table. And leave.
— The key?
Klavdiya Petrovna let out a short, dry chuckle. It wasn’t a laugh of joy, but a sound of contempt, honed by years of practice. She slowly pulled out a bunch of keys from her purse, singled out one shiny, almost new key, and swung it in the air like a hypnotist’s pendulum.
— This key? The very one you gave me at the housewarming so that you’d know your mother always has a chance to come and help if something happens to you? You’re asking me to take away this symbol of my care? Roma, listen to yourself. Do you even realize how this sounds from the outside? These aren’t your words. She put them in your mouth.
Her gaze flicked to Sveta, and in it was a full palette of feelings — from superiority to outright hatred. She looked at her daughter-in-law like a virus infecting her son’s healthy body.
Roman didn’t move. He didn’t justify or argue about symbols. His face was calm and unreadable, and that calm frightened Klavdiya Petrovna far more than any scream.
— I didn’t ask for it. I told you to put it on the table. This is no longer your home. And you have no reason to come here.
— Oh, is that so! — she stepped forward, closing the distance, invading his personal space. — So now you decide where my home is and where it’s not? And who, may I ask, gave the first installment on your fortress here? Who persuaded my old friend to give you a mortgage at a favorable rate? Who gave you the car you drive that… person around on? You think all this appeared thanks to your pretty eyes?
She said this quietly, but every word was aimed to humiliate, to remind him of his dependence, his supposed incompetence. This was her main trump card — maternal help that was actually a debt pit disguised as love.
Sveta, who had been silent on the sofa all this time, now stood up. She didn’t approach them, but simply straightened to her full height, her silent presence growing heavier. She looked not at her mother-in-law but at Roman, and in her eyes there was no plea for protection. There was confidence.
That look, that quiet partnership finally switched something in Roman. He looked at his mother as if weighing her words on invisible scales and finding them empty.
— The car, — he repeated slowly, grasping her word. — You’re right. You gave me the car.
Triumph sounded in Klavdiya Petrovna’s voice. She decided she had broken through his armor, that he remembered the “debt.”
— Finally! At least a drop of gratitude!
— Yes. Gratitude, — Roman nodded. A cold, barely noticeable smile touched his lips. — So here’s the deal. You have twenty-four hours to forget about your financial claims. If during that time you or anyone on your behalf contacts Sveta again demanding money, I will do a very simple thing. I will sell the car. The very one you gave me. And I will give all the money, down to the last kopek, to Sveta. As compensation for her nerves. Do you understand me?
The living room became absolutely silent. Klavdiya Petrovna froze with the key in her hand. Her carefully constructed world, where she was the benefactor and her son the eternal debtor, collapsed in an instant. He didn’t just reject her help. He took her main gift, her main lever of pressure, and turned it into a weapon against her. He used her own disgusting logic but aimed it exactly at the target. The mask of decency cracked, revealing an expression of pure, unclouded rage. Her son had just declared war on her on her own terms. And she realized she was losing.
Klavdiya Petrovna’s expression shifted from rage to something else. She froze for a moment, her mind apparently working at full speed to process this new, unthinkable situation. Her son’s ultimatum wasn’t just audacity — it was a violation of all the rules she had lived by for decades. Then her lips slowly stretched into a smile. It was a creepy, unnatural smile, full not of joy but of poisonous understanding. She had lost the battle and was now preparing to burn the entire battlefield.
— Do you really think this is about some fifty thousand? — her voice became quiet, almost coaxing, making it even more sinister. She slowly lowered her hand with the key. — Roma, my dear, naive boy. You still don’t get it. I just wanted to give her a chance. A chance to act humanly.
She paused, enjoying the effect her words had on Roman and Sveta. She no longer looked at her son. All her attention was fixed on her daughter-in-law, who stood pale as a sheet, instinctively feeling that the main blow was coming.
— Do you think she’s with you out of great and pure love? — Klavdiya Petrovna continued, addressing Roman but not taking her eyes off Sveta. — That girl, your Sveta, came to me a month before your wedding. Alone. Without you. She sat in my kitchen, drank my tea, and told me what a wonderful man you are, but a bit… impractical. And offered me a deal.
Roman was silent. The air in the room thickened; you could cut it with a knife.
— A deal, — repeated Klavdiya Petrovna, savoring the word. — She said if I provide her with regular financial support, she would make sure you don’t waste money on nonsense. That she would keep you on the “right track.” She knows how to control you — those were her exact words. She just wanted to sell me a leash for my own son. And when I refused her, throwing her out of my house, she arranged this cheap wedding at your expense to quickly get you under her control. So those fifty thousand, Roma, aren’t my debt. They’re her penalty.
She finished and straightened triumphantly. The lie was monstrous but meticulously crafted. It explained everything: her sudden hostility and the absurd demand for money. It was her last, strongest poison injected straight into the heart of their relationship.
Roman didn’t move. He slowly shifted his gaze from his mother to his wife. He saw her face — shock mixed with disgust at what she had heard. There was no guilt in her eyes, only pain from being dragged through this filth. He looked at her for a second, two, three. Then turned back to his mother. There was no doubt or anger in his eyes. Only cold, final emptiness.
— I understand, — he said quietly.
He stepped forward, reached out, and simply took the key from her fingers. Klavdiya Petrovna was so stunned by his calmness that she didn’t resist. She expected yelling, quarrels, tears — anything but this icy, businesslike tone.
— Let’s go.
He didn’t take her arm or push her. He just turned and walked toward the exit, knowing she would follow him as if hypnotized. He opened the front door and waited until she stepped onto the stairwell. He didn’t look at her. His gaze was fixed on the neighboring apartment number.
Then he silently closed the door right in front of her face, turned the lock, and without moving from the door, took out his phone. Sveta heard him pressing buttons.
— Hello, is this the lock replacement service? Hello. I urgently need to change the cylinder in the front door. Yes, right now. Take the address…