“I won’t give you any money.”
Larisa’s voice was surprisingly calm, and that emptiness in her own tone scared her even more than the dull eyes staring back at her.
She looked at her eldest son, Oleg, and could see nothing of the boy whose runny nose she once wiped and to whom she read bedtime stories.
In front of her stood a stranger—a bitter, angry man reeking of stale alcohol and cheap cigarettes.
“I need it,” he hissed, leaning over her, filling the entire cramped kitchen with his presence. “This isn’t up for discussion. You’re just going to give it to me.”
“I don’t have that kind of money, Oleg. I gave you almost my entire salary last month. What am I supposed to live on? How do I buy food for Dima?”
He curled his lips in a sneer.
“Oh, she worries about Dima. And who’s going to worry about me? That’s your problem. You should’ve done better in life instead of sitting in your office for pennies. I’m your son, you owe me.”
Owe. That word had been sticking out of their relationship like a rusty nail for the last ten years.
Ever since he dropped out of college because it was “for system slaves.”
Ever since his first “brilliant business idea” collapsed, dragging down with it her modest savings that she had set aside for home repairs.
“I don’t owe you anything,” Larisa said quietly but clearly. “I raised you, fed you, gave you an education—which you quit yourself.”
She stared painfully at his features, trying to understand where she had gone wrong. At what point did this child who once brought her little bouquets of dandelions turn into… this?
She had raised both him and Dima the same way. Fed them from the same spoon, read the same books, scolded them equally for bad grades. But Dima grew up differently. Entirely differently.
“Don’t lecture me!” Oleg shrieked, his face contorting. “The money. Now. Hurry up.”
He stepped toward her. Larisa backed away until her back hit the cold wall of the narrow kitchen hallway. Her heart pounded up in her throat.
“Leave, Oleg.”
“I’m not leaving without the money!”
He reached out his hand—not to take, but to grab. His fingers dug into her forearm, squeezing so hard her vision darkened. The pain was sharp and humiliating. It was an act of violence.
And at that very moment she understood. Not with her mind, but with her entire being. She understood that this was the end. The end of her old life, where she was a mother who forgives everything.
Just then, a key turned in the lock. The door opened, and Dima froze on the threshold. He didn’t say a word.
He simply took off his backpack, placed it on the floor, and looked at his brother’s hand still gripping their mother’s shoulder.
Dima’s gaze was calm, but that very calmness made Oleg uneasy. Reflexively, he released his fingers.
“What are you doing here?” he barked angrily at his younger brother.
“I live here,” Dima replied just as calmly. “And you, it seems, are leaving.”
He stepped forward, positioning himself between Oleg and Larisa. On his mother’s arm, a large, ugly bruise was slowly forming.
And looking at that mark, Larisa finally understood: there was no way back to her old life anymore.
“What, playing the hero now?” Oleg tried to peek over Dima’s shoulder, appealing again to their mother. “Mom, are you going to let him talk to me like that? I’m your eldest son!”
He was trying to play the same old card, to make himself the victim. It had worked before. But now Larisa was silent, staring at the bruise on her arm.
“Oleg, just go,” she repeated, her voice filled only with a dull weariness.
“Oh, I see how it is!” he burst out. “Your favorite shows up and that’s it? All your life he got the best of everything while I was just an afterthought? He got tutors, a new computer, and all I got were your lectures!”
It was a blatant lie. She looked at his face, twisted with spite, and felt nothing but emptiness.
As if everything inside her responsible for motherly love toward him had been burned out.
“Leave,” Dima said. His voice carried no threat, only a cold statement of fact. “Touch her again, and our next conversation will be very different. And not here.”
Oleg shot his brother a contemptuous look but retreated toward the door.
“You’ll regret this, Mom,” he threw over his shoulder. “You’ll come crawling back when your precious favorite abandons you!”
The door slammed. Larisa slowly slid down the wall to the floor. Dima crouched next to her, gently taking her arm.
“Does it hurt?”
She shook her head. It wasn’t her shoulder that hurt. Her whole life hurt.
“Dima, where did I go wrong?”
“You didn’t, Mom,” he replied softly, pulling a bag of frozen vegetables from the freezer and pressing it to her arm. “Some people are just like that. Blood doesn’t change it.”
The next day Oleg attacked in a different way. Messages full of venom and manipulation:
“I got into debt because of you. If anything happens to me, it’ll be on your conscience.”
Larisa almost gave in, but Dima silently took her phone and blocked his brother’s number.
A day later, her boss called.
“Larisa Petrovna, what is going on with you?” Her voice was icy. “I just got a call from your son—Oleg, I think? He was screaming that you robbed him, that you’ve lost your mind. I had to hang up. Do you realize this undermines our firm’s reputation?”
Larisa listened, her face burning with shame. He wasn’t just trying to break her. He was trying to destroy her life—her last source of stability.
She stammered apologies and hung up. She understood she could no longer just defend herself. Hiding wouldn’t work.
The first thing she did was change the locks. Dima found a locksmith who replaced them in an hour. The old mechanism clattered into the trash. That was the first step.
The counterattack came two days later: a persistent doorbell. Through the peephole—Oleg, and next to him an unfamiliar man in a cheap suit. Oleg looked self-assured.
“Mom, open up!” he yelled. “I know you’re in there! This is child protective services—they’ve come to check on you!”
Larisa understood. He wasn’t just trying to paint her as insane.
He brought some buddy of his to stage a show, to pressure and humiliate her.
Inside, there was no fear. Years of motherly forgiveness had burned to ashes the moment he raised his hand against her.
Now she felt only cold clarity. She looked at him through the tiny peephole and saw not a son, but an enemy.
She stepped away from the door and picked up the phone. Her hands didn’t shake. She found in her old address book a number she had hoped never to dial again.
“Hello?” a wary male voice answered.
“Vadim? This is Larisa Petrovna. Oleg’s mother.”
There was a pause on the other end.
“I know you. Did something happen?”
“Something did,” Larisa said evenly. “Do you remember three years ago you wanted to file fraud charges against Oleg? When he pulled that computer scam and framed you?”
The voice on the line tensed.
“Why are you bringing this up?”
“Back then, I paid you. Two hundred thousand. Everything I had. So you’d withdraw your statement and forget the whole thing. I kept our correspondence. And the bank transfer with the note ‘repayment of Oleg’s debt.’”
She paused.
“My son Oleg is currently pounding on my door with some dressed-up friend, trying to prove I’ve lost my mind. So listen. If he doesn’t disappear from my life forever, all of that material will be on the investigator’s desk tomorrow. And I’m sure they’ll have questions for you too about extortion and complicity. Am I clear?”
There was heavy breathing in the receiver, then a hoarse whisper:
“Clear. I’ll handle it.”
Larisa hung up. She approached the door. Outside, Oleg was saying something excitedly to his companion, but then his phone rang.
He listened, and his face changed. Went pale. He muttered a brief phrase to his partner, and within a minute they were hurrying toward the elevator.
Larisa rested her forehead against the cold metal door. She had done it. She had used his own dirt against him. And for the first time in many years, she felt like she could breathe.
Six months passed. Oleg vanished. At first, Larisa lived in constant tension, but gradually the silence stopped ringing in her ears and turned into peace.
She no longer asked herself where she had gone wrong. The answer came on its own. She hadn’t gone wrong. She had simply raised two different people.
One—grateful and loving. The other—a bottomless pit. And none of that was her fault.
Life without Oleg turned out not to be empty, but full.
Dima, who had become even more attentive after that incident, graduated from university and got a good job. On weekends they walked in the park or went to the countryside.
One Saturday, Dima came home particularly cheerful.
“Mom, I’ve got an idea. Remember you always wanted a dacha?”
Larisa smiled faintly.
“I did. Once.”
“Well, not just once.” Dima handed her a tablet. On the screen was a photo of a small but very cozy little house. “It’s not far from the city. I took out a loan. We’ll go there on weekends. You’ll plant your peonies, and I’ll grill kebabs.”
Larisa looked from the photo to her son. Tears rolled down her cheeks on their own. But these were tears of quiet, overwhelming happiness.
That same evening, as they discussed which flowers she would plant under the windows, a message arrived on her phone from an unknown number:
“Mom, forgive me. Everything’s bad. I really need your help.”
Larisa looked at the message. Her fingers didn’t tremble. She felt neither pity nor anger. Nothing.
She showed the phone to Dima. He read it, frowned.
“What will you do?”
Larisa silently pressed “block number” and set the phone aside. She looked at her son, at the tablet with their future little house, at her calm new life.
“I’ll go put the kettle on,” she said. “And let’s figure out where the rose bed should go.”