Maybe we should just hand her your bank card too?”
Kira threw the bank envelope onto the table, the one she had just picked up from the little stand in the hallway.
Denis froze in the kitchen doorway, tugging off his scarf. Outside, November rain drummed on the window ledge; the apartment smelled of braised cabbage and fresh bread. Two plates of dinner steamed on the table, next to sliced tomatoes and a clay bowl of sour cream. A cozy evening had turned into a minefield.
“It’s from Bystrodengi,” Kira jabbed her finger at the logo of the microfinance company. “Forty thousand. For Lena again?”
“Kir, let’s just eat in peace…”
“In peace?” She pushed her plate away. “We’ve been cutting costs on everything for two months. I buy chicken instead of beef, I walk instead of taking a taxi. And you…”
Denis silently hung up his jacket and sat at the table. His fork clinked against the plate.
“She’s having trouble with rent.”
“She’s always having trouble.”
Kira looked at her husband and felt that familiar wave of helpless frustration rising inside. Their dream of a new apartment was melting away with every transfer to his sister.
The morning after that fight turned out gray and dull. Kira woke up at five — she had to be at the bakery before opening. Denis was asleep, turned toward the wall; the blanket lay bunched up between them, a symbolic boundary after last night’s conversation.
In the kitchen she switched on the coffee maker on autopilot and took out yesterday’s bread. Her eyes fell on a magnet on the fridge — a photo from their wedding three years ago. Young, tanned, laughing against the backdrop of the sea. Back then they had just moved to this small seaside town, full of plans. Kira dreamed of owning her own bakery, Denis had found a remote programming job with a Moscow company. It seemed like everything was working out perfectly.
“Can’t sleep?” Denis appeared in the doorway, rumpled, in an old T-shirt.
“Work won’t wait.”
She poured him some coffee and sat down opposite. Outside, dawn was just breaking; the garbage truck growled in the yard.
“Kir, about yesterday…”
“Denis, how much did we save over the past year?”
He was silent for a moment, stirring his sugar.
“About a hundred and fifty thousand.”
“One hundred and twenty. I checked yesterday. It should’ve been three hundred. Where did the rest go?”
“Well, there were expenses…”
“Lena is not ‘expenses’. She’s a black hole.”
Denis winced. The story with his sister had been dragging on since the death of their parents two years earlier. A car crash, the hospital, the funeral — everything had happened in the space of one terrible week. Lena was twenty-eight then, but she sobbed like a child, clinging to her brother. “You’re all I have now,” she kept repeating.
“She tried to get on her feet,” Denis protested. “She worked in a salon, then in a shop…”
“Then in a café, then at a call center,” Kira continued. “And everywhere ‘it didn’t work out’. But she did manage to rent an apartment in the city center with our help, when she could easily live somewhere cheaper. She did manage to pay for cosmetology courses for eighty thousand — which she quit after the third class.”
“She promised to pay it back.”
“She’s promised ten times already. And you still believe her.”
Kira stood up and started getting ready. Keys, phone, order notebook flew into her bag.
“You know what hurts the most?” She stopped at the door. “Not the money. It’s that you make decisions about our finances on your own. As if I don’t exist here at all.”
The door slammed. Denis stayed sitting in the kitchen with his cooling coffee. Yesterday’s envelope from Bystrodengi lay on the table. Forty thousand — a third of their monthly savings. And Lena hadn’t even said thank you, she had just messaged: ‘Got it, but it’s not enough. I still need money for the deposit on a new apartment.’
In mid-December, Kira ran into her friend Marina at the mall. Marina worked as an administrator at a beauty salon and invited her in for a cup of coffee.
“We’ve got a new brow artist,” Marina chattered as they walked down the shiny corridor. “She’s really talented, clients are crazy about her. That’s her, by the way.”
Kira stopped. Behind the salon’s glass door, sitting in a chair by the mirror, was Lena. She was animatedly telling something to a client, waving her perfectly manicured hands.
“…my brother and his wife help me, of course,” her voice drifted out. “Where would I be without them? Denis is a gem, he always comes through. And Kira… well, she puts up with it. She understands family comes first.”
“You’re lucky to have a brother like that,” the client remarked.
“Oh yes. Though sometimes I have to remind him of his family duty. He’s the older one, he has to take care of me.”
Kira turned around and walked away, ignoring Marina’s surprised questions.
At home she opened her banking app and methodically went through every transaction for the past six months. Transfers to Lena, cash withdrawals on the days she visited, online purchases delivered to her address. Three hundred and twenty thousand rubles.
Three hundred and twenty thousand of their joint money had gone to makeup courses Lena quit after a month. To rent for a two-room flat in a good neighborhood. To the latest iPhone. To a trip to Sochi to “fix her nerves”.
Kira sat in front of her laptop screen and felt something snap inside. Not from anger at Lena — Lena was practically a stranger taking advantage of the situation. It was her trust in Denis that was breaking. In the man she planned to spend her life with, who hid expenses from her, lied about sums, and chose his sister over and over again.
Three days after the visit to the salon, Kira came home early — the oven at the bakery had broken down, and they’d had to close after lunch. Still on the staircase she heard her sister-in-law’s familiar voice.
Kira quietly turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. In the living room, Lena was sprawled on their couch in a new dress, with professionally styled hair. On the coffee table were their best cups and a little vase with cookies from Kira’s kitchen stash.
“…just two hundred thousand for the down payment on a new car,” Lena was saying, stirring her coffee. “I need a car to get to work! You know I’m a brow artist now, my clients are waiting for me all over the city.”
Denis sat in the armchair opposite, hunched over his laptop.
“Len, but you work at a salon downtown…”
“And I do home visits too! Rich clients want services at home. Without a car I’ll lose half my income. Or do you want your sister to ride the bus with the masses?”
Kira walked into the room. Lena didn’t even turn her head.
“Denis, we need to talk,” Kira said evenly.
“Don’t start a scene,” Lena rolled her eyes. “This is a family matter.”
“Exactly. And family is me and Denis — not you and his bank card.”
Silence fell. Lena slowly turned to her brother.
“Are you hearing this?”
“Lena, leave,” Denis closed the laptop.
“What?”
“Leave. Now.”
His sister jumped up and grabbed her bag.
“You’re just whipped! Mom was right about you!”
The door slammed so hard the windows rattled. Denis sat staring into space, as if only now realizing what his relationship with his sister had turned into.
Denis spent the night in the kitchen with his laptop. He reread his messages with Lena over the past two years, and with each one his face grew darker.
“Denis, I urgently need money or they’ll evict me.”
“You’re obligated to help, I’m your sister.”
“Mom would be so disappointed to see how indifferent you are.”
“If you don’t transfer the money today, you can forget you even have a sister.”
Manipulation, threats, emotional blackmail. How had he not seen it before? How had he let himself be used like that?
Toward morning he found Kira in the bedroom. She wasn’t asleep, just sitting by the window with a cup of cold tea.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been an idiot.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
“That you hid the expenses from me. Lied about the sums. Chose her over us.”
“I’ll fix it. No more transfers to Lena, I promise.”
Kira shook her head.
“Denis, it’s not about the money. You didn’t even see the problem until I shoved your nose into it. You haven’t heard me all these months. How are we supposed to build a family if you don’t think you need to make decisions together with me?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I need time. To think. To be on my own.”
Kira moved in with a friend a week later. There was no drama — she just packed her things and left. Denis didn’t try to stop her. He understood he had no right.
The first month was the hardest. Lena called ten times a day — threatening, crying, promising to “pay everything back”. Denis blocked her number. When she showed up at his office with another hysterical scene, he called security.
“You’re not my brother anymore!” she screamed.
“I am your brother,” he replied calmly. “But I’m not your ATM anymore.”
Kira threw herself into work. The bakery demanded all her attention — new spring menu, looking for a second pastry chef, equipment repairs. She didn’t pine; instead she felt a strange relief. As if she’d finally shrugged off a heavy backpack after a very long hike.
Denis started seeing a therapist. At the third session he broke down in tears as he talked about how, after their parents died, he felt obligated to replace them for Lena. How he was afraid he’d lose his sister too if he stopped helping. How he hadn’t noticed that help had turned into enabling.
“You are not responsible for the life of your adult sister,” the therapist told him. “Only for your own.”
In April, when spring had finally taken full hold, Kira opened a second bakery. Small, but in an excellent location — right next to a business center. Morning coffee and croissants sold out in an hour.
She stood behind the counter, checking next week’s deliveries on her tablet, when the little bell over the door jingled.
“Good afternoon,” a familiar voice made her look up.
Denis looked different. Not on the outside — same jeans, same jacket. But he carried himself straighter, more self-assured. There was no constant fatigue or guilt in his eyes anymore.
“Hi,” Kira put the tablet aside. “Coffee?”
“And a croissant, if I may.”
She poured an Americano — he’d always drunk that — and slipped a warm croissant into a bag.
“How are you?” Denis asked as he paid.
“Good. Lots of work, but it’s the good kind of tired. You?”
“Also good. I moved to a new company, closer to home. And… I’m still in therapy.”
“That’s good.”
“Kira, I’m not asking you to come back. I just want you to know — I understand now. I understand what I did. And I’m working on it.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Lena came by a month ago. To the first bakery. Complained that you ‘abandoned her in a difficult moment’. I gave her a coffee and told her you were doing the right thing.”
Denis chuckled.
“She doesn’t call me anymore.”
“That’s good, Denis. Really.”
He took the bag, hesitated for a moment.
“Maybe we could grab a coffee sometime? Just coffee, no strings attached.”
“Maybe,” Kira smiled. “Sometime.”
He nodded and left. Kira watched him walk down the spring street — back straight, step steady. A man who had finally shrugged off the weight of someone else’s debts.
She went back to her tablet. Ahead lay a long day full of work and plans. Life went on — without debts, without guilt, without obligations no one had agreed to take on. An honest life of honest people who know how to take responsibility for their own choices