The hall glittered with a blinding, unreal brilliance. Hundreds of dazzling lights from the huge crystal chandeliers, reflected in gilded frames and flutes of expensive champagne, struck right into the eyes, making everything that was happening feel unreal. Hundreds of eyes, like flashes of countless cameras, were fixed, unblinking, on the two of them standing in the very center of all this splendor.
Mark Svetlov, idol of the public, an actor with a dazzling, exhausted smile and a heaviness crushing his soul, stood at the altar, trying to breathe evenly.
Next to him—Lika.
Quiet, fragile, with huge eyes the color of a summer sky, in which, as it had always seemed to him, all the purity of the world was reflected. She was incredibly, almost painfully beautiful in her simple white dress without any extra embellishment, and that very simplicity made her a queen in this sea of ostentatious luxury.
He looked at her, and his heart tightened with a strange, mixed pain in which guilt and love had tangled into one tight, unbreakable knot.
That feeling had been haunting him mercilessly for the last three weeks. From the very moment when a drunken, pointless argument stopped being just an argument and turned into an obsessive, deafening idea—into an obsession.
Mark’s gaze darted over the rows of guests, unconsciously searching for that one person, that accomplice. He found him. Artyom. He was sitting in the third row, openly, brazenly smirking, not even trying to hide it, and demonstratively raised his glass as if making a toast.
The bet.
Stupid, drunken, disgusting bet. “Bet you, ‘great and inimitable actor’, that you can’t, in a month, make that ‘mute little bird’ from the shelter fall in love with you and drag her to the altar.”
Mark had done it. He had proved it.
And then… then something inside him turned over, broke, and changed forever.
He fell in love with her silence. In this world where everyone was constantly talking, lying, playing roles, her quiet was the only real, genuine thing. He fell in love with her clear, honest, piercing gaze that seemed to see right through him—not the actor, not the “golden boy,” but simply Mark. And the most surprising thing of all was that it did not judge him.
His family was seated in the front row. With the same proud, lofty air as if on a throne.
His mother, Anna Viktorovna. The very image of impeccable style, an ice queen of perfection. Her smile was worth a fortune and just as cold and fake. She was the “trustee,” the chief benefactor of that very shelter.
She looked at Lika with cold, detached approval. Like at a rare, expensive item successfully acquired, something that fit perfectly into the décor of their life. The ideal daughter-in-law. Beautiful. With a good, if tragic, backstory. And, most importantly, silent.
His father, Viktor Sergeyevich, sat beside her. An impeccably tailored expensive suit. An impeccably empty, expressionless face. A man-function, the living embodiment of a businesslike approach to everything, even family.
“Mark Viktorovich,” the loud, solemn voice of the registrar sounded, tearing him out of his heavy, viscous thoughts. “Do you agree to take Sofia Andreevna as your wife?”
Mark looked at Lika. She was looking straight at him, and in her gaze there was such an abyss of trust that he felt ashamed. His entire life—fake, glossy, disgusting—flashed before his eyes in a single instant.
And in that instant he saw another life with incredible clarity. The one that lived in her eyes. Simple, honest, quiet.
“Yes.”
Mark’s voice rang out firm and confident. He had made his choice. Finally. To hell with the bet. To hell with everything. He just wanted to be with this woman, to become the man she saw in him.
The registrar, an older woman, smiled at them approvingly.
“Sofia Andreevna…”
There was a pause. Deep. Ringing. All the guests, his family, Mark himself—they all froze, waiting for her usual meek, almost imperceptible nod.
But Lika did not nod.
She slowly, very slowly, as if overcoming some invisible resistance, turned her head away from Mark.
Her gaze, suddenly heavy and merciless, slid along the rows and then locked, like a blade, right onto Anna Viktorovna.
Mark saw the perfect, rehearsed smile on his mother’s face twitch. At first it simply froze, and then, like a thin crack across smooth morning ice, it began to slowly, inexorably slide away, revealing bewilderment and simmering rage.
What… what is happening? flashed through Mark’s mind.
Lika drew in a deep, noisy breath, filling her lungs with air.
And the entire glittering, utterly fake hall filled with her voice. Clear, strong, low—and thunderously unexpected.
“Before I say ‘yes’… I want everyone gathered here to know who Anna Viktorovna Svetlova really is.”
Mark froze. He stopped breathing, feeling a cold wave roll down his back.
His mother’s face was covered with ugly, blotchy red splotches.
“What is she babbling about?” hissed his father, yanking his wife by the elbow. “Call security. Now! Get her out of here!”
“I saw,” Lika went on, and her voice did not waver for a second. It was as firm and cutting as a diamond. “I saw everything with my own eyes.
“I saw how for years you systematically stole donations from the shelter. The very one where Mark and I met.”
Artyom in the third row choked on his champagne, and his coughing echoed loudly in the ringing silence.
The guests froze, turning into a row of motionless, shocked statues. The music and restrained laughter, so recently filling the space, disappeared, leaving behind absolute, ringing emptiness.
“You stole from children,” Lika took a step forward, letting go of Mark’s hand. Her movement was decisive. “You stole from those who couldn’t ask for help. You stole from me.”
Anna Viktorovna leapt to her feet. Her face twisted into a mask of pure, unfiltered fury. All her polish and perfection evaporated in an instant.
“How dare you, you vile little wretch!” she screeched, losing all self-control. “You… you’re insane! Deranged! Mark! Do something! Make her shut up!”
Lika looked at her calmly, almost detached.
“Deranged?”
She slowly raised her hand, in which, unnoticed by anyone until that moment, she’d been holding her small phone.
“And this handwriting, Anna Viktorovna—do you recognize it? This is a scan of an order in your own hand, transferring money from the charitable fund to your personal offshore account.”
She turned the bright screen toward the guests.
“Want me to put it up on the big screens right now? I have all the proof with me. Dozens of transfers. Invoices for your diamonds, for your vacations—all paid with money meant to fund surgeries for critically ill children.”
Now there was complete, absolute silence.
Viktor Sergeyevich turned whiter than chalk. He gripped his wife’s arm so hard she cried out from pain and surprise.
“We need to leave. Now. This instant.”
They didn’t just walk. They almost ran, rushed toward the exit, shoving stunned guests aside and noisily knocking over expensive chairs.
Like rats fleeing a sinking ship that had finally smelled its own doom.
Behind them, stumbling and jostling, a few more “close” relatives and “business partners” bolted after them.
The hall, full of people barely a minute ago, emptied noticeably in thirty seconds.
Lika watched them go, and at last her shoulders relaxed.
Then she slowly turned back to Mark. His face was as white as a sheet. He was in deep shock, his world crumbling before his eyes. But in his eyes, when he looked at her, there was no fear and no condemnation.
There was only stunned, boundless admiration—and a kind of bitter pride.
“Now you know the whole truth,” she said quietly, almost in a whisper. Her lips trembled noticeably, betraying the immense strain.
Mark looked at her. At her shining eyes, full of unshed tears and incredible iron strength.
Then he looked at the wide-open doors through which his “perfect,” fake family had just fled.
After that he firmly took her cold hand in his, feeling her thin fingers.
“Yes,” he said loudly and clearly, addressing the stunned, completely lost registrar. “I agree. I want to take this woman as my wife.”
He turned to Lika so he could see only her.
“I love you even more now, Sofia. More than I can say.”
The registrar, a pale, middle-aged woman, coughed nervously. She had seen a lot in her career, but nothing like this in her life.
“Uh… Based on the documents submitted… I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
Awkward, thin, hesitant applause rippled through the half-empty hall.
The remaining guests—those who were more shocked by what had happened than loyal to the Svetlov family—shifted from foot to foot, not knowing where to look. The music, timidly and uncertainly switched back on by the DJ, instantly died again under the weight of the oppressive tension.
Waiters stood frozen with full trays of champagne that no one wanted to drink anymore, as if it had turned to poison.
Mark didn’t notice anyone around them. He looked only at Lika, who seemed about to shatter into a million pieces from all she’d just endured. All the strength that had held her up until now had left together with his fleeing family.
Gently, almost reverently, he brushed his fingers against her pale cheek.
“Let’s get out of here. Right now.”
“Hold it, man. Don’t be in such a hurry.”
Artyom’s voice roughly sliced through the thick, heavy air. He was walking toward them, swaying slightly. He was dead drunk, and anger and resentment churned in his eyes.
“And the prize?” he smirked, staring at Mark with open challenge. “I lost, didn’t I? The bet was for a month, and you… you actually married her. A real marriage! You owe me.”
Lika tensed. She looked at Mark questioningly, pain in her eyes.
“What is he talking about?” Her voice was barely audible, and that old uncertainty had crept back into it.
Mark closed his eyes. The moment of ultimate, bitter reckoning had come. There was no point hiding anything.
“Artyom, leave. Now.”
“No way!” he nearly squealed. “You didn’t just make a fool out of me, you made fools of all of us! You really married her! And all because of a stupid bet!”
He jabbed a finger in Lika’s direction.
“Do you even… hic… do you even remember how you laughed when we were betting? ‘Make the mute little bird fall in love’? And look at her now—not so mute after all! And what a voice!”
Mark took a sharp step forward, completely shielding Lika with his body.
“Leave while you still can. That’s my last warning.”
“Or what?” Artyom backed away, frightened by the hard, changed look on his face. “Go to hell, both of you… Useless actor! And your con-artist wife!”
He waved a hand in their direction and, stumbling over a chair leg, staggered toward the exit, muttering incoherent curses under his breath.
Mark slowly, with difficulty, turned back to his wife.
“He told the truth. The whole truth.”
Her face was strangely calm. Too calm—like a smooth surface of water before a storm.
“It was a bet,” Mark looked her straight in the eyes, no longer able to lie or hide. “A stupid, drunken, disgusting bet. ‘Make the mute little bird fall in love.’ I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to say it.”
He expected anything. A slap. A scream. Bitter, accusing tears.
But Lika was looking at him with such deep, all-understanding, all-forgiving sorrow.
“I know, Mark,” she said softly, as if sharing a secret. “I heard everything that night.”
He choked in surprise, the air catching in his throat.
“What?”
“I was in the next room. At the shelter. That very evening. I heard every word you said. Every joke.”
Mark felt the floor finally disappear from under his feet, leaving emptiness in his soul.
“And you… you knew? From the very first day?”
“From the very first day,” she nodded quietly. “And now it’s time you heard my truth. All of it.”
She took a small step back, creating a distance between them.
“I’m not a ‘mute little bird.’ And I’m not an orphan, like everyone thinks.”
Her gaze turned hard, polished like steel.
“I’m a journalist. Sofia Andreevna Orlova. My specialty is big, complex investigations into corruption in charity foundations.”
Mark stared at her, speechless, feeling the last bastion of his old life crumble.
He—a actor playing at love because of a stupid bet.
She—a journalist, playing at being mute for the sake of a greater cause.
“Your mother…” she gave a bitter, soundless smile. “She thought I pretended to be silent because of some childhood trauma. That was very convenient for her. I became her shadow, her living mascot. ‘My poor, quiet little Lina.’”
“And you… this whole time…”
“Her silence was her main shield. And my greatest weapon.”
Lika had pretended to be silent because people say things they never would if they thought someone was listening. She would sit for hours in Anna Viktorovna’s office while the woman conducted her business calls. She saw all the documents, all the papers that were carelessly left lying around on the desk.
“I came to that shelter as a volunteer. My own real family foundation has been doing charity work for years. Real charity. And we’d long noticed that money from this shelter—run by your mother—kept disappearing. Constantly, for years. Enormous, truly colossal sums.”
She had spent months gathering evidence, piece by piece, risking everything.
“And then you appeared. With your idiotic, boyish bet.”
“You were playing me,” he whispered, finally grasping the full horror and brilliance of the situation.
“No more than you were playing me, Mark,” her voice suddenly softened, and he heard that familiar tenderness in it. “I was supposed to leave as soon as I had all the necessary proof. Publish the piece and just disappear from your life.”
“Why didn’t you leave then?” he asked, hope trembling in his voice.
“Because I fell in love with you. For real.”
She had watched him change day by day. How from a conceited, arrogant actor who just wanted some fun, he gradually turned into a man ready to do anything for her, a man who looked at her in a way no one ever had.
“You stopped acting, Mark. Your ‘bet’ ended for you after a week. And I… I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t believe in such a miracle.”
She had allowed him to “win” her heart.
And she had allowed him to propose, knowing the whole ugly backstory.
“I had to choose,” she whispered, and for the first time, genuine pain sounded in her voice. “My work, my mission. Or you. Your happiness.”
Mark looked at this incredible, strong woman. The woman who had just publicly destroyed his family, exposed his own lie—and confessed her love to him.
“And what did you choose in the end?” he asked just as quietly, afraid to scare the moment off.
“I chose to tell the truth. All of it. To you and to everyone.”
She stepped toward him, closing the distance.
“I couldn’t marry you knowing your whole life, your prosperity, was built on your mother’s theft and deceit. And I couldn’t marry you until you knew who I really am. Until we were completely honest with each other.”
They stood alone in the huge, ridiculous, almost empty hall, littered with wilting, expensive flowers.
“My family… they’ll destroy me for this,” Mark said hoarsely, his voice ragged.
“They’ll destroy themselves,” Lika replied firmly, without a hint of doubt. “And you…”
She took his hands in hers. Her palms were warm, alive, so real.
“You’re free now, Mark. Free of their lies. Free to choose for yourself.”
He looked into her bottomless eyes. And for the first time in his life he wasn’t acting. He wasn’t pretending. He wasn’t trying to seem better than he was.
“I… I don’t know who I am now. Without them. Without all this gloss, without this role.”
“You’ll find out,” she smiled, and all the tenderness in the world was in that smile. “We’ll find out together. Day by day.”
She bent down and picked up her discarded bridal bouquet from the floor.
“And now, my husband,” she tugged him resolutely toward the exit. “Our banquet has been suddenly canceled, it seems. Let’s go get some shawarma. I’m starving.”
They sat in a small, 24-hour roadside diner on the way out of the city, right by the highway.
Mark, in his immaculate, expensive tuxedo, and Lika in her luxurious white dress that cost as much as a good car.
In front of them, on a sticky plastic table, lay two huge shawarmas wrapped in paper.
Mark took a cautious bite. The taste of garlicky sauce, fatty meat and fresh vegetables was sharper, brighter, more real than any sophisticated delicacy from their canceled banquet.
“Sofia Orlova,” he said, chewing carefully. The adrenaline was slowly subsiding, giving way to a deafening, frightening and yet deeply desired reality.
“Yes,” she looked at him calmly, studying his reaction. She still hadn’t started eating.
“You do realize…” he searched for the right words, feeling how clumsy they sounded. “What you did… that was a real explosion. It’s going to change everything.”
“It was the truth, Mark. Nothing but the truth. There was no other way.”
“You could have told me. Before the wedding. We could have figured something out together…”
“We?” she raised her shining eyes to him. “What would you have done, Mark? Asked me to keep quiet? Tried to ‘settle’ everything quietly, as a family, with your mother?”
He was silent. Because she was absolutely right. He would have tried. He would have started persuading her, looking for a compromise.
“You would’ve become an unwitting accomplice,” she said gently yet inexorably. “In the end, you would have chosen them. And I… I didn’t want you to choose between me and them. I wanted you to see who they really are. For your choice to be conscious.”
“And what did I see?” he gave a bitter half-smile. “That my mother is a thief? That my father is a coward who ran first, leaving her behind? That my best friend is a jealous idiot? That my wife is a talented liar?”
He finally said that word. “Liar.”
Lika didn’t flinch, accepting the blow.
“And you?” she asked without reproach. “An actor who wagered a living, feeling person as if she were a thing?”
They looked at each other. Two liars. Two people whose story had begun with deceit.
“My bet was vile,” Mark said, pushing his half-eaten shawarma away. “I’m not going to look for excuses. I dove into it like a foolish, spoiled boy. And then…”
“And then what?” she nudged him.
“And then you just stayed silent. You watched me with those clear eyes. And in your silence, in your trust, for the first time in my life I saw myself. The real me. Without embellishment. And I wanted to be better, to become the man you saw in me.”
He shook his head sadly.
“I looked at you and thought: ‘This person is purer, better, more honest than anyone I know.’ Ironic, isn’t it? Now it sounds like a cruel joke.”
“I never lied to you about the most important thing, Mark.”
“And what’s the most important thing?” he asked, greedily catching her words.
“What I felt for you.” She leaned toward him across the table. “When you read me old poems in the park. When you told me how you really hate those endless fake receptions and social events. When, at night, thinking I was asleep, you admitted you were terrified of becoming as empty as your father.”
She knew him. Truly knew him.
Pretending to be mute, she had listened to him more attentively than anyone ever had.
“You heard all my most intimate thoughts,” he whispered, amazed.
“I heard you. Your real heart.”
Mark’s phone, lying on the table, suddenly vibrated, interrupting the fragile moment of closeness.
He turned it over. On the screen: “DAD.”
Mark declined the call with a firm motion.
The phone vibrated again, insistently. Once more: “DAD.”
He rejected the call again.
A third call. “ANNA VIKTOROVNA.”
He picked the phone up and simply switched it off, looking straight at Lika.
“This is only the beginning. They won’t give up.”
“I know,” she nodded, and in her eyes he saw not fear, but readiness to fight. “They’ll never forgive me for this blow. And they’ll never forgive you for staying with me.”
“My career…” he began automatically, but Lika gently cut him off.
“You didn’t have a career, Mark. You had a role. One single role. ‘The Svetlovs’ son.’ And you played it brilliantly, for many years.”
She reached across the table and covered his hand with her warm, living palm.
“But now the troupe has scattered, the sets have collapsed. You’ll have to learn to live without a script. You’ll have to improvise.”
Mark looked at their joined hands. His—still in the sleeves of an expensive tux, a costly watch at his wrist. Hers—in the lace of a wedding dress in which she had just overturned his life. In the middle of a cheap, shabby little diner.
He laughed. First quietly, in disbelief, then louder, from the depths of his chest.
It was the laughter of a man who had just lost everything that made up his old life.
Or maybe had finally found something far greater.
“Where do we go now?” he asked, wiping away a tear born of laughter.
“To my place,” Lika said, and for the first time in that long, crazy day she smiled her real, light, joyful smile. “My apartment is very small. And I should warn you, there’s not a speck of gold leaf in it.”
“That sounds just perfect,” he said—and realized he meant it absolutely.
He stood up, still holding her hand.
“Only let’s finish this amazing shawarma first. I’m starving to the point of dizziness.”
Lika laughed, and her laughter was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
In that very moment, under a dim lamp stained with ketchup, their real shared family life was just beginning. Without lies, without masks, from a clean slate.
Lika’s apartment wasn’t just small. It was tiny, almost miniature.
But it had something Mark had never seen in the huge, cold mansion of his parents—real, living life.
Hundreds of books stacked right on the floor along the walls. An old but unbelievably comfortable, sagging couch covered with a soft throw. A tiny kitchen where the air smelled of turmeric, cardamom and coffee rather than sterility and expensive antiseptic.
Mark stood in the middle of the room in his rumpled tuxedo. He felt enormous, ridiculous, foreign—like a grand piano inexplicably shoved into a tiny bathroom.
Lika disappeared into the bedroom for a moment and came back in a simple gray T-shirt and soft sweatshorts. Her hair was pulled up into a messy, cute bun.
“Here,” she handed him a neatly folded set of clothes: an old faded T-shirt with some music festival logo and well-worn sweatpants. “It’ll look silly, but at least it’ll be comfortable.”
He changed in the cramped but spotless bathroom.
When he came out, Lika was already sitting on the couch with her laptop on her knees. Her face was focused and serious.
“Well,” she said without looking up. “It’s started. It’s all in motion now.”
She turned the screen toward him, and he saw an endless newsfeed.
“SCANDAL AT STAR’S WEDDING: BRIDE ACCUSES MOTHER-IN-LAW OF EMBEZZLEMENT.” “ANNA SVETLOVA’S CHARITY FOUNDATION UNDER INVESTIGATION.” “ACTOR MARK SVETLOV: CAREER AND FAMILY IN RUINS.”
The headlines were tabloid, screaming, merciless.
“These are… just rumors. Gossip,” Mark muttered, groping for some foothold. “The guests spread it around…”
“These aren’t rumors.” Lika calmly opened another browser tab. “This is my article. It went live ten minutes ago. Officially.”
She hit Enter as if launching an irreversible mechanism.
The article’s title was restrained, emotionless: “Trustees. Charity as a Business Model.”
There wasn’t a drop of emotion in it. Only bare, irrefutable facts. Scans of bank transfers. Transcripts of testimony from former shelter employees. Photos of luxury purchase invoices paid from the foundation’s accounts.
Everything she’d spent long dangerous months collecting, piece by piece.
Mark read. And with each line, with each new proof, his blood ran colder, his heart shrank with shame.
These weren’t abstract sums. This was money meant for emergency surgeries. For warm clothes in winter. For proper food for those same children he sometimes saw when he came to the shelter to “play at charity” for glossy magazine photos.
He sank heavily onto the couch beside her. So very heavily.
“I didn’t know…” he whispered, feeling how empty those words were. “I had no idea about the scale.”
“You didn’t want to know,” she corrected softly but inexorably. “And that’s very different.”
He looked at her. At this seemingly fragile woman who had just single-handedly, like a real strategist, toppled an entire, seemingly unshakable empire of lies.
“Why didn’t you leave when you had all the proof?” he asked, pain in his voice. “Why… why the whole show with the wedding?”
Lika snapped the laptop shut. The quiet whir of its cooler faded from the room.
“Because I needed to look her in the eyes,” she answered simply. “I didn’t want it to be an anonymous stab in the back. I gave her a chance. One last chance.”
“A chance?” Mark didn’t understand.
“I met her alone a week ago. Just the two of us, no witnesses. I told her I knew everything. I offered her a way out: return all the money. Quietly, without publicity. And just walk away from the foundation, from our lives.”
Mark could hardly believe what he was hearing.
“And what did she…?”
“She laughed in my face,” Lika said with a bitter smile. “She called me a ‘filthy shelter mouse’ who should be grateful for scraps. She said if I so much as squeaked, she’d destroy me, smear me on the wall. And then…”
“And then what?” Mark asked quietly.
“She offered me money. A lot of money. To just ‘get out’ of your life. Said you’d already had your fun playing at love and would soon get bored with me and come back to the family.”
Mark felt physically ill, nauseated by the depth of his mother’s cynicism.
“She thought everything and everyone had a price. She didn’t realize I’m not for sale. Not for any money in the world.”
“And me?” Mark asked almost soundlessly. “Was I just part of your brilliant plan? A pawn?”
“You were the biggest and most beautiful obstacle to my plan,” she said with disarming, brutal honesty. “I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with the son of the target of my investigation. And you weren’t supposed to fall in love with the subject of a bet. But we both made that mistake. Or maybe it was a miracle?”
Her phone was lit up with dozens of notifications.
“My lawyers are already working. My father… he’s furious. But not with me. With them. With your entire system.”
Mark took a deep breath and switched his phone back on.
It practically exploded with alerts.
Hundreds of missed calls. Dozens of angry, panicked messages. From his father. From his mother. From Artyom. From his agent.
He opened the last one from his father.
“You’re dead to me. Don’t even try to call. You betrayed your family, your name. You are no longer my son. Never again.”
Mark stared at the crooked, venomous letters. He expected sharp pain. Bitterness. Burning fear.
He felt nothing but a vast, all-encompassing relief, as if a massive weight he’d been hauling all his life had finally fallen from his shoulders.
Calmly, he deleted the message.
The next one was from his agent, Stanislav Leonidovich.
“Mark, the theater is in a panic, they’re tearing up your contract. They’re talking about reputational risk. Tomorrow’s shoot is canceled. Call me as soon as you can—we need to meet urgently.”
And that was it. The finale. The end of his career.
He was no longer “the Svetlovs’ son.” No longer a “star of stage and screen.”
Now he was just Mark. A man in someone else’s sweatpants. In a tiny but cozy apartment. Next to the most dangerous, strongest and most honest woman he had ever met.
He turned to Lika. She was watching him, holding her breath, waiting for his decision, his words.
Mark put his phone aside, out of reach.
“I’ve got two pieces of news for you, wife.”
“Oh? What are they?” she raised an eyebrow.
“First, I got fired. From everything. Looks like my brilliant acting career, built entirely on my father’s money and connections, has just officially ended.”
“That is probably the worst thing I’ve heard all day,” she said with a warm smile, full of support and understanding. “And the second?”
He pulled her into his arms, breathing in the faint scent of her hair. For the first time on this insane, endless day, he kissed her. Truly kissed her. Deeply and gently.
It was not the kiss of an actor playing a part. It was the kiss of a man who had nothing left to lose but this woman.
“The second,” he said when they finally broke apart to catch their breath, “is that I have one brilliant idea for what we should do on our wedding night.”
“And what’s that?” she whispered, looking into his eyes.
“Sleep.” He said it with comical seriousness. “We’re dead tired. And tomorrow… tomorrow will be a new day and we’ll improvise. Together.”
Lika laughed and hugged him.
It was the best, truest, happiest ending to their crazy, beautiful, unpredictable wedding.
A sunbeam, warm and gentle, filtered through the leaves of an old maple tree and danced bunny-like on the top of a wooden garden table. A perfect, well-kept lawn. A bright yellow ball abandoned in the emerald grass. Piercing, infectious child laughter that seemed to fill everything around with life.
Mark, now a well-known director of an independent avant-garde theater that critics either called “genius” or “unbearable,” sat on the terrace of their country house, savoring his morning coffee.
The house wasn’t a palace, nothing like the cold mansion of his parents. It was alive, breathing. Wooden, smelling of pine and freshness. Filled with sunlight and comfort.
Lika, now editor-in-chief of a major, influential investigative outlet, sat opposite him with a tablet, scrolling through the morning news. She’d become even more beautiful with the years; a wise depth had appeared in her eyes.
“Andrey!” she called out, not looking up but clearly in control of the space. “Five minutes! Go wash your face, breakfast is almost ready!”
“Oh, mo-oom!” came a disgruntled but cheerful voice from the lawn.
Mark smiled tenderly, watching her.
Their nine-year-old son, Andrey Markovich Orlov (Lika had insisted on her own last name, and Mark was more than happy to agree), was the center of their universe, their greatest joy and pride.
“I’ll go,” Mark got up from his chair. “You work.”
He leaned down to kiss the top of her head, breathing in her familiar, beloved scent, then headed toward the lawn.
“Andryush! Drop the ball, Dad’s going to play with you!”
He stepped onto the soft, perfect grass. The sun was already moving toward afternoon, painting the sky in gentle pastels.
“Andrey?”
Silence. Only birds singing in the branches.
On the grass at the base of an old spreading apple tree lay the lone yellow ball.
“Andrey!” Mark smiled, deciding his son had started a game. “Not the time for hide-and-seek! Come out!”
He walked around the house, peered around the corner, into the shed where they kept their bikes and garden tools.
No one. Empty.
“Lika!” His voice quivered, and a note of panic slipped in. “Have you seen where he went?”
Lika stepped out onto the terrace, her face instantly growing serious and tense. She knew that tone, that edge of fear in his voice.
“He was right there,” she pointed at the lawn. “Right there by the apple tree, kicking the ball.”
They quickly, almost running, circled the entire property. Then Mark saw it. The little gate at the end of the garden, which had always, since Andrey’s birth, been securely locked, was now slightly ajar.
“I’m calling the police,” Lika already had her phone out. Her fingers, which had never trembled before the most powerful people, were shaking visibly.
“Wait!” Mark grabbed her arm sharply, his gaze fixed on the gate. “Look.”
Something small and light was hanging from the metal handle, swaying in the wind.
Not a note.
A little silk handkerchief, faded with age. With a delicate embroidered monogram: “A.S.”
The same handkerchief his mother, Anna Svetlova, had always carried with her, no matter what.
Mark hadn’t seen that handkerchief in ten long years.
For ten years they’d heard nothing about her. After the loud, high-profile trial that sentenced Anna Viktorovna to seven years in prison for large-scale fraud, she and his father had seemingly vanished from their lives for good.
His father, as they later learned from random sources, had died a year after sentencing. He hadn’t survived the shame, ruin and public condemnation.
And Anna… she had done her time. Released early two years ago, she’d gone to ground, melted into anonymity, never making a sound.
Until today.
“No…” Mark whispered, his voice breaking. “This can’t be. She… she’s broken, finished. She…”
“She’s been waiting,” Lika’s voice turned icy, sharp as a razor. In that moment the mother in her stepped aside and the cold, calculating investigative journalist took over.
Mark’s phone, lying on the terrace table, shrilled loudly, slicing through the silence.
They both rushed to it as if their lives depended on that call.
“UNKNOWN NUMBER,” the screen said.
With a shaking hand, Mark hit “Answer.” He turned on speaker so Lika could hear.
At first there was only emptiness and a faint crackling, like a worn-out record on an old gramophone.
Then a voice.
Dry, creaking, like rusty hinges on a long-abandoned door. A voice in which there was nothing human left—only concentrated poison and wild, animal triumph.
“Hello, Mark.”
Mark turned to stone.
“Hello, ‘mute little bird,’” the voice rasped, with a hint of a smirk. “I know you’re there too, listening.”
Lika came right up to the phone, her face white with rage and fear.
“Where is my son, Anna Viktorovna? Where is Andrey?”
“Your son?” a dry, sacrilegious chuckle crackled through the speaker, and goosebumps marched down Mark’s back. “You took my son away from me. Ten years ago. You ripped him out of my life.”
“Mark made his own choice!” Lika shouted, losing control.
“He chose you?!” the voice shrieked, sliding into hysteria for a moment. “He chose filth! He betrayed his blood, his family, his name!”
There was a pause, heavy and loaded.
“You taught him to improvise, Sofia Andreevna. And I… I have spent these ten years preparing the finale to our little play. The main act.”
“What do you want from us?” Mark asked. His voice was hoarse with held-back emotion.
“Want?” the voice laughed again, and that laughter was terrifying. “I had everything. Absolutely everything. And the two of you took every last crumb from me.”
The voice suddenly went quiet, almost gentle, which somehow made it even worse.
“I want you to understand. To feel it down to the very bottom of your souls.”
A small, frightened, sobbing voice came over the line.
“Mom? Dad? I’m scared…”
“ANDREY!” Lika screamed, clenching her fingers on the tabletop so hard her knuckles turned white.
“You took my son,” Anna Viktorovna hissed. “And now… now I’m taking yours. Forever.”
Abrupt, short beeps.
Mark and Lika stared at each other. In their eyes was the same horror—and the same resolve.
Lika already had her laptop open; her fingers were once more steady and fast, like a pianist’s.
“She couldn’t have done this alone,” her voice was level, cold, professional. “She was under supervision, she had no money, no contacts. Someone helped her. Someone who knows us.”
“Who?” Mark exhaled, feeling a new dark cloud gather over their happiness.
“Someone who hated us just as much as she did. Someone who also lost everything because of us back then.”
She turned the screen toward Mark.
On it was a recent, slightly blurry photo taken by her security service a couple of months earlier for a report. Anna Viktorovna, much older, hunched, in large dark glasses, climbing into a battered car near a cheap grocery store.
And behind the wheel of that car…
Mark leaned closer, and his heart dropped.
“Artyom?”
He was older, bloated, balding—but it was him. His former best friend. His accomplice in that long-ago bet.
“He was her go-between all these years,” Lika said without a shadow of doubt. “He was waiting for her release. And they both waited for this day. The day we’d be as happy and defenseless as possible.”
This wasn’t the end of their story.
It was the beginning of a new one, far more terrifying and merciless. A battle for their son. A battle for their future. A battle they were ready to fight.
Together