The hall was humming with muted conversations appropriate to the occasion. The expensive but frankly stifling banquet hall that Galina Viktorovna Orlova had chosen personally, relying on the advice of the city’s trendiest event planner, pressed down with its ostentatious luxury—gilded stucco moldings, heavy velvet drapes, enormous crystal chandeliers casting cold glints of light. The air was thick and sweet with the scent of expensive perfume and sophisticated dishes.
Her only son Andrey’s wedding had, from the very morning, promised to turn into a disaster. And now, at the height of the celebration, that foreboding had become a bitter reality.
And Galina Viktorovna—permanent hostess of the city’s most successful pastry shop, “Gala,” a woman whose name was synonymous with impeccable taste and ruthless business acumen—was doing everything in her power to make sure every guest understood this, felt it with every cell of their body. Her face, which usually wore a mask of polite nonchalance, was today a tightened mask.
“…and of course, from the bottom of our hearts, we wish the young couple… the most important thing—mutual understanding,” she raised her flute of expensive sparkling wine high, looking straight at the bride, at Masha. Her gaze was sharp and cold as a blade. “Our Andrey is a passionate soul. Emotional. He knows how to sur-prise.”
The word “surprise” she spat out like a cherry pit, with a barely noticeable effort.
“His choice…” She deliberately paused theatrically, letting the guests savor every moment, “…turned out to be, we must admit, quite unexpected for all of us.”
The guests at the tables coughed politely, awkwardly, glancing at one another. Everyone in this small but ambitious town knew perfectly well that the brilliant Andrey Orlov, heir to a fortune, had married a cleaner. Literally. A girl who, just six months earlier, had been scrubbing floors and wiping dust in his country house.
“Just to spite his mother, that’s all,” hissed the gossips at the tables, hiding behind fans and menus. “Poor Galina Viktorovna, he’s driven her to the edge.”
Masha sat in the place of honor, her back perfectly straight. She was only twenty, and it was written on her face, in her clear, make-up-free gaze. The wedding dress—cheap by Orlov standards—bought in a chain store, looked on her like a foreign, ridiculous costume for a masquerade.
Andrey, handsome, angry in helplessness and already visibly drunk, squeezed her hand under the table, trying to pass at least a drop of his warmth, his support.
“Hold on, sunshine. Just hold on. She’s just raging, she doesn’t know how else to be. This is our day, remember?”
Masha gave the slightest nod, unable to utter a word. She didn’t look at her husband. Her gaze was fixed on her mother-in-law, on that woman in an expensive lavender suit whose very presence poisoned everything around.
Meanwhile, Galina Viktorovna continued her monologue, drawing out the words, savoring the moment:
“Our dear little Mashenka is, of course, a very simple girl. Modest. But, as they say, you can’t order the heart. Even if it has temporarily gone blind, veiled by the mist of youthful maximalism. And we, as loving parents, of course will accept this choice. To the young couple!”
The guests, feeling the awkwardness, applauded unevenly, uncertainly, looking around.
The MC, a young man with a guitar, sensing how dangerously tense the atmosphere had become, rushed to the microphone, trying to save the situation.
“What a heartfelt, touching toast from such a loving mother! And now… by tradition, we give the floor to our beautiful bride! Mashenka, share with us—tell us, how did you manage to win the heart of such an enviable groom? What is the secret of your charm?”
A deathly silence fell.
With great satisfaction, Galina Viktorovna sank back into her chair, sipping champagne in small sips, with the face of a pre-declared victor. She fully expected that this drab, mousy little thing would now burst into tears from overwhelming emotion, or start mumbling something incoherent, full of thanks and fawning.
Masha slowly, as if in a dream, rose from her seat.
She took her glass of plain water. Her thin fingers trembled slightly, but her voice, when she drew breath and began to speak, was startlingly clear, even and cold, like a mountain stream.
“Thank you, Galina Viktorovna. For such… truly warm words. For your attention.”
She swept her gaze over the hushed, intrigued guests, feeling hundreds of eyes fixed on her.
“You are absolutely right in one thing. I really am a simple person. Since childhood, I’ve known what it means to work with my hands. I know the price of bread at the market, and of a real piece of meat.”
She turned to Andrey, and true tenderness flickered in her eyes.
“And I know that Andrey married me to spite you. To prove his independence. That’s true. But it’s only part of the truth.”
Andrey tensed, his fingers again tightened around her hand. “Masha, what are you doing, don’t…”
“Please, darling, let me finish. Let me say what I should have said long ago.”
She turned back to her mother-in-law, and now her gaze was direct and open.
“You think I’m just a gold-digger after your money, your status. You think I’m just some accident out of nowhere, an annoying mistake your son made.”
Galina Viktorovna smiled lazily, condescendingly, making a light gesture with her hand: “My dear girl, I think nothing of the sort, don’t be so dramatic…”
“Forgive me for interrupting, but I didn’t end up here today by accident,” Masha’s voice grew firmer, ringing with steel. “Twenty years ago…”
At those words, Pyotr Alekseevich, Andrey’s father—a pale, always quiet and inconspicuous man sitting beside his wife—jerked as if hit by electricity. He stopped chewing his dessert, his fork froze in midair.
“…twenty years ago,” Masha went on clearly and distinctly, “in our city maternity hospital No. 5, one woman, young and ambitious, signed an official refusal of her newborn child.”
The hall froze completely. The pressure in the room seemed to rise several times over. The music playing softly in the background died away on its own, as if the sound engineer had sensed the approaching storm.
“A girl was born. A perfectly healthy, strong girl. But she wasn’t wanted. Not at all. That woman, her mother, desperately needed a boy. The one and only heir. The continuer of the family line.”
Galina Viktorovna stopped smiling. Very slowly, very carefully, she set her crystal glass down on the white tablecloth.
“What nonsense are you talking, girl? What kind of foolishness is this? Are you feeling unwell?”
“I am that very girl. The one you refused that day.”
The silence became absolute, deafening. One of the waiters dropped a fork on the parquet, and its bright metallic clang sounded like a gunshot at a firing range.
“You simply signed me away,” Masha didn’t look away from Galina’s eyes. “Threw me out like something unnecessary. Because your husband, Pyotr Alekseevich, so badly wanted a son. An heir for his future business.”
“This is monstrous slander!” shrieked Galina, leaping to her feet. Her face twisted into a mask of rage. “Security! Get this… this girl out of here immediately! She’s not herself!”
“It’s true,” said Pyotr Alekseevich quietly, almost in a whisper, but very distinctly, staring at the pattern on the tablecloth as if hoping to find all the answers there. “Galya… I… I knew.”
Galina looked at her husband as if he’d stabbed her in the back. “Petya?! What are you saying? Come to your senses!”
“I… I knew, Galya. I suspected. And a year after you gave birth… I accidentally found papers in your documents—about the refusal. I… I kept silent. You told everyone that our daughter died in childbirth, I… I knew you were lying, but I kept silent. All these years.”
Andrey shot to his feet, shoving his chair back. He was completely sober—every trace of alcohol seemed to have evaporated in a single instant.
“Mom? Dad? What are you talking about? What is this horrible story, Masha?!”
Masha turned to him. Her eyes were full of tears, but they were not tears of pity or fear; they were angry, bitter tears for her entire life.
“That’s not all, Andrey. The most important part is still ahead.”
She looked again at Galina, who was standing with both hands braced on the table, her chest heaving heavily.
“You abandoned me. Your own blood. And a month later, so that your husband wouldn’t suspect anything, so you could finally ‘close the issue’ of an heir and calm your conscience… you pulled some strings, paid big money, and adopted a boy from another town.”
Now Andrey staggered as if he’d been struck on the head. He stared from Masha to his mother, unable to process what he was hearing.
“What? What boy? What are you saying?”
“Yes, Andrey,” Masha’s voice softened, with notes of endless pity in it. “You. You’re that boy. You’re the adopted son. You are not their blood.”
Galina jumped up, her face flushed a deep crimson.
“Shut up! Shut up this instant, you little wretch! How dare you!”
“I am your biological daughter,” Masha said calmly, with icy dignity. “And he is your adopted son. And now… he’s my lawful husband.”
She took a step toward her mother-in-law—toward her mother.
“I found out this monstrous truth a year ago. When my adoptive mother, the only real mother I ever knew, the one who raised me, was dying of a serious illness. She told me the whole story. She gave me your name. Galina Orlova.”
“I searched for you. For many years. I just wanted to see you. To look at you with my own eyes.”
“I got a job as a cleaner in your house,” she nodded at Andrey. “I saw you. And I saw her. With my own eyes.”
“I saw how she, my biological mother, treated you. How she reproached you with every bite of food, even though it’s you—no one else—who keeps her pastry business, her whole prosperity afloat.”
“I heard how, when she thought no one was listening, she whispered and called you ‘the fosterling.’ The way she looked at you—with cold calculation, not with a mother’s warmth.”
Andrey covered his face with his hands; his shoulders shook.
“And I understood one simple, terrible thing. You and I—we are both her victims. She threw me away, her own blood. And she methodically, for years, broke you, humiliated you, made you dependent. You wanted to get back at her by marrying ‘a simple cleaner.’ And I… I wanted justice. I wanted to look her in the eyes on the day when she wouldn’t be able to simply throw me out, the way she’d been throwing me out all her life.”
Masha raised her modest glass of water.
“I’ve come back, Mother. I’ve come back for what’s mine. For our happiness—mine and Andrey’s.”
Galina Viktorovna stared at her with empty, glassy eyes—the eyes of someone whose firmest ground had just been knocked out from under her feet.
“So yes,” Masha looked at the stunned, shaken guests. “I’m simple. I’m an outsider in your world. But I am an Orlova. By right of birth. By right of blood.”
She turned to Andrey, and her voice trembled.
“Forgive me. I had to do this. I had to say it. And know this… I love you. Truly. Not out of revenge. Not for profit. But because you’re just like me. You’re alone. And I’m alone. We found each other.”
Andrey was silent for a very long time. The entire hall held its breath and was silent with him.
Then he slowly, with enormous effort, raised his head. He looked at the woman who had called herself his mother for twenty years. At the man who had been his father and had kept quiet all these years.
Then he looked at Masha. In her eyes, he saw the very truth he had been searching for all his life.
He walked up to her. Took her hand in his. His palm was warm and firm.
“You’re right,” he said quietly, but loud enough to be heard in the farthest corner of the hall. “I really am alone. I was alone. Until you.”
He turned to Galina.
“Thank you for everything. For raising me. For a roof over my head. But it seems my real family—the one that was meant for me by fate—is right here.”
He nodded at Masha, whose hand he was holding.
He took her by the hand and led her to the exit of the hall. Without looking back at the shouts, the sobs, the pleas to return.
They walked through the entire hall, past the stunned guests, past the weeping, broken Pyotr Alekseevich, past the petrified, white-faced Galina Viktorovna, who seemed to have turned into a pillar of salt.
The massive oak door of the banquet hall closed behind them with a quiet but final click.
The banquet was over. An entire era was over.
The cold November air hit their faces, sobering more effectively than smelling salts. The fine, nasty drizzle that had been falling since morning had turned into a solid wall of rain.
Masha’s wedding dress—thin and cheap—was instantly soaked through and clung to her body. Andrey was in only his suit jacket; his starched shirt darkened in seconds.
Without a word, they both ran to his car, parked by the entrance. In silence, as if in a fog, they got inside.
The silence in the cabin was broken only by the ticking of the turn signal Andrey had forgotten to switch off in his haste, and the rustle of their wet clothes.
He just sat there, staring straight ahead at the rain-smeared windshield. His hands on the steering wheel were trembling slightly, betraying him.
“Where to?” he finally asked hoarsely, forcing the words past a lump in his throat.
“To my place,” Masha answered just as quietly. “It’s just a rented room on the very edge of town. We don’t have… anywhere else now.”
He simply nodded, turned the key in the ignition, and the car rolled away.
They drove in silence through the wet, dark, alien city. Past the bright windows of cafés, past happy couples hurrying under one umbrella, past all that normal, ordinary life that now remained outside their car windows.
Masha stared at her rain-blurred reflection in the side window. She was still wearing her veil, now wet and shapeless.
“You knew,” Andrey suddenly spoke again, without taking his eyes off the road, “you knew all this when we first started dating? When I first took you to a restaurant?”
“Yes. I already knew then.”
“And when I proposed to you? You were standing on the balcony, and I was on my knees below, and all the neighbors were watching… you knew?”
“Yes, Andrey. I knew.”
“And you… allowed it. All this time. So all of this… our marriage… it was all part of some plan? A way to get revenge?”
He wasn’t angry. There was no rage or accusation in his voice—only bottomless, all-consuming exhaustion.
“At first… yes. I came to your house with a single goal—to take revenge. To see her face when she realized. But I didn’t know, I didn’t expect that she treated you like that. That she spoke to you like that.”
“I thought you were a spoiled golden boy. An heir swimming in love and luxury. But you… you were just as much a hostage. Just as lonely as I was.”
Andrey gave a short, bitter laugh.
“‘The fosterling.’ Yes, she loved that word. Especially when she thought I wasn’t listening. Whenever I did something not exactly the way she wanted.”
“‘I pulled you out of the gutter, you ungrateful brat.’ ‘Your own parents abandoned you, and I, kind soul that I am, picked you up, warmed you.’”
He slammed his palm hard against the steering wheel. The car swerved, but he immediately corrected it.
“Damn it! Damn it! My whole life! My whole life I was trying to prove something to her! To earn her love! To prove that I’m a real Orlov! That I deserve this surname!”
“I expanded her pastry business, I found new suppliers, new clients! I worked like a dog, not showing up at home for days, while she was out choosing new furs and dresses in boutiques! And she… and she…”
“And she knew from the very beginning. Knew I wasn’t hers. And… hated me for it. For not living up to her expectations.”
“Not you,” Masha said softly but very clearly. “Herself. She hated us. Both of us.”
He tore his eyes from the road for a second and looked at her. For the first time that endless evening—really looked at her.
“Us?”
“Me—for being born. For my very existence reminding her of that vile, low act she committed.”
“And you—for not being hers. You’re a living, daily reminder of her lies to her husband, of her own imperfection.”
The car rolled to a stop in front of an old, shabby five-story building—one of those built in the last century.
They climbed the creaking concrete stairs to the third floor in silence. Masha opened the only door with her key. Inside was a tiny room with flowered wallpaper, an old sagging sofa, a wooden table, and a curtain separating an improvised kitchen.
Masha pulled the wet, formless veil off her head and tossed it onto the only chair. She looked ridiculous and sad in that soaked white dress in the middle of the poor but neat room.
“You… checked… that we’re not related?” Andrey suddenly asked, watching her struggle to undo the small zipper on the back of the dress. “By blood, I mean.”
“I did,” Masha nodded, giving up on the zipper. “As soon as I realized that you… weren’t indifferent to me. I was more afraid of that than anything.”
“I found all the documents. Including your adoption file. You’re from another town, from another orphanage. You were born three months earlier than when she ‘lost’ me in childbirth.”
“You and I have nothing in common. Not a single drop of shared blood. Except for her. Except for Galina Viktorovna.”
Andrey walked over and silently helped her with the zipper. The dress fell to her feet in a shapeless white puddle. She stood there in a simple white slip that had been hidden under the dress.
He dropped heavily onto the sofa, still in his expensive, wet wedding suit.
“And now what? What do we do now?”
He looked lost, confused, like a little boy left alone in an unfamiliar place.
“I… have nothing. The car is hers, company property. The apartment I lived in—it’s hers. The job…” he gave another bitter laugh. “Well, you figured that out yourself. My position was just a pretty sign on the door.”
“I have…” Masha walked to the table, opened a drawer, and took out an old metal cookie tin. “Here. Ten thousand. My adoptive mom left it to me before she died. ‘For a rainy day,’ she said. So… here.”
She sat down beside him on the sofa and put the tin on his knees.
“We have us. Two of us. Against her whole world.”
Andrey stared at her for a long time. At her tired, pale but unbroken face. At her resolute, fiery eyes.
“You’re a monster, Masha,” he said at last quietly, without malice. “You destroyed everything. My whole world. Everything I thought was true.”
“Me?” She jerked her head up, and that same fire flared in her eyes again. “I just told the truth! The truth she hid for twenty years!”
“But you did it at our wedding! In front of the whole town! You humiliated her publicly!”
“And when else should I have done it?!” she burst out, springing to her feet. “Did you think she’d let me say this quietly, in a cozy living room over a cup of tea?”
“She would have devoured me alive! She’d been grinding me down since the second you introduced me to her! ‘Cleaner.’ ‘Simpleton.’ ‘Not our circle.’”
“She was already looking for a way to get rid of me. To annul our marriage. To find you a ‘proper’ match.”
“I knew I had one chance. One shot. And I took it. Right on target.”
She walked to the single window and pulled back the curtain, looking out at the wet, dark street.
“And you know what? I don’t regret it. Not a thing. Not for a second.”
Andrey watched her thin but unbending back.
“I…” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Me neither. I don’t regret it either.”
In the banquet hall, at that moment, real chaos was breaking loose.
The guests scattered like cockroaches when the lights come on, carrying with them the juiciest, most horrifying gossip of the year—if not the decade.
Pyotr Alekseevich sat with his head in his hands, quietly crying. The head waiter approached him with a thick folder.
“Pyotr Alekseevich, sorry to bother you, but… the bill for the banquet… it needs to be…”
“Go away…” he croaked without looking up. “Just leave it… go…”
Galina Viktorovna stood by the table, leaning on it with her knuckles. She was eerily calm. Too calm.
Slowly, with a strange sort of pleasure, she finished her glass of champagne to the last drop.
Then she picked up her thin, expensive phone.
“Hello, Slava?” she said into the receiver in an icy, even voice, devoid of emotion. “I have a little… problem. With my assets. Yes. My… ‘fosterling’ has suddenly decided he’s all grown up and independent. And that…” She looked at Masha’s discarded modest bridal bouquet, “…that little tramp who put on this circus today. They need… to be shown their proper place. Immediately.”
Their wedding night was ridiculous, sad, and endlessly weary.
Andrey slept on the floor, on an old blanket folded several times, which Masha dug out from the depths of the wardrobe. He hadn’t taken off either his jacket or trousers, only loosened his tie.
Masha lay curled up on the narrow sofa in that same slip, covered with her old house robe.
Neither of them slept. They just lay there with their eyes open, listening to the neighbors quarreling behind the thin wall, to the kitchen tap dripping steadily, to the wind howling through the cracks in the old window frames.
“So,” Andrey said into the darkness. “All right. We’re now officially homeless. Unemployed. And at the same time… married. A brilliant, textbook start to married life.”
“And free,” Masha added quietly but distinctly from her corner.
“Free?” He laughed bitterly. “You really believe that?”
“I do.”
“Well, I’m wanted. Wanted on all fronts.”
In the morning, that became a harsh reality.
Andrey’s phone was exploding with calls and messages. But they weren’t angry calls from his “mother” demanding explanations.
“Andrey, all your bank cards are blocked. The system shows an error.”
“Andrey, this is the real estate agency. The owner of the apartment you live in is asking you to vacate the premises. By this evening.”
“Mr. Orlov, you must urgently return the company car. It’s listed on the balance sheet of ‘Gala.’”
He looked at Masha, who was silently making instant coffee in a cracked mug in the shared kitchen.
“She’s fast. Very fast—just as I expected. She’s cut me off from everything. From everything I ever touched.”
“What?”
“Everything was hers. The apartment, the cards, the car—they were all in her name, in ‘Gala’s’ name. I was just… a trusted figure. A manager. An errand boy with a fancy business card.”
He looked at Masha, true, animal terror in his eyes.
“We have nothing. Not a stick of furniture, not a patch of land. Even that car in the yard—it’s not mine anymore. They’ll take it.”
“Then they’ll take it,” Masha said calmly, without a hint of panic, handing him a steaming mug.
“You don’t understand the scale!” He jumped up, almost spilling the coffee. “They’ll just throw us out on the street! She’ll call everyone in this town, we won’t be able to rent even this room! We’ll have nowhere to live!”
There was a quiet but insistent knock at the door.
They both froze like criminals.
Andrey looked at Masha, the same silent question in his eyes: “Has she already found us?”
The knock came again, more insistent.
Masha went to the door and cautiously peered through the peephole.
“It’s…” she turned in surprise. “It’s your father. Pyotr Alekseevich.”
Andrey himself flung the door open.
On the threshold, swaying, stood Pyotr Alekseevich. Rumpled, unshaven, his eyes red and swollen from tears. Yesterday’s expensive suit hung off him like a sack. He reeked of cognac.
“Dad?” Andrey didn’t know what to say or how to act.
Pyotr Alekseevich didn’t look at him. His gaze was fixed on Masha.
He stared at her for a long time, intently, as if seeing her for the first time, then his lips trembled and he whispered barely audibly:
“The eyes…” he breathed. “The eyes… just like my late grandmother Yevdokia’s. The same gray, deep… Just the same.”
He stepped into the room, looking around the shabby but tidy space with a kind of aching sadness.
“So this is where you live? In these conditions?”
“We…” Masha began, but he cut her off sharply.
“Shut up, Galya!” he suddenly barked hoarsely. And Masha and Andrey realized that in his confusion he was addressing her as he did his wife. “Shut up whenever I’m talking! Don’t interrupt!”
He shook his head, trying to gather himself.
“Forgive me. I… I didn’t mean that.”
He looked at Andrey, and there was such torment in his eyes that Andrey involuntarily looked away.
“I’m a coward, son. My whole life I’ve been a pathetic, pitiful coward.”
“I knew… I knew she gave up the baby. I found those papers. A year after your adoption. I thought the baby had died, and then I found the hidden folder… and understood everything.”
“And I kept silent. Because of the business. Because of our reputation. Because of you, Andrey. I was afraid that in her rage she’d take you away from me too, strip me of everything.”
He was breathing heavily; it was hard for him to speak.
“I couldn’t stop her. She’s like a tank that crushes everything in its path. And I… I was just a shadow. A shadow with a wallet.”
He suddenly reached inside his jacket and pulled out an old, worn-to-threads leather briefcase.
“Here. Take this.”
Andrey looked at him, not understanding, hesitant to take it.
“This is mine. My personal savings. What I put away ‘before Galina.’ And what I’ve been saving all these years. From every little ‘allowance’ she gave me, from every paycheck she ‘allocated’ to me.”
He almost forced the briefcase into Andrey’s hands.
“There’s not that much. But she doesn’t know about these accounts. She never knew.”
“And this. The most valuable of all.”
He took a thick, greasy notebook in a cloth cover out of the briefcase.
“These are recipes. Real, family ones. My grandmother Yevdokia’s. What we started with, Galina and I, when we opened our first little stall. What made us famous.”
“What Galina then ‘improved’ in the race for profit. Replaced real butter with margarine. Real condensed milk with ‘product identical to natural.’”
He looked at Masha, tears in his eyes.
“You… are the real one. By blood. And he”—he nodded at Andrey—“he’s real in spirit. He’s more my son than if he were my own flesh and blood.”
“She… she destroyed my life. But you… don’t let her destroy yours. Build your own. A real one.”
He turned and, without looking back or saying goodbye, walked out of the room, leaving behind the smell of cognac and old age.
Andrey and Masha stood in the middle of the room like statues.
Andrey slowly, almost reverently, opened the briefcase.
Inside, lying atop neatly stacked bundles of cash, was that very old notebook.
Andrey carefully opened it to the first page.
The familiar, neat, faded handwriting of his grandmother.
“‘Bird’s Milk Cake.’ On agar. The real kind. Not gelatin,” he read aloud, his voice trembling.
He lifted his eyes to Masha. All the adrenaline, all the fury and pain of the past days seemed to have gone, evaporated. Something else had appeared—something solid and dependable.
“She thinks she’s won. That she’s destroyed us.”
“She thinks she’s taken absolutely everything from me that I had in this life.”
He looked at the old, precious notebook in his hands as if it were his own soul he was holding.
“But in her stupidity… she left us the most important thing. The only thing that has real value.”
Masha looked at him, at the sudden fire of determination blazing in his eyes.
“What? What did she leave us?”
“A secret. A real family secret. Not hers—ours. Shared.”
He snapped the notebook shut.
“We urgently need our own kitchen. Our own place.”
Their “kitchen” turned out to be the former cafeteria of a bankrupt factory on the far edge of an industrial zone. An abandoned place nobody needed.
A damp basement reeking of mold and old grease. The tiles on the walls were peeling off in sheets, exposing brick. Rusty, crooked shelves. Broken windows boarded up with plywood.
“This is the best we can afford and the only thing she didn’t manage to block,” Andrey said bitterly, running his hand along a greasy wall.
He was furious, consumed by powerless rage. The last three days had been a humiliating, exhausting marathon.
The money from his father’s briefcase was a decent start-up sum. But as they quickly found out, there wasn’t a single landlord in the city willing to rent them a proper space.
“Sorry, the place has just been reserved.”
“Oh, we’ve changed our minds about renting; we decided to renovate instead.”
“We don’t need… trouble with your family, sorry.”
Andrey’s fists clenched so tightly his knuckles went white.
“She’s called everyone! Every last one of them! Every realtor, every owner of an empty property! She’s got people everywhere!”
He kicked a rusty metal table hard, sending it crashing into a corner.
“She wants us to crawl away from here. To swallow our shame and crawl off into some hole.”
Masha, dressed in rubber gloves and an old, heavily used housecoat bought on sale, silently and stubbornly scrubbed years of grease and burnt-on grime off an old Soviet oven they’d found at the dump.
“Then,” she said without turning around, “we aren’t crawling anywhere.”
“Masha, do you see this place?!” He waved his arm around the room. “This isn’t a ‘kitchen.’ It’s a morgue! Catacombs!”
“There’s no proper equipment here! The ovens don’t work; they need to be completely torn apart! The wiring is rotted through, it’s a fire hazard!”
Masha straightened up and pushed a strand of hair off her face. She was covered in soap suds and soot.
“I’ve worked as a cleaner for many years, Andrey. I’ve scrubbed places worse than this. Much worse.”
She walked up to him, taking off one glove.
“You’re used to everything being handed to you ready-made. To the ‘errand boy’ walking in and nicely managing an already running process.”
He recoiled as if from a physical slap. “What did you say?”
“And I’m used to working. Not ‘managing’—working. With my hands. Doing. Creating from nothing.”
She held out a second pair of rubber gloves to him.
“So stop whining and feeling sorry for yourself. You’re no longer Galina Orlova’s ‘fosterling.’ You’re a husband now. My husband. And we’re going to fight.”
He looked at the simple yellow gloves, then at her tired but unbreakable eyes.
“We have your father’s money. We have your real grandmother’s recipes. And we have this.”
She nodded at the dirty, abandoned basement.
“This is ours. The first truly ours, belonging only to us. And we’re going to turn it into a candy box.”
Slowly, as if overcoming some inner barrier, Andrey took the gloves.
The next two weeks they didn’t live so much as survive—on the edge of human endurance.
They slept three or four hours a night. In the same rented room, on the same narrow sofa—only now truly together, sharing warmth, exhaustion, and hope.
By day they disappeared into their basement, turning it into a battlefield.
Andrey, who had never held anything heavier than an expensive pen, watched tutorial videos and learned to plaster walls and fill in cracks.
Risking his life, he rewired the entire space, swearing at everything but doing the work.
He dismantled and repaired old Soviet ovens they’d found at the scrap metal yard and gotten for almost nothing.
Masha painted the walls, stripped old paint, and scrubbed away decades of filth and soot.
In the evenings, exhausted to the limit, they sat in the tiny kitchen of their room and experimented. Over and over.
On a small, weak electric cooktop, they tried to recreate the recipes from the old notebook.
“‘Agar-agar must be soaked for four hours in cold spring water…’” Andrey read aloud, poking a finger at the yellowed page.
“This isn’t right, it turns out like rubber, not soufflé,” Masha grimaced, tasting another attempt. “It’s rubbery, it doesn’t melt in your mouth.”
“‘Butter, fat content eighty-two and a half percent…’” he looked sadly at a cheap block of butter from the supermarket. “‘This isn’t it. Grandma wrote ‘market,’ ‘village,’ ‘real cream butter’…”
They were on the verge of despair. Their strength was almost gone.
The money was melting before their eyes.
It went on rent for the basement. For cement and paint. For sacks of flour and eggs.
“We’re not going to make it,” Andrey said one late evening, sinking to the floor in the still unfinished space. He sat with his head in his hands, smelling of paint, sweat, and hopelessness. “She’s won after all. We haven’t even opened yet, and we’re already almost bankrupt. Nothing works.”
Masha stood up silently. She looked at him, at his bent back, and her eyes filled not with pity, but with a new resolve.
She took the last money they’d set aside for food. At dawn, just as it began to get light, she went to the central market.
She came back with a can of fresh, still warm milk. With a big piece of yellow homemade butter that smelled of grass. With three dozen farm eggs in dark-brown shells.
“Make it,” she said, setting everything down in front of him. “Make it now. Out of this.”
“Masha, that’s our last… we were supposed to live on that for a week…”
“I said—make it. Now.”
And he did. Forgetting about fatigue, about despair, about everything.
He worked over that saucepan all day like an alchemist over the philosopher’s stone. He beat the whites by hand, with an old whisk, because their cheap mixer had burned out on the third cake.
He boiled the syrup, checking the notebook minute by minute, afraid to overcook or undercook it by even a second.
By evening, when dusk was already gathering in their basement, a cake was standing on the table. Small, not much to look at.
But it was a real, honest cake. Bird’s Milk. The very one from a childhood they never had.
It smelled of vanilla from real pods, of real dark chocolate, and of something so irrevocably lost that their hearts ached.
They silently cut it in half.
Masha brought a little piece to her lips on the tip of the knife.
A tear rolled slowly down her cheek, against her will. Then another.
“This is it,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “Andryusha… this is the one. The real thing. I… I remember this taste… from another time…”
Andrey tried it too. He broke off a tiny piece and placed it on his tongue.
And it wasn’t just the taste of “success” or of a “quality product.” It was the taste of truth. Of memory. Of that very love that Grandma Yevdokia had put into her creations.
It was a perfect cake. No exaggeration.
“We’ll do it,” he said quietly, looking at her, the same fire burning in his eyes as in hers. “We’ll make one cake. Just one. But like this one.”
He looked at her, and there was no anger or exhaustion in his gaze anymore—only firm certainty.
“‘The Real Orlov Pastry Shop.’ Using the recipes of Yevdokia Orlova. Not Galina’s.”
They opened the following week. Quietly, without pomp, without guests and ribbon cutting.
Without a sign. Without advertising. With one old table serving as a display, and two stools in their spotless, scrubbed-to-a-shine basement.
They baked just five cakes. Five perfect, handmade Bird’s Milk cakes.
On a small chalkboard by the entrance, Andrey wrote: “Bird’s Milk. Like Grandma’s. By old recipes.”
Then they waited. Sat in their basement and watched the door.
No one came. Not the first day. Not the second. Not halfway through the third.
By the evening of the third day, Andrey sat on one of the stools, looking at the five cakes that were just starting to dry out a little.
“I told you,” he said quietly, without reproach, just stating a fact. “Nobody needs this. People want their usual margarine, the familiar ‘product’ and a low price. No one’s going to come all the way to the edge of town for ‘the real thing.’”
The basement door creaked open.
In the doorway appeared a head—a little old lady in a kerchief. The same granny, “God’s dandelion,” from the nearby building they always passed.
“Sonny, what’s that wonderful smell you’ve got here?” she asked. “Just like in my childhood, back in the village…”
Andrey looked at Masha, who had frozen by the table.
“It’s…” Masha said, and the most genuine smile of the past months lit up her face. “It’s the truth, Granny. Just the truth.”
The next week they finally, to the last penny, ran out of money. They sat in the basement wondering what to do next, how to go on.
And at that very moment, there was a knock on the door again. Firm and confident.
It wasn’t Pyotr Alekseevich standing there.
It was that same Slava. In a perfectly tailored expensive suit, with a leather folder in his hands. That same “manager” and Galina’s right hand.
“Andrey Orlov?” he asked, smiling politely, though his eyes were cold. “And… Maria Orlova, if I’m not mistaken?”
He looked around their neat but poor basement with thinly veiled disgust.
“My client has a… final offer for you. Thoughtful and fair.”
“We don’t want to hear anything,” Andrey said sharply, stepping between him and Masha.
“Galina Viktorovna is not, by nature, a cruel person. She is very family-oriented. Despite everything. She’s willing to forgive you. To give you a second chance.”
He opened his folder.
“The conditions are simple. You shut this… thing down immediately,” he gestured around. “Stop further disgracing the family name. Out of the goodness of her heart, Galina Viktorovna will open a new, small branch. In… Ust-Kuzminsk. Three hundred kilometers from here.”
“You, Andrey, will go there as manager. On probation. And the girl…” he nodded at Masha, “…can work the register. Modestly, without pretensions.”
“And…” he theatrically pulled a sheet of expensive paper with the ‘Gala’ logo from the folder, “…she will have to sign a public, notarized retraction. That at the wedding… she was… not herself. Overwrought, got facts mixed up because of stress.”
Andrey laughed. Bitterly and loud.
“Tell Galina Viktorovna…”
“No,” Masha said suddenly, gently moving him aside.
She walked right up to Slava. She was shorter than he was, but there was such strength in her posture that he involuntarily stepped back.
“Tell Galina Viktorovna,” she said calmly, taking a perfect slice of their cake from the display and holding it out to him, “that we… are not for sale. Not for any branches. Help yourself. Ours. The real thing.”
Slava stared at the slice as though it were a poisonous snake.
“You… you don’t understand what you’re doing. You’re dooming yourselves… to poverty. You’ll rot in… this… basement! You can’t refuse her! She’ll destroy you!”
“You know what?” Andrey said, placing a hand on Masha’s shoulder. “We’ve already refused. We’re free. And we’ve already won.”
With a loud snap, Slava shut his folder, turned and left, slamming the door.
Epilogue. Ten years later.
The warm kitchen, bathed in soft evening light, smelled of vanilla, real chocolate, fresh pastries, and that special coziness you only find in places built with love.
It was no longer that damp basement on the edge of the industrial zone.
“The Real Orlov Pastry Shop” had never become a huge, faceless “empire” with a network of branches. It had become a quiet but unshakable legend. People knew about it far beyond the city. Blogs and magazines wrote about it, but the owners stubbornly refused to expand.
A small, homey café, like a grandmother’s house, on a quiet green street in the city center. You had to book a table two or even three months in advance. To try that very legendary cake, to order a wedding cake for your loved ones, or simply to taste the flavor of real, unhurried time.
Masha, now thirty, stood at a big wooden table. Her back just as straight and determined as ever. But her gray, deep eyes no longer carried war—only calm, wise weariness and kindness. With her own hands, with great care, she was decorating another wedding cake, piping out the finest sugar flowers.
Andrey, with distinguished gray at his temples and smile lines at the corners of his eyes—traces of not so much age as of frequent laughter—sat at a old sturdy desk by the window.
He was carefully calculating and checking something in that same priceless grandmother’s notebook. They had never bought a computer for orders, preferring to keep everything by hand in a special ledger.
“Dad, did you mess up the numbers again?” came a lively, cheerful voice.
At one of the guest tables, doing homework, sat a boy of about nine. Bright, lively.
Lyosha.
He was a surprisingly beautiful copy of Andrey—the same dark hair, the same shape of eyes. But his eyes themselves were exactly Masha’s—gray, shining, intelligent, and very perceptive.
“I did not mess up, smart-aleck,” Andrey grumbled with mock severity, not looking up from the notebook. “I’m just double-checking the shipment of that agar. The real one, not fake.”
“Was Grandma Galya really very mean?” the boy suddenly asked out of nowhere, rolling bits of fondant into funny little figures.
He knew his story. His parents never lied to him. They told him everything in broad strokes, without poison, but without sugarcoating. They believed he had a right to know.
Masha and Andrey exchanged glances across the room. Over the years, they had developed their own special language of looks.
“She wasn’t mean, Lyosha,” Masha said quietly, smoothing a cream rose. “She was… very lonely and very unhappy. And that made her cruel.”
“And very, very lost,” Andrey added, putting the notebook aside. “She got lost in her money and her pride.”
“And Grandpa Petya? Was he lost too?”
Andrey took a deep breath. Pyotr Alekseevich had passed away three years earlier. Quietly, in his sleep. They had time to say goodbye.
“Grandpa Petya was… a kind man, but very weak. He was afraid. And that fear ate him up inside.”
“But he used to come sometimes. Secretly. To your school. Just to look at you when you played with the other kids.”
“I saw him,” Lyosha said seriously, concentrating on his fondant. “Once. He was standing behind the fence and… crying.”
Masha put down the piping bag, went over to her son, and kissed the top of his head with boundless love.
“He wasn’t crying from sadness, sunshine. He was crying from happiness that he had you. That you’re such a wonderful, smart, kind boy.”
…
At that very moment, in a huge, cold and almost empty mansion in the most prestigious part of town, Galina Viktorovna stood at a panoramic window, looking at the sunset.
She had aged greatly. Her once formidable, thriving “Gala” empire, built on margarine and “products identical to natural,” was slowly but surely falling apart. The fashion for all-natural ingredients, for hand-made quality that Andrey and Masha had unwittingly sparked, had finished off her business.
People had learned the truth. And word of mouth turned out stronger than all her advertising budgets and connections.
Everyone wanted “like the real Orlovs.” Her “Gala” had become a symbol of fakes and deceit.
On the elegant marble table in front of her lay a single photograph. Not of her husband, not of Andrey. Of Lyosha. Her grandson.
Her one and only real blood. Orlov blood. From her own daughter.
“He should be here,” she hissed into the silence, clenching a handkerchief in her thin fingers. “Next to me. He’s my heir. The only one.”
Pyotr Alekseevich—now completely gray and stooped, almost never leaving his armchair—flinched weakly when he heard those words.
“Galya… don’t… I beg you… Leave them be… They’re so happy… They’re doing so well…”
“Happy?!” her voice, hoarse from age and rage, shrilled through the stately quiet of the living room. “In that cramped hole?! In that flour and sugar?! He’s an Orlov! The last true Orlov!”
“He’s my heir! The only one who carries my blood, my genes!”
“Galya, he’s just a child… He’s happy there, with them…”
“He’ll fix everything!” Her eyes, dulled by years, flared again with that familiar fanatical, unhealthy fire. “He’ll get everything back for me! Everything that ungrateful ‘fosterling’ and that… little tramp took from me! He’ll restore the family’s proud name!”
She turned to her husband, her gaze suddenly wheedling and poisonous.
“Petya… he’s… our… blood. Our… last hope of correcting our mistakes. You… understand, don’t you? You’ll… help… me… bring him back?”
Pyotr looked at her—at this woman he had spent his entire life with, in fear and silence—and slowly, in his old, weary way, nodded. Not because he believed in her, but because he was afraid. He didn’t know how not to be afraid anymore.
“He’ll be mine. I’ll raise him right. As a true Orlov.”
…
It was late evening. The pastry shop smelled of coffee, a long day’s fatigue, and a sweet peacefulness.
Lyosha sat in a small, cozy back room lined with bookshelves and a soft sofa, reading a book while he waited for his parents to close up so they could walk home together.
“I’ll just take out the last trash, Andrey, and we’ll close,” Masha said, tying up a bag.
“I’ll help,” Andrey picked up a second, heavy bag of kitchen waste.
They went out through the back door into the little courtyard where the dumpsters stood. Just for two or three minutes. They left the café door unlocked, knowing Lyosha was inside.
They didn’t hear the soft, almost inaudible click of the front door from the street.
They came back laughing at an old joke Andrey had just remembered.
“Lyosha?” Masha called, taking off her work apron. “Get ready, sweetheart! We’re done!”
Silence.
For some reason, Andrey felt that something was wrong, right down in his bones. He went white as a sheet.
He rushed to the back room.
The door stood wide open.
On the sofa lay an open book—the adventure novel the boy had been reading with such enthusiasm.
On the small table next to it, beside a half-finished glass of juice, lay a single lollipop. Wrapped in shiny, golden foil.
No such candy was produced or sold in their city. You could only find it in a few specialty boutiques in Moscow—and in corporate gift sets from “Gala.”
On top of the open book, like a marker, lay a small envelope made of thick, expensive cream-colored paper with embossing.
With a trembling, suddenly icy hand, Masha picked it up and opened it.
Inside, on the same expensive paper, were only a few words. In Galina Viktorovna’s large but now shaky handwriting.
“Enough happiness for you. I’m taking what’s mine. For proper upbringing. He will become who he was meant to be.”
Without a sound, Masha collapsed onto the floor, the sheet of paper slipping from her fingers.
Andrey, without saying a word, ran outside like a madman, onto the deserted street sinking into night.
It was already dark. The streetlights cast long, anxious shadows on the pavement.
In the cold evening air lingered, mingling with the ever-present, familiar smell of vanilla from their bakery, a faint but distinct trail of expensive, heavy, alien perfume. Galina Viktorovna’s perfume.
He stared into the darkness at the receding red taillights of a black luxury SUV at the end of the street.
“She took him,” he whispered into the emptiness. And in his voice there was no anger and no fear.
There was something worse—a chilling premonition of the beginning of a new, most terrible war of their lives.