Just imagine it, Nika—just for a second,” Slava’s voice was coaxing, syrupy, like warm honey. He was sprawled across their wide bed with his hands laced behind his head, staring at the ceiling as if he didn’t see white plaster there, but blueprints for their brilliant future. “We sell that wreck. Just a patch of land with a shed on it—and that’s it. We’ve got real cash in hand. I put it into a business, and in a year—year and a half max—we take off. We truly take off.”
Veronika didn’t lift her eyes from her book. She could feel this conversation in her skin, the way you feel a storm coming in that sticky, airless heat. It had started the same way for the fifth or sixth time in the past two months: first the dreamy tone, then the word “we” with that special emphasis, and finally the cherry on top—the verb “take off.”
“Slav, that’s my parents’ dacha,” she answered evenly, turning a page even though she couldn’t see a single letter. “They go there every weekend from May through September. Mom’s roses are there. Dad built the sauna with his own hands. What ‘patch of land’?”
“I’m not saying we toss them out on the street!” He sat up; his enthusiasm became more insistent, more physical. He scooted closer and put his warm hand on her shoulder. “We’ll buy them another one. Better. With a proper toilet, not a hole in the floor. Farther from the city, where the air is cleaner. They’re retirees—they need peace. And this… Nik, come on, understand: this is our springboard. A once-in-a-lifetime chance. I’ve calculated everything.”
In silence, she lifted his hand off her shoulder and placed it on the blanket beside her. Calculated. She knew what that meant. It meant he’d already spent money they didn’t have—from selling something that didn’t belong to them. That “springboard” hovered in their conversations like an intrusive ad for a cheap loan. He needed it for his next brilliant business plan which, like all the ones before it, was supposed to make their family rich.
“I’m not going to talk to them about this,” she cut him off, closing the book. The discussion was over—at least for today. “That’s it. Topic closed.”
“Fine, fine,” he said, raising his hands in a placating gesture, and a flash of poorly concealed irritation crossed his face. “Whatever you say, boss. Just think about it. Not about me—about us. I’m going to shower.”
The bathroom door shut, and a moment later the hiss of running water filled the apartment. Veronika sank back into the pillows. Fatigue hit her all at once—heavy, cloudy. She wasn’t angry, no. She was just tired of this endless game of Great Schemer, where she was cast as both sponsor and grand prize.
She picked up her phone to mindlessly scroll, when Slava’s phone vibrated on his nightstand. The screen lit the dim bedroom. Mom.
Her heart gave an unpleasant little jolt. Her mother-in-law usually called during the day. An evening call could mean something urgent. Without thinking, Veronika grabbed the phone and swiped to answer.
“Hello,” she said.
But no one was listening. From the speaker poured a fast, impatient whisper that didn’t expect a reply.
“Slavik, well? Did you talk to her? Why are you dragging your heels, son? She’s refusing again, isn’t she? Pressure her—push harder! Say it’s for the family, for your future baby—make something up! Otherwise they’ll snatch your springboard right out from under your nose, her parents will leave that shack to someone else. We need money, you know that! Urgently!”
The words hit Veronika in the face like tight, icy streams of water. Springboard. Her springboard. Money. We. Her mind went ringing-empty, washing out fatigue and irritation alike. She didn’t say a word. She simply pressed the red end-call button.
The water noise in the bathroom stopped.
Veronika stayed seated on the bed, straight as a wire. She didn’t set the phone down. She held it in her hand, and the cold plastic seemed to burn her fingers. It felt like evidence. Like an irrefutable proof of a crime she’d suspected but refused to believe.
The bathroom door opened. Out of the steam came Slava, a towel around his waist and another on his head. He looked relaxed, pleased, a lazy smile playing on his face. He glanced at his wife—and stopped short. Her look was unfamiliar to him. There wasn’t a hint of warmth in it, only the cool, calm shine of polished stone.
“Something happen?” he asked, and the smile began to melt.
She stared at him in silence—at his wet hair, at the drops sliding down his chest. Then she slowly lifted her hand and showed him his phone.
“Your mom called—she’s worried!” she said. “She’s asking when you’re finally going to wear me down about selling the dacha. Tell her the springboard for your takeoff just broke. And she can take her little acrobat son back home with her!”
Slava froze halfway to the wardrobe. The towel on his head slipped sideways, exposing damp, tousled hair. He gave a nervous laugh, but the sound came out dry and rattling, like he’d choked.
“Nik, what is wrong with you? Mom blurts things out without thinking… she has her own logic, you know that. And anyway—since when do you answer my calls?”
He tried to lace his voice with offended hurt, to flip the blame, to make her the guilty one for violating his personal space. It was his old, time-tested trick.
It didn’t work.
Veronika didn’t even lift an eyebrow. She looked through him, as if he were made of glass.
“‘Springboard,’ Slava. What a precise word. Not ‘our chance,’ not ‘a family nest’—a springboard. A bouncy board for one jumper. I kept thinking what it reminded me of. And then I remembered. You recall that ‘promising coffee shop’ that needed ‘a small start-up fund’? My father gave you money then. And when your genius idea collapsed six months later, he also covered your debts so angry people wouldn’t come to our door. Was that your first test jump?”
Slava jerked as if struck. He yanked the towel off his head and threw it to the floor. The relaxed look vanished; his features sharpened, and a cornered, angry glint appeared in his eyes.
“That was business! Business always has risks! I wanted what was best for us!”
“For us?” She slowly shook her head, a faint, poisonous half-smile curving her lips. “And the car? Remember how you convinced me we needed a bigger one—‘executive class’—because it was ‘status’ and ‘an investment in image’? My parents gave me money for my birthday, and we bought our car. Only somehow you were always the one behind the wheel. You drove your buddies around in it, you went to ‘business meetings’ that never led anywhere. In three years, I drove it to the supermarket maybe ten times. That was your second takeoff attempt, right? On someone else’s dime.”
Each word was measured and cold, like a surgeon’s scalpel. She wasn’t accusing, wasn’t screaming. She was opening up their life together layer by layer and displaying the ugly truth.
“That wasn’t help, Slava. That was sponsorship. And I’m not a wife—I’m your general investor, supposed to supply resources for your grand plans without interruption. Except you turned out to be a lousy start-up guy. Not a single one of your projects took off. And now you decided to bet the last thing I have—my parents’ home. How enterprising.”
“Enough!” he barked, his voice cracking. “Enough humiliating me! You never believed in me—not for one second! You’ve always looked down on me from your little bell tower where everything is served on a silver platter! Do you have any idea what it’s like to live with someone who constantly reminds you that you owe them everything? Yes, your parents helped us! So what? You threw it in my face every day! With your silence, with your look! You think I didn’t see how you looked at me? Like I was nothing! Like a kept man with ambitions—”
“A kept man with ambitions?” Veronika tilted her head slightly, as if trying the phrase on. “Actually, yes. You’re right. That’s exactly how I’ve been looking at you lately. I just didn’t want to say it out loud. Thanks for sparing me the trouble.”
That calm, almost lazy agreement hit Slava harder than any scream. He’d been waiting for tears, for denial, for counter-accusations—anything that would let him inflate a scandal and reclaim the role of wounded victim. But she simply agreed. She disarmed him by stealing his only weapon: his pretend offense.
And then the mask finally cracked and crumbled into dust.
“Oh, so that’s how it is!” he hissed, his face twisting with pure, unclouded contempt. He stepped forward, his half-naked body tensing. “Fine. Then let’s be honest. Yes—I wanted to sell that dacha! And you know what? I had every right! Because I spent the best years of my life on you! I invested in this marriage—my time, my youth, my energy!”
He spoke loudly, viciously, spitting the words as if vomiting out poison he’d been storing for years.
“Your parents squat on those plots like dogs in a manger! They don’t need it! It’s dead capital! And I need it! To build something real, not rot in your cozy little petty-bourgeois burrow! You think I enjoyed living by your schedule? Putting up with your bland friends talking about kids and discounts? Sitting through your dreary family dinners where your father looks at me like I’m empty space? I endured it all! For you! For our future—which you sabotaged with your fear and your laziness!”
He paced the room like a caged animal, from the bed to the window and back, leaving wet footprints on the parquet. This was no loving husband, not even an offended boy. This was a hungry predator, furious that his rightful prey—by his own logic—had been taken away.
Veronika watched the outburst in silence. She didn’t interrupt. She let him spill everything, down to the last drop. She looked at him the way a doctor watches a patient in a fit, waiting for the acute phase to pass so she could deliver the diagnosis.
When he finally stopped, breathing hard, she spoke—still quietly, still evenly.
“You ‘endured’ my friends?” she clarified. “The same friends you tried to borrow money from behind my back for your ‘projects’? And then I had to pay them back to salvage what was left of your reputation? You endured my father? The same man who got you a job after your first collapse—and you quit three months later because you ‘didn’t want to hump your back for an uncle’?”
She stood up from the bed. She didn’t move toward him—she simply rose, and that simple movement made him take a step back.
“You say you invested your best years. Let’s do an inventory of your investments, Slava. Five years. Your coffee shop—opened with my father’s money—lasted six months and left forty thousand dollars in debt. ‘Our’ car—bought with my money—you wrecked drunk, and the repair cost half of a new one. Your ‘consulting business,’ for which you demanded a separate home office and a new laptop, consisted of you sitting at home for two years playing online games. Those are your assets? That’s your energy? You invested nothing, Slava. You only consumed. You’re a parasite. And you’re not angry at me—you’re angry that the donor organism woke up and decided to cut off your access.”
He stared at her, and the anger was gone from his eyes. Only cold, animal fear remained. He understood she could see straight through him. Not an ambitious man, not an unrecognized genius—but what he really was: pathetic, lazy, and absolutely empty. He opened his mouth to argue—then found not a single word. All his bluster, all his prepared accusations, turned to ash under her calm, merciless analysis.
Slava stood in the middle of the room, and suddenly he felt cold—not from a draft or wet skin, but from the dead emptiness yawning open inside him after her last word.
“Parasite.”
The word stuck, became his second skin.
He waited for more. But there was no more.
Veronika silently walked around him, the way you walk around a piece of furniture blocking your path. Her movements were smooth and economical, without fuss or rage. She went to the built-in wardrobe and, with a soft click, opened the door. From the top shelf she pulled down his travel bag—large, dark, heavy fabric—the one he took on “business trips” when they needed a break from each other. She didn’t fling it or toss it at his feet. She calmly set it in the middle of their bed, on the rumpled blanket. The bag lay there—black and empty—like an open grave for their marriage.
Then she went to the dresser where her purse was. She took it, pulled out her wallet. Slava watched the everyday motions with growing confusion. What was she doing—giving him taxi money? The thought was so humiliating he clenched his fists.
She opened the wallet and took out a thick stack of bills—heavy, bound with a bank band. All their shared cash, withdrawn a few days earlier for a big purchase.
She walked to the bed. For a moment she paused, looking at the money in her hand, and then, with a light, almost careless motion, she dropped it onto the travel bag. The bundle thudded dully against the fabric and stayed on top—brazen and out of place.
“Here,” she said, her voice as even and colorless as before. “This is yours. Consider it severance.”
Slava looked at the money, then at her. He didn’t understand. Or rather, his mind refused to understand what was happening. This wasn’t a quarrel, not a scandal. It was a termination. The shutdown of an unprofitable enterprise where he had been the main—and only—asset that failed to justify the investment.
“I’m closing our project, Slava,” she continued, as if reading his thoughts. “It turned out to be a failure. Too many expenses, no profit, and zero prospects. I’m writing off the losses and exiting the business. And this”—she nodded at the money—“is your share. For services rendered. Compensation for time spent. So you can find yourself a new ‘springboard’ and a new investor.”
She spoke about their life as if she were reading a business report. No pain. No regret. No anger. Only cold, sober calculation. And it was worse than any curses.
“Your acrobatic act is over,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes. In her gaze he saw nothing but tired disgust. “The circus is leaving. No rush—pack whatever you consider yours.”
With those last words, she turned and left the bedroom. No slammed door. She simply went out and pulled it closed behind her. A few seconds later, from the kitchen, came the click of the kettle being switched on.
Life went on.
Just without him.
Slava was left alone in the middle of the room, still wrapped in a towel, staring at the empty travel bag and the money on top of it. The bills were real. He could reach out and take them—the very money he’d wanted so badly. There it was, lying in front of him.
But he couldn’t move.
He felt naked, ridiculed, crushed.
He hadn’t been destroyed by a scream, but by an accountant’s report. He hadn’t been thrown out—he’d been written off the books. He stared at his severance pay and understood it wasn’t a springboard.
It was a gravestone—under which he had just buried himself