She wasn’t taking revenge. She simply signed a document. Sometimes justice arrives quietly—without pomp, but with a cool satisfaction that lasts longer than applause.
Rita set down her pen and closed the personnel folder for the finance department employees. Staff reduction was always an unpleasant procedure, but the company was going through a restructuring, and it was inevitable. The list of those to be laid off lay in front of her, and the surname “Krasnova” didn’t stir any particular emotion in her. At least, that’s what everyone around believed.
“Are you sure?” her deputy asked, taking the signed papers. “Inna Krasnova is a leading specialist in her area.”
“I’m sure,” Rita nodded. “The certification results speak for themselves. We don’t have the resources to keep employees who don’t deliver the required performance.”
The deputy shrugged and left. Rita walked over to the window of her new office. Beyond the glass stretched the business district—glass high-rises, chaotic traffic, people hurrying about their lives. Nothing like the view from the window of her and Andrey’s apartment on the third floor of a brick five-story building.
“Rita, we need to talk,” Andrey came home late, as he had for the past three months. His voice sounded unusually firm.
She looked up from her laptop, where she was reviewing corporate reports. Working in financial analysis required attention even outside office hours.
“Did something happen?”
Andrey looked oddly determined, and Rita immediately understood—this was serious.
“I’m leaving.”
“Where?” she didn’t understand.
“From you, Rita. I met someone else.”
Two simple sentences that destroyed five years of marriage.
She stayed silent, looking at the man she had lived with all those years. Together they had saved for the down payment on that apartment, together they had taken out the mortgage they still had years left to pay.
“So what now?” Rita asked, surprised by how calm her own voice sounded.
“I’m leaving, Rita. I’ll pick up my things this weekend. We’ll have to sell our apartment. We’ll split the furniture later, when emotions settle down. We’ll file the divorce papers electronically.”
“Who is she?” was the only thing she wanted to know.
“You don’t know her. Inna. We met at a financial modeling course. You’re always one step ahead—with reports, with your career. But next to her I… matter.”
“Next to her I… matter.” That phrase lodged itself in Rita’s memory with sharp clarity. As if all those years with Rita he’d felt insignificant—secondary.
That night she didn’t cry. She just lay there staring at the ceiling, thinking about the strange emptiness filling her from the inside. No rage, no despair—only a cold resolve to become stronger than she had ever been before.
A week passed. Rita filed the divorce paperwork and threw herself into work. The financial analysis department became her shelter from thoughts of her ruined marriage and betrayal. When her manager offered her training in a leadership development program, she agreed without hesitation.
“Your results are excellent, Margarita,” he told her. “Restructuring will begin soon, and we see you in a management role.”
After two months of training and certification, she was promoted to deputy head of the department—and three months later, to head of the entire regional network’s finance department.
Rita didn’t look for information about Andrey and his new woman. But the corporate world is small—especially in their city. At one meeting she heard someone mention, “Inna Krasnova from marketing analytics prepared the presentation.” After the meeting, she decided to learn more about the employee.
“Krasnova?” Rita asked a colleague in HR. “Tell me about her.”
“Ambitious, but her results don’t match her self-image,” he remarked. “Talks a lot, does little.”
“Does she have a family?”
“Recently married some Muromtsev from the construction sector. She’s very proud of it—showed everyone her wedding photos.”
Rita felt something inside her twitch. Muromtsev from the construction sector. That could only be Andrey—her ex-husband.
“Andrey Muromtsev?” she clarified evenly.
“Yes. Do you know him? He’s your namesake,” the colleague looked at her with interest.
“We crossed paths once,” Rita replied, smoothly shifting the conversation.
That news about his wedding should have hurt. But Rita felt only cold curiosity—as if she were watching someone else’s life through aquarium glass.
Information that once would have shattered her heart now felt like data. A line in a spreadsheet. Rita kept climbing the career ladder, and the corporation’s acquisition of several smaller companies opened new horizons. When she was offered the position of leading the staff optimization project after the merger, she agreed.
Her job now was to determine which units and employees the combined company truly needed—and which it could cut without harming the business.
And that was when the marketing analytics department’s documents landed on her desk—where Inna Krasnova worked. By all formal metrics, she wasn’t particularly competent. By colleagues’ feedback, she wasn’t always reliable, prone to inflating her own achievements.
Rita spent a day studying all the indicators. Objectivity above all. And the data spoke for itself: the department could be cut by 15%, and the first candidate for dismissal was Inna.
Pure math. No revenge.
Andrey’s call caught her on a Saturday morning. She was sitting on the balcony of her new apartment—spacious, in a modern residential complex with a view of the park.
“Rita… is that you?” his voice sounded confused.
“Good morning, Andrey.”
“Was it you who signed Inna’s termination order?”
Rita took a sip of her morning coffee.
“I sign a lot of orders. It’s my job.”
“Stop it!” irritation cut through his voice. “You knew who she was. You did it out of spite.”
“I’m the head of the finance department. We carried out staff optimization after the merger. Fifteen percent of employees were laid off. Decisions were made based on objective performance indicators.”
“Rita, I know you. This is revenge, isn’t it?”
She suddenly laughed—openly, genuinely.
“You know me? Really? If you knew me, we wouldn’t be talking on the phone right now about your new wife. And no, Andrey—this isn’t revenge. This is business. Nothing personal.”
She ended the call first. For the first time since their separation, she was the one controlling the situation, not him. And that feeling was stronger than any emotion they had once shared.
On Monday morning, Rita ran into Inna Krasnova at the entrance to the business center. She recognized her immediately—she’d seen the photo in the personnel file. A tall blonde with cold blue eyes stopped in front of her.
“So you’re the famous Margarita Alexeyevna?” her tone was challenging. “Andrey’s ex-wife.”
Rita nodded calmly.
“And you’re Inna Krasnova. Former specialist in marketing analytics.”
“You fired me out of revenge,” Inna stated, not asked.
“Out of fifty-four employees in your department, eight were laid off. All had performance indicators below the department average. You included.”
“That’s vile!” Inna raised her voice, drawing the attention of employees walking by.
“Our company values professionalism, not personal connections,” Rita remained unruffled. “Maybe in your previous life, things worked differently.”
“And you know what’s vile?” Rita spoke quietly, but firmly. “Building your happiness on someone else’s grief. Although that’s a kind of business too. You made your bet—and you lost.”
“Andrey was unhappy with you!”
“Maybe. And now you’re both unhappy. Nothing personal, Inna. Just life.”
Two months later Andrey showed up at Rita’s door.
“Can I come in? We need to talk.”
Rita let her ex-husband into the apartment. He looked around, noting the stylish interior and the spaciousness.
“You’ve settled in well.”
“Yes, not bad,” she agreed. “What did you want?”
“Inna still can’t find a job,” he sat down in an armchair without waiting to be invited. “Can you help somehow?”
Rita sat opposite.
“Are you serious? You come to me and ask me to help the woman you left me for?”
“Rita, understand—we have a difficult situation. Mortgage, plans…”
“We had plans too, Andrey. Remember?”
He lowered his eyes.
“I made a mistake. I understand that now.”
Rita shook her head.
“No, Andrey. You didn’t make a mistake. You made a choice. And now you live with its consequences. Just like I do.”
“What should I do?”
“Nothing. Live on. Support your wife—or don’t. That’s your choice too. But it’s not my problem.”
“You’ve changed,” he said, surprised.
“Of course. Did you think I’d stay the miserable woman you abandoned forever?”
After Andrey left, Rita stood by the window for a long time. Dusk settled over the city; windows lit up in neighboring buildings. Behind each one—someone’s life, someone’s story, someone’s victories and defeats.
Maybe she really had taken revenge when she signed that order. But she would never admit it—to Andrey, to Inna, or even to herself. Objective performance indicators had simply become a convenient tool.
Was it an accident that she paid special attention to the department where her ex-husband’s new wife worked? An accident that she studied Inna’s numbers so meticulously?
Or maybe it was because, over the years, Rita had learned to identify with flawless accuracy the kind of people who always put personal gain above everything else. People like Inna. People Andrey had become. And to remove them from her path.
Her phone rang. The screen showed the name of the HR director.
“Anatoly, good evening.”
“Margarita Alexeyevna, it’s a delicate situation. A husband of one of the laid-off employees called me. Asked us to reconsider the decision about Inna Krasnova.”
Rita smirked.
“And what did you tell him?”
“That the decision was made based on objective data and isn’t subject to review.”
“Corporate policy is perfectly clear on matters like these,” Rita remarked. “We can’t make exceptions for individual employees based on personal requests.”
“You answered correctly,” Rita paused. “And let him know—this employee won’t be getting recommendations from our company. Those are the rules.”
She ended the call and looked out the window again. In the distance she could see the old neighborhood where their former apartment remained. Let them sort it out themselves—with their mortgages, plans, and problems.
A year later, Rita received another promotion—she was appointed CFO of the entire holding. That same day she learned Andrey had ended things with Inna.
“Couldn’t resist sharing the gossip,” the HR colleague said at lunch. “Remember the man who called about Krasnova? Turns out he left her. Walked out when she couldn’t find a job for three months.”
“Well, would you look at that,” Rita replied calmly, stirring her coffee. “What an interesting turn.”
“In what sense?”
“People rarely change,” Rita said philosophically. “They just change the scenery while playing the same role.”
“Doesn’t matter. Just an observation.”
And that evening, raising a glass to her promotion, Rita smiled at her reflection in the window. She hadn’t planned revenge. Life itself had put everything in its place—and it turned out far sweeter than any carefully crafted strategy.
She had gone from a confused, abandoned wife to a successful top executive with prospects for even greater growth. Not many can turn a blow of fate into a springboard for takeoff. But Rita could.
Rita wasn’t taking revenge. She simply became stronger. And that proved to be the best kind of justice