The next contract for the delivery of medical equipment blurred in front of her eyes. The numbers and clauses had long since merged into a monotonous mush. Elena rubbed the bridge of her nose and leaned back in her chair.
The phone call from her husband came at just the right time.
“Len, hi. Listen, I’m going to be late today. The meeting is dragging on.”
“Again?” The woman absentmindedly flipped the page. “That’s the third time this week.”
“What can you do—work. Don’t make dinner for me, I’ll grab a bite somewhere.”
“Okay.” Elena was already used to her husband constantly staying late at work. Over the past six months, it had been happening noticeably more often. “See you at home.”
“Yeah, sure. All right, bye.”
She was about to hang up, but suddenly she heard a familiar female laugh in the background. Her hand froze above the screen. That laugh… where had she heard it before?
“Igor, you promised!” the same voice rang out—clearer now.
Elena’s heart skipped a beat.
Angela.
Her former friend—the one she hadn’t spoken to for two years, ever since that ugly incident with money.
What was she doing next to Igor?
“Just hang on a little longer,” she heard her husband say. “We have to be careful.”
“I’m sick of hiding! When are you finally going to make up your mind?”
“Angela, we agreed. A little more time and it’ll work out. The main thing is that Lena doesn’t suspect anything too soon.”
Elena felt her fingers go numb. The phone almost slipped from her hand. What did “make up your mind” mean? What were they talking about?
“I’m tired of waiting,” Angela continued. “We’ve been dragging this out for two years. She’ll find out anyway.”
“She will—but not now. I have a plan. Trust me.”
A plan? Elena pressed the phone tighter to her ear, afraid to miss a single word. Her mouth went dry.
“Your Elena is so naïve,” Angela laughed. “She still doesn’t suspect a thing. And we’ve practically pulled everything off right under her nose.”
“Quiet,” Igor snapped. “Don’t relax. She’s smarter than she looks.”
“Igor, I’m serious. Stop stalling. File the paperwork and end this. I can’t keep putting up with this comedy.”
Paperwork? What paperwork? Elena felt cold spread down her spine. Don’t tell me…
“Fine, fine. Next week I’ll meet with a lawyer. But you have to promise you’ll be careful. If she suspects something too early, everything could fall apart.”
“I promise. But I’m not going to wait forever!”
In the receiver Elena heard movement, and a car door slamming.
“Get in, let’s go. I’m in a hurry.”
The line went dead.
Elena sat motionless, staring at the black phone screen. Her thoughts tangled, refusing to form any logical chain.
Igor and Angela. Two years. Paperwork. A plan.
She tried to reconstruct the timeline. Angela had disappeared from their lives after the scandal over the loan. Back then it turned out she’d spent the money Elena gave her on something completely different—not her mother’s treatment, as she’d claimed.
But if what Elena had overheard was true, Angela and Igor had been together for two years.
The whole time.
“Lena, can you sign the contract with MedTech?” Marina, the head of procurement, slipped into the office unnoticed and handed her a folder. “There are two copies—need your signature on both.”
Elena took the folder mechanically, but the letters blurred again. Her hand trembled.
“Len, are you okay? You look like a ghost. Did something happen?”
“No, it’s fine. It’s just… my head hurts a little.”
“Maybe you should go home? There’s only an hour left in the day. You can sign it tomorrow.”
“No, I’d better do it now.” Elena forced herself to focus on the text.
At home she wandered around the apartment aimlessly.
The overheard conversation replayed in her head again and again. Every phrase grew new meanings; every word sounded like a threat.
The family photos on the dresser suddenly felt like props from someone else’s life.
Elena picked up a vacation photo from Sochi. She remembered that day perfectly. Igor had been typing something in his phone all evening, and when she asked, “What are you doing?” he grunted that he was working and hid the screen.
Back then she’d thought her husband was a hardcore workaholic. Now she understood he hadn’t been texting colleagues at all.
“We’ve been dragging this out for two years,” Angela’s words echoed.
So it started right after the money scandal.
What if they staged that fight on purpose? So they wouldn’t cross paths anymore and wouldn’t raise suspicion?
Elena went into the kitchen and automatically put the kettle on. There was food in the fridge for dinner. She always cooked extra just in case Igor changed his mind and came home. Now that habit felt ridiculous.
Then a message from her husband popped up:
“The meeting’s running even later. I’ll be home late—don’t wait.”
Typical. How many messages like that had there been in recent months?
Elena tried to remember when she’d first noticed changes in Igor’s behavior: staying late more often, dressing differently, expensive cologne he’d never bought before.
And there had been oddities with money, too.
Igor had become more secretive about finances, stopped discussing big purchases. He said he wanted to surprise her.
Naïve idiot—she’d even been happy about his “thoughtfulness”!
Elena opened her laptop and logged into online banking. Their joint account showed normal spending: utilities, groceries, gas.
But his personal card…
Cash withdrawals had become far more frequent. Restaurants she didn’t recognize. Flower shops… and he hadn’t brought her flowers in six months.
She wanted to scream from helplessness and humiliation. How could she have been so blind? Every sign of cheating was right there, and she kept making plans for their future and dreaming about children.
She shut the laptop and started pacing again. She had to do something—but what? Make a jealous scene? Or ask him directly?
“If she suspects something too early, everything could fall apart.”
What exactly could fall apart? And what documents was Igor going to “file”?
Suddenly a frightening thought surfaced. The apartment was registered in her name—her parents had given it to her as a wedding gift. But after the marriage registration, Igor became a co-owner. Was he planning to…?
Elena rushed to the safe where they kept all the important documents. The marriage certificate, the apartment papers, her passport—everything was there. But that didn’t mean anything. Copies could have been made in advance.
She remembered Angela. She had always been cunning and calculating.
At university she could wriggle out of any situation and shift the blame onto others. And the “loan for my mother’s treatment” story had shown exactly what she was capable of. It turned out Angela’s mother was alive and well, and the money had gone to pay off Angela’s own debts.
And now the two of them were planning something. Against her.
Her phone vibrated again.
“Len, I’m leaving on a business trip tomorrow morning. For three days. Forgot to tell you.”
A business trip. Convenient! He’d spend three days with Angela somewhere in a hotel.
Elena quickly typed back: “Okay. Which city are you going to?”
The reply didn’t come right away: “Voronezh. Meeting with suppliers.”
Elena opened her husband’s work email. Luckily, she knew the password—Igor had never hidden it.
There were no emails about any trip to Voronezh. But she did find correspondence with a travel agency about booking a room at a hotel outside Moscow. For two people. Starting tomorrow.
She lay awake all night, listening to every sound.
Igor came back around midnight, quietly took a shower, then lay down beside her and almost immediately started snoring. Normally she would have been happy he came home, but now his presence felt like a fake performance.
In the morning he packed for his “business trip” with unusual care. Elena pretended to be asleep, but watched him through half-closed eyelids.
“Len, I’m heading out,” her husband bent down to kiss her forehead.
“Have a good trip,” she mumbled, trying to sound sleepy.
As soon as he left, Elena got dressed quickly and went to work. But she couldn’t concentrate. She mechanically shuffled papers, answered calls, nodded in meetings—while thinking about one thing only: what next?
By lunchtime, a plan had formed.
If Igor and Angela were at a hotel outside Moscow, that meant she had time to search his things at home. Maybe she’d find something that would clarify everything.
She asked to leave work early, claiming she felt sick (which wasn’t far from the truth), and went home.
She started with his desk. The drawers held ordinary stuff: pens, notebooks, chargers. But in the farthest corner she felt a folded sheet of paper. It was a printed appraisal of their apartment. From last week.
Her hands shook. So her husband really was planning to sell the place. Their home—given by her parents…
Elena went into the bedroom and opened her husband’s side of the closet. Between the shirts she found a bag from a jewelry store. Inside were expensive gold earrings with diamonds. A receipt for an amount they usually spent in a month on everything.
Those earrings were clearly not for her. Elena was allergic to gold—Igor knew that perfectly well.
In the pocket of his blazer she found a lawyer’s business card and a note with a date:
“Divorce. Division of property.” Igor’s handwriting.
So in three days her husband was filing for divorce!
Elena sat down on the bed, feeling her legs give out. All this time he had been preparing to leave her. And not just leave—take her for everything he could.
Something in her boiled over: rage. Pure, cold fury at the audacity, at the fact they thought she was a fool they could twist around their finger.
She grabbed her laptop and started acting.
First, she logged into online banking and transferred all the money from their joint account to her personal one.
Then she found the phone number of the travel agency her husband had used.
“Hello. I’m Mr. Kravtsov’s wife. He asked me to pass along that the hotel check-in is delayed. We have a family issue.”
“Understood. And when are you planning to check in?”
“Not sure yet. Most likely we’ll have to cancel the booking.”
“All right, we’ll update the reservation. Thank you for letting us know!”
Elena smiled with satisfaction. Let the lovebirds arrive to locked doors. Romantic getaway ruined.
But that wasn’t enough. She needed more—something that would make them understand it was dangerous to toy with her.
She remembered that Angela worked at an advertising agency that handled several big shopping centers. A serious position, image matters. And management was unlikely to appreciate an employee who wrecked other people’s families.
Finding her boss’s contact details wasn’t hard.
Elena drafted a short but pointed email saying their employee had been having an affair with a married man for two years and was planning real-estate schemes with him.
She didn’t send it yet. She decided to keep it as a last resort.
By six that evening she was in Oleg Mikhailovich’s office—the lawyer who’d helped her settle her grandmother’s inheritance. The experienced attorney assessed the situation immediately.
“Elena, you’re doing the right thing not just sitting on your hands. Men often think their wives don’t understand legal matters.”
“What do you advise?”
“Tomorrow morning—before he goes to his lawyer—file for divorce yourself. That gives you an advantage: you’ll be the petitioner, not the respondent. You’ll be able to set the terms.”
“And the apartment will definitely stay mine?”
“Absolutely. Moreover, if we can prove he was hiding expenses, spending family money on a mistress, the court may take that into account during the asset division.”
Oleg Mikhailovich prepared all the necessary documents. Elena signed a power of attorney for him to represent her.
“And one more piece of advice,” the lawyer added. “If you have recordings of their conversations, messages, photos—anything—it could be useful. Russian courts take marital infidelity seriously.”
That evening Elena made her plan for the next day.
In the morning she would go to court and file for divorce. Then she would go to work as if nothing had happened. And then, while Igor sat in his lawyer’s office, he would receive a summons stating that the divorce had already been initiated—by her.
Around eleven at night another message came from Igor:
“Len, everything okay with you? I’m tired, going to bed early. I won’t call tomorrow. Negotiations all day.”
“Of course you won’t,” Elena thought. “You’ve got other plans.”
She quickly replied:
“Okay, sweetheart. Good luck with the negotiations. Love you.”
That last word was hard to type, but she had to keep up appearances until the very end.
She sent the text and turned off her phone. She intended to rest well, because the next days would be very tense.
In the morning Elena woke with a strange sense of lightness.
For the first time in months she knew exactly what she was doing—and why. At nine a.m. she filed the divorce petition in court, and by eleven she was already at work.
Igor stayed silent for two days. Apparently, he was enjoying the last days of his “business trip” with Angela.
At last the long-awaited call came.
“Len, this… this must be some misunderstanding!” the man mumbled, flustered. “They just handed me a summons. It says you’re filing for divorce.”
“Not a misunderstanding,” Elena replied calmly. “Reality. Because I know everything, Igor.”
Her husband tried to sound outraged.
“What are you talking about? I’m on a business trip—in Voronezh!”
“At the ‘Podmoskovnye Dali’ hotel. In a room for two. With Angela—my former friend. Is that what you meant to say?”
“Lena, listen…”
“No—you listen. The apartment stays mine. Don’t even dream about it! I already transferred the money from our joint account to my own. And I took the gold earrings too. They were yours—now they’re ours!”
“What, were you spying on me?”
“Yeah, right. You were so stupid I didn’t even have to do anything. When we talked three days ago, you forgot to hang up. I heard everything. A lucky accident!”
A woman’s voice flared up in the background—Angela was protesting about something.
“And yes, Igor—tell your girlfriend I sent an email to her agency. With all the details of your relationship. Let’s see how management reacts to an employee who wrecks families.”
“You had no right!”
“And you had the right to lie to me for two years? To plan a divorce and the sale of my apartment behind my back?”
Igor’s voice turned plaintive.
“Lena, we can talk about everything. I’ll explain—”
“You’ll explain it in court. Oleg Mikhailovich will represent my interests. Because I don’t want to see you.”
Elena ended the call and switched off her phone.
That evening, as usual, Marina from the neighboring department stopped by.
“Lena, you seem kind of… happy today. What happened?”
“I’m getting divorced!”
“My God! And you’re saying it so calmly?”
“You know, when you make the right decision, it becomes easier to breathe right away.”
A week later Elena received a reply from the advertising agency: Angela had been issued a severe reprimand and stripped of her quarterly bonus. A month later she quit—apparently the atmosphere at work had turned toxic after everyone found out the truth.
Igor tried through mutual acquaintances to say he was ready to settle. But Elena was unmoved.
The divorce went quickly. There was nothing to argue about. The apartment—documented as her personal property—remained hers. Their shared savings were split in half, but since Igor couldn’t explain the origin of the large expenses in recent months, his share ended up being symbolic.
And for the first time in years, Elena felt her life belonged to her again—and that justice really does prevail sometimes. Especially if you give it a little help