The door slammed with an indifferent loudness, cutting off the sounds of the stairwell. Vadim stepped aside, letting her go in first. A girl. I knew they would come.
He’d called earlier that day—his voice saturated with that brisk, businesslike cheerfulness I’d learned to hate—and told me an “important talk and a surprise” were waiting for me that evening. In that moment I understood: the time had come.
She walked into my apartment, and the first thing I felt was her scent. Sweet, like an overripe peach left in the sun. Cheap and intrusive, it instantly began forcing out the familiar smell of my home—subtle, with notes of sandalwood and old books.
She looked around with poorly concealed superiority, as if sizing up which of my curtains would best match the color of her hair.
Vadim, without taking off his shoes, went into the living room. His expensive boots left dirty marks on the parquet. His voice was even, almost casual. That confidence in him was new—frightening.
For the last six months, after his big deal, it was as if he’d decided he’d grabbed God by the beard and now everything was permitted. He stopped being my husband and became the master of life—his, and, as he thought, mine too.
“Lena, meet Katya.”
He swept his hand around the room—the sofa, the bookshelves, me. The gesture of an owner pointing out his possessions.
“From now on, she’s the mistress here.”
I didn’t flinch. I didn’t scream. Everything inside me had died long before that evening. I simply nodded, accepting his words as a given. Like a weather forecast you’d already heard that morning. That phone call had been the signal—the final dot in my months-long plan.
Katya gave me a quick, appraising glance. Triumph sloshed in her eyes—the triumph of a winner.
She was young, and that youth seemed to her like impenetrable armor. She saw in me only a fading backdrop for her victory.
I walked slowly to the antique dark-oak chest of drawers I’d inherited from my grandmother. My fingers, steady and without trembling, opened a hidden compartment under the carved cornice—one Vadim didn’t even know existed.
Inside lay two thick black envelopes. The result of three months of my quiet, invisible work.
I took one and held it out to Katya. My voice was calm—maybe even too calm.
“Welcome. This is for you.”
Her hand froze for a moment. Confusion flickered across her well-kept face, quickly replaced by a condescending smirk. She probably decided it was some pathetic attempt to buy her off or hand over documents.
“What is it?” she asked, turning the smooth cardstock between her fingers.
“Open it and you’ll find out,” I said.
Vadim frowned. He’d been expecting tears, hysteria, a scandal—anything he could control, anything he could sneer at and ignore. My composure threw him off.
“Lena, don’t start,” he ground out. “Don’t make a scene.”
“I’m not starting, Vadim. I’m finishing.”
Katya, curious, tugged at the edge of the envelope. Inside wasn’t a single sheet, but a stack of glossy photographs. She pulled out the top one.
Her face changed instantly. The smirk slid off, her lips twisting ugly. She began flipping through the pictures—fast, faster—and with each new one her breathing turned ragged, noisy.
The smell of overripe peaches in the room suddenly became suffocating—unbearable.
Her fingers loosened, and the glossy cards fanned out onto the parquet.
An unsightly mosaic of someone else’s life: shabby interiors with carpets on the walls; men with greasy hair and heavy, predatory stares; an unremarkable door with the sign “Massage Salon,” and her coming out of it, adjusting a cheap jacket.
“What kind of circus is this, Lena? Where did you get this?” Rage and confusion wrestled on Vadim’s face. He stepped toward the photos, but my voice stopped him.
“It’s a lie! Photoshop!” Katya shrieked, her voice breaking into unpleasant high notes.
“Photoshop?” I slowly shook my head. “Was Vadim so busy chasing a pretty face that he forgot to mention that before marriage I worked for ten years as a senior financial analyst at a serious company?
“I know how to collect and analyze information. And I had my own money for it—from selling my parents’ dacha, remember? I simply hired a very good private detective.
“And he’s prepared to confirm the authenticity of every photo in court. As is Semyon Arkadyevich—the man in the third picture. He gets very talkative when someone hints at possible problems with the tax inspectorate.”
The name, tossed into the air, hit like a punch. Katya recoiled. Vadim looked at her with disgust. Now he wasn’t looking at a pretty toy—he was looking at a dirty liability that compromised him.
“Who is Semyon Arkadyevich? Katya, I’m waiting for an explanation.”
She started to gasp for air. The mask of a confident predator crumbled, revealing a frightened provincial girl caught in a cheap lie.
“Vadim… darling, don’t listen to her…”
I went back to the chest of drawers and took the second envelope.
“She hasn’t told you everything, Vadim. The detective—once he got carried away—dug into your life too. Just in case. Turned out there was a lot of interesting stuff there as well.”
I held the envelope between two fingers, as if weighing it on a scale.
“That envelope was for her. So she’d understand the game is over.”
A pause hung in the air—thick, heavy. Katya stared at me with animal terror. Vadim—with barely concealed revulsion and rising anxiety.
“And this, Vadim, is for you. Your part of the story. Much more detailed.
“With account statements. Offshore transfers.
“And the names of your business partners—and how you cheated them.”
Vadim’s hand froze. His face became a hard, gray mask.
“Are you threatening me? In my own home?”
“In my home, Vadim. This apartment—if you’ve forgotten—came from my parents. And you were simply… living here. Very comfortably living here.”
Katya, sobbing, collapsed to her knees in front of me. Pitiful. Crushed.
“Please… don’t… I’ll give everything back… I’ll leave… you’ll never see me again…”
I didn’t look at her. My whole world was focused on the man I’d lived with for fifteen years—and, as it turned out, had never truly known.
“Blackmail is ugly, Lena.”
“And bringing your mistress into the home where your wife lives—is that beautiful? Is that what a decent man does?”
With disgust he shoved Katya away as she tried to cling to his legs. She was no longer a prize—she was a problem. An expensive mistake that could ruin everything.
“Shut up,” he snapped at her, then looked back at me. In his eyes flashed a predator’s respect for a stronger predator. “What do you want?”
“For this misunderstanding to not be here. In five minutes.”
Vadim yanked Katya up off the floor and practically threw her out into the stairwell.
“You’ll pick up your things tomorrow!”
The door slammed shut. He stood there, breathing hard, leaning against it.
“Now we’ll talk.”
He sat down in his favorite armchair. The master. Even now he was trying to be one.
“I won’t take that envelope, Lena. We’re adults. Let’s make a deal.”
“I’m not making deals. I’m turning the page. Without you.”
“Divorce? Half the property? Fine. I agree.”
“I want you to leave. Now. With one travel bag. You’ll sign a waiver renouncing any claim to this apartment and everything in it. In return…” I nodded toward the black envelope, “…this stays between us.”
Silence fell. The silence of a chess game where one piece has been checkmated.
“You thought it all through,” he said without expression.
“I had plenty of time—while you were building your new life.”
He stood up. For the first time that evening I saw not a self-assured alpha male, but simply a tired, aging man. All his swagger had been propped up by my weakness. When the weakness disappeared, he deflated.
He walked silently into the bedroom. I heard him open the closet, the clicks of the bag’s locks. Ten minutes later he came out with a small bag and stopped at the threshold.
“Goodbye, Lena.”
I didn’t answer. I watched him quietly close the door behind him. I went to the chest of drawers, took the black envelope, and tossed it into the fireplace. I didn’t need leverage anymore. I just wanted him gone.
Two years passed.
The first year was a year of quiet, a return to myself. I threw out all the furniture Vadim had bought.
I re-papered the walls. I walked a lot, read the books I’d been putting off for years, restored my professional contacts, and even took on several large freelance projects.
I was getting acquainted again with the woman I’d become—strong, independent, valuing her solitude.
And then Nikita came into my life. A simple, quiet engineer I bumped into in a bookstore—we reached for the last copy of a Brodsky poetry collection at the same time.
We talked for hours—about literature, life, the past. He was raising a son alone after his wife died suddenly from illness. We grew closer slowly, carefully, like two people who know the cost of loss.
In that same living room it no longer smelled of sandalwood, but of fresh-brewed coffee and something faintly childlike. On the sofa, there was a fortress made of pillows.
The door opened and Nikita came in, carrying grocery bags and a small wind-up dog.
“Yegorka and I decided our garrison is missing a guard dog,” he smiled.
From behind his back a six-year-old boy peeked out.
“Lena, does it bark?” he asked, reaching for the toy.
I crouched, wound up the dog. It hopped across the parquet in a ridiculous little dance. Yegorka laughed. And in that laughter I understood what real victory is. It isn’t revenge. It’s being able to sit on the floor in your own apartment and listen to a toy dog bark—and feel like you’re exactly where you belong.
Three more years passed.
Autumn light flooded the kitchen. It smelled of cottage-cheese casserole with raisins—Nikita’s signature dish, which Yegor adored.
Yegor himself—now nine—was absorbed in assembling a complicated model sailboat at the big oak table we’d bought together.
I sat in a wicker chair, reading a book and watching them. The harmony of that moment was so complete that my past life felt like the plot of a bad, unbelievable movie.
Rumors about Vadim reached me rarely. His business hadn’t collapsed, but it had sunk hard. Without my connections and the analytical mind he’d gotten used to exploiting for free, he’d lost his grip, his confidence, the shine in his eyes.
They said he never remarried—just swapped one young copy of Katya for another. He didn’t become a miserable drifter; he simply turned into an empty place, a shadow of his former greatness.
Katya wrote once. A long, rambling message. “I understand everything… He robbed me…
Help me, for God’s sake, at least a little money for a ticket home…” I blocked her without replying. She was someone else’s trash—and I wasn’t going to drag it into my house.
“Lena, look!” Yegor ran up to me, showing off the nearly finished sailboat with crimson sails. “We’ll name it ‘Hope’!”
I hugged him. Nikita came over and kissed the top of my head.
“The casserole’s ready. Time for tea.”
And we sat down at the table: the man I loved, and the boy who had become my own. I looked at them and understood the main conclusion. Strength isn’t in destroying your enemy’s life.
True strength is in building your own. A mason who patiently, brick by brick, raises the walls of his home will always be stronger than someone who only knows how to blow up other people’s.
Because after an explosion, only ash remains. But the house stays standing. And there will always be light burning in its windows.