Your tea is still tasteless, Svetochka. Just grass-flavored water. And in those teabags, too—like in a factory canteen.”
Marina Vitalyevna said it in that special tone that both stated a “fact” and expressed the deepest pity for the misery of someone else’s everyday life. She sat at the perfectly clean glass table in Svetlana’s kitchen, holding an expensive porcelain cup with two fingers, her little finger stuck out as if she were doing a great favor—to the cup and to the hostess. A sunbeam, slipping through the impeccably washed window, played on her carefully styled hair, tinted the color of “eggplant.”
Svetlana silently poured herself water from the filter. She knew the tea was only the beginning. This was artillery preparation before the main assault. Her mother-in-law never came just because. Every visit was a mission, designed to extract some kind of benefit: moral, material—or, most often, both at once.
“Yes, I can’t compete with your samovar and loose-leaf blend,” Svetlana replied evenly, sitting down across from her. She didn’t smile. She simply watched.
“That’s exactly it,” Marina Vitalyevna nodded with satisfaction, taking another sip of the “grass.” “Traditions are dying out. Nobody values the real thing anymore. And my Lyoshenka has completely gone to the dogs. He used to eat his mama’s little soups, borscht. And now what? They order pizza and that’s dinner. He’ll ruin his stomach.”
She looked at Svetlana reproachfully, as if Svetlana herself had been sprinkling poison into every pizza box. Svetlana stayed quiet. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard accusations of culinary genocide against her own husband. This was the second part of the mandatory program: complaints about how badly her son lived with this woman.
Marina Vitalyevna let out a heavy sigh, set down her cup, and began inspecting her flawless manicure.
“It’s hard, Svetochka, living on one pension. I worked my whole life, never spared myself—and what do I have to show for it? Pennies. Just enough for medicine and utilities. And you still want to… live a little. Like a human being. See the world. Lyudochka, my neighbor, is flying to Turkey for the third time already. And how am I any worse?”
Svetlana felt the air in the kitchen start to thicken. They were approaching the climax.
“Turkey is nice,” she said neutrally. “The climate is wonderful.”
“Wonderful!” her mother-in-law picked up eagerly, leaning forward. Her eyes gleamed with a gambling excitement. “And the hotel is шикарный—everything included! And all my friends are going. We’ve practically packed our suitcases. There’s just one ‘but’…”
She paused dramatically.
“I’m short. Just a little. One hundred thousand. You’re a smart girl, Svetochka. You work well, my Lyoshenka isn’t exactly poor either. You wouldn’t refuse a mother, would you? The real mother of your husband?”
She looked at Svetlana expectantly, with that same mix of ingratiation and demand that Svetlana hated. Her gaze said: Come on, say yes, and maybe I’ll leave you alone for a while.
Svetlana took a slow sip of water.
“Marina Vitalyevna, I understand you. But we can’t right now. We’ve planned a major purchase, and all our available funds are already allocated.”
Not a single muscle twitched in her mother-in-law’s face. She only leaned back slowly in her chair. All the elderly gentleness, the feigned goodwill, vanished in an instant. Something predatory surfaced—mean and vicious—what usually hid beneath layers of sighs and complaints. Her eyes narrowed, and the corners of her mouth dragged downward.
“So that’s how it is,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I knew it—I’d get no help from you. Greedy. You’ve always been greedy. You think Lyoshenka won’t find out how you humiliated his mother? Refused over such a trifle. He won’t let anyone offend his mama. We’ll see how you sing when he has to make a choice.”
The threat hung in the kitchen air—thick and poisonous, like mercury fumes. Svetlana had expected this. She knew that behind the facade of weakness and pension complaints there was exactly this mechanism: crude, but sharpened over years into blackmail. Someone else in her place might have been frightened, might have started making excuses, bargaining. But Svetlana only smirked slightly, with just the corners of her mouth. It wasn’t a cheerful smile—it was cold, almost predatory, the smile of someone who sees a predictable trap and has no intention of stepping into it.
“A choice?” she repeated, her voice calm, even faintly curious. “Do you really think, Marina Vitalyevna, that in this situation the choice will be Alexey’s to make?”
Marina Vitalyevna frowned. She hadn’t expected pushback like that. She was used to her hints producing fear, fussing, a desperate desire to make amends. But here there was icy calm—and a question that struck at the weakest point in her whole setup.
“And whose would it be?” she snapped. “He’s my son! He loves and respects me! And when I tell him what a heartless wife he has—ready to leave his own mother in poverty for some ‘major purchase’—he’ll think about it. He’ll think very hard. I’ll open his eyes to you, Svetochka. I’ll tell him how you don’t value him, how you don’t care about his family. How you only ever think about yourself. He won’t abandon his mother. He never has.”
She said it savoring every word, painting an image of her daughter-in-law’s inevitable collapse in the air. In her mind she was the victor: the wise mother rescuing her son from the clutches of a selfish woman.
Svetlana listened in silence, not interrupting. She let her finish, let her spill all the prepared venom. When her mother-in-law stopped and looked at her triumphantly, Svetlana slowly stood up from the table. Now she wasn’t sitting across from her. She was standing over her. And that simple shift in position changed the balance of power completely. It wasn’t the mother-in-law looking down anymore—it was her.
Svetlana’s face held no emotion. No anger, no hurt, no fear. Only cold, absolute clarity.
“If you need money so badly, Marina Vitalyevna, then go and earn it, instead of extorting it from me under the pretext that you’ll turn your son against me! And if he’s as suggestible as you say, then I don’t need a husband like that at all!”
Each word was clipped and precise. This wasn’t an answer in an argument. It was a sentence. A sentence on their relationship, on her blackmail, and possibly on her son.
Marina Vitalyevna froze, her face going blank. She stared at her daughter-in-law as if she couldn’t believe what she’d heard. In her world, that scenario was impossible. People were supposed to object to her, argue with her, fear her. But she had simply been… dismissed. Crossed out of the equation, along with her supposedly all-powerful influence over her son.
Without waiting for an answer, Svetlana turned and walked into the entryway. She didn’t rush. Her movements were confident and final. She took the front door handle and, with a quiet click, opened the lock. Then she pulled the door wide, making a broad, inviting opening to the stairwell.
“You can start right now,” she added, turning back toward her mother-in-law, frozen in the kitchen. Her voice was just as even, just as lifeless. “Call Alexey. Tell him. Let’s see who your son stays with when he learns about your methods. Goodbye.”
Marina Vitalyevna slowly got up. Her face shifted from stunned to crimson with rage. She walked past Svetlana without looking at her, feeling spat on and humiliated. Already on the landing, she turned, her eyes shooting lightning.
“You’ll regret this,” she hissed.
Svetlana looked at her in silence. Then, without saying another word, she closed the door—right in her face.
The door shut with a dry, indifferent click. To Marina Vitalyevna, that sound was louder than a gunshot. She stood on the landing, staring at the smooth, expressionless surface that separated her from the familiar world where she was the center of her son’s universe. A cold, sharp fury pierced her. This wasn’t just an insult. It was sabotage—a subversion of the order of things, an attempted coup on the scale of one single family. Her hands, gripping her purse so hard her knuckles whitened, trembled slightly. But it wasn’t the tremor of weakness. It was the vibration of a string pulled to the limit, ready to snap at any moment and lash everything nearby.
She didn’t knock or shout. That would have meant admitting defeat. Instead she slowly, barely breathing, pulled out her phone. Her fingers—usually so nimble when laying out solitaire on her tablet—now moved with predatory precision. She found the treasured contact, “Lyoshenka,” and hit call, already rehearsing the first lines in her head. She didn’t go downstairs—no. She stayed right there on the landing, so that her voice, if needed, would carry hints of chill and the echo of an empty stairwell—the perfect set dressing for her little performance.
Alexey was in a work meeting when his phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. “Mom.” He grimaced and declined the call. Ten seconds later the phone buzzed again. And again. He apologized, stepped into the hallway, and answered—ready to hear another complaint about the pharmacy or noisy neighbors.
“Yeah, Mom, I’m in a meeting—something urgent?”
Instead of her usual brisk voice, he heard a quiet, stifled sob. A sound that, since childhood, had been his personal red-alert code.
“Lyoshenka… sonny…”
“Mom, what happened? Where are you?” His tone changed instantly. All the business façade fell away, exposing pure protective instinct.
“I… I was at your place…” Marina Vitalyevna’s voice shook and broke, like someone who couldn’t get enough air. “I just dropped by… for some tea… to check on Sveta…”
She paused, letting her son paint that idyllic picture in his imagination.
“And? What happened? Is Sveta home?”
“She is…” Another sob, now more desperate. “Lyoshenka, I don’t know what I did to her… I just… just mentioned that my friends are going to Turkey… That I want it so badly, just once… in my old age… to have a little joy… I didn’t ask for anything, son, you know me, I never—”
A masterful lie, polished over years. Alexey tensed; his jaw clenched. He pictured his small, aging mother sharing a modest dream.
“And what did she say?” he ground out.
“She… she laughed in my face, Lyoshenka… Said if I needed money I should go work for it, not extort it… Said that…” Here Marina Vitalyevna made her brilliant move; her voice dropped to a tragic whisper, “that I was nobody to her… and that if you’re so suggestible, then you’re not needed either… And then… then she just opened the door… and threw me out. Like a dog, Lyoshenka… I’m standing in the stairwell right now… alone…”
The picture she painted was monstrous. In Alexey’s head, the puzzle assembled instantly: his tired, unhappy mother, humiliated beyond endurance, and his wife—a heartless, cruel monster. Any doubts that might have surfaced were erased by the lifelong habit of believing every word she said. His world was simple: Mom was sacred. And whoever offended the sacred was an enemy.
“Mom, calm down. Hear me? Go home right now. I’m coming,” he cut in.
He hung up without waiting for a reply. Went back into the conference room, grabbed his laptop and car keys from the table. “Urgent family situation,” he threw at his boss, and walked out without looking at anyone. One single thought hammered in his head, white-hot: a blow to the temple. An insult. His mother. His mother had been thrown out. He drove without noticing traffic lights or other cars. Righteous anger filled him to the brim, leaving no room for questions or doubt. He wasn’t going to figure things out. He was going to deliver justice. And justice, as he understood it, had to happen immediately.
The apartment door didn’t open—it was practically ripped out of its frame by the force of the key turning. Alexey burst into the entryway without even taking off his coat. His face was dark, almost unrecognizable, twisted by righteous fury. Svetlana was sitting in an armchair in the living room with a book on her lap—though she wasn’t reading. She had been waiting. She lifted her gaze to him, and there was no fear in her eyes, no surprise. Only a tired acknowledgment of the inevitable.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he started from the doorway, his voice low and controlled—which only made it more threatening. He wasn’t shouting. He was accusing.
Svetlana was silent, simply looking at him. She saw not her husband, but a soldier sent into battle. A чужой soldier—someone else’s.
“You threw my mother out? My mother! An elderly person! You kicked her out of the apartment?!” He stepped into the room, fists clenched. He was breathing hard, like after a sprint. “She called me—she was in terrible shape! Because of you!”
He waited for an answer. Excuses, screaming, an argument—anything that would confirm there was a conflict in which he was the judge. But Svetlana kept silent, and that silence drove him far crazier than any quarrel could have.
“I’m waiting for an answer!” he barked, losing the last of his self-control. “You will take your phone right now, call her, and apologize! Do you hear me? You will beg her for forgiveness!”
He spoke to her like a subordinate who’d messed up, like a lesser creature that had dared to violate an unbreakable law. Svetlana slowly closed her book and set it on the side table.
“You didn’t even ask what happened, Alexey,” she said quietly, but that only made her words heavier. In the room ringing with his rage, that quiet voice was like a bell struck once.
“What is there to ask?!” he exploded. “My mother told me everything! How you mocked her, humiliated her! How you refused to help and threw her out! Or are you saying she made it all up?!”
“No,” Svetlana answered calmly. “I don’t want to say that. I want to say you came here already knowing the whole ‘truth.’ You don’t need my version. You don’t need a dialogue. You need me to carry out your mother’s order.”
Alexey froze. She disarmed him again, but this time the blow landed not on his mother, but on him. She exposed his motives with surgical precision.
“You… you’re trying to twist everything around! Shift the blame!” he tried to seize the initiative back, but his voice no longer sounded so sure.
“There’s no blame, Alexey. There’s only a choice. And you made it before you even stepped over this apartment’s threshold. You chose her. Her performance, her manipulation, her version of reality. That’s your right.” Svetlana stood up. She was absolutely calm. Her face held nothing but a cold, final decision. “She demanded money, threatening to destroy our family. I told her that if you’re so suggestible you’ll let her do it, then I don’t need a husband like that. And I was right.”
She looked him straight in the eyes, and he saw neither love nor hate. He saw emptiness. The place where he used to be had been burned to ash.
“So now,” she continued evenly, “you can turn around and go to your mother. Calm her down. Tell her she won. She got what she wanted. She got rid of me. And now you belong to her completely.”
He stood in the middle of the room, stunned. All his fury, all his righteous indignation, crumbled to dust against that icy wall. He wanted to yell, argue, prove something—but the words stuck in his throat. Suddenly he understood there was no one to argue with. A stranger stood before him—a woman who had just delivered her final verdict.
Svetlana walked around him the way you walk around a piece of furniture, went into the bedroom, and returned with a small travel bag—one she had clearly packed in advance.
“I’ll leave the keys on the table. Goodbye, Alexey.”
She passed him in the entryway, put on her shoes, slipped on her coat. He remained in the living room, unable to move, watching her. He heard the lock click.
The door closed. This time, forever.
Alexey was left alone in the quiet apartment, filled with the scent of his wife’s perfume and the deafening echo of a life that had just collapsed. He had won the war for his mother’s honor. And in that victory, he had lost everything…