Oksana Borisovna strode into my hallway not like a guest, but like a court bailiff who’d already listed my belongings and sold my couch in her imagination. Behind her—like a trailer hooked to an overloaded truck—scurried my sister-in-law Natasha, chewing gum so fiercely it was as if she were grinding up someone else’s destiny.
“You have to pay off my loan. I’ve decided,” my mother-in-law snapped, not even bothering to take off her coat with its astrakhan collar—one that had lived through the Brezhnev era and, judging by how it looked, had probably been on kissing terms with him.
“Sorry… what?” I actually fell silent for a moment, trying to work out whether this was real life or rehearsal for somebody else’s melodrama. “Not my issue. The bank is around the corner—go discuss loans with them. And in my house it’s Sunday: tea, peace and quiet, and absolutely no ‘you have to’ aimed at me.”
My husband Nikita, sitting in the kitchen with a mug of tea, instantly picked up a new profession: “the invisible man.” He even sipped quietly, as if he were afraid his breathing might betray him.
He drove a city bus and had learned a rule: when there’s a fight in the cabin, keep your eyes on the road and don’t get involved. Me—I worked as a waitress in an upscale restaurant—so I saw women like Oksana Borisovna ten times a day. The only difference was that at the restaurant they tipped me, and here they paid in my nerves.
“Vika, don’t be cute!” Oksana Borisovna barged into the kitchen, shoving past me with her hip, the way an icebreaker shoves through thin ice—zero grace, maximum certainty. “This is family. It’s serious. Natasha has a debt. Three hundred thousand. Collectors are calling.”
Natasha flopped into my chair and rolled her eyes like a martyr.
“They even call the post office!” she shrieked. “My supervisor said she’ll fire me if I don’t fix this. And I have anxiety! I’m a creative soul, you know—stress is literally bad for me.”
“A creative soul at the parcel counter—now that’s something,” I smirked, pouring myself coffee. “So what did you spend three hundred thousand on? Rare-stamp sets?”
“None of your business!” Natasha snapped. “Courses. ‘How to Become a Goddess and Attract Millions with the Power of Intention.’”
I choked on my coffee. Beside me, Nikita suddenly became deeply interested in the only question that required no bravery whatsoever: how fast tea cools down if you stare at it hard enough.
“And how’s the goddess thing going?” I asked, wiping my lips with a napkin. “Did the millions show up? Or so far it’s just collectors who’ve caught the scent of success and come swarming?”
“You’re cruel, Vika,” my mother-in-law declared solemnly, lifting a finger as if delivering a verdict. “Jealous. You pick at rich people’s leftovers in your fancy restaurant and shove tips into your bra, while Natasha was searching for a path to the light! So here’s how it’s going to be: you pay the loan. I know you have savings—Nikita let it slip that you two were planning to change cars. The car can wait. Family means being responsible for each other.”
I looked at them the way you look at a tiny gnat: it buzzes, it struts like it’s important—and yet it weighs less than its own audacity.
Audacity is a talent too, if you know how to monetize it. Oksana Borisovna just wasted hers.
“And what exactly do I get out of this, excuse me?” I asked, switching to a businesslike tone. “Besides the profound moral satisfaction of sponsoring an online scammer industry?”
Oksana Borisovna exchanged a glance with her daughter. The air suddenly smelled like cheap scheming.
“We’ve decided…” my mother-in-law paused, milking it like she was on a theater stage. “If you pay off the debt, I’ll sign the dacha over to you.”
The dacha. The mythical Eden in the “Red Food Worker” cooperative. Six overgrown garden plots buried under nettles as tall as a person, and a little house held together solely by old paint and sheer stubbornness. Still, the land there was worth decent money—the location was good, near a lake.
“You’ll sign it over—properly?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“It’ll all be yours!” Natasha spread her arms wide like she was gifting me half the planet. “Mom said so. Just pay the loan. Today. Through the app.”
There it was: the hook. A fat, juicy worm on a rusty fishing line.
“Alright,” I nodded. “Interesting offer. Land isn’t getting cheaper.”
Their faces brightened. Natasha even stopped chewing, and Oksana Borisovna opened her mouth to start dictating account details.
“But there’s a catch,” I cut across their triumph. “First the paperwork, then the money. We go to a notary. We sign a deed of gift to Nikita. We get the registry extract. And the second it’s official, I pay the debt in full.”
The smile slid off my mother-in-law’s face like plaster after a heavy rain.
“So you… don’t trust your own mother?” Her voice shook, climbing toward air-raid-siren pitch. “I’m offering you my heart on a silver platter, and you’re giving me bureaucracy?”
“Trust, Oksana Borisovna,” I replied evenly, “doesn’t spread on bread. A notarized deed, however, is armor.”
“How dare you!” Natasha squealed. “We came to you with sincerity! And you—waitress! Carry this, bring that! You should be washing our feet out of gratitude that we even let you into the family!”
There it was. Masks off.
I leaned on the table and looked at Natasha with the kind of long, heavy stare I used at drunk oligarchs in the restaurant who demanded live violin music produced with a dinner fork.
“Natasha,” I said softly—and the kitchen temperature dropped by ten degrees. “Waiting tables teaches you two things: how to endure idiots and how to count money. And if you think insults are the best currency for negotiations, I’ve got bad news. The ‘goddess’ inside you clearly skipped diplomacy class.”
Natasha opened her mouth, found nothing to say, and let out a sound somewhere between a croak and a squeak.
“You greedy pike!” my mother-in-law entered the battle like heavy artillery. “We wanted to do this nicely! I would’ve signed it over later! Someday!”
“‘Later’ is a consolation prize for fools,” I said flatly. “You know why you’re yelling? Because you never planned to give us that dacha. You thought: ‘Vika is a sucker, Vika will pay, and we’ll promise her the moon.’ That’s fraud based on trust, Oksana Borisovna. Article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code.”
“Nikita!” she roared, whipping around toward her son. “Your wife is insulting her mother! Say something!”
Nikita slowly lifted his eyes from the tablecloth like a man who had finally grown tired of being furniture in someone else’s performance.
“Mom,” he said calmly, “Marina isn’t insulting you. She’s just not applauding your decisions.”
My mother-in-law drew breath to explode, but Nikita continued—steady, with the kind of cold tone that makes blood pressure spike.
“Let’s clarify the rules. You take out a loan. Then you announce that my wife has to pay it. Because you decided so. That’s not ‘family,’ Mom. That’s ‘this is convenient for me.’”
He turned to Natasha and looked at her with the careful attention of a doctor about to explain that sweets at night aren’t a diagnosis—they’re a habit.
“Natas, you’re… special, of course,” he said gently. “You have a gift: turning any bill into somebody else’s responsibility. ‘I want’ becomes ‘you owe me.’ ‘I decided’ becomes ‘someone else pays.’ Very innovative financial model. Shame banks don’t know about it. For some reason, they like signatures—not inspiration.”
Natasha flushed.
“Are you mocking me?!”
“No, of course not,” Nikita nodded. “I’m learning from the best. From Mom, for instance. She always ‘cares.’ Especially when her ‘care’ costs other people money.”
My mother-in-law slammed her palm on the table.
“I’m your mother! I did everything for you—”
“For us,” Nikita cut in, still perfectly level, “you’re trying to turn Marina into a payment terminal. No PIN required. And then you’re offended that she isn’t thrilled about it.”
He paused—short and sharp, like a slap.
“Mom, the way you ‘support’ Natasha is exactly why she’s convinced she doesn’t actually have to be an adult. She just needs to find someone nearby who blushes and pays. And you know what? I’m tired of financing your love for your younger daughter. Love is when you teach her to be responsible—not when you drag her around to relatives like a precious statue: ‘Careful, don’t drop her, she cost us a fortune.’”
Natasha tried to interrupt, but Nikita lifted a hand.
“Wait, I’m not done with this beginner course called ‘Adult Life.’ Natasha, if you want to be a goddess—be one. But funny thing about goddesses: they can pay for their own whims. And their loans. Especially their loans. Because miracles end exactly where the payment schedule begins.”
My mother-in-law went pale.
“Traitor! Henpecked little man!”
Nikita even smiled—tiredly, without joy.
“Sure. In our family it’s like this: a man who doesn’t hand over someone else’s money on demand is ‘henpecked.’ And a man who stays quiet and pays is a ‘real son.’ Convenient classification. I’m opting out.”
He leaned forward and spoke almost softly, which somehow made every word louder.
“So here’s the deal. Either we formalize everything with a notary—amounts, terms, your responsibility, guarantees—and then maybe we discuss help. Voluntary help, not ‘you have to.’ Or you pay off your own loans. And yes, Mom: ‘family’ is not when you distribute other people’s money like you’re running payroll.”
He sat back.
“Now choose: an adult conversation or the door. And skip the theater—‘you’ll never see my face here again.’ This isn’t an ultimatum, it’s a tour. The exit is the same way you came in.”
They left so quickly you’d think someone offered them a discount on scandals in the next stairwell, leaving behind nothing but a draft and the sensation that our kitchen had just hosted a masterclass in family circus.
A week passed.
I came home from a shift exhausted but in a good mood. Nikita greeted me with dinner.
“Mom called,” he said, serving salad. “They sold the dacha.”
“Seriously?” I blinked. “And did they pay off the debt?”
“That’s the thing,” Nikita gave a crooked grin. “The buyer was thorough. Checked the paperwork. Turns out the dacha’s been under arrest for three years. Mom used it as collateral to take out a loan—to give Natasha money for her wedding. The wedding that got canceled a month later.”
I burst out laughing—loud, until tears came. The puzzle snapped into place. They’d tried to sell me something they no longer owned, using my money, to cover a brand-new debt. A miniature MMM pyramid scheme—right inside one cramped apartment building.
“And Natasha?” I asked, wiping tears of laughter.
“The collectors squeezed her,” Nikita shrugged. “She had to sell her iPhone and her fur coat. And get a second job. Cleaning at the same post office where she works. Now she hands out parcels during the day, and mops floors there in the evenings. She says it’s for ‘grounding her energy.’”
“Energy of the mop,” I nodded.
I walked to the window. The city bustled below—people rushing to errands, falling into debt, believing in miracles, trying to outsmart fate.
Girls, here’s a tip from my personal “school of family hospitality.”
Money works like a restaurant: you read the menu first, then you open your wallet. And you read the fine print especially carefully—the tiny line at the bottom where it usually says: “At the chef’s request, you’re also paying for the table next to you because they’re ‘practically family.’”
And remember the main rule: never pay for a dish that hasn’t been brought to you yet. Not even if the chef—your mother-in-law, or anyone else—swears on her mother’s health, her cat’s liver, and the bright future of the whole family. Because most of the time, behind the pretty name “Homestyle Stew” is a very simple recipe: yesterday’s scraps reheated on your nerves and served with a thick sauce called “you have to.”
And when someone tells you, straight to your face, “But we’re family,” smile and ask, “Family—does that mean we eat together… or that I’m the only one getting the bill?”