Olya did not merely notice scents—she inhabited a world spun from them. As a private perfumer who created one-of-a-kind fragrances for demanding elite clients, she had learned to reduce any lie to its chemical notes. Lately, Viktor had smelled off. Not of another woman’s perfume—that would have been far too ordinary for a man who fancied himself a sophisticated egotist. No, he smelled of cold metal, wet earth, and bird droppings.
Viktor worked as an ornithologist at a major airport, using falcons to chase crows and seagulls away from the runways. He loved to brag about his “wild” profession, seeing himself as some lord of the skies. But that evening, one week before their wedding, he brought home not the scent of open air, but the reek of decay.
“We need to talk,” he said, standing in the middle of the living room without even taking off his heavy boots. Mud from the soles was grinding into the expensive carpet Olya had spent six months choosing.
“If this is about the guest list, I already crossed off your third cousin…” Olya began, still blending sandalwood and bergamot in her head for a new custom order.
“No. The wedding is off. Or rather, it will still happen—just not with you.”
Olya went still. A vial of jasmine essential oil slipped from her fingers, but instead of shattering, it landed softly on the sofa, as though fate itself had cushioned the blow.
“What?”
“Her name is Inga. She’s… alive. And you’re like your little glass vials. Dull. Dusty. Inga and I are on the same wavelength. She’s a pet groomer—she understands animals. You just wrinkle your nose at everything.”
Viktor said it all with the ease of a man choosing a brand of beer at a bar. There was not a trace of guilt in his voice, only thick, sticky audacity.
“Vitya, I’m pregnant,” Olya said before she could stop herself. She had not meant to tell him yet. She had been saving the news like a gift for the day they registered their marriage. She was only six weeks along.
Viktor grimaced as if he had bitten into a lemon.
“Oh, spare me the drama. ‘I’m pregnant, don’t leave me’… boring. Get an abortion. I’ll give you money. Actually… no, I won’t. You make decent money from your stinky little brews anyway.”
“You’re telling me to kill the baby?” Olya’s voice shook, but not from tears. Something inside her had begun to vibrate. The beast in her was waking.
“It’s not a baby, it’s an embryo. A lump of cells. And anyway, maybe it isn’t even mine. You’re always running around to your presentations. Bottom line—pack your stuff. I’m giving you two days. The apartment, as you know, belongs to my mother, but I’ll be living here with Inga. Mom is fine with that.”
Olya looked at him and saw not the man she loved, but a stuffed specimen—hollow, padded with the sawdust of vanity.
“This is Lyudmila Pavlovna’s apartment. She let us live here while we saved for a house.”
“Exactly. Us. Me and my wife. And you? You’re nobody now. So get moving while I’m still being nice.”
That night Olya did not cry. She lay in her temporary place—a tiny studio she rented for her workshop—and stared at the ceiling. Then she went to the one person who might be able to explain the twisted logic of all this: Viktor’s mother.
Lyudmila Pavlovna was the head of a logistics center that handled oversized freight. A woman like a cliff face, a woman like a freight truck. She smoked slim cigarettes, releasing the smoke through her nose like a dragon, and solved problems that made truckers go gray.
“Lyudmila Pavlovna, your son threw me out. He’s marrying someone else in a month. I’m pregnant, and he told me to get rid of the baby,” Olya blurted out from the doorway without even saying hello. She was shaking. “I’m going to have an abortion. I don’t want to give birth to a monster’s child. I want to purge this filth from my body.”
Seated behind a massive desk in her office, the older woman slowly removed her glasses. Her usually unreadable face began to flush red.
“What did you say? Repeat that.”
“Viktor told me to have an abortion. He threw me out. Some woman named Inga is moving into the apartment.”
Lyudmila Pavlovna rose. Her solid frame blocked the light from the window.
“Sit down, Olya. Drink some water. And stop that abortion talk. There will be no killing.”
Lyudmila Pavlovna did not care for melodrama; she cared for logistics. If cargo was damaged, the guilty party paid. If the route was wrong, it got changed. She went to see her son the very next day.
The apartment—a spacious Stalin-era flat with soaring ceilings, inherited from her father, a general—met her with the scream of a hammer drill. Viktor, shirtless, was knocking down the partition between the kitchen and the living room. Nearby fluttered a skinny girl with a Spitz tattoo on her shoulder—Inga.
“Mom? Why are you here without calling?” Viktor turned off the tool and wiped his sweat with a filthy rag.
“Vitya, what is going on here? Why is Olya sleeping in her workshop? Why are you tearing down a wall without approval?” his mother asked in a low voice that rumbled like a diesel engine.
“Olya is the past. Inga is the future. The wall blocks the light. And seriously, Mom, stay out of it. You always said, ‘Live, son, build your nest.’ So that’s what I’m doing.”
“I told you to build a family, not a brothel. Olya is pregnant with your child, you idiot.”
Inga let out a smug little laugh, covering her mouth with a hand tipped in glaring acid-bright polish.
“Oh, Lyudmila… whatever-your-patronymic-is? Vitya said she made the whole thing up to grab the apartment. Just your standard blackmailer.”
Lyudmila Pavlovna shifted her heavy gaze to the girl.
“Keep your mouth shut until I tell you to speak. Vitya, you threw a pregnant woman out. You rejected your own son.”
“Mom, you’re getting old. It’s not a child, it’s a problem. Inga and I are young—we want to live for ourselves. And you… go home. Don’t interfere. Better yet, transfer the apartment to me officially already. I need a renovation loan, and the bank wants collateral. Don’t be stingy.”
Viktor stepped toward his mother, put his hands on her shoulders, and began steering her toward the door.
“That’s enough, Mom. Audience over. Go back to your trucks. You’re stinking up the place—smells like mothballs in here.”
He shoved her out onto the landing and slammed the door.
Lyudmila Pavlovna stood before the closed door, staring at the peeling apartment number. Her own son—the one she had rescued from every disaster, paid through school, and gotten a position at the airport through her connections—had just called her mothballs and thrown her out of her own apartment.
She went to Olya that evening. Olya was sitting among glass bottles, blending musk with wormwood. The workshop smelled bitter and uneasy.
“I went to see him,” the older woman said without sitting down. “He’s beyond saving. I couldn’t talk sense into him.”
Olya burst into a jagged, hysterical laugh.
“And what am I supposed to do with that? Be happy? I’m going to the clinic tomorrow.”
“No!” Lyudmila slammed her palm onto the table so hard the glass vials rattled. “You are having this child. He is my blood, even if his father is human trash.”
“I have nowhere to live, Lyudmila Pavlovna. I don’t have the money for maternity leave. My work is unstable. I can’t manage this.”
“The housing issue is solved. The money issue too.”
She pulled papers from her bag.
“Tomorrow we’re going to the notary. I’m signing the apartment over. The very same one where that creep is doing renovations right now.”
“What?” Olya stopped laughing.
“You heard me. The apartment will be yours. Entirely. And I’m opening an account in the baby’s name. But there’s one condition: you stay quiet. For two months. Let that so-called master builder pour money into the renovation. Let him spend everything he has. Let him take out loans. And when he’s done, we’ll come.”
Two months passed. To Olya they dragged like thick resin. The morning sickness eased, replaced by a ferocious appetite. On social media she saw pictures of the “happy newlyweds.” Viktor and Inga posing against stripped walls, then beside Italian tile, then with an expensive kitchen and a brand-new sofa. The captions read: “Our cozy nest,” “My husband spoils me,” “Jealousy is silent.”
Viktor truly had poured himself into the place. He borrowed money from his friend Stas, a shady character who dealt in wrecked cars. Stas lent it with interest—friendly terms on paper, brutal deadlines in reality. Viktor was certain his mother would eventually cave and sign the apartment over, and that he would sell his grandmother’s country house and settle the debt. The plan seemed as reliable as a Swiss watch—except someone had forgotten to insert the gears.
On Saturday morning, while Viktor and Inga were enjoying their “honeymoon” (they had quietly registered the marriage without any pomp, saving their money for the renovation), the doorbell rang.
Viktor, wearing only his underwear, opened the door expecting a pizza delivery.
Olya was standing there.
She had changed. The soft, slightly distracted girl who used to smell of vanilla was gone. In her place stood a woman with a sharp bob haircut, a leather jacket, and a scent of leather, tobacco, and burnt sugar. Behind her loomed two broad-shouldered movers in uniforms that read Freight Services.
“What do you want?” Viktor asked, thrown off balance. “It’s a bit early to beg for child support—you haven’t even given birth yet.”
Olya walked past him into the apartment.
“Cozy,” she said, looking around. The walls were painted a trendy gray, and the kitchen gleamed. “Inga, are you here? Come out. Let’s get acquainted all over again.”
Inga stepped out of the bathroom in a robe, a towel wrapped around her head.
“You?!” she shrieked. “Vitya, throw this psycho out!”
And that was when Olya said the words she had rehearsed in front of the mirror, honing the intonation until it was as sharp as a blade.
“The honeymoon is over. Get out of my apartment!”
She hurled the sentence at the wife of her former fiancé, and only then did Viktor begin to understand what had happened. Even then, he could not quite believe it.
“Are you insane? What do you mean, your apartment?” Viktor lunged as if to grab her arm, but one of the movers silently set a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Hands off,” the man said calmly.
Olya threw a sheet of paper onto the kitchen table—brand-new, solid oak.
“Read it. Official property registry extract. Owner: Olga Andreyevna. Basis: deed of gift. Date: two months ago.”
Viktor snatched up the document. His eyes raced over the lines as the color drained from his face, turning his sun-bronzed macho look into the mask of a frightened boy.
“It’s fake… Mom couldn’t… she couldn’t do this to me! I’m her son!”
“Your mother, Vitenka, is a smart woman. She got rid of a worthless asset—you. And she gifted the apartment to her grandchild. And to me, as the child’s guardian,” Olya said with a smile.
Inga darted to the table and ripped the papers from his hands.
“Vitya! You said the apartment was yours! You said your mother would transfer it! We put two million into this place! My money, my father’s money!”
“Shut up!” Viktor shouted. Then he turned to Olya. “You… you bitch. You manipulated my mother! I’ll go to court! I’ll prove she’s mentally incompetent!”
And then Olya unleashed the one thing Viktor feared most. She did not defend herself. She started screaming—not pitifully, not pleading, but with savage fury, right at the edge of breaking glass.
“GET OUT! I’LL THROW YOU OUT LIKE STRAY KITTENS! DID YOU THINK I’D JUST SIT THERE AND CRY?! I’LL DESTROY YOU! YOU MISERABLE BIRDHANDLER, YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE A KING?!”
Olya snatched up an expensive vase from the table—a gift from Inga’s mother—and, staring Viktor straight in the eyes, opened her fingers. The vase crashed to the floor and exploded into shards. The sound was deafening.
“YOU ARE NOTHING HERE!” Olya shouted, advancing on him, her face twisted with rage. “YOU HAVE ONE HOUR! ONE HOUR TO PACK YOUR RAGS! THE FURNITURE STAYS! THE RENOVATION STAYS! THOSE ARE PERMANENT IMPROVEMENTS, YOU IDIOT! READ THE LAW!”
Viktor froze. He was used to women being either pliable clay or nagging nuisances. He stepped backward.
“Olya, calm down… we can make a deal… I’ll reimburse the renovation…”
“NO DEALS! GET OUT! OR I CALL THE POLICE AND FILE A REPORT FOR UNLAWFUL ENTRY! YOU’RE NOT REGISTERED HERE ANYMORE! LYUDMILA PAVLOVNA HAD YOU REMOVED THROUGH THE CIVIC OFFICE A WEEK AGO, BY COURT ORDER, AS SOMEONE WHO LOST THE RIGHT TO USE THE PROPERTY!”
Inga began shrieking.
“Vitya, do something! She’s throwing us out! My money! My father will kill me!”
Olya spun toward her.
“Shut your mouth, you flea-ridden side piece. Consider it payment for renting luxury housing. Too expensive? Well, the market is brutal these days.”
She chose crude words on purpose, stripping away their cultivated little air of refinement. She rolled over their nerves like a steamroller.
Viktor tried to salvage what little dignity he had left.
“Fine. We’ll leave. But I’m taking the appliances.”
“Try it,” Olya said, nodding toward the movers. “These guys will make sure you leave with nothing but your underwear and socks. The TV, the fridge, the fitted kitchen—whose name is on the receipts? Oh right. I have them. Lyudmila Pavlovna said you kept them in the hallway cabinet. Thanks for not throwing them away.”
It was a bluff. Olya had no receipts. But Viktor was too panicked to remember that. He was crushed under the force of her rage, the shouting, and the shock.
Viktor and Inga carried their things out in black trash bags. Olya’s movers stood at the door with their arms crossed, tossing out mocking comments.
“Hey, boss, you don’t want to take the laminate flooring too? That cost money.”
“Watch that your little Spitz doesn’t run off—we were ordered to clear the place of parasites.”
Soon they were on the street. Inga was sobbing, mascara smeared down her face.
“You! You’re pathetic!” she screamed at Viktor. “You said everything was handled! My dad gave me money for that kitchen! Where am I supposed to live now?!”
“Inga, baby, we’ll go to my friends… to Stas…”
“To Stas? That criminal? Go to hell!”
She hurled her bag onto the pavement, called a taxi, and when it arrived, she got in alone.
“Inga!” Viktor shouted. “What about me?”
“You? Go fly off with your falcons, you broke loser!”
And just like that Viktor was left alone—with two bags of clothes, no apartment, no wife, and no money. His phone buzzed. A message from Stas: Vityok, deadline’s tomorrow. Money or interest. You know me—friendship is friendship, but money is separate.
At that moment a black car pulled up. The window slid down. Lyudmila Pavlovna was inside. She looked at her son with the cold detachment of someone inspecting a stranger’s expired cargo container.
“Mom…” Viktor rushed to the car. “Mom, help me! She took everything! She’s crazy! She robbed me!”
Lyudmila Pavlovna did not even flinch.
“She took what was hers. And what was mine. You did an excellent renovation, son. Apparently you do have taste. My grandchild will be very comfortable there.”
“But I have nowhere to live! Stas is going to bury me!”
“Live at work, then. In the bird hangar. You like soaring above the earth, don’t you? Then soar. And as for the country house, I changed the locks yesterday. Don’t even think about going there. There’s an alarm system now, and security patrols.”
“Why?!” Viktor screamed, grabbing the car door. “I’m your son!”
“You stopped being my son when you suggested killing my grandchild. And when you threw me out, you stopped being human.”
The window went up. The car drove away, leaving Viktor in a cloud of exhaust.
Epilogue
Olya stood by the window in the renovated living room. The air smelled of fresh renovation and, faintly, victory. She stroked her stomach.
“There we are, little one. The nest is ready. And your father helped us, without even knowing it.”
Viktor’s phone would not stop ringing with calls from Stas. Viktor sat on a park bench staring at the dim screen. But his worst blow was still ahead.
A week later he was summoned to the airport’s HR department.
“Viktor Sergeyevich, a complaint has been filed against you. More precisely, information has come to light. You used your official position for… let us say, improper use of company resources.”
“What?” Viktor did not understand.
“It has come out that you were selling state-issued feed for the birds of prey on the side. Your former wife—or rather, your former live-in partner—Inga provided messages and receipts. She is very angry with you, Viktor Sergeyevich. We are forced to terminate your employment for cause.”
Viktor walked out of the office with his employment record in his hands. The world he had built on lies, arrogance, and confidence in his own impunity had collapsed into a black hole. He stood in the wind and understood that this was exactly what he deserved. That “parasite” mentioned at the beginning of the story—it had been him all along. And the system had rejected him.
Meanwhile, back in the apartment, Olya was drinking tea with Lyudmila Pavlovna.
“Nice laminate,” her mother-in-law said, tapping the floor with her heel. “Very durable.”
“Yes,” Olya said with a smile. “Vitya always did like high-quality things. It’s just a shame he turned out to be such a cheap imitation.”
They laughed. Bitterly, perhaps—but justly.