Darya ran across the station square faster than Olympic champions. Her heels clicked against the asphalt in a frantic rhythm, and only one thought spun through her head:
“Please, let me make it!”
The business trip to Yekaterinburg was important. It was her first serious project after her promotion at the advertising agency. To fail it would mean going back to making presentations for local cafés.
“Damn it!” the woman blurted out when her phone slipped from her sweaty fingers and hit the concrete with a nasty crack.
The screen shattered. A misshapen star immediately spread across it.
Darya cursed, picked up the device, and mentally calculated the loss: a new iPhone cost half her salary. That was just what she needed to complete her happiness.
Passengers rushed around her with enviable speed, hurrying to their trains. No one paid any attention to the young woman in a строгий suit standing in the middle of the flow of people, desperately examining her broken phone.
“Daughter, did you drop this?”
Darya turned around. In front of her stood an elderly Gypsy woman in a bright skirt, with gold teeth. In the stranger’s hands was an iPhone. Exactly like hers, but intact.
“That’s not mine,” Darya said in confusion, showing her broken phone. “Mine is this one.”
“No, daughter, this is yours. And that one is someone else’s. Look closely.”
Darya took the phone the woman was holding out. On the screen was her photo from the New Year’s corporate party. The phone unlocked with her fingerprint. It really was her iPhone, whole and undamaged.
“How is that possible?” the woman muttered, comparing the devices. The broken phone looked exactly the same, but it did not respond to her fingerprint at all.
“It doesn’t matter how,” the Gypsy woman said, gripping her hand tightly. “What matters is something else. Don’t get on the train, daughter. Go home and hide in the wardrobe. Don’t ask why! You’ll understand later!”
“What nonsense is this?” Darya tried to pull her hand free. “My train leaves in ten minutes. I have an important meeting…”
“You have no train,” the Gypsy woman shook her head. “Go home. Into the wardrobe. And wait.”
“Let go of me! Are you crazy?”
But the woman had already vanished into the crowd, leaving Darya standing there with two identical phones in her hands and a head full of questions.
The loudspeaker announced boarding for the train to Yekaterinburg. Darya looked at the platform, then at the intact phone in her hand.
“What kind of mystical crap is this?” she thought as she headed toward the train.
But her legs suddenly felt like lead. Every step was difficult. The Gypsy woman’s words kept spinning in her mind, and a strange anxiety grew in her chest.
At the carriage, Darya stopped. The conductor was checking tickets, passengers were climbing the steps. One more minute and the train would leave.
Career, project, money…
And that crazy old woman with her insane demands.
“Miss, are you boarding?” the conductor asked.
Darya looked at her ticket, then at the train. Something inside her was screaming:
“Don’t!”
It sounded irrational, stupid, but very insistent.
“No,” she heard her own voice say. “I’m not going.”
The train left without her.
The woman stood on the empty platform, staring in confusion as the red lights of the train disappeared into the tunnel. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. It was her boss calling.
“Petrova, where are you? The client from Yekaterinburg just canceled the meeting, they have a force majeure situation at the plant. We’ll have a call tomorrow and discuss new deadlines.”
Darya was speechless.
The meeting had been canceled? Exactly today, when she had not boarded the train because of a mad Gypsy woman’s advice?
“Darya, are you there?” the director asked anxiously. “You didn’t manage to leave, did you?”
“No,” she muttered. “I didn’t.”
“Excellent! Then come to the office tomorrow, we’ll have to rebuild the whole strategy. The client wants to change the concept completely.”
Darya got home in a state of mild shock.
On the minibus, she kept staring out the window, trying to find a rational explanation for what had happened.
Of course it had been a coincidence. Just an unbelievable coincidence.
The Gypsy woman couldn’t have known about the canceled meeting. The decision had been made later. Or…?
At home, the usual chaos reigned: unwashed dishes, clothes scattered around, and Barsik the cat, who meowed resentfully because his lunch was late.
Darya fed the cat, made coffee, and sat down to sort out the phones.
The shattered iPhone still lay there like dead weight. Her real smartphone, meanwhile, worked perfectly well. Most likely she had simply picked up someone else’s lost phone that looked like hers. It was easy to get confused with modern models.
“Hide in the wardrobe,” the woman repeated the old woman’s words aloud and snorted. “What advice!”
Still, the uneasiness would not leave her. Not because of the meeting with the Gypsy woman, of course. It was simply that the whole day had been strange.
To distract herself somehow, Darya tried to work: she answered emails, checked presentations, but she could not concentrate. Her mind kept returning to her career, to how lucky she had been that the meeting was canceled, to the Gypsy woman with her piercing gaze.
By evening, the nervous tension had completely taken over.
Darya paced around the apartment, turned the television on and off, checked social media. Barsik watched his owner’s restlessness with philosophical calm.
“All right,” she said aloud. “Let’s suppose it was very lucky advice. The old woman turned out to be right about the train. But what if…”
The thought seemed absurd. But the whole day had been absurd.
And in the end, what did she have to lose? She would sit in the wardrobe for half an hour, prove to herself that she was being ridiculous, and then go to bed.
At half past six in the evening, Darya stood in the bedroom in front of the wardrobe. An old Soviet monster inherited from her grandmother took up half the wall.
“I really am crazy,” the woman muttered, pushing the hangers aside. “Normal people do not hide in wardrobes on the advice of a strange Gypsy woman.”
But despite her doubts, she climbed inside, settled herself between shoe boxes, and pulled the doors almost shut, leaving a small crack. Inside it was dark, stuffy, and dusty.
Barsik peered through the gap, meowed in confusion, and walked away.
Time dragged slowly.
Darya sat in her improvised shelter and felt like a complete idiot. What was she doing? Why had she listened to the nonsense of some strange old woman? Tomorrow her colleagues would hear this story and laugh.
A car drove past outside the window. Then another, and another… Everything was as usual.
Twenty minutes later, the woman heard the sound of keys in the lock of the front door. Her heart skipped a beat. She lived alone, and only she and her younger sister had keys. Her sister was currently on vacation in Thailand.
The door opened. Footsteps and muffled voices were heard. Men’s voices.
“You sure there’s no one here?” someone asked in a deep voice.
“Petrova is away on a business trip until tomorrow, we checked,” answered the second, clearly younger one. “The neighbors saw her leaving with a suitcase.”
Darya went cold. They knew her surname. They knew about the business trip. These were definitely not random burglars.
“Where does she usually keep documents?” the younger one continued.
“On the work desk or in the bedroom. Search carefully so she won’t realize someone was here.”
Drawers opened, papers rustled. Barsik meowed unhappily, then went quiet.
Darya sat in the wardrobe, pressing her palms over her mouth so she wouldn’t give herself away. Her heart was pounding so loudly it seemed the whole apartment could hear it.
“Find anything?” came the voice from the living room.
“Not yet. Just some advertising layouts, utility bills…”
The footsteps moved into the bedroom. Darya curled up between the boxes, praying the wardrobe doors wouldn’t creak. Someone passed right beside her.
“Did you check the desk?” the deep-voiced one shouted from another room.
“I’m checking. There’s a bunch of junk here… Wait, what’s this?”
Darya tensed. What had they found? What were they looking for? What documents?
“Show me… No, that’s not it! We need the materials for the banking project. ‘Next-generation loyalty system.’ Something like that should be written there.”
“A tasty piece worth millions?”
“Keep your voice down! Yes, exactly. Kira said the material should either be on the desk or in the laptop. Keep looking!”
Everything inside Darya turned cold. Kira… her colleague from the department and her best friend. They had been working together on a project for one of the country’s biggest banks. They were creating an innovative system for promoting banking products, one that was supposed to bring the agency a contract worth tens of millions.
“Kira said the presentation is tomorrow?” the younger one asked.
“The day after tomorrow. But if we find the materials tonight, she’ll have time to repackage everything as her own and present it to the director tomorrow morning while Petrova is away.”
“Clever bitch… that Kira.”
“For that kind of money, everyone becomes clever. All right, check the laptop, and I’ll keep searching here.”
Darya felt cold sweat running down her back. She wanted to scream from disappointment and betrayal.
Kira. Her friend, the one she had had dinner with so many times, discussed problems with, made plans with… She had hired these men to steal her work.
“The laptop is password-protected,” the younger man reported.
“Try the standard options: birth date, the cat’s name…”
“Already did. They don’t work.”
“Then look for flash drives, external drives, printouts. She worked on the project at home.”
The footsteps moved through the apartment again. Darya remembered: all the materials really were at her home. The project was worth a fortune, and if Kira stole it…
“Got it!” the younger one exclaimed. “A flash drive in the nightstand. ‘Banking Project. Final.’”
“Excellent. That’s it, let’s go. Kira is waiting.”
Darya waited another half hour and climbed out of the wardrobe. Her legs were numb, and her head was buzzing with anger and shock.
Kira. How could she act so vilely? Betrayal could have been expected from anyone, but not from her. Although…
The nightstand had been carefully closed, but Darya already knew the flash drive was gone: all the work, all the algorithms, all the target audience analysis. The project that was supposed to make her career and bring the agency a forty-million-ruble contract.
She rushed to her laptop. Thank God, they had not guessed the password. But the cloud storage was empty. Kira had access to the shared project folder and had erased everything from it. Only one… hope remained.
Darya frantically rummaged through the drawers of her desk. Somewhere here there had to be…
There!
An old flash drive labeled “Work Materials,” which she had used for draft versions. It was not the final version of the project, but enough to prove authorship.
Her phone showed half past eight in the evening. Tomorrow Kira was planning to present the stolen project to the director. But Darya could get ahead of her.
She quickly dialed Igor Semyonovich. Of course, disturbing her boss late at night was madness, but what else could she do?
“Petrova?” came the annoyed voice in the receiver. “What happened? Have you tried resting?”
“Igor Semyonovich, I need to meet with you urgently. It concerns the banking project. Someone is trying to steal it.”
“Darya, explain clearly what’s going on. And calm down!”
The woman told him everything she knew: about the canceled business trip, the uninvited guests, Kira, and the stolen flash drive. She spoke quickly and incoherently, understanding how crazy it all sounded.
“All right,” said the director after a long pause. “Come to the office. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Igor Semyonovich, can I call the police?”
“Not yet. First let’s sort this out ourselves. If Kira really did this… I have a few ideas.”
When Darya arrived, the light was already on in the director’s office. Igor Semyonovich went straight to the point.
“Show me what you have.”
Darya connected the flash drive to her boss’s computer and started showing him draft materials, early versions of the algorithms, notes, calculations… everything with timestamps proving her authorship.
“That’s enough,” the director nodded. “Now look.”
He turned the monitor toward her. Kira’s corporate email was open on the screen.
“How did you get access to her correspondence?” Darya asked in surprise.
“I am the director of this agency. I have access to all employees’ work email. You just never guessed it,” Igor Semyonovich smirked. “And here’s what’s interesting…”
He opened a chain of Kira’s messages.
Kira had been negotiating with people from Media Group, their main competitor. For her “unique development” she expected to receive three million rubles.
“Do you see where she was heading?” the director shook his head. “It wasn’t enough for her just to steal your project. She also wanted to run off to the competitors with it. Tomorrow morning she was planning to submit her resignation.”
Darya read the emails carefully. Her anger grew with every message. Kira described “her” development in detail, promised full documentation and a ready presentation.
“What are we going to do?” the woman asked almost in a whisper.
Igor Semyonovich looked at the clock.
“It’s almost midnight. At nine I have a meeting with representatives of the bank. And at eight-thirty Kira planned to come to me with an ‘emergency presentation on the project.’ I think we’ll arrange a little surprise for her.”
At eight in the morning, Darya sat in the reception area, sipping coffee and watching employees hurry into work. Igor Semyonovich had thought through every detail.
At exactly eight-thirty, Kira entered the director’s office. Through the glass door it was visible how animatedly she was talking, gesturing with her hands.
“Now,” the director nodded to his secretary.
Darya entered the office at the exact moment her friend was saying:
“…this innovative system will bring the bank at least fifteen million in additional monthly profit. I worked on the algorithms for three months, studied customer behavior models…”
When she saw Darya, Kira froze with her mouth open. Her confident, triumphant face turned pale.
“Darya? But you were… on a business trip…”
“The meeting was canceled,” Darya said calmly, walking up to the director’s desk. “An amazing coincidence, isn’t it? Otherwise I would have missed your presentation of my project.”
“Why yours?” Kira tried to object, but her voice trembled traitorously. “It’s my development, I…”
“Kira,” Igor Semyonovich interrupted, “perhaps you can explain how your friends got into Darya’s apartment yesterday evening? And why they needed the flash drive with the project materials?”
The last remnants of composure left the woman. She sank into a chair, dropping the folder from her hands. Papers scattered across the floor.
“I… I can explain…”
“Explain,” the director nodded, discreetly switching on a recorder. “And while you’re at it, tell us about your negotiations with Media Group. About the three million for the exclusive development.”
For the next half hour, Kira tried to justify herself, blame circumstances, and assure them that she had only wanted to “protect the agency’s interests.” But the facts were undeniable: correspondence with competitors, the stolen materials, testimony from the men she had hired, who had already given confessions to the police.
“Well then,” Igor Semyonovich finally said, “Kira Vladimirovna, you are dismissed for serious violations of labor discipline and disclosure of commercial secrets. And you, Darya Mikhailovna, congratulations! I am appointing you deputy director for strategic development.”
Darya flinched in surprise.
“But I…”
“You saved the agency a forty-million-ruble contract,” the director smiled. “And you showed that you know how to work in extreme situations. By the way, the bank representatives will be here in half an hour. Are you ready to present the project?”
By lunchtime, everything had been decided.
The bank signed an exclusive contract with the agency for the implementation of Darya’s system. Media Group had to explain to its clients why their “innovative development” had suddenly become unavailable. And Kira… Kira was packing up her personal belongings under the watch of a security guard.
“Dasha,” she stopped her friend near the elevator. “I didn’t mean to… it just happened…”
“It just happened? Kira, don’t make me laugh! You hired people to rob my apartment. That cannot be an accident. It is a choice, and you will bear full responsibility for it!”
That evening, Darya sat at home with a glass of wine, smiling as she stroked Barsik. The cat purred, clearly pleased that his owner had not gone anywhere.
Everything had turned out so strangely…
The Gypsy woman at the station, the canceled business trip, several hours in the wardrobe… some kind of mysticism!
Although maybe it was not mysticism. Maybe life simply sometimes hints at the right decisions to those who are willing to listen. Or maybe the old Gypsy woman had been right… sometimes you just need to trust your intuition and stop asking unnecessary questions.
A message came from her sister:
“How was the business trip? Did everything work out?”
Darya smiled and quickly typed back:
“It worked out. Even better than planned…”
The moon was shining outside the window, Barsik was purring nearby, and life seemed astonishingly fair.