“Come on…”
The lock didn’t give way at once. As usual, the key jammed on the second turn, but even that familiar irritation of the old door couldn’t spoil Natalia’s mood today. She practically flew into the apartment, bringing with her the scent of expensive perfume and fresh evening air into the stale hallway. Thick kraft paper bags from an elite supermarket rustled in her hands, and in her purse lay the signed offer letter, burning through the lining like a glowing coal — but pleasantly, promising a whole new life.
“Tyoma! You won’t believe what happened!” she called out, kicking off her high heels. The heels struck the parquet floor with a dull knock. “I bought that wine, remember? The one we saw at the restaurant on our anniversary but decided was too expensive? Today we can have it. Today we can have everything!”
From the living room came the usual sounds: the flat mumbling of the television and the rhythmic clicking of a game controller. Natalia walked in, glowing as brightly as polished copper. Artem was sprawled on the sofa in his favorite stretched-out sweatpants and a faded T-shirt. In front of him, on the coffee table, stood a tower of dirty mugs and empty chip packets. He didn’t even turn at the sound of his wife’s voice, continuing to stare at the screen, where his virtual character was calmly shooting monsters.
Natalia set the bags down with a thud on the only free corner of the table, almost knocking over an ashtray full of cigarette butts.
“Artem, wake up!” She stepped in front of the television, blocking his view. “I’m telling you, they approved me. The order has been signed. I’m now the head of the logistics department. Starting Monday, I’ll have my own office and a team of twelve people.”
Artem slowly, with obvious irritation, pressed pause. He lifted his heavy, clouded gaze to his wife. There was no joy in it, no interest — only the dull annoyance of a man who had been interrupted during something important.
“Move,” he muttered, scratching his unshaven cheek. “You’re blocking the screen. So they approved you. Big deal. Why are you shouting through the whole apartment? My head’s splitting after my shift, and you’re jumping around like a child.”
Natalia felt something snap inside her. The joy that had been bubbling in her like champagne suddenly hit the icy wall of his indifference. But she decided not to give up so quickly. Maybe he was just tired. Maybe he simply didn’t understand how big this was.
“You don’t get it,” she said, beginning to unpack the groceries onto the table: sliced marbled beef, expensive blue cheeses, a jar of olives, and a heavy dark bottle of wine. “They raised my salary. And not by ten percent, like they promised, but almost double. Plus quarterly bonuses. Artem, I’ll be making more than two hundred thousand. We can pay off the car loan by winter!”
At the mention of the number, Artem’s face changed. The boredom disappeared. He slowly sat up on the sofa, lowering his feet to the floor, and fixed his eyes on her without blinking. His gaze narrowed into two sharp slits. He said nothing, processing the information, and in that silence Natalia physically felt the tension thickening around them.
“How much?” he asked quietly, his voice dry as a snapping branch. “Two hundred? And what exactly are they paying a former senior manager that kind of money for? For moving papers from one pile to another with a pretty smile?”
“For competence, Artem. For the fact that I saved the project with the Chinese partners when everyone else had given up.” Natalia straightened, feeling the smile slide from her face. “Why are you reacting like this? This is our money. Our budget.”
Artem gave a crooked, nasty snort. He reached for the wine bottle, turned it in his hands, studying the label with the expression of a connoisseur, although he knew nothing about wine, and set it back down with a loud thump.
“Our money? Don’t make me laugh. You just named a sum that I, a qualified engineer, earn in three months of backbreaking work at the plant. And you’re telling me you’ll sit in an air-conditioned office and make three times more?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Natalia blinked in confusion. “Different fields, different labor markets. You were the one who refused to take the qualification course last year.”
“Oh, so now it’s my fault?” Artem shot to his feet, looming over her. He was taller than her, and now, in the half-darkness of the room, he looked disturbingly massive. “So I’m the stupid factory worker who didn’t want to study, and you’re some logistics genius? Come back down to earth, Natasha. Positions like that and money like that don’t just get handed out. Especially not to women like you.”
“What do you mean, ‘women like me’?” Natalia’s voice turned cold.
“Ordinary. Gray. Mediocre.” Artem began counting on his fingers, stepping closer and closer to her. He smelled of stale sweat and old tobacco. “You forget to turn off the bathroom light. You can’t remember where my socks are. You mix up right and left when you’re driving. And now you expect me to believe the board of directors somehow discovered a great leader in you? Don’t make me laugh.”
He picked up the package of expensive cheese, weighed it in his hand, and tossed it back onto the table with contempt.
“Either they’re idiots, or you’re not telling me something. Who pulled you up there? That new deputy director you’ve been talking my ears off about? Viktor, was it? You climbed too fast. A month ago you were whining that the reports didn’t balance, and now suddenly you’re the boss? That doesn’t happen, Natasha. Not with your brains.”
Natalia stood there as if he had spat in her face. The festive dinner she had pictured all the way home crumbled into dust before it even began. Instead of clinking glasses and toasts, she had received a bucket of filth.
“Are you suggesting I slept my way into this position?” she asked quietly, looking straight into his eyes.
“I’m not suggesting. I’m analyzing the facts,” Artem smirked, and that smile was more frightening than any shout. “Because I don’t see any other reason why they’d pay you that kind of money. You’re just a worker. A good, obedient workhorse. But not a leader. You can’t even manage your own kitchen — we’re always out of bread. How are you supposed to manage people?”
He turned away from her and dropped back onto the sofa, deliberately picking up the controller again.
“Clear all this off the table,” he threw over his shoulder, nodding toward the delicacies. “I’ve lost my appetite. And put that wine away. We’re not celebrating anything. There’s nothing to celebrate. Celebrating a hiring mistake is a bad omen. Tomorrow they’ll probably realize they mixed up the surnames, or that you misunderstood something. So don’t embarrass yourself.”
Natalia silently, with the mechanical precision of a robot, put the wine bottle into the cupboard. The ham and cheeses went into the refrigerator, pushed into the farthest corner behind a pot of yesterday’s borscht. The celebration had died before it was born, leaving only a bitter taste in her mouth and a tremor in her hands that she could not control. She needed to take off that suit — the symbol of her triumph, which in this apartment now looked absurd and provocative, like a ball gown at a funeral.
She went into the bedroom, feeling her husband’s heavy, drilling stare on her back. He did not stay in the living room. The shuffle of his slippers across the floor announced that the conversation was not over. Artem appeared in the doorway, blocking her exit, and folded his arms across his chest. His face showed a mixture of boredom and that particular sadistic pleasure with which a child tears the wings off a trapped fly.
“And where are we running off to?” he drawled lazily, watching as Natalia tried to unbutton her cuffs with trembling fingers. “I’m talking to you. Or do bosses no longer listen to ordinary mortals?”
“I want to change, Artem. Please leave,” she said quietly, without raising her eyes. It felt as though if she looked at him, she would simply fall apart.
“Why should I leave? This is my bedroom. My apartment. And my wife too, by the way, at least for now.” He stepped inside, closing the distance. In the tight space of the bedroom, his presence became suffocating. “You still haven’t answered me. How are you going to lead people if you can’t even figure out your own phone? Remember the tantrum you threw a month ago when your internet went out? ‘Tyoma, help me, Tyoma, save me.’ And now you’re a top manager?”
“That was the provider’s problem, not mine,” Natalia finally lifted her head. In her usually soft eyes, there was now a cold determination to defend what was left of her dignity. “And stop bringing up household nonsense. My job is not setting up routers. I manage processes. I negotiate…”
“Negotiate!” Artem burst into a sharp, barking laugh. “Listen to yourself! What negotiations, Natasha? You can’t string two words together when we go to the housing office to check the bills. You always hide behind me. And now suddenly you’re some business lioness. Don’t be ridiculous. They’ll crush you in the first week.”
He came right up to her and tugged at the lapel of her jacket, as if checking the quality of the fabric.
“Expensive little suit. Bought with my money, by the way. I worked so you could go to the office looking pretty. And now you’ve decided you’ve outgrown me? That now you’ll bring money home while I carry your slippers in my teeth?”
“I never said anything like that,” Natalia’s voice trembled, but she forced herself to continue. “I just want us to live better. To be able to afford more. Why does that make you so angry? Why can’t you simply accept that I’m good at my job?”
At that moment, Artem’s face twisted. The mask of ironic skepticism fell away, revealing raw, pulsing rage. Her calm tone, her attempt to speak to him as an equal, her arguments — all of it was gasoline thrown onto the fire of his wounded ego. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard enough that her head snapped back.
“You think that just because you got promoted, you’re smarter than me now? You imagine yourself a boss? Know your place! You’re a stupid woman who got lucky! You’ll refuse that position tomorrow, or I’ll make your life so unbearable that you’ll quit yourself!”
Natalia tried to pull away, but his fingers dug into her shoulders like steel clamps. Fear, sticky and cold, crawled down her spine. She had never seen him like this before. He could grumble. He could make cruel jokes. But now there was real hatred in his eyes.
“Let go, you’re hurting me!” she cried.
“Oh, she’s in pain…” He shoved her away, and Natalia fell awkwardly onto the edge of the bed. Artem towered over her, jabbing his finger in her face. “You’ll turn down that position tomorrow. Do you hear me? Tomorrow morning you go to that Viktor of yours — or whoever it is — and tell him you can’t handle it. Say you overestimated yourself. Say you have family circumstances. I don’t care what you say.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Natalia whispered, rubbing her shoulder. “I’m not refusing it. I worked toward this for three years. This is my chance.”
“A chance to disgrace yourself?” he cut her off. “I won’t let you shame my name. When you fail everything in a month — and you will, I guarantee it — all my friends will laugh at me. They’ll say, ‘Artem’s woman got too full of herself, climbed where she didn’t belong, and made a fool of herself.’ I don’t need that.”
He leaned lower, his voice dropping into a sinister whisper that sent shivers across her skin.
“Otherwise I’ll make your life hell. Believe me, Natasha, I can be creative. You won’t find peace at home. You won’t sleep. You’ll crawl to work like a zombie, with red eyes and shaking hands. And they’ll throw you out themselves. So choose: either you leave quietly on your own tomorrow, or we start a war. And you’ll lose that war, because you’re weak. Without me, you’re nothing.”
Artem straightened, adjusted his T-shirt as if shaking off the dirt of the conversation, and looked down with contempt at his wife curled on the bed.
“Think,” he said. “You have the night. And now go make dinner. A proper dinner, not your moldy cheeses. I want cutlets with mashed potatoes. On the table in forty minutes. Boss lady… Pfft.”
He turned and left the bedroom, slamming the door loudly behind him. The impact echoed through the apartment, ringing in her ears. Natalia remained sitting in the half-darkness, feeling an enormous black emptiness spreading inside her. There were no tears. Only a sharp, crystal-clear understanding: the man she had known for ten years was gone. Or perhaps he had never existed, and there had only been a convenient mask that had finally fused with the face of a monster. She looked at her hands — they were still trembling — but somewhere deep inside, beneath the layers of fear and hurt, a tiny hot ember of anger began to glow.
Natalia did not go to the kitchen to fry cutlets. That would have been surrender, an acknowledgment of his right to command her. Despite the fear, a taut string of resistance stretched inside her. Instead, she sat down at the small kitchen table, pushed the salt shaker aside, and opened her laptop with determination. The screen lit up with a cold bluish glow, highlighting the shadows beneath her eyes. She needed to check her presentation. Tomorrow morning she had to enter the meeting room not as a beaten-down wife, but as a professional, and that file was her only support — her shield against the madness unfolding inside the apartment.
She tried to read the charts, but the lines swam before her eyes. Her husband’s shouting still rang in her ears. But Natalia forced herself to concentrate. Her fingers moved across the keyboard, adding final corrections to the slide about logistics chains. Work had always calmed her. There were clear rules there. Causes always had consequences — unlike in her family life.
Artem appeared in the kitchen doorway silently, like a predator drawn by the scent of fear. He had changed into a clean T-shirt, but his expression remained the same — a mixture of disgust and triumphant superiority. He was tossing an apple in one hand.
“I believe I said something about dinner,” he said calmly, though there was more threat in that calmness than in any shouting. “And you’re playing with your little toys again? You think if you hide behind a monitor, I won’t reach you?”
“I’m working, Artem. This is the presentation for tomorrow’s meeting. It has to be perfect,” Natalia said without turning around, still typing, though her back had gone rigid with tension. “Leave me alone for half an hour. Then I’ll make everything.”
“Perfect?” Artem snorted and came closer, peering over her shoulder at the screen. A chill seemed to come off him, as if he had brought a draft into the room. “Let’s see what’s so perfect. ‘Optimization of transport flows’… God, what nonsense. Did you find these smart words online? Do you even understand what’s written here?”
“I wrote it myself over two weeks. Move away, please. You’re distracting me.”
Instead of moving away, Artem suddenly leaned forward and slammed the laptop shut, nearly catching her fingers. Natalia flinched and instinctively pressed the computer to her chest as though it were a child.
“Don’t you dare!” she shouted, jumping up from the chair. “There were unsaved edits! What are you doing?”
“I’m restoring justice, Natasha. Saving the company from embarrassment and you from overworking yourself.” He ripped the laptop out of her hands with frightening ease. Natalia clung to the edge of it, but the strength was unequal. Artem shoved her back roughly with his elbow, and she flew into the refrigerator, striking her hip painfully against the handle.
“Give it back! Artem, don’t be an idiot — give it back right now! That’s a work computer!” Natalia’s voice broke into a shriek. For the first time that evening, she felt truly afraid — not for herself, but for the fact that he might destroy the result of her labor and wipe out all her effort.
Artem did not listen. He turned the thin silver laptop over in his hands as though judging its weight. A cold, dead smile played on his lips.
“A work computer, you say? So it’s company property. And as the person responsible for it, you should take care of it. But you’re clumsy, aren’t you? Everything is always slipping out of your hands.”
He turned and slowly headed toward the balcony door. Natalia rushed after him, trying to grab his arm, but he stretched out his hand to stop her, as if pushing away an annoying little dog.
“Don’t interfere,” he hissed through his teeth. “It’ll be worse for you.”
Artem threw open the balcony door. The noise of the night city and the cold autumn wind burst into the apartment, instantly cooling the room overheated by their fight. He stepped onto the concrete floor of the balcony and approached the open window. Ninth floor. Below, in the black pit of the courtyard, a few dim streetlights glowed, and the tiny beetles of parked cars sat motionless.
“Artem, no…” Natalia froze in the doorway, white as a sheet. “Don’t do this. Please. All the information is there. There’s no copy.”
“No copy?” He pretended to be surprised, holding the laptop at arm’s length over the drop. “How careless for a department head. Shame, shame. See? I told you you were useless. Professionals make backups.”
“I’m begging you…” she whispered, feeling as if her heart had stopped.
Artem looked straight into her eyes. There was no frenzy in his gaze, no madness — only cold, precise calculation. He wanted to destroy her, and he knew exactly where to strike. His fingers opened.
The silver rectangle slipped silently into the darkness. Natalia lunged forward, but it was too late. There was no scream, no immediate sound of impact — the height swallowed the device in silence. After a couple of endless seconds, a dull, pitiful crunch of plastic and glass came from the asphalt below. Immediately afterward, a car alarm began wailing, disturbed by the falling object.
Artem calmly closed the window, turned the handle, cutting off the street noise, and came back inside. He rubbed his palms together as though dusting them off after a job well done.
“There, you see?” he said with an icy smile, looking at his frozen wife, who was still staring into the darkness beyond the glass. “You can’t even take care of equipment. You dropped it. Couldn’t hold on. What kind of boss are you, Natasha? You’re a walking disaster.”
Natalia slowly turned her head toward him. She was not crying. The shock had dried up her tears, leaving only a scorched desert inside her. She looked at the man with whom she had shared a bed for seven years and saw an utterly foreign creature.
“Tomorrow you write a resignation letter,” Artem continued casually, walking past her toward the kitchen. “Say you lost company equipment. Say your nerves gave out. You’ll stay home and have children for me, like a woman is supposed to, instead of playing business lady. Otherwise I’ll arrange little ‘surprises’ like this for you every day. There are still plenty of things in this apartment that can accidentally fall. The TV, for example. Or your makeup.”
He paused in the doorway and threw over his shoulder, “Now go see what’s left of your career. Maybe you can collect the keys as souvenirs.”
The alarm downstairs finally fell silent, and a heavy, muffled quiet settled over the apartment, where every breath sounded as loud as a gunshot. Artem went into the kitchen and sat down on a stool with the air of a man who had completed an unpleasant but necessary task. He was completely calm, even relaxed. In his universe, the proper order of things had just been restored: the threat to his authority had been eliminated, and a woman who had gotten above herself had been put back in her place.
Natalia did not run downstairs to gather the pieces. She understood there was no point — nothing survived a fall from the ninth floor. Instead, she slowly walked into the kitchen and sat across from her husband. Her face was frighteningly calm, stripped of every emotion, like a mask carved from white marble. Artem had expected hysteria, screaming, maybe even an attempt to hit him. But that icy silence began to unsettle him. He shifted on his chair and was the first to break it.
“What are you staring at?” he muttered, picking up the apple he had never finished. “I told you, it was for your own good. Your nerves will be better off. Tomorrow you’ll go, write your refusal, say you burned out. And everything will go back to normal. We’ll live properly again. I’m even willing to forget this little ‘boss lady’ episode if you behave yourself.”
Natalia looked at him without blinking. For the first time in all their years of marriage, she saw him completely. Sitting before her was not a husband, not a protector, not a partner. Sitting before her was a small, frightened man being eaten alive from the inside by black envy. His ego was so fragile that any success of hers felt to him like a personal insult, like an attempt to humiliate his manhood.
“You didn’t forget anything, Artem,” she said quietly, her voice dry as dead leaves. “You were simply scared.”
“What?” He choked on a piece of apple, his face instantly flushing with outrage. “I was scared? You’re delirious, Natasha. Who exactly am I supposed to be afraid of? You?”
“You were afraid I’d become better than you. That I’d earn more, decide more, matter more,” she said in a flat, steady voice, as if reading out a sentence. “You didn’t destroy my presentation, Artem. You tried to destroy me as a person. Because next to me, your own worthlessness becomes too obvious. You know you’re mediocre. You reached your ceiling five years ago and haven’t moved since. But I moved forward. And you couldn’t stand it.”
Artem slammed his fist down on the table. A cup of half-drunk tea jumped, spilling a brown puddle across the tablecloth.
“Shut up!” he growled. “You dare call me worthless? I fed you while you were on maternity leave! I renovated this apartment with my own hands! You’re nothing without me! You’re an empty space that imagined itself a queen!”
“I was nothing as long as I listened to you,” Natalia did not even flinch at the blow to the table. “But today you made one mistake. You thought that by throwing out my laptop, you would break me. Instead, you set me free. I have nothing left to lose, Artem. The presentation is gone? Fine. I’ll go to the office tomorrow and speak without slides. I’ll talk from memory. I’ll draw the diagrams on the board with a marker. But I will not give up the position.”
Artem jumped up, knocking over the stool. His eyes filled with blood, the veins in his neck swelling. He had not expected this resistance. He was used to Natalia giving in, smoothing over conflicts, searching for compromises. But now an enemy sat before him.
“Oh, you’ll go?” he laughed viciously, stepping close to her. “You really think I’ll let you leave the apartment? You don’t understand, Natasha. The games are over.”
He strode into the hallway. There was the sound of metal jingling, the click of the lock, then another, final turn. Artem returned to the kitchen, tossing a set of keys in his hand — hers and his.
“That’s it,” he said, slipping the keys into his jeans pocket. “Quarantine. Tomorrow you stay home. You don’t have a phone, and in five minutes I’ll cut off the internet too. I’ll pull the cable out. You’ll sit inside these four walls until that nonsense leaves your head. Until you crawl to me on your knees and beg forgiveness for what you said about me being mediocre.”
Natalia slowly stood. She was a head shorter than him, but now it seemed as though she were looking down at him. There was so much contempt in her gaze that Artem involuntarily took a step back.
“You can lock the door,” she said in an icy voice. “You can take my phone. You can even hit me, if you have the courage to sink that low. But you’ve already lost. You think you’re in control? No, Artem. Now you’re just a jailer. And I am your punishment. You’ll come home every day and see how much I hate you. You’ll eat that hatred for breakfast, lunch, and dinner instead of cutlets.”
“Shut up!” he shouted, unable to bear her calm, devastating tone.
“I will make your life hell without even leaving this apartment,” she continued, stepping toward him. “You wanted me to know my place? I know it now. My place is anywhere — anywhere but beside a pathetic failure like you. And tomorrow, when you leave for your ‘important’ job and your miserable salary, I’ll find a way out. I’ll break a window. I’ll scream until someone calls emergency services. I’ll tear that door apart if I have to. But I will get out. And when I come back, this will no longer be your home.”
Artem stood there breathing heavily, his fists clenched until his knuckles turned white. The air in the kitchen felt charged to the breaking point. Between them there was no longer a marriage, no shared past, no memories. There was only the naked, ugly truth of two people who had become mortal enemies inside forty square meters.
“Just try it,” he hissed, though a note of uncertainty slipped into his voice. “Just try saying a word to anyone. I’ll grind you into dust.”
“You’ve already destroyed everything there was,” Natalia turned away from him and headed toward the bedroom. “Sleep on the sofa. If you come into the room, I’ll defend myself with whatever I can get my hands on. Even a knife. I’m not joking.”
She entered the bedroom and slammed the door shut, propping a chair beneath the handle from the inside. Artem remained standing in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by the smell of a cold dinner and a ruined life. He stared at the closed door with hatred, realizing that he had won the battle over the laptop but lost the war he himself had started.
The apartment filled not with silence, but with thick, black hatred — and the two of them had to spend the endless night inside it.