“Who’s going to cook dinner? We just got home from work!” Oleg grumbled, dropping onto the living room sofa in the same jeans he had worn outside.
His younger sister Irina immediately appeared in the kitchen doorway, wrapped in a fluffy robe.
“Ol, it’s eight o’clock, and there’s nothing on the stove. My boys won’t eat plain buckwheat. Make them some cottage cheese pancakes,” she added in a spoiled, demanding tone.
From the children’s room came a wild crashing noise. Irina’s three sons were taking turns jumping from the bunk bed, systematically destroying the laminate flooring. They ignored the adults completely, glued to their tablets at full volume.
Olga was forty-five. She had just come home after a brutal day of financial reports at the office. Her legs ached, but inside, instead of her usual exhaustion, there was only cold, precise clarity.
They lived in a spacious four-room apartment that Olga rented. Her salary as a senior financial analyst was more than enough to provide a comfortable life. Oleg, however, earned three times less, while proudly calling himself “the provider” and spending his small paycheck on his own entertainment.
Exactly one month earlier, Irina had shown up at their door with her children and suitcases, confidently announcing that renovations in her apartment were taking longer than expected.
“Cottage cheese pancakes are sold at the bakery downstairs,” Olga replied calmly. “Go down and buy some.”
Oleg immediately jumped up from the sofa.
“Olga, why are you starting again? Irina already has it hard. Her renovation has stalled. You’re supposed to be understanding. We’re family!”
Olga gave a short laugh.
“Renovation?” She looked her husband straight in the eye. “I saw the listing a month ago. Your sister rented out her apartment for forty-five thousand rubles.”
Irina froze instantly and looked away. Oleg was confused for a second, but his sister suddenly went on the attack, dropping the mask of the helpless relative.
“So what if I rented it out?” she snapped shamelessly. “Oleg was the one who suggested it! He said you earn good money, buy quality groceries, and that in a year I could pay off my car loan. What, are you really that stingy when it comes to your husband’s family?”
The puzzle finally clicked into place. It had been a cynical, carefully calculated plan by two immature relatives to drain someone else’s resources.
“Oh, so that’s how it is,” Olga nodded.
Feeling backed up by his sister, Oleg straightened his shoulders again.
“Yes, I suggested it! So what? Your job is to create comfort at home. Don’t like it? Pack your things and go back to your little studio. I’ll pay the rent for this apartment myself!”
Olga had been waiting for exactly those words. She took a document with a blue stamp from her bag and placed it on the kitchen table.
“You won’t be paying anything, Oleg.”
She paused, watching her husband’s face go pale.
“You were probably wondering why I spent an entire month quietly cooking dinners for you and serving this whole traveling circus. Let me explain. I paid a large deposit for this apartment — two hundred thousand rubles. According to the contract, if I moved out without proper notice, the landlord had every right to keep the entire amount. So I sent an official notice of termination on the very day I saw your listing, Irina.”
Oleg’s arrogance vanished instantly.
“Tomorrow at exactly nine in the morning, the lease ends,” Olga continued evenly. “The landlord will come to collect the keys. And I’m moving back to my studio, which, thank God, has belonged to me for years and doesn’t come with any mortgage.”
“What do you mean, the lease is terminated?” Irina’s voice cracked into a hoarse squeak. “Where are we supposed to go this late at night? My tenants paid a year in advance!”
“We’ll get a hotel!” Oleg barked, pulling a bank card from his pocket. “I’ll book a suite right now, and you, Olga, will come crawling back to apologize!”
Olga looked at the plastic card in his hand and smiled.
“That’s my secondary card, Oleg. I blocked it an hour ago. Your convenient little resource is closed. Out. You have fifteen minutes.”
Oleg was speechless. He frantically opened his banking app. There were three hundred and forty rubles left on his personal salary card.
When they began dragging their bags into the stairwell, shoving each other and hurling insults, Oleg called his mother in a panic, begging her to come and take them in.
Olga did not close the door behind them right away. Instead, she walked to the living room window.
Twenty minutes later, a car pulled up to the entrance. Oleg’s mother, Nina Alekseevna, jumped out. She rushed toward her son and daughter, who were standing outside surrounded by bags and three screaming children.
“Mom, she threw us out! She left us without a single coin!” Oleg whined, trying to shove a suitcase into the trunk.
But instead of pitying her precious boy, Nina Alekseevna suddenly slapped him hard across the face.
“You idiot!” her shrill voice rang through the courtyard. “You lost a woman like that! Who’s going to feed you now? I can’t support you and Irina on my pension!”
From above, Olga watched as her former relatives started fighting right there by the entrance, blaming one another for their stupidity and greed.
In her handbag, next to the lease termination papers, lay a completed divorce application. Olga would file it the next morning with the same cold smile.
She quietly closed the window, shutting out the noise from the street.
That same evening, Olga sat in the tiny but deeply familiar kitchen of the studio she had owned before marriage. The place was perfectly silent. She took an old copper cezve from the cabinet, the one with the slightly bent handle — the very one Oleg had always demanded she throw away.
Olga brewed strong, fragrant coffee, poured it into her favorite mug, and took the first sip. Inside, she felt unbelievably light. She no longer had to pay other people’s bills. She no longer had to carry arrogant freeloaders on her back. She would never again be “understanding” at her own expense.
From that day forward, she had only one position to care about — her own.
She still had her money, her personal space, and an entirely new, free life.
What would you have done in Olga’s place: kicked the shameless relatives out immediately and lost the two hundred thousand, or waited out the month just as coldly and calmly? Share your opinion in the comments.