“Meet Lena. She’ll be staying in the guest room… just until she sorts out her housing situation. Dasha, don’t make that face, like you’ve just bitten into a lemon. We’ve got plenty of space. It’s not like she’ll be in your way.”
Vadim said it so casually. As if he had bought a new floor lamp from IKEA, not dragged into our home the same woman I had “accidentally” run into a month earlier at that forum. Lena — tall, slim, wearing some provocative dress — smirked crookedly and rolled her suitcase right onto my pale carpet. With dirty, wet wheels. Straight into the middle of the living room.
Bitch.
“I hope we’ll get along, Dasha,” she sang.
A heavy, sugary perfume clung to her. My temples started aching immediately.
Vadim was watching me closely. Waiting. Waiting for me to scream, smash plates, throw his clothes off the balcony. He needed that. He needed an excuse to paint me as hysterical and throw me out of the house “legally.” After all, he knew I had nowhere to go. Every bit of savings I’d had over the last ten years had gone into our bakeries. And officially, I was just listed there as a “consultant.” As for the house — he had cleverly registered it in his mother’s name, Anna Borisovna.
I exhaled slowly. My heart was pounding somewhere in my throat, but I walked over to him and straightened the collar of his jacket.
“Of course, Vadik. If that’s what you’ve decided… Come in, Lenochka. Make yourself at home.”
My husband’s eye twitched. He hadn’t expected me to swallow this so easily. What he didn’t know yet was that this little “obedience” would cost him every last kopeck.
Every single one.
The next three days were pure hell. Lena didn’t behave like a guest. She behaved like the lady of the house. She deliberately cleared my serums out of the bathroom — the expensive ones I had saved up for an entire month to buy — and replaced them with her cheap little tubes. She sat in my place at the table and curled her lips.
“Oh, Vadim, why does Dasha oversalt everything? It’s bad for you. Your blood pressure will go up, and we still have plans to go out…”
Vadim only chuckled, stroking her hand right in front of me.
“It’s fine, Lenus. Dasha is a woman who knows her place. Efficient. Like furniture in the hallway — it just stands there. You tell her something, she does it. Don’t pay attention to her.”
That evening, my mother-in-law dropped by. Anna Borisovna lived in the neighboring cottage and came over, supposedly “just to visit.” She sat in the kitchen, folded her hands over her stomach, and whispered:
“Dasha, my dear, don’t start showing character, do you hear me? Vadik just needs to get this out of his system. Men are like children — they chase anything shiny. He’ll play with her and get bored. But you must endure it. You understand, don’t you? The house is mine. Where would you go? Back to your mother’s village, to that crumbling shack without a toilet? Sit quietly, and maybe something will fall to you from the master’s table…”
“I understand everything, Anna Borisovna. I’m very, very patient,” I replied, looking at my laptop screen.
At that exact moment, the registration of the assignment agreement was being finalized. Vadik was convinced I was only good for making coffee. He hadn’t changed the passwords to his email in years. He thought I was a harmless shadow.
Idiot.
He had forgotten that I was the one who had carried the entire accounting and logistics of our bakeries on my back.
On the fourth day, I “forgot” my tablet on the kitchen table. I knew Lena was the kind of girl who couldn’t resist digging through someone else’s dirty laundry. And sure enough, ten minutes later she was whispering to Vadim in the hallway.
“Vadik, your quiet little mouse is doing something behind your back!” she hissed. “I saw a bank notification. Some huge transfer… I’m telling you, she’s trying to rob you!”
Vadim stormed into the bedroom while I was packing my things. My things. The few items I had bought before our “great business empire.”
“What are you planning, you bitch?” He grabbed my elbow so hard I gasped. There would definitely be a bruise tomorrow. “What money? You are nobody here! Dust under my feet, do you understand?”
I looked up at him. Made my face as pitiful as possible. Almost cried.
“Vadim, it’s just a deposit for an apartment rental… I decided to leave on my own. Why should I stay here and watch you two… like this? On Friday at six in the evening, a courier will come with my documents. I’ll take my passport and disappear. I promise.”
He released my arm and wiped his hand on his trousers with disgust.
“Now that’s more like it. For once in your life, you’re acting like an adult woman. Pack your junk and get out.”
Friday. 5:50 p.m.
Vadim and Lena were lounging on the sofa with glasses of expensive wine. They were already loudly discussing how they would throw out my bed and turn the room into a dressing room for Lena’s clothes. Anna Borisovna had also rushed over — to make sure I didn’t “accidentally” take the silver spoons with me.
At exactly 6:00 p.m., a black car pulled up to the gate. A man in a strict suit stepped out, carrying a heavy leather folder.
“Oh, the courier’s here,” Vadim drawled lazily. He didn’t even get up. “Hand over your paperwork. We’ll sign it and adiós, Dashulya. Free as the wind.”
But the man was not a courier. He laid documents with blue stamps and a registry extract on the table.
“Good evening. My name is Igor Viktorovich. I represent the Vector investment group. Mr. Vadim Petrov, we hereby notify you that ownership rights to this residential property, as well as seventy percent of the shares in your bakery chain, have been transferred.”
Vadim choked on his wine. It splashed right onto his white shirt. His face turned gray, almost earthy.
“What ownership? This is a mistake! The house belongs to my mother! Mom, tell him!”
Anna Borisovna began trembling. Her double chin shook.
“Vadik… I… do you remember in March? You asked me to sign papers for the production expansion… You said it was just a formality… so you could get a loan at a lower interest rate…”
The lawyer adjusted his glasses coldly.
“It was not a formality, Anna Borisovna. It was a surety agreement secured by property collateral. Your son then successfully defaulted on that obligation. He had been transferring working capital into personal accounts. The debt was purchased by my client, Daria Alekseyevna. And today at five o’clock in the evening, the forced collection procedure was completed.”
The living room went so quiet that the only sound was Lena frantically trying to zip up her suitcase. It had never even been unpacked. She must have sensed something.
“What does that mean?” the “guest” stammered, backing toward the door.
“It means, Lenochka,” I said, stepping forward, “that you can take your ‘successful businessman’ with you. Along with his debts and his mother as a bonus. Vadim, you didn’t know that Lena is an old acquaintance of my lawyer, did you? I planted her in your path myself at that forum. I needed you to relax. To feel like an alpha male and completely abandon the business. You brought her into this house yourself. You gave her the keys to your office, where the original documents were kept — documents she copied for me very successfully.”
Lena stood up, adjusted her skirt, and winked at me.
“Dasha, the rest of the fee, as agreed? I should go. My taxi is already on the corner.”
“I transferred everything, Lena. Thank you for the performance. The photos of you and Vadim cuddling were very useful in convincing the investors that he was no longer a reliable partner.”
Vadim stared at us, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on dry land. His world had collapsed. The bakeries, the house — everything had vanished. All he had left was an angry mother and the realization that he had been outplayed by “furniture.”
“You… you said you didn’t mind her living here!” he croaked, gripping the edge of the table.
“I don’t mind, Vadik. Live here. But the new tenants are moving in tomorrow morning. I rented this house out by the day for loud parties. So you have exactly ten minutes to gather your things and disappear. Don’t forget your mother. She’ll fit perfectly in a Khrushchev-era apartment on the outskirts.”
I stepped out onto the porch. At the gate stood Vadim, clutching the very suitcase Lena had “forgotten” in her rush. I watched him struggle to close the trunk of his wreck of a car, and for the first time in ten years, I didn’t feel sorry for him at all.
Not even a little.
If anything, I felt slightly disgusted.
I was no longer furniture.
I had finally thrown all that old, rotten junk out of my life.