Part 1. An Uninvited Visit
The doorbell drilled insistently through the hallway, tearing apart the thick silence of the apartment. Rimma, who had been sitting at a table buried under maps of old Moscow and reference books on nineteenth-century architecture, flinched. She was not expecting anyone. In her world, made up of dates, merchant family names, and carefully planned walking routes, sudden intrusions were considered bad manners.
She went to the door and looked through the peephole. Distorted by the glass, yet painfully familiar, Stanislav’s broad face looked like a caricature of the past she had spent the last two years trying to erase from her memory. Rimma hesitated for a moment, weighing whether to open or not, then clicked the lock.
“Hello, Rimmochka,” Stanislav said, stepping over the threshold without waiting to be invited in.
His heavy frame filled the narrow corridor, seeming to push the air out of it. He did not smell of cheap cologne, but of underground metal dust and rubber — the permanent scent of his job as a train driver.
“Stas?” Rimma did not step back. She blocked the entrance to the room with her shoulder. “You handed over the keys two years ago. Your conscience, apparently, disappeared even earlier. WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
He smirked with that same smug smile that used to make her jaw tighten.
“Your hospitality is as poor as ever. I’m here on business. Serious business.”
Without the slightest shame, he pushed her aside with his hand, as if she were a subway turnstile, and walked into the kitchen. Rimma watched him with a look that held no fear, only cold scientific curiosity — the way an entomologist might observe a beetle crawling across a clean tablecloth.
Stanislav lowered himself onto a chair, which gave a pained creak under his weight. He looked around the kitchen: new wallpaper, no trace of his favorite chipped mug, piles of books on the windowsill.
“I heard your granny, Agnessa Pavlovna, passed away,” he said, drumming his thick fingers on the tabletop.
“Six months ago. You didn’t come to the funeral, even though she used to feed you pancakes,” Rimma replied dryly, leaning against the doorframe.
“Work, shifts, you know how it is. The tunnel doesn’t let go. But this isn’t about pancakes. A little bird told me your grandmother didn’t leave you just a stack of old postcards. A little house in the countryside, maybe? Or perhaps an apartment in the center she was quietly renting out?”
There it was. Greed. It oozed out of him like oil from a faulty machine.
Part 2. The Mechanics of Another Person’s Meanness
Rimma walked to the table and sat down opposite him. Her movements were smooth, polished by years of speaking in public. She was used to holding the attention of groups of forty people, speaking over the noise of the street. But now, a different kind of performance awaited her.
“We are divorced. The property has been divided. Notarized. Final,” she said clearly.
“Not final, Rimma. Not final at all!” Stanislav leaned forward. His face reddened, not from shame, but from excitement. “We were still married when your grandmother started getting sick. Did I drive her to doctors? I did. Did I buy medicine? I did. That means I have a moral right. Maybe even a legal one, if I dig deep enough. You probably spent family money on her, and now the inheritance is all yours? That won’t happen.”
Rimma remembered how he had “driven her.” Twice in five years, and then complained for a week that he had wasted gas and a day off. As for “buying medicine,” that meant Rimma transferring money to his card so he could stop by the pharmacy on his way.
“You’re petty, Stas. You always were. Remember how you used to check grocery receipts to make sure I hadn’t bought an extra yogurt?”
“That’s called saving money! A family is a budget!” he snapped. “Don’t change the subject. Regina, my sister, said she saw the documents. You accepted the inheritance. A commercial property. Old building stock. City center. That’s millions, Rimma. Millions!”
Rimma smiled inwardly. Regina. Her former sister-in-law worked in the Bureau of Technical Inventory archive and had always stuck her long nose where it did not belong.
“And what do you want?”
“Half. Or I file a lawsuit to reopen the division of property. I’ll find witnesses who’ll say you hid income, that renovations here were paid for with my bonuses. I’ll ruin your life, drag you through court. You know I’m stubborn. Like my train — straight ahead, no stopping.”
There was not a drop of warmth in his eyes, only a calculator counting zeros. He did not see the woman he had lived with for ten years. He saw a safe whose code he believed he had almost cracked.
“Are you blackmailing me?” Rimma’s voice became calm and dangerous.
“I’m offering a deal. You give me a share, and I forget you exist. I need the money. I invested… badly. I have to cover my debts. Not to the kind of people they show in movies, just ordinary people who don’t like waiting.”
Part 3. The Illusion of Power
Stanislav felt he had the upper hand. In his mind, women were weak and easily frightened. Rimma had always avoided scandals, escaping conflict into her books and history. He was sure that if he pressed hard enough, frightened her with court, gossip, and public humiliation, she would collapse like a house of cards.
“So Regina sniffed everything out,” Rimma said thoughtfully. “Yes, there is a property. First floor. A historic building. A former shop that once belonged to the merchant Morozov.”
Stanislav’s eyes lit up. A merchant’s shop! That was a gold mine. Rent, a boutique, a restaurant — anything was possible.
“See? And you kept quiet like a partisan. Let’s do this: you sign over half to me as a gift. Or we sell and split the money. We decide RIGHT NOW, or I start calling a lawyer. I know one. A real shark.”
“You think I’ll give you something that belonged to my family just because you raised your voice?”
“You’ll give it to me because you’re weak, Rimma. You’re a rotten little intellectual. People like you are afraid of dirt. And I’ll make a scandal. I’ll smear you everywhere, figuratively speaking. I’ll write on every forum that you’re a fraud. I’ll tell your guide colleagues all about you.”
He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. His arrogance was so tangible she wanted to open a window. He believed he had cornered her.
Rimma remained silent. She looked at her ex-husband and saw not a person, but a bundle of primitive instincts. He thought her silence meant fear. He was wrong. It was the calibration of her aim.
She understood that he would not leave peacefully. Logic was useless here. Persuasion would only look like weakness to him. He needed a show. He needed to witness her defeat in order to feel his own greatness.
“You want war, Stas?” she asked quietly.
“I want what’s mine. Don’t make me angry, Rimma.”
Part 4. A One-Woman Theater
Inside Rimma, somewhere near her solar plexus, a cold, sharp spring tightened. She remembered the acting lessons she had taken for theatrical walking tours. Anger is energy. Hysteria is a weapon, if you control every decibel.
She sprang to her feet. The chair crashed backward. Stanislav jerked.
“YOU WANT WHAT’S YOURS?!” she screamed so loudly that the dishes rattled in the cupboard. Her usually melodic, trained voice turned into the shriek of a sawmill.
Stas froze. He opened his mouth, but Rimma gave him no chance to speak.
“YOU PARASITE! YOU WORTHLESS MAN! YOU THINK I’M AFRAID OF YOU?!” She grabbed a stack of papers from the table — drafts of her tours — and threw them into the air. Sheets scattered in a white explosion of chaos.
“Rimma, what are you doing… calm down…” Stanislav muttered, shrinking into his shoulders.
“I FED YOU! I CLOTHED YOU! AND NOW YOU COME HERE MAKING DEMANDS?!” She advanced toward him, waving her arms, her face distorted, her eyes burning with wild fire. “DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THIS INHERITANCE COST ME? CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE?”
She snatched a heavy folder from the counter and slammed it onto the table right in front of his nose.
Bang.
“Here! Choke on it! Devour it! You want a share? YOU WANT PROBLEMS? TAKE IT!” she screamed, forcing her voice to break, deliberately pushing herself until red blotches appeared on her neck. “I’m tired! I can’t carry this anymore! You think it’s a gift? It’s a curse!”
Stanislav was confused. Her reaction was abnormal, frightening. But through all that screaming, his greedy mind caught the most important thing: she was giving in. She was hysterical. She was ready to hand it over just to get rid of him.
“Quiet, you crazy fool… The neighbors will call someone…” he hissed, though there was no confidence left in his voice. Only a desire to take what he wanted and escape this madwoman as quickly as possible.
“LET THEM CALL! LET EVERYONE KNOW YOU’RE A THIEF!” Rimma grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper and began writing quickly, broadly, almost tearing through the page. “Here! I refuse it! I’ll give everything to you! The whole property! All of it! I don’t need it! Just GET OUT of my life!”
She shoved the paper under his nose. It was a written obligation to transfer ownership rights to the property in exchange for his refusal to make any further claims.
“You… are you serious? The entire property?” Stas scanned the lines with his eyes. Greed fought with caution, but the sight of his trembling, screaming, completely unrecognizable ex-wife convinced him: she had broken.
“SIGN IT! OR I’LL EAT THIS PAPER RIGHT NOW!” she screamed, spitting as she spoke. “Take that crypt! Go on! Be a man! Take responsibility!”
Stanislav grabbed the pen. Numbers spun through his head. Central Moscow. Rent. Sale. He was rich. And she was a hysterical woman who would be left with nothing.
He signed.
Rimma immediately, without stopping her performance of heavy breathing and nervous twitching, pulled out already prepared notarial forms from the folder. They had been there for another matter, but they worked perfectly as part of the act.
“Tomorrow at nine in the morning, at the notary’s office. We’ll formalize the transfer of rights. I’ve already been there; everything is ready. Just leave me alone! I CAN’T STAND THE SIGHT OF YOU!”
“All right, all right,” Stanislav said, standing up and pressing his copy of the agreement to his chest. “You offered it yourself. I didn’t force you. Psycho…”
He hurried to the door, afraid she might change her mind or rush at him with a knife. The door slammed shut.
Rimma stood in the middle of the kitchen. Silence slowly returned to the apartment. She straightened her back, fixed her hair, and walked to the mirror. There was no trace of madness on her face — only a cold, angry smile.
“Checkmate, darling,” she whispered.
Part 5. A Sarcophagus with a Secret
Two months passed.
Rimma was leading a group of tourists through Zamoskvorechye. The autumn sun gilded the church domes, and the air was clear and fresh.
“Please pay attention to the building on the right,” her voice sounded steady and inspired. “It is a typical example of late nineteenth-century merchant architecture. A former shop. Sadly, the property is now in a very poor state.”
She noticed a familiar hunched figure standing near the entrance to that very building. Stanislav looked terrible. Gaunt, wearing a wrinkled jacket, he was gesturing furiously while speaking to two stern-looking uniformed officials and a woman with a thick folder.
“What kind of outrage is this?!” Stanislav’s voice carried over to them. “What restoration? I don’t have that kind of money!”
“Citizen, you are the owner,” the woman with the folder said firmly. “The building is a cultural heritage site of federal significance. According to the preservation obligation, which passed to you along with ownership, you are required to carry out emergency foundation stabilization work within thirty days. Otherwise, you face a fine of five million rubles and seizure of the property. And here is an order to remove the illegal alterations made by previous owners in the nineties. The expert commission estimates the cost of the work at twelve million.”
“But I didn’t know! My ex-wife tricked me!” Stanislav howled.
“Ignorance of the law does not exempt you from responsibility. You accepted the property and signed the transfer act. Also, the land tax for commercial properties in this zone has increased as of this month. The bills have already been sent to you.”
Stas clutched his head. Then he saw Rimma.
Their eyes met.
In his eyes, there was raw animal terror. He understood. That performance, that hysterical breakdown — it had not been defeat. It had been a trap. She had known the building was a poisoned asset. The walls were barely holding, the utilities were rotten, and its protected heritage status meant it could not be demolished, rebuilt, or even have its windows replaced without a dozen expert approvals, each costing as much as a new car. Agnessa Pavlovna had spent years battling the property department in court and had avoided fines only through old connections — connections Stas did not have.
Rimma gave him the faintest nod and turned back to the tourists.
“As you can see, history is not only beauty,” she said with a light smile, “but also a tremendous responsibility. The burden of owning the past can be unbearable for those who see only profit in it. Let’s continue, friends. The Ostrovsky estate is waiting for us.”
She walked away with an easy step, leaving behind her former husband standing at a broken trough made of elite, but utterly useless, brick.
He had received his inheritance.
And now, slowly but surely, it was devouring him.