“Vadim, where is the blue envelope that was under my planner in the nightstand?”
Larisa stood in the kitchen doorway, clutching a completely empty cardboard folder in her hand.
Saturday morning had started in the worst possible way. Just ten minutes earlier, she had walked barefoot into the kitchen to get a glass of water and stepped ankle-deep into an icy, sticky mess.
Their old two-door refrigerator, which had been surviving for the last six months only through prayers and repeated freon refills, had finally died. The compressor was silent. From beneath the dried-out freezer seal, a small lake had spilled across the linoleum, mixed generously with the bloody liquid from thawed meat.
After swearing under her breath, Larisa had rushed into the bedroom to get the cash they had saved so she could immediately order a new refrigerator. They had spent three months putting together that one hundred thousand rubles, denying themselves restaurant meals, new clothes, and every little unnecessary purchase.
Vadim was sitting at the kitchen table with one leg crossed over the other, calmly scrolling through car news on his phone. Thick rubber slippers covered his feet, so the disaster spreading across the floor did not bother him in the slightest. He had not even bothered to throw a rag onto the floor while his wife was still asleep.
“I asked you where the hundred thousand is,” Larisa repeated, pronouncing every word sharply as she stepped closer, carefully avoiding the brown puddle.
“I took it,” her husband replied in a perfectly even voice, without lifting his eyes from the screen. “Yesterday after work.”
“Wonderful. You took it. And what exactly did you take it for, may I ask? Are you blind, or has your sense of smell completely stopped working? Our refrigerator is dead. The freezer leaked. All the beef I bought at the market on Wednesday is floating in warm water. The milk has gone so sour that the carton is swollen like an airship and is about to explode all over the shelves. We agreed that this morning, at ten o’clock, we were ordering a new one.”
Vadim finally locked his phone and placed it on the table. He looked at his wife with that particular expression of condescending superiority that Larisa hated more than anything.
“We are not ordering any new refrigerator today. We’ll manage with this one for now. Call some repairman from the classifieds and let him solder the pipe or fix whatever broke. They’ll do it for three thousand. The hundred thousand went to something more important. Lyuba turns thirty-five in two weeks. It’s her anniversary.”
“So what?” Larisa frowned, feeling a tight spring of anger twisting inside her. “What does your sister’s birthday have to do with the money we saved for a major household appliance?”
“It has everything to do with it. She wanted to celebrate at the Golden Pheasant restaurant. She invited our whole family, her colleagues from work. Yesterday she called me, completely upset. She said she couldn’t afford that kind of celebration and was about to cancel the booking and invite everyone to some cheap pizzeria on the outskirts. Can you imagine the embarrassment? Aunt Galya is coming from Samara. Uncle Borya is flying in. What would they think of us? That we’re so poor we can’t even give my sister a proper celebration?”
Larisa looked from her husband’s smug face to the puddle, which had already begun to smell distinctly of raw, rotting meat, then back at Vadim. The puzzle in her mind formed one ugly picture.
“So you’re telling me…” she began slowly, squeezing the cardboard envelope so hard that it cracked and bent in half. “You emptied one hundred thousand rubles from our family budget and gave it to Lyuba for a drinking party in a restaurant?”
“I didn’t give it to her,” Vadim corrected proudly. “I went to the administrator myself and paid the full amount in advance for a luxury banquet. As her older brother. So my family would look respectable. Lyuba will tell everyone at the table: my brother Vadim paid for this banquet. That means status. Respect from relatives. And you’re making a huge problem out of a piece of metal.”
Larisa turned sharply, pulled an old towel from under the sink, threw it onto the floor, and crouched down to soak up the filthy water.
“We were going to buy a new refrigerator because the old one is leaking, and you paid for your sister’s birthday banquet?! She is a grown woman. Let her pay for her own guests! Why should our food rot so your relatives can dance and eat salads at our expense?! I’m going to that restaurant and taking the money back from the administrator!” she snapped, wiping the kitchen floor.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Vadim said, curling his lips in disgust as he watched Larisa drag the rapidly darkening towel across the linoleum. “The money was paid in my name. The service contract is registered under my passport. And honestly, why are you being so petty? You always reduce everything to rubles and food. So what if the meat thawed? Cook borscht with it today. Nothing terrible happened. But family reputation can’t be bought. Lyuba is my blood. I’m obligated to help her.”
“Reputation?” Larisa straightened up and hurled the rag, soaked in foul-smelling liquid, right near the legs of Vadim’s chair. Dirty drops splashed onto his ankles. “What reputation, Vadim? You work as a metal sales manager with a salary of seventy thousand! You saved that money together with me. My vacation pay was in that envelope too! I worked two weeks without days off so we could store food like normal people instead of eating rotten garbage!”
Vadim pulled his foot away from the wet rag and glared at her.
“I’m the man here. I decide how the money in this house is spent. I wanted to give my sister a proper gift, and I did.”
“Your thirty-five-year-old sister works as a nail technician in a basement salon and rents a one-room apartment!” Larisa’s voice became hard, stripped of everything except contempt. “But she needs an anniversary celebration with style, with sturgeon and caviar! Paid for with someone else’s money! You’re pretending to be an oligarch in front of Aunt Galya, while sitting in rubber slippers in the middle of a stinking kitchen because you don’t even have enough money for a new compressor!”
Larisa walked over to the dead refrigerator and yanked both doors open. A chunk of ice mixed with frozen cherries from a torn bag immediately fell onto the floor. A sharp sour smell of spoiled food hit them in the face.
“Look here, patron of the arts!” she jabbed a finger inside the appliance. “There’s about eight thousand rubles’ worth of food in here. Your favorite smoked sausages are covered in slime. The pork knuckle you asked me to roast this weekend smells so bad it makes me gag. You’re eating this for dinner tonight. I’ll boil that rotten meat for you in a pot without salt and put it on the table. You’ll choke it down and remember your status and the respect of your relatives.”
“Shut your mouth!” Vadim roared, jumping up from the chair. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that! I said the money went to something important. Throw this trash in the garbage and go buy fresh food.”
“Fresh food? And what am I supposed to buy it with?” Larisa crossed her arms and smiled crookedly. “My salary doesn’t come until the fifteenth. Yours went to a banquet at the Golden Pheasant. Our cards are empty. So welcome to reality, successful brother. For the next two weeks, we’ll eat pasta and whatever I can save from this stinking puddle.”
Vadim opened his mouth to deliver another lecture about family values, but a sharp, persistent ring at the door interrupted him.
Larisa glanced at the clock above the stove. Half past nine on Saturday morning. She had a very good idea who had shown up so early.
“Vadik, why are you taking so long? I left the taxi meter running!” Lyuba’s bright, shameless voice rang out from the hallway as soon as Vadim unlocked the front door. “I only stopped by for five minutes. It’s about one little thing.”
His sister swept into the kitchen with complete confidence. She was wearing a short faux-fur coat in a suspiciously bright burgundy color, and high suede stiletto boots. The air instantly filled with a suffocating mixture of heavy sweet perfume and sour milk, which by then had fully occupied the room.
Lyuba took two steps across the linoleum, wrinkled her heavily made-up nose, and stopped, looking down at her feet.
“Ugh, what is that stink in here? Larisa, you could at least air the place out once in a while. It’s impossible to breathe. And what is this dirty swamp on the floor? I’m going to ruin my new boots in this puddle!” she complained, glaring at her brother’s wife, who was still standing near the open refrigerator.
“That’s your anniversary banquet leaking, Lyubanya,” Larisa replied in a flat, emotionless voice. “You can start celebrating right here. Help yourself. There’s a wonderful pork knuckle on the bottom shelf. True, it’s already turned a little green and smells like a corpse, but for free food it’ll do.”
“Vadik, what is she talking about? What pork knuckle? Why is she insulting me first thing in the morning?” Lyuba turned her outraged gaze to her brother.
Vadim shifted awkwardly in his rubber slippers and tried to make his face look firm.
“Don’t pay attention, Lyub. The appliance broke, and Larisa lost her mind over household problems,” he brushed it off. “Why did you come so early? Did something happen?”
“It’s about the restaurant. Yesterday we approved the menu, but I thought about it last night and realized there won’t be enough alcohol. Uncle Borya drinks like a horse. Three bottles of cognac per table won’t be enough; he alone will finish two. And we also need to pay the photographer. Who’s going to take pictures of me with the guests? So transfer another fifteen thousand to my card right now. I’ll go settle things with the contractor.”
Larisa slowly closed the refrigerator door. The plastic click sounded surprisingly loud in the cramped kitchen. She stepped toward her sister-in-law, ignoring the sticky squelch beneath her slippers.
“Are you seriously here asking for more money?” Larisa fixed her unblinking eyes on Lyuba’s brightly painted face. “Your brother took one hundred thousand rubles from my nightstand last night. That was our savings for a new refrigerator. We spent three months saving for it so we could go to the store today. Now our kitchen is full of rotten meat, we have no money until the next paycheck, and you’re standing here in your boots demanding another fifteen thousand for a photographer?”
Lyuba lifted her chin arrogantly, not embarrassed in the slightest. She adjusted the collar of her burgundy coat and looked at Larisa with open mockery.
“First of all, he took his own money. He’s the man of this house, and he knows better how to spend the budget. Second, don’t stick your nose into our family matters. Vadik is my real brother. It’s my milestone birthday. I’m turning thirty-five. I have every right to celebrate in a way that won’t make me ashamed in front of my relatives and friends. And you’re ready to strangle someone over some stinking food box. Greed is a disgusting trait, Larisa.”
“Your family lives in a rented one-room apartment on the edge of town, Lyuba,” Larisa said through clenched teeth, moving closer. “Your salary as a nail technician barely covers rent and cheap food. What restaurant? What cognac for Uncle Borya? You live beyond your means and expect others to pay for it. You’re just a freeloader who has gotten used to feeding off someone else’s budget.”
“Shut your mouth!” Vadim barked, stepping forward and pushing his sister behind him. He pointed a finger at his wife. “Don’t you dare talk to my sister like that in my house! She’s right. I decided to pay for her celebration. And if necessary, I’ll find another fifteen thousand for the photographer. I’ll borrow it from colleagues at work, but Lyuba will have a proper anniversary. And you can pick up the rag and wipe the floor before the linoleum swells. Throw the spoiled food out too. It’s disgusting to look at.”
Lyuba smiled triumphantly from behind Vadim’s shoulder. Her eyes gleamed with total victory. She felt completely safe, knowing her brother would always defend her so he would not look weak.
“Exactly, Vadik. Let her do something useful instead of turning the place into a dump,” Lyuba agreed, glancing around the countertop with disgust. “In a normal housewife’s kitchen, appliances don’t break. She must not have taken care of it properly. Anyway, I’m leaving. My taxi is waiting. Transfer the money like we agreed. And Larisa, you don’t have to come to the banquet. I don’t want angry, jealous people at my celebration.”
“I wouldn’t come to your ball of hypocrisy even at gunpoint,” Larisa said, taking a step back toward the kitchen unit. “And you, Vadim, will not borrow a single kopek more. Because your colleagues’ debts will have to be repaid from our budget. I’m not paying for your empty showing off.”
“Nobody asked for your opinion!” Vadim’s face flushed red with fury. “I’m the man! I make the decisions in this apartment!”
Larisa looked at the united pair standing before her. Brother and sister stood in the middle of a dirty kitchen reeking of rotten meat, absolutely certain they were right. They truly believed that the illusion of prosperity they were trying to build for visiting relatives was worth spoiled food, lies, and stolen savings.
“All right. You make the decisions,” Larisa said calmly. She picked up a roll of thick black garbage bags from the countertop and tore one off with a loud rip. “Then you’ll personally deal with the consequences of those decisions.”
She opened the plastic bag and stepped back toward the dead refrigerator.
Lyuba snorted, adjusted her handbag on her shoulder, and headed toward the kitchen exit, stepping carefully on tiptoe so she would not dirty her shoes in the puddle. Vadim crossed his arms smugly, convinced he had won and put his wife in her place.
But Larisa had not even begun.
“Why are you dumping that filth right on the clean tablecloth?!” Lyuba shrieked in disgust, jumping toward the windowsill and pressing her back against the glass. She quickly pressed the fluffy sleeve of her burgundy coat to her face, trying to shield herself from the sickening smell.
Instead of answering, Larisa reached elbow-deep into the leaking freezer and pulled out the very same pork knuckle. Overnight, the meat had taken on a clear gray-green shade. The vacuum packaging had swollen and split along the seam, releasing sticky bloody liquid.
Larisa swung her arm and threw the piece into the open black garbage bag lying in the middle of the dining table. It landed with a heavy wet slap. Drops of foul liquid flew in every direction.
After the pork knuckle came a package of expensive smoked sausages covered in a thick layer of white slippery mold, and a pack of soggy dumplings that had turned into one sticky lump of dough and gray minced meat. Dirty water from the lower shelves dripped onto Larisa’s sweatpants, soaking into the fabric in dark patches, but she kept methodically emptying the ruined refrigerator.
“I’m collecting your banquet props, Lyubanya,” Larisa said through her teeth, fishing a plastic container of spoiled cheese out of the bloody puddle at the bottom drawer. “Vadim is the sponsor of the year, after all. I’m just drawing up the balance sheet for our family enterprise. Look carefully at what our savings became.”
“Put that in the trash bin immediately, you lunatic!” Vadim shouted, taking a threatening step toward the table. His rubber slippers squeaked unpleasantly on the wet linoleum. “Are you putting on this rotten circus just to humiliate my sister? Do you think I’ll stand here and watch?”
“I haven’t even started putting anything on,” Larisa said.
She wiped her fingers, smeared with meat slime, on a paper towel, tossed the crumpled paper into the sink, and pulled her phone from her pocket.
She unlocked the screen and opened the browser. Her thumbs moved quickly and confidently across the keyboard as she typed into the search bar.
“What are you typing? Who are you calling?” Lyuba narrowed her eyes suspiciously, still holding her sleeve over her painted face. Her unnaturally straight posture became slightly tense.
“I’m looking for the phone number of the Golden Pheasant restaurant,” Larisa replied calmly without looking up. “I believe the administrator’s name is Margarita. I’m going to call this lovely woman, cancel the reservation made in the name of my unbelievably generous husband, and demand the return of the one hundred thousand rubles. According to service rules, if a banquet is canceled more than a week in advance, they must refund the full amount.”
Lyuba choked on air. Her face, under the thick layer of foundation, broke out in ugly red blotches. Her eyes widened with raw animal panic. The thought of losing her luxurious celebration in front of Aunt Galya and Uncle Borya instantly knocked the arrogance out of her. Her cardboard crown tilted.
“You… you wouldn’t dare call!” she spat, taking an uncertain step toward Larisa, forgetting her new boots and the puddle on the floor. “Vadik, tell her! Make her put the phone down! These are my guests! I already sent invitations to all the girls from work! If you cancel it, they’ll laugh at me!”
“Larisa, put the phone down,” Vadim said in a low, threatening voice. He breathed heavily, his nostrils flaring like an enraged bull’s. His face twisted with anger. “You’re not calling anyone. The contract is under my passport. I paid the money myself. Nobody will cancel anything or return anything to you.”
“And you also took the money from our shared nightstand yourself, Vadim,” Larisa said.
She found the number on the restaurant’s website and pressed the green call button. The first long tone sounded from the speaker. She turned on loudspeaker and placed the phone on the edge of the table, right beside the bag of rotten meat.
“And I don’t care whose name is on the paper. If they refuse to return the money by phone, I’ll go there personally, stand in the middle of their fancy hall, and create such a scandal that they’ll stuff those one hundred thousand into my pockets themselves just to keep me from scaring away their other customers.”
With a growl, Vadim lunged forward, trying to knock the phone off the table. Larisa caught his hand in midair and shoved it aside with force. From the unexpected push, Vadim slipped on the wet linoleum. His feet slid apart, and he almost fell straight into the puddle of thawed blood, barely managing to grab the edge of the counter. A frying pan that had been standing near the stove crashed loudly onto the floor.
“Don’t you dare reach your hands toward me!” Larisa said sharply, looking at her husband with open disgust. “You’re a pathetic coward and a poser, Vadim. You buy the cheapest Chinese tires at the car market for your financed car because you don’t have money for decent ones. You take homemade cutlets to work in cheap plastic containers so you don’t have to spend three hundred rubles on lunch in the cafeteria. But to impress your provincial relatives, you’re ready to leave your own family eating rotten sausages!”
“You’re just jealous! You evil, greedy creature!” Lyuba screamed hysterically, completely losing control. “You’re jealous that I’m having a real celebration, that people respect me, while you sit in this filth and count kopeks!”
“What exactly should I envy, Lyuba?” Larisa twisted her lips in contempt, looking her sister-in-law up and down with cutting disdain. “Your overdue payday loans that you take out every week just to buy another outfit? The fact that you’re two months behind on rent for your miserable one-room apartment and don’t answer your landlady’s calls? You’re a broke woman with queenly demands. You want sturgeon and expensive cognac for Uncle Borya, while at home you eat plain pasta with the cheapest mayonnaise because you have no money for meat. And your brother is exactly the same. Two of a kind. You built yourselves a house of cards out of lies and sit inside it pretending to be local elites. In reality, both of you are empty, worthless cheap fakes.”
Driven to fury by her words, Vadim slammed his fist down on the kitchen table. The bag of rotten meat jumped, releasing a fresh wave of stench.
“Have you completely lost your mind?!” he yelled, spraying spit. “Shut your mouth right now before I shut it for you!”
“You can shut your own mouth when you’re gnawing stale crackers until payday!” Larisa shot back, overpowering his shouting.
At that moment, a cheerful female voice sounded from the phone lying on the table, interrupting their fight.
“Golden Pheasant restaurant, administrator Margarita speaking. Good morning. How may I help you?”
“Hello, Margarita,” Larisa said very clearly and loudly, leaning toward the speaker. “I’m calling about a banquet booked yesterday under the name Vadim Nikolaevich… for the fifteenth. A thirty-fifth birthday for thirty-five guests.”
“Yes, one moment, I’m opening the system,” the administrator chirped over soft restaurant music with a hint of popular jazz. “I see your reservation. A full prepayment was made, exactly one hundred thousand rubles in cash. Would you like to make changes to the menu, add hot appetizers, or has the number of guests changed?”
“We would like to cancel the entire event,” Larisa said, keeping her icy gaze fixed on her husband’s distorted face. “Please tell me the exact refund conditions for terminating the agreement.”
“Hey! What are you doing? Hang up right now!” Lyuba screamed, throwing herself toward the dining table to snatch the phone.
Larisa thrust out her elbow and pushed her sister-in-law away with force. Lyuba stumbled back, hitting her hip painfully against the edge of the counter. She hissed angrily, rubbing the bruised spot on her expensive trousers.
“According to our restaurant policy, if the reservation is canceled more than fourteen days in advance, the deposit is refunded in full,” Margarita replied calmly, almost like a machine. “We will need the customer to come in person with his passport and the receipt I issued yesterday evening when the booking was made.”
“Excellent. The customer will be standing at your desk in exactly one hour,” Larisa said.
She ended the call and quickly slipped the phone into the back pocket of her jeans.
“You finished creature!” Lyuba burst into a piercing scream. Her heavily made-up face twisted into an ugly mask of hatred. She spun toward her brother and dug her long, brightly manicured nails into the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Vadik, are you completely spineless? You’re just standing there watching this madwoman destroy my celebration? Do something to her! Make her undo that call! I already told all the girls at work about the Golden Pheasant! If you don’t fix this right now, I don’t want to know you! I’ll tell all the relatives what a henpecked nothing you are!”
Vadim stood in the middle of the kitchen, breathing heavily and loudly through his nose. The situation had completely slipped out of his control. His attempt to play the role of a successful, generous brother-provider had collapsed.
On one side, his sister was screaming, demanding the banquet he had promised and threatening to humiliate him publicly before the family. On the other side stood his wife, ready to wage war over the money stolen from the nightstand.
“Shut up, Lyuba!” Vadim shouted, shaking his sister’s hand off his shoulder. “Stop screeching in my ear!”
“Oh, so that’s how it is?!” Lyuba was choking with rage, spitting as she spoke. Red lipstick smeared at the corners of her mouth, making her face look almost insane. “So now you’re backing out? You swore you would pay for everything! And now you’re retreating because of some woman who feels sorry for a piece of metal? Go to hell, dear brother! Take out a payday loan, sell that junk heap you call a car, open a credit card, but you owe me that money! I already ordered a dress for thirty thousand for that restaurant!”
“Nobody owes you anything, greedy parasite,” Larisa said coldly, watching the pathetic scene unfold.
Vadim, furious at being humiliated and dragged through the mud by both sides, took a heavy step toward his wife. His fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he growled, looming over Larisa threateningly. “We’re not going to any restaurant. The money stays in the register. I told the family I’d pay for the banquet, and that’s how it will be. If you open your mouth one more time and embarrass me in front of that administrator, I’ll smear you across this floor. Do you understand me?”
Larisa did not move back even a millimeter. She looked into Vadim’s furious eyes, then shifted her gaze to the black garbage bag stuffed to the top with spoiled food, lying on the table in front of her.
The next second, she grabbed the bag by its edges and hurled it with all her strength straight into her husband’s chest.
The plastic burst with a loud clap from the force of the impact. A huge, slippery, gray-green pork knuckle slammed into Vadim’s stomach, leaving a disgusting brown streak of foul liquid and sticky slime on the light fabric of his sweatshirt.
The rest of the thin plastic tore apart at the seams, and the entire contents poured over him like a waterfall. A package of moldy smoked sausages struck him in the neck, leaving a pale slippery film on his skin. The soggy lump of dumplings landed on his stomach, exploding into scraps of gray meat and dough across the kitchen. Dirty, reeking water drenched him from head to toe, spilling behind his collar and running down his house pants straight into his rubber slippers.
The stench that rose in the small room became unbearable. It was a concentrated sweet-sour odor of decay that instantly stole the air from the lungs and brought tears to the eyes.
“My God! Psycho! Crazy beast!” Lyuba shrieked when a few dirty drops reached her precious burgundy coat.
She recoiled from her brother in panic, brushing off her sleeve in disgust, and without looking where she was going, fled from the kitchen. Her heels clattered loudly across the laminate in the hallway. A second later came the sound of the lock opening in a hurry and the front door slamming deafeningly shut.
The beloved sister had run away, leaving her adored sponsor alone with the consequences of his own generosity.
Vadim stood with his back against the kitchen counter, gasping for air. His face had turned an earthy green. He tried to shake a piece of stinking meat from his chest, but only smeared the sticky mess deeper into the fabric. His stomach gave out. He bent double with a loud, hoarse gag and barely managed to turn toward the sink.
Larisa stood absolutely still in the middle of the chaos.
Inside her, there was no more anger, no hurt, no need to prove anything. The tight spring that had been winding up all morning suddenly snapped, leaving behind only a ringing, cold emptiness and perfect clarity.
She looked at the man she had been married to for four years and could not understand how she had been so blind. In front of her was not the head of a family, not a partner, not a protector. In front of her, gagging over the sink, was a pathetic, insecure boy ready to wreck his own life for cheap showmanship and the approval of toxic relatives.
“You… are you completely sick?” Vadim rasped, keeping his face over the sink and spitting thick saliva. “I’ll destroy you for this… You’ll pay for everything.”
“You know, Vadim, you actually just gave me a huge gift,” Larisa said in a flat, emotionless voice. She did not even move as she watched his miserable attempts to wipe slime from his sweatshirt. “If that cursed refrigerator had not broken last night, I would have kept living in illusions. I would have kept believing that we were building a future together. That we were a team. But we never were.”
Vadim tried to straighten up and say something, but another wave of nausea from the smell of his own clothes forced him to bend over again.
“You can go to your restaurant, Vadim. You can eat sturgeon there, drink cognac with Uncle Borya, and make beautiful toasts about what a successful and generous brother you are,” Larisa continued, pronouncing each word as if hammering nails into the coffin of their marriage. “But you’ll go there alone. And you’ll have to go back to your sister afterward. Because you are not coming back into this apartment.”
“This… this is my apartment too!” her husband weakly snapped, breathing heavily. “We split the rent!”
“We used to,” Larisa corrected him. “The rental contract is in my name. You can call the landlady right now if you want. She’ll confirm that I paid her for this month on Wednesday. From my salary. So you don’t live here anymore. You have exactly two hours to wash that rot off yourself, pack your things, and get out.”
She stepped back, away from the puddle spreading across the linoleum, and folded her arms across her chest.
“And one more thing. Fifty thousand in that envelope was my personal savings. By tonight, you will transfer that amount to my card. I don’t care how you do it. Take the money back from Margarita at the restaurant. Get a loan in your own name. Sell that junk you call a car. But if the money is not there by eight o’clock tonight, tomorrow I’m going to the police and filing a theft report. And while I’m at it, I’ll pawn that precious gaming laptop you so carelessly left on the desk in the bedroom. Choose what matters more to you: status in front of Aunt Galya, or your electronics.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Vadim whispered, finally turning to face her.
There was no more aggression in his eyes. No superiority. Only the primitive fear of a man who had realized he had been cornered.
“I would. And I absolutely will,” Larisa said with a cold smile. “On Monday, I’m filing for divorce. The game of happy family is over, Vadik. Finita la commedia.”
She turned and walked out of the reeking kitchen with a firm, confident step, without looking back even once.
In the bedroom, Larisa closed the door tightly behind her, cutting off all sounds from the hallway. She walked to the window and threw it wide open. Frosty, biting morning air rushed into the room, instantly pushing out the last traces of the heavy smell.
Larisa closed her eyes and breathed in the cold wind deeply.
Her soul felt strangely light and free.
She no longer had to save for appliances by depriving herself of everything. She no longer had to endure the arrogance of her shameless sister-in-law. Most importantly, she no longer had to share her life with a man for whom she had always come second to cheap ambitions.
From the hallway came a dull thud, the shuffle of feet, and the sound of running water in the bathroom.
Vadim had started packing.
Larisa smiled, took a travel bag from the closet to help him pack faster, and realized that this Saturday, which had begun so horribly, had actually become the best day of her life.