After the first call, I still hoped my work number had somehow ended up with them by accident. But then someone else’s debt reached the main office phone, and I decided to find out through official records who had given the debt collectors my address and contact information.
The phone on my desk rang at half past ten while I was checking the August invoices. Oksana’s internal number appeared on the screen. She was our office administrator. Usually she transferred calls from suppliers or the warehouse accounting department, so I picked up without taking my eyes off the spreadsheet.
“Elena Viktorovna, there’s a man asking to speak with you personally,” Oksana said, a little more quietly than usual. “He says it’s about Denis Morozov. At first I thought he was one of your work-related relatives or contacts, but then he gave your home address. Should I put him through?”
My finger froze on the row with the total.
Denis was my husband’s younger brother. He had never worked for our company, had never bought anything from us, and had no reason to know my office number.
“Put him through, Oksana. But please write down the number he’s calling from,” I said. “I’ll explain what’s going on later, if I manage to understand it myself.”
A second later, an unfamiliar male voice came through the receiver. Polite. Almost excessively careful.
“Good afternoon, Elena Viktorovna. We are trying to contact Denis Andreyevich Morozov. Your number is listed as a contact number. Please tell him that he urgently needs to get in touch with us.”
“Who exactly gave you my work number?” I asked.
The man avoided answering. He named the organization, repeated Denis’s last name, and said he was not authorized to discuss the details of the debt with me.
“Then we have nothing to discuss,” I said. “I have nothing to do with his obligations. This is my work number. Remove it from your contacts and do not call here again.”
The man repeated a rehearsed phrase about passing the information on to the responsible specialist. I was already about to end the call when he added:
“Does Denis Andreyevich also not live at the address on Molodyozhnaya Street?”
That was my address.
Not my mother-in-law’s old address. Not the apartment Andrei had lived in before our marriage.
My current address, where my husband and I had been living for the past seven years.
I hung up and stared at the office phone for several seconds. Then I took out my planner and wrote down the time of the call, the number, and the name of the organization.
Oksana looked into my office about five minutes later. She was holding a stack of courier envelopes.
“Is everything all right?” she asked. “It’s just that the man sounded as though they had been looking for you for a long time.”
“No one is looking for me,” I replied, closing my planner. “It’s my husband’s brother’s debt. I don’t know yet how they got my number.”
Oksana nodded and did not ask any more questions. That was something I had always appreciated about her. By the age of forty-five, a person usually understands that curiosity about someone else’s private life is not a professional necessity.
Throughout the rest of the day, I kept thinking about the conversation.
It was not the first time Denis had gotten himself into debt. Sometimes he fell behind on a loan, sometimes he borrowed money from an acquaintance until payday, and then spent the next three months explaining why that particular payday had somehow turned out differently.
For the past several years, his main lifeline had been Valentina Petrovna.
My mother-in-law could lecture her younger son for an hour and then go and pay his debts herself.
They had gradually tried to pull me into that system too.
At first, they asked me to talk to Andrei. Then they wanted me to see whether Denis could be given a job at our company. Later they asked me to lend him money “literally just until Friday.”
At some point, I stopped answering such requests immediately and learned to say that Andrei and I did not pay other people’s debts.
I thought that was enough.
That evening, Valentina Petrovna came to our apartment herself.
She rarely warned us in advance. She would simply ring the intercom from downstairs and apparently believed that only strangers needed to arrange visits beforehand.
Andrei opened the door for her.
I was sitting at the kitchen table with my planner and phone.
“Mom, Lena wants to ask you something,” my husband said after Valentina Petrovna took off her shoes and entered the kitchen.
“If this is about Denis again, you’d better not start,” she replied. “He’s going through a difficult period right now. Everyone is already putting pressure on him.”
“It is about Denis,” I said. “Today, people looking for him because of a debt called me at work. They have my office number and our home address. Do you know where they got them?”
My mother-in-law put her handbag on an empty chair.
There was no surprise on her face. No concern either.
Only mild irritation, as though I had asked why she had moved the sugar bowl.
“Of course I know. I gave it to them.”
Andrei slowly turned his head toward his mother.
“Mom, what did you do?”
“Don’t make a scene,” Valentina Petrovna snapped. “They keep calling me from morning until night. Denis doesn’t answer his phone. I told them there was you. You’re family, after all.”
I looked at her.
“Where did you get my work number?”
“You called me from it once. I saved it. And I know your address without needing a phone.”
“And you gave all of that to complete strangers?”
My mother-in-law pursed her lips.
“‘Complete strangers’… Lena, don’t turn an ordinary conversation into a criminal case. They were looking for Denis. I told them his relatives could contact him. What is so terrible about that?”
Andrei sat down across from his mother.
“What’s terrible is that people are now calling Lena at work because of Denis’s debt. Why did you give them her number instead of mine?”
Valentina Petrovna looked at her son as though the question were childish.
“Because you don’t answer either when I ask you to talk to your brother. Lena is the organized one in your family. If someone tells her something, at least she’ll see it through.”
That was when everything became clear.
My mother-in-law had not panicked and accidentally given them my number.
She had chosen me deliberately.
Like a secretary for the family emergency service.
“So you wanted them to pressure me, and then I was supposed to pressure Denis?” I asked.
“What pressure?” Valentina Petrovna raised her voice. “An adult woman gets one phone call and suddenly you’re choosing dramatic words. Denis is in such a difficult situation right now that he needs help.”
“He needs help from the person who borrowed the money. I didn’t borrow it.”
“You are his brother’s wife.”
“And that means my office number can be handed out to anyone?”
My mother-in-law looked at Andrei, clearly expecting his usual support.
“Tell her. She’s just being stubborn out of principle, while the boy is suffering.”
Andrei rubbed the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses.
“Mom, Denis is thirty-eight years old. And you had no right to give Lena’s work number without her permission.”
Valentina Petrovna abruptly fastened the handbag she had never even opened.
“Well, this is what I’ve lived to see. My own son is lecturing me about rights. I thought you were a family, but apparently everyone here is only looking out for themselves.”
She stood up.
“Yes, I gave your information to the debt collectors,” she threw at me. “Because at least people can talk to you. Nothing terrible happened.”
I did not answer immediately.
My planner was lying on the table. It contained the time and number of the call.
Next to it was my phone, which still showed Valentina Petrovna’s outgoing call from the previous week. At the time, she had asked whether we knew where Denis was.
“All right. I heard you,” I said. “Now I know where they got my contact information.”
My mother-in-law was clearly expecting an argument. Perhaps even threats.
Instead, I asked only one question.
“Did you personally tell them that this was my work number and my home address?”
“I told them everything they asked,” she replied. “Because I’m tired of dealing with Denis’s problems alone.”
“Now I understand everything,” I said.
“Just don’t start telling people later that I wanted to harm you.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone anything. What you just said is enough for me.”
She left three minutes later.
Andrei walked her to the door and returned to the kitchen with the same expression he always had after conversations about his younger brother.
“Lena, I’ll talk to her again,” he began. “Just let’s not start a war. She genuinely doesn’t understand what she’s done.”
“Andrei, I don’t need another conversation with your mother. I need these people to stop calling me at work.”
“I’ll find Denis.”
“That won’t solve anything either. Today he’ll answer. Tomorrow he’ll disappear again. They already have my number.”
My husband sat down across from me.
“What do you want to do?”
“First, I want to find out exactly what information they have about me and where they got it. Not according to your mother. In writing.”
The next day, I arrived at the office earlier than usual.
I found the organization’s official section for written requests, noted the details of the first conversation, and prepared an inquiry.
No family drama.
No phrases about my shameless mother-in-law.
I simply stated that I was not the debtor, that I had never consented to the use of my personal or work number in connection with another person’s debt, and asked them to tell me what personal data they were processing, where they had obtained it, and on what basis they were contacting me.
I saved a separate copy of the signed request.
Then I went to Oksana.
“If anyone calls about Denis again, don’t put them through,” I said. “But please write down the number and the time. I may need it.”
She put down her stapler.
“I already saved yesterday’s incoming call. Our system keeps a call log. If you need a printout, just tell me.”
“Thank you. But don’t explain anything to anyone. It isn’t my debt.”
“The first call was enough for me to understand that,” Oksana replied. “If someone is trying to find an employee’s husband’s brother through the accounting department, that is already a strange route.”
I returned to my office and almost convinced myself that the matter would end there.
It didn’t.
Two days later, they called again.
This time I was away from my desk, and Oksana answered.
Then another call came through to the general office number.
When I returned from lunch, a small yellow sticky note was lying on my keyboard.
The time. The telephone number. The employee’s name.
I picked it up and copied the details into my planner.
“They asked when you would be available,” Oksana said. “I told them that employees’ personal matters were not handled through me. Then the man asked me to tell you that Denis urgently needed to call them back.”
“He has never even worked here.”
“That’s what I told him.”
That same day, the director stopped by my office before a meeting.
“Elena Viktorovna, Oksana told me you’ve been receiving several calls about a personal matter. Is it anything serious?”
That sentence frightened me more than any argument with my mother-in-law.
In seventeen years at the company, the figures in a draft spreadsheet might have failed to balance, a supplier might have been late, or the online banking system might have frozen.
But no one had ever approached my manager because of my personal debts.
Because I didn’t have any.
“It isn’t my debt,” I said. “And it isn’t Andrei’s either. They are looking for his younger brother. Someone gave the debt collectors my work number as a contact without my consent. I’ve already submitted a formal inquiry and I’m documenting every call.”
The director looked at the sticky note beside my keyboard.
“Then please deal with it. The office line isn’t a family information service.”
“I will. I’ll try to put an end to it.”
He left.
There was no reprimand. Not even really a warning.
But it was enough for me.
That evening, Andrei again suggested calling his mother.
“She needs to hear that people at work are already asking you about this because of her.”
“She heard that on the first evening.”
“Then I’ll say it more firmly.”
“And what will change? Will she call those people and ask them to give my information back? And what if they tell us they never received anything from her?”
Andrei was silent for a moment.
“You think they might say that?”
“I don’t want to think. I want an answer.”
A few days later, I received confirmation that my inquiry had been accepted.
Then there was another call.
This time it went not to my internal line but to the main office number.
I recorded that one too.
The entire situation had taken on an unpleasant accounting-like precision.
Date.
Time.
Number.
Who answered.
What they asked.
Previously, Valentina Petrovna could turn any family dispute into fog.
She never said she had asked for money. She had merely been “looking for a solution.”
She had not interfered. She had been “trying to help.”
She had not shifted responsibility onto others. She simply “couldn’t abandon her son.”
Those phrases did not work against a call log.
On the ninth working day after I submitted my inquiry, I received a reply.
I saw the email in my inbox first thing in the morning after turning on my computer.
I did not open it immediately.
First, I printed the inquiry I had sent, took out my notes about the calls, and only then opened the attachment.
The organization listed the contact details they had stored in their information system.
My mobile number.
My work number.
My address.
I had never provided any of them to that company.
Then came the answer to my question about the source.
The contact information had been obtained during a telephone conversation with Valentina Petrovna Morozova, who had identified herself as the debtor’s mother.
At the bottom was a signature:
Marina Belova, Client Requests Department Specialist.
I read that sentence twice.
Not because I had learned something new.
Until that moment, all I had were Valentina Petrovna’s words spoken in our kitchen.
Now I had the organization’s written response.
I clicked “Print.”
The printer stood at the far end of the office.
The page came out warm and slightly curled.
I placed it beside Oksana’s yellow sticky notes and my original inquiry.
That evening, I showed the documents to Andrei.
He read them for a long time.
First my request.
Then the reply.
Then the call log Oksana had printed from the office system.
“It actually says here that Mom gave them the information?” he asked, even though the sentence was right in front of him.
“Yes. They received my work number and address after speaking with her.”
Andrei took off his glasses and wiped the lenses on the edge of his T-shirt.
“I kept hoping she had only given them your mobile number. You know, without thinking.”
“She thought about it. She told us herself why she did it.”
“So they could reach Denis through you.”
“That is exactly what she wanted,” I said.
My husband handed the papers back to me.
“What are you going to do now?” Andrei asked.
“Now I’m filing a complaint. I’ll attach my original inquiry, their reply, and the call records.”
He frowned.
“You’re going to file a complaint specifically against Mom?”
“I am not inventing an accusation against your mother. I’m describing what happened to my personal information. Who used it, where they obtained it, and what happened after I told them to stop calling me. The source is already identified in their own written response.”
Andrei walked to the window but did not look outside. He picked up the charger he had been searching for that morning and placed it on the table.
“She’ll say you humiliated her.”
“That is probably exactly what she’ll say,” I replied.
“And Denis will say everyone fell out because of him.”
“Denis is perfectly capable of saying exactly that too.”
“Don’t you care?”
I looked at my husband.
“Of course I care. That’s exactly why I spent nine days gathering documents instead of starting a screaming match with your mother on the first evening. But if we reduce everything once again to her hurt feelings and Denis’s difficult life, tomorrow someone may decide they can give away my passport number because ‘Lena is responsible and will sort everything out.’”
Andrei lowered himself into a chair.
“I understand what you mean,” he said quietly.
This time, he did not suggest calling anyone.
I prepared the complaint over the weekend.
I checked every sentence the same way I would check a professional document.
I did not need to write that my mother-in-law was a bad mother or that Denis was irresponsible.
None of that had anything to do with the issue.
I simply described the sequence of events.
I had received calls at my office number regarding another person’s debt.
I had informed the caller that I was not the debtor and had not consented to such contact.
The calls continued.
In response to my inquiry, the organization confirmed what personal information it was using and identified the source from which it had obtained it.
I attached copies of everything.
On Monday, I went to the local office of Roskomnadzor.
There were two people sitting in the reception area ahead of me.
One man was holding a transparent folder filled with documents. A woman was searching for something on her phone and sighing from time to time.
When my turn came, the employee reviewed my statement and the attachments.
“You are including the organization’s reply as well?” she asked.
“Yes. Here it is. The source of the contact information is listed on the second page.”
She turned the page.
“And this printout of the calls is from your employer?”
“It’s from our office system’s incoming call log. These are the dates and numbers that were recorded.”
The employee checked the number of attachments and returned my second copy with a stamp confirming receipt.
The whole process took less time than our family discussions about Denis usually did.
I left the building, put my copy of the complaint into my folder, and went to work.
Valentina Petrovna called that evening.
I don’t know whether Andrei had told her, or whether Denis had resurfaced and passed along his own version of events.
Her voice was hard.
“Did you really file a complaint against me?”
“I submitted a complaint about the use of my personal information and the calls to my workplace,” I answered. “I attached the organization’s response, which states who provided my contact information.”
“So it was against me. Don’t play games with words.”
“I’m not playing with anything. The complaint states exactly what happened.”
“I told them you were a relative, not a guarantor! I only wanted Denis to get in touch with them.”
“Then you should have been trying to get Denis to respond.”
“I’m his mother! I can’t just sit there and watch while they put pressure on him.”
“And I can’t take that pressure for him while I’m at work.”
My mother-in-law raised her voice.
“Is a piece of paper more important to you than family?”
I looked at the copy of my complaint lying on the edge of my desk.
“No, Valentina Petrovna. What matters to me is that people in our family do not hand out someone else’s phone numbers and address simply because it is convenient for them.”
“You could have just asked me not to do it again.”
“I did ask you that the very first evening. You told me nothing terrible had happened.”
For several seconds, all I could hear was her breathing.
“So what is going to happen to me now?”
“I don’t decide what happens to anyone. I reported what was done with my personal information. The rest will be reviewed by the people responsible for handling such matters.”
“So this is how you treat me.”
“No. This is how I treat my phone number, my address, and my job.”
She ended the call first.
Several weeks later, I received a response regarding my complaint.
I read it once, saved it with the rest of the documents, and did not send it around to the entire family.
Something else mattered more to me.
The calls stopped.
First Monday passed.
Then Tuesday.
Then the entire working week.
On Friday, Oksana brought me a contract to sign and paused by the door.
“By the way, no one has called about your Denis anymore,” she said. “I specifically checked the call log for the whole week.”
“Good. That was exactly what I wanted.”
She placed the contract on my desk.
“I was already getting used to writing suspicious numbers on sticky notes.”
“Save them for the suppliers. They’re more useful there.”
Oksana laughed and left.
I put the contract into its folder and opened the next invoice.
Denis’s debt did not magically disappear.
Valentina Petrovna did not become a different person because of one conversation.
Andrei was still worried about his mother and his brother.
But my work phone was once again simply a work phone.
And that result was enough for me.