Today, from the very morning, the weather was magnificent. The bright sun, as if missing after two rainy days, generously showered the city with its rays. Perhaps that was exactly why Alisa decided to drop by her husband’s workplace.
Alisa was a cheerful and impulsive young woman. She adored surprises and often arranged them for her loved ones. Her husband, Dmitry, on the contrary, was characterized by reserve and predictability. Perhaps it was precisely this contrast that had drawn them to each other.
The girl glanced at the clock – it was already 18:10. “Did he leave?” she thought, and just in case, she called her friend who worked in the same office as her husband. The friend replied that she didn’t know where Dmitry was but invited Alisa to come over for a coffee.
The sound of her high heels echoed on the parquet floor as Alisa walked through the office corridors. She looked around – almost all the employees had already scattered. The girl thought she shouldn’t have come, but decided: “Since I’m here, I might as well visit my friend.”
Alisa’s gaze, like a radar, swept over the desks as she studied the charts on the walls. She noticed a full-figured woman hurrying toward the exit, then a man who was folding papers into his briefcase while muttering something under his breath.
And then Alisa spotted a bright blue USB flash drive lying on the floor.
“Hmm,” she snorted, bending down to pick it up.
She had already planned to put the find on the nearest desk but changed her mind – who knew if the flash drive would still remain there? So she decided that on her way back she would hand it over to the secretary, if she was, of course, still at her post.
“Hi there!” Alisa cheerfully greeted as she dashed into her friend Olya’s office.
“He’s not here,” her friend immediately announced, rising from her chair.
“What a bummer,” the girl replied with a note of sadness in her voice and flopped onto the small sofa.
For about five minutes, Alisa chatted with her friend out of courtesy, but then she dashed out of the office and ran home.
“Are you home?” Alisa shouted when she opened the front door, but all she received in return was the usual silence.
The girl carefully placed her heels aside, rushed into her room, and began to change. Glancing at the clock, she noted that it was already eight o’clock, and her husband was still not there.
“I wonder what sort of routes he takes,” Alisa mused aloud.
She opened her purse intending to grab her phone, but instead she came upon that very flash drive that she had found at the office.
“Damn,” she said with annoyance, “I forgot to give it to the secretary.”
“Do not read,” Alisa read the awkward inscription, painstakingly scratched by someone on the flash drive.
“And why not?” she asked herself. “But it’s not fair! How can I now not read what’s on the flash drive?”
The girl set the find aside, yet the flash drive, as if by magnetism, kept pulling her attention.
“You’re all to blame,” she addressed the unknown carver of the inscription. “But only just a peek.”
After turning on her laptop, Alisa inserted the flash drive and ran it through the antivirus – everything was clean. She opened the new disk and found only one single folder labeled “do not read.”
“They’re making fun of me!” she snorted and, naturally, clicked on the icon to open the folder. “Well, well, what do we have here?”
Hundreds of photographs greeted her. Zooming in on one picture, the girl gasped.
“Damn it,” she murmured quietly as she realized she was looking at her husband’s face. “Damn it,” she repeated, scrolling through the photos.
There he was, standing among some men, chatting with someone, holding a glass of champagne. Alisa immediately guessed that this was from a banquet at his office. And then there was the woman with red hair and a neatly cut bob.
“Maybe someone was taking pictures during a presentation,” Alisa thought.
The snapshots seemed harmless – she herself had thousands of similar ones – but one photo immediately piqued her interest: her husband Dmitry was seen embracing the redhead by the waist.
“Bastard,” Alisa muttered under her breath. “So that’s how you are,” she said resentfully and opened the next picture.
“Oh,” the girl sighed heavily. She leaned closer to the screen to get a better look at the red-haired woman that her husband was kissing.
“Scoundrel,” the word slipped out involuntarily. “Womanizer!”
But really, what was there to it? Well, a kiss – things happen. She once even smooched a colleague after having a bit too much at a corporate party.
While scrolling through the pictures, Alisa noticed that the images were becoming more explicit. Soon she saw another room with dimmed light, and now his hand was resting on a woman’s chest. Alisa jumped back from the laptop, looking in the room in horror, half-expecting her husband to be there watching her scroll through the images, but Dmitry was nowhere to be seen – as usual, he was running late.
“No,” she whispered quietly, thinking about that red-haired woman. “Mistress,” she assumed.
It took her several minutes to compose herself, but eventually Alisa returned to the laptop to see what other photos were in store. What she saw next was even worse. There he was, taking off her dress, then more, and more, and even more…
“How can this be?” she whispered in despair. “How can this be?”
She could not believe her eyes. Just six months ago, they had celebrated their wedding at the registry office, and suddenly he had a mistress. Alisa felt sick. For about fifteen minutes, she sat in front of the monitor, not knowing what to do next. She wanted to call her husband to know if it was indeed true.
“Of course he won’t answer,” she told herself.
The girl got up and went to the kitchen. It was already 8:00 p.m., and her husband was about to arrive, yet she still hadn’t prepared dinner. In her heart, where daisies had once bloomed and lavender had filled the air with fragrance, darkness began to settle. That redheaded mistress had trampled, torn apart, and defiled everything. And her husband, her Dima, the man she had loved, adored, and admired – the man she couldn’t live without.
After drinking a glass of water, the girl returned to the bedroom. The screen betrayed her by shining and exposing her husband’s infidelity. At that very moment, the front door slammed. Alisa snapped out of her thoughts, sharply closed her laptop, and pulled out the flash drive. In that instant, she felt the urge to pounce on her husband, grab his hair, and hit him until one of them fell to the floor. A heavy, pained roar escaped from her throat – a roar that was quiet, hissing, and controlled.
“No,” Alisa stated firmly. “Not now,” she repeated, tucking the flash drive away in a box of hygiene products, and with a strained smile went off to greet her husband.
Alisa stood by the window, gazing thoughtfully at the gray autumn sky. The wind whipped yellowed leaves along the street, and they swirled in a strange dance as if trying to cling to their last moments of life. The girl sighed deeply, gathering her thoughts. A question tormented her – one she dared not ask her husband.
Dmitry sat in an armchair, engrossed in reading a book. He was lost in a world of fantasy, oblivious to everything around him. Alisa stole a glance at him and then turned away from the window again.
“No, not now,” she thought, “What if I’m mistaken? What if it isn’t him in the photographs?”
Desperately, she wanted to go back to the laptop and view the images once more, but Dmitry’s presence made that impossible. Alisa sighed, deciding to postpone the conversation.
She changed into her home clothes and approached her husband.
“Dim, I’m going to the kitchen,” she said, lightly kissing him on the cheek.
Dmitry looked up from his book. His eyes, as always, sparkled with pleasure.
“Alright, dear,” he answered with a smile.
“Strange,” a fleeting thought whispered through her mind, “He doesn’t feel any remorse at all. No, no – I need to look again later. Maybe it isn’t him? Maybe someone who looks very similar?”
That self-justification calmed Alisa somewhat. She headed to the kitchen where, half an hour later, dinner was ready. At the table they chatted casually about nothing in particular, and afterwards, Alisa went to take a shower.
The next day, the girl couldn’t concentrate at work. Her thoughts revolved around the mysterious flash drive with the inscription “do not read.” Had it not been for that message, she would never have dared to open it. But now she wanted to find out who was in the photographs – Dmitry or someone else.
Having asked for an early leave from work, Alisa rushed home. Without even changing, she turned on her laptop, took out the flash drive from its hiding place, and began reviewing the photographs, starting with the very last one.
“Bastard!” she couldn’t help but exclaim when she saw her husband caressing another woman’s body.
Her eyes darkened, and she felt sick. It seemed as if even time had stopped. For about ten minutes, she sat there, paralyzed by indecision.
“Still, it’s you, Dima,” she said in a trembling voice. “But why?” she asked herself, fully aware that she wouldn’t get an answer.
Alisa shrank, her legs giving way, and she collapsed on the floor. In pain, the girl began to cry softly, hugging her knees. She had never cried so much as she did now – crying out of hurt, love, and happiness – but not for the betrayal of the person closest to her! Never.
A cry burst from her throat – a cry of pain, of suffering. A cry that made her herself feel afraid. Alisa pressed her hand to her mouth and, with horror, looked towards the living room. Nobody was there, which allowed her to lose herself again, howling like a wounded beast.
After calming down a bit, Alisa resolutely declared: “I’m getting a divorce!”
She stood up and banged her fist on the table.
“I’m getting a divorce!” she roared, quickly beginning to change.
However, after a few minutes, she stopped.
“Alright, I’ll get a divorce. But he won’t feel the pain that I have felt. The pain of betrayal.”
A fleeting thought crossed her mind to try to claim something from him, but Alisa remembered that her husband had nothing but an old Lada and his bank account was empty.
“Not now,” she murmured more calmly to herself. “Not now,” she repeated, and, approaching a small photograph of her and Dmitry kissing, she flipped it over.
The entire next day, Alisa schemed her revenge. Yes, revenge – because now she was sure that in those photographs, her Dmitry was the very man who had sworn his love and fidelity to her.
The following day was a day off. Alisa had in advance purchased an unregistered SIM card, inserted it into her phone. With an innocent look, she went into the living room where her husband was sprawled on the sofa reading his book.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” she told him. In response, he just nodded.
Closing the bathroom door behind her, Alisa chose a shower gel, squeezed it into the bathtub, and turned on the water. For a minute she sat there wondering if she should really go through with it. The pain of betrayal still roiled in her soul, but now there was a desire for revenge that overshadowed all her other feelings.
“Take this,” she whispered, and from the new SIM card she sent her husband a photograph of him kissing his redheaded mistress.
She thought he would react immediately, but only silence followed. Alisa sank into the water. Breathing became easier; she closed her eyes and for a while pondered why this had happened. After all, she was beautiful and young. In another ten years, maybe she could have accepted it, but now… just six months ago, they had stood together at the registry office, rejoicing at the thought of having their own apartment.
Her phone chimed. Alisa quickly grabbed it and read the message:
“Who are you?” it said, coming from her husband.
“You could say I’m your guardian angel,” Alisa replied caustically. “I have more pictures – a lot of them,” she added in another message.
A minute later, another reply came: “What is it?”
“You know very well,” answered Alisa.
When the idea of acting as a blackmailer struck her, she was even excited. There was something humiliating about it – it was equivalent to beating a helpless person, yet at the same time, Alisa felt joy and relief deep inside.
“Let him suffer,” she whispered and set her phone aside. But then it started buzzing again.
“What do you want?”
“Guess on the first try,” she replied.
Alisa had already decided that she would definitely divorce him. She no longer wanted to live with Dmitry, although she still loved him, but it was no longer that pure love – it had become dirty, crumpled, and foul.
“Money?” eventually came Dmitry’s message.
“Clever,” she shot back.
Silence followed again.
“What a blockhead,” the girl thought, already considering grabbing a sponge to wash herself, but her phone buzzed again.
“Even if I transfer you money, you’ll still have the pictures.”
“Yes, they will remain,” Alisa did not deny it. “But this is a one-time deal; I don’t intend to blackmail you every week.”
“Have you sent them to someone else?” Dmitry thought he was talking to a man.
“You’re the one at fault; you’re responsible for the consequences,” Alisa wrote.
Silence fell once more. The girl could only imagine what was running through her husband’s mind.
“Feel the pain,” she thought, running her hand across her body. “Suffer like I do.”
The phone buzzed again.
“What’s the guarantee that no one will see the pictures?”
“None,” Alisa answered honestly. “I won’t meet with you, but I can propose the following: you pay me for my work, and I’ll forget about your existence. It’s a fair deal.”
Her finger hit “send.”
Almost immediately, a reply came: “What do you want?”
“Money,” Alisa answered with a smile.
“How much?” came the brief question.
For a second, Alisa hesitated. Should she say 100,000? Yes, that might work. She had already typed in that figure, but then she added two zeros, giggling to herself. Alisa sent the message.
“No,” the reply came immediately.
“This is a one-time deal. I want to get as much as possible. Either I send you one photograph at a time, and you’ll pay 50,000 for each, but in any case, I will take what is due from you. So choose.”
Inside, Alisa seethed with anger – anger at her husband’s betrayal, anger at that red-haired woman who dared to take him away from her. Her fingers tapped furiously on the screen, sending message after message.
“Freak,” she whispered quietly as she sank into the water. “Bastard,” a brief thought flashed by.
The phone buzzed again. Alisa resurfaced, dried her hands, and picked up the phone to check the new message.
“Five,” was the only word.
“Wow, I didn’t expect such a twist,” she remarked. “Five lemons? Where did he get them from?” she wondered. “He has nothing in his account. Or is that woman going to give him money?”
Her lips stretched into a bitter smile. She immediately typed her reply:
“Ten.”
Her finger struck the “send” button.
At that moment, Alisa couldn’t hold onto the phone any longer. It slipped from her hands, tumbling as if performing a somersault, and landed in the water with a splash.
“Damn!” the girl simply swore to herself and, retrieving the phone, looked at its blinking screen. It flashed a couple of times before going dark.
“Damn it!” she muttered in frustration and quickly started drying it off. She tried to revive it, but the phone remained unresponsive.
Alisa burst out of the bath, drying herself hastily with a soft towel. Passing by her husband, she noticed his pallid face. The apartment was dim – thick curtains blocked out the bright autumn daylight.
“Are you feeling alright?” she asked in a gentle tone. Her hair, still wet from the shower, left dark stains on her shoulders.
“Fine,” came his short, clipped reply.
For a moment, Alisa felt pity for her husband. She opened the cupboard and retrieved some activated charcoal.
“Maybe you ate something bad. Here, drink these,” she offered him tablets.
“No,” he replied in a near-mechanical tone.
“Feel the pain, suffer,” Alisa thought as she walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. She swallowed those same black tablets, washed them down with water, and after brushing the towel off her shoulders, she passed by her husband. He didn’t even look at her.
Just ten minutes later, Alisa stepped out of the room holding a small handbag. It contained a light summer dress that accentuated her slim figure.
“I’m going to see Olga. If your stomach starts hurting, be sure to take your tablets. They’re right here,” she announced, deliberately placing a box on a shelf.
The man said nothing. His ashen face slowly turned toward her; his eyes were glassy, cold, lifeless. For a moment, Alisa again felt the urge to embrace him and whisper, “Forget it all,” but recalling his infidelity and his mistress, she abruptly turned away and went to dress.
Outside, Alisa took an old phone—the one she had sunk in the bath—and inserted the spare SIM card into it. With a look of bitterness, she checked for new messages.
“Fish got away from the hook,” she thought, but recalling her husband’s wan face, she smiled bitterly.
While walking through the park, Alisa mulled things over. She had indeed thought of visiting her friend Ola just to chat a bit. After all, it was her day off, and perhaps she might learn something about that red-haired lady.
When Alisa arrived at her friend’s place, the first half hour was filled with the usual small talk – the simplest of gossip. But then Alisa softly steered the conversation toward the topic that interested her:
“Listen, does Dmitry work with a woman with red hair and a neat bob?”
Olya, who was slicing a pie at the time, didn’t even bother to turn toward her friend.
“Well, how should I put it…” Olya paused for a second, holding a knife. “She doesn’t work here at all. If you mean the one…”
“Do you have a lot of redheads working here?” Alisa inquired.
“There’s Tamara Grigoryevna in accounting – she’s about 60.”
“No, I mean a young one,” Alisa clarified.
“I thought the same – why would you need an old lady. That’s Isolda. But she doesn’t work here either. And what do you need her for?” her friend asked curiously.
“My husband mentioned her once.”
“Ahhh…” Olya replied meaningfully. “Her name is Isolda, and by the way…” Olya looked directly into Alisa’s eyes, raised her finger in an indicative manner, “she’s the wife of my boss, Igor Stepanovich. That’s how it is!”
“Unbelievable,” Alisa murmured quietly and decided to drop the subject immediately.
An hour later, the girl left her friend’s place, wandered through some stores, sat in a café, visited her mother’s house for tea, and only returned home later in the evening.
“Are you home? You haven’t died yet?” Upon opening the door, Alisa’s first cry was directed at her husband, but once again she was met by silence. “Hey, are you alive?”
The girl entered the living room, but there was no one there – not in the kitchen, not in the bedroom either.
“He must have slipped out,” she thought, but on opening the wardrobe with her belongings, she confirmed everything was in place. “Not yet,” she answered herself bitterly.
Night fell over the city like a soft blanket just as Dmitry finally appeared in their small apartment. Alisa, who had been sitting on the sofa with a book, looked up at her husband. His rumpled appearance stirred irritation within her, though she tried to mask it with feigned concern.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, setting her book aside.
Dmitry mumbled something indecipherable that could be taken for an apology and, without even undressing, went into the bedroom. Alisa pressed her lips together as she watched him leave.
“There’s still something on the stove if you’re hungry,” she tossed over her shoulder, but Dmitry seemed not to have heard.
Alisa sighed and went to the kitchen. Mechanically, she washed the dishes, gazing out the window at the dark courtyard. The faint glow of street lamps barely illuminated the empty swings of the children’s playground.
Returning to the bedroom, Alisa lay next to her husband, striving not to touch him. She stared at the ceiling, reminiscing about how they had met. It felt like a different life – a bright summer day, a chance meeting in the park, then their first kiss under a blooming linden tree. Back then, Dmitry had seemed like the best man in the world. But now… now he stirred only disgust within her.
The morning came out cloudy. Another workday began. Dmitry left early without saying goodbye. Alisa was busy with household chores when a message arrived: “I’m ready,” it read.
Alisa froze, not believing her eyes. Was he really going to pay those ten million? Where had he gotten that kind of money? A thought of the red-haired woman flickered through her mind.
“Bastard,” she hissed through gritted teeth, recalling how she had scrimped on everything to pay the bills. “You freak!”
With trembling hands, she typed her electronic wallet number and sent it to Dmitry. Then she opened the banking app and began to wait. When the first transfer of one million rubles arrived, Alisa couldn’t help but exclaim in amazement.
“Oh my!” she blurted out. “Is he really paying?”
It all seemed surreal. The man, who used to walk around in holey socks, was suddenly throwing millions around. And for what? For some photographs?
Within an hour, Alisa’s account had reached ten million rubles. She sat in the kitchen, looking out at the gray sky, trying to make sense of it all.
“Insane,” she muttered.
A new message from Dmitry appeared: “Everything is in. Are we agreed?”
Alisa sighed deeply and sent him a part of the photographs – those where he was seen kissing Isolda and trying to lift her skirt.
“That’ll be enough for you,” she murmured as she blocked his number.
Now, she had to decide what to do with the money. Alisa feared that Dmitry might contest the transfer. She quickly gathered herself and went to the bank. By evening, all the money had been transferred to a new deposit account.
“Phew,” Alisa exhaled as she left the bank. She felt both relieved and strangely empty. The deal was done, but what now?
Alisa wandered through the busy streets of the city, not wanting to return home. The autumn wind tousled her hair, and the noise of passing cars drowned out her troubled thoughts. She decided to visit her friend Olya at work.
In the office, the familiar hustle and bustle reigned—employees dashing about, telephones ringing, and fragments of conversations echoing everywhere. Passing by Igor Stepanovich’s reception desk, Alisa stopped and began rummaging through her handbag. At that moment, a door opened, and an elderly woman emerged from an office.
Alisa deliberately dropped a pen and, bending down to retrieve it, cautiously placed the flash drive on the floor. As she rose, she discreetly nudged it with her foot, and with a faint rustle the flash drive flew into the boss’s office.
“Now I won’t need it anymore,” Alisa thought. She hoped that later in the evening the cleaning lady would find it and place it on Igor Stepanovich’s desk. This was the second part of her revenge plan.
That evening, Alisa roamed through her once-cozy apartment’s spacious living room. The walls, adorned with family photographs and paintings that they had chosen together, now felt cold and foreign. She stopped in the middle of the room, taking in the familiar surroundings. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn, letting in only thin beams of light in which dust particles swirled.
Alisa had always been a strong woman, able to hold herself together, but now it felt as if she might break apart any moment. Yet there were no tears – she had already cried them all out over the past few days. Inside, there remained nothing but emptiness and bitterness.
Yes, she had taken her revenge on her husband. Perhaps too harshly. Deep down, she understood that infidelity wasn’t solely a sin of men. Many couples somehow manage to exist, turning a blind eye to affairs. But she couldn’t. She simply couldn’t.
Alisa exhaled heavily as she looked at the screen of her phone, which still displayed that ill-fated image: her husband kissing Isolda. She pressed the lock button and set the phone aside.
“So, who took your picture then?” Alisa muttered under her breath, furrowing her brows.
Yet, in truth, another question tormented her: who had slipped her that flash drive? It had appeared as if by magic at the very moment when Alisa was on her way to visit her friend.
The woman walked to the window and slowly pulled back the curtain. Outside, a light autumn drizzle fell, and passersby hurried along under umbrellas. Life went on, despite everything.
Alisa was stubborn and principled; she could not stand betrayal. But now, left alone in the empty apartment, she wondered for the first time: had she been too hasty in deciding to kick her husband out? Perhaps she should have tried to talk, to work things out?
But it was too late. Shaking her head and dismissing any doubts, Alisa made her choice and wasn’t about to back down. Now she had to learn to live anew, without the person she had once considered her closest in the world.