Larisa was sitting in the kitchen as usual—in a tank top, with stretched-out knees on her pants, staring at her phone. She wasn’t scrolling or zoning out, just looking at it like it was an icon. There was a zero blinking, then a three, then a bunch more zeros… three million. Real money. In her account. Every bill earned with sweat, nerves, and countless “No, thanks, I brought my own.”
She swiped her finger across the screen. No magic. This wasn’t a dream. The money was real. And it was hers.
From the hallway came a muffled call:
“Lara, where are you?” The voice sounded like someone who lost his slippers, not his wife.
“In the kitchen, where else?” she answered, quickly closing the app and stuffing the phone into her robe pocket—as if hiding a lover.
Andrey appeared in the doorway like a hero of office warfare. His tie looked like a noose, his shirt like it had been robbed in, and his hair was a creative “Gone with the Wind” style.
He collapsed onto a stool. Poor guy, tired. He’d been clicking his mouse all day.
“How are things?” he asked without looking, with the voice of a stoker who’s really a poet at heart.
“Fine. And you?” she said while pouring tea, already knowing she wouldn’t like this conversation. He’d gotten too soft lately.
“Same as always.” He rubbed his forehead. “Hey, remember when we talked about savings?”
There it was—the prelude. Slow but sure. Larisa tensed like a cat by a bowl of catnip.
“What savings exactly?” she squinted.
“Well, you remember—we agreed to save separately.”
“I remember. So?”
“Just… curious how much you’ve saved so far,” Andrey tried to look casual. It came out more like, “I’m asking now, but I’m gonna rob you later.”
Larisa sized him up like a butcher judging a batch of spoiled minced meat.
“And how much do you have?” she asked calmly, but her voice was sharp enough to crack a thermometer from stress.
He looked away like a schoolboy caught cheating.
“Not much yet… expenses, you know…”
She knew. New iPhone, sneakers, hanging out with friends, “we just had coffee” that cost four thousand rubles. Her husband was generous—but not with himself.
“And you think that gives you the right to poke into my money?”
“Lara, but we’re family!” he suddenly exploded like a kettle without a lid. “What the hell do you mean ‘your’ money?!”
“The same money I denied myself rolls and shoes for three years in a row to save up. Ring a bell?”
“Oh, come on!” he waved his hand. “We didn’t even know how we’d live back then.”
“And now you decide all our agreements are trash?”
“What agreements?” he grumbled. “Normal people have a shared budget!”
“Of course! Especially when the wife has three million and the husband dreams of a car.”
He went silent. His fingers drummed the table like an insomniac woodpecker. You could see he was searching for a good argument, preferably not too stupid.
“Let’s talk later, yeah? I’m really tired,” he got up from the stool and started to leave but stopped at the door. “So… how much do you have?”
“Andrey, leave me alone.”
“I’m not asking you to transfer it! Just curious.”
“Well, then die with that curiosity.”
He froze.
“So now we have secrets?”
“Not secrets. Respect for personal contributions.”
“Got it…” he muttered and left like a hero from a bad soap opera.
Silence. Then—bam!—the TV in the living room blared across the apartment. The sign: “I’m offended, please notice.”
“Lara!” he suddenly shouted. “Mom’s calling! She wants to talk to you!”
She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. Here it came, the heavy artillery. Galina Petrovna, the finance minister of their family life.
“Larisa, dear!” her mother-in-law cooed, sweet as borscht with sugar. “How are you and Andryusha? Everything okay?”
“Fine enough.”
“And he says you two have misunderstandings. You know, I always thought…”
“That the budget should be joint,” Larisa cut in. “Yeah, yeah, I know, you say that every time like a weather forecast.”
“Well, how else? Dad and I have always done everything together!”
“We do things differently.”
“Larisa, honey, that’s not how a family should be…”
“Galina Petrovna, I’ll decide what’s ‘family-like.’ Andrey and I have an agreement.”
“You’re a smart girl…” the voice became sickly sweet. “But he’s upset. Very. His heart hurts.”
“Maybe he’s just thinking about the car, not his heart.”
Pause. Calibration of tone on the other end.
“Laročka… but it’s harder for men! It’s harder for them to save. Their psychology is impulsive.”
“Well, then he should control his impulses. We don’t have a casino at home.”
“Larisa, don’t be so harsh…”
“And you don’t be manipulative.”
The mother-in-law gasped. The phone hissed slightly.
“Just think about it. Family means compromises.”
“A compromise is when both give in. Not when one saves and the other just ‘takes an interest.’”
She hung up. Went to the living room. Andrey was on the couch, holding the remote like a weapon. News, sports, cooking show, sports again…
“So? Talked to her?” he asked without looking away from the screen.
“She’s got your back.”
“And you?”
“I’m for agreements. And for everyone having their own dreams.”
“The car isn’t my dream. It’s ours.”
“I don’t drive.”
“And I don’t save,” he countered bitterly.
Silence. The TV switched off. Andrey got up.
“So you won’t help?”
“Would you help me if you had three million and I asked for cosmetics?”
He didn’t answer. Just left. The door slammed.
Larisa was alone. No sound in the apartment. Only in her head:
“I wonder, if I told him I bought a car for myself, would he be offended or happy?”
Then she thought… maybe she really should buy one. For herself. And learn to drive. Let him have his impulses, and she’ll have a driver’s license.
She clicked on the kettle, sat at the table, staring into nowhere. Her head buzzed—as if stuffed with cotton and filled with a choir of her own suspicions.
Andrey clearly decided to go on the offensive. And his mom signed up as a general. A union to protect offended husbands.
The phone vibrated. A message:
“I’m staying at Mom’s tonight. Think about what I said.”
Larisa snorted and shook her head.
“Yeah, think about it… I wonder if he came up with this himself or if Mom helped him write tonight’s drama?”
Checked the balance. Three million. There they were, lying in the account, sparkling like a three-eyed hedgehog under a streetlamp. And now this wealth was being swooped on like seagulls on a sandwich.
In the morning she was woken by an insistent call. On the screen—Galina Petrovna. “Bullfight” round one.
She hung up. A minute later—the second round.
“Larisa, dear!—Galina Petrovna babbled, like cotton candy not a mother-in-law.—How did you sleep?”
“Fine. And you?” Larisa pushed a strand of hair back and braced for a verbal fight.
“Bad, dear. Andryusha came home all wound up, poor thing. Tossed and turned all night.”
“Too bad,” Larisa said dryly, reaching for her cup.
“We talked… He’s worried! Very!”
“About what all of a sudden?”
“What about?! You keep secrets from him! That’s not normal!”
“Galina Petrovna, enough. I already explained to you yesterday—no secrets. We have an agreement. A perfectly adult one, by the way.”
“What agreement?!—Her voice turned steel, like a battleship rolling in.—A family is one whole! Not two different wallets!”
“We decided to save separately. That worked for both of us.” Larisa deliberately left out “before.”
“Nonsense!” the mother-in-law exploded. “In normal families everything is shared!”
“Then why didn’t Andrey suggest that right after the wedding?” She sipped her coffee, looking out the window.
“He… well… thought you’d understand. It’s obvious!”
“Yeah, like a fairy tale: sit and guess what the prince needs.”
“Larisa, don’t be sarcastic. Let’s meet. The three of us, talk heart to heart. Like people!”
“No way.”
“Why not? We’re family!”
“Exactly,” and she hung up.
Shower, coffee on the run, work chats. Her head was a beehive—buzzing, ringing, itching. Andrey messaged every hour: first apologizing, then begging, then blaming. Classic: first “sorry,” then “it’s your fault.”
By evening Larisa just turned off her phone. Enough. If he wants to talk—let him write letters by carrier pigeons.
She came home and froze. In the kitchen, like a scene from a cheap play, a bouquet of roses in a vase. Nearby, shining like a lightbulb in the hallway, was Andrey. All hospitable.
“Hi, darling!” he stood, stepped to her, reaching out his arms.
“Uh-huh. Nice flowers. How much did they cost?” She didn’t smile, not even a twitch of an eyebrow.
“Around fifteen hundred.”
“Fifteen hundred? For plants that will wilt in two days?” Larisa took off her jacket.
“Lara, stop counting every penny! You need to know how to enjoy life!”
“Yeah, on my dime, right? Enjoy?”
“No, on ours, God! Everything’s shared!”
And here she snapped. The mask fell off, her voice sharp like a newscaster with attitude:
“Shared? Since when?”
“Since the wedding!”
“Interesting. When was the last time you put a penny into the joint account?”
“Forget it!” He waved it off. “In normal families, nobody keeps score!”
“And in normal families, men don’t live off their wives! You’ve been living off me for three years!”
“I wasn’t living off you! I was investing!”
“In what? Sneakers? Twenty-thousand-ruble headphones? Restaurant food delivery while I eat buckwheat three days in a row?!”
“Well, sorry, should I walk around like a pauper?”
“You are a pauper! Just with ambitions!” She threw up her hands. “I was saving for an apartment. And you—for looking ‘stylish’!”
“No one forced you!”
“My dream forced me! My own apartment! Without you!”
He stepped back. He knew the old Larisa. This one—with burning eyes and shaking hands—was a stranger.
“Lara, let’s talk calmly…”
“Too late. Take your flowers!” She grabbed the bouquet and hurled it into the trash bin. “That’s where they belong!”
“It’s just a gesture of goodwill!”
“Goodwill? You bought me off with flowers? Maybe next time you should go for a ring so I’ll jump back into the ‘joint budget’!”
He was silent.
“Listen, better go to your mom’s. She probably has the joint budget, the care, and slippers that fit.”
“Lara…”
“Goodbye! I’m tired of this play!”
The bedroom door slammed so hard Andrey jumped. He stayed in the kitchen with a trash bin full of roses and a broken life.
Morning. Suitcase, laptop, passport. All on the checklist.
“Where are you going?” Andrey stood in the doorway like a schoolboy who forgot his homework.
“I’m moving out.”
“You can’t just take off like that!”
“I can. And I am.”
“Because of money?!”
“No. Because of you. You turned out not to be who I thought.”
He rushed to the door blocking her exit:
“Wait! It’ll be different! Forget about the money!”
“Yeah? How will we live? Like before? When I saved and you spent?”
“I… well…”
“There’s no trust between us, Andrey. It died. Along with the bouquet in the trash.”
He followed her like a lost puppy.
“Lara, please don’t go. I’ll change. I won’t ask anymore…”
“You won’t. Because there won’t be anyone left to ask.”
The door slammed. The stairwell was silent. Suitcase in hand. Emptiness in her chest. But a certain lightness, a release.
Six months later.
Developer’s office. At the table—a manager, a guy about twenty, with a neat beard and a voice like a lottery host.
“Corner unit, eighth floor, park view. Down payment—three and a half million. Will you sign?”
Larisa nodded.
“I will.”
She took the pen and signed. Line by line. Each letter a step up the stairs. Toward herself. Toward her life.
Andrey called for the first two months. Flowers, words, threats from his mom. But all in vain. The divorce went fast and tearless—there was nothing to divide. Except disappointments.
Now she lived in a studio, waiting for the keys. Alone. Without advisors, mama’s boys, or a ‘joint budget.’
She smiled at herself in the shop window reflection. A woman who made it. Because she chose not family, but herself.