No, Oleg, just listen to this!” Marina’s voice—my husband’s sister—rang through the entire kitchen, drowning out the sound of the television. “She says the new installer has ‘pure chaos in his head.’ Chaos! Alina, darling, that’s called deconstructivism.”
I silently stirred the salad, feeling her heavy, appraising gaze on me. Oleg, my husband, coughed awkwardly.
“Marina, come on… Alina was just sharing her opinion.”
“Opinion?” She laughed theatrically, tossing back her perfectly styled blonde hair. “To have an opinion about contemporary art, you need to actually understand something about it. This isn’t painting daisies in a field, you know.”
Every Sunday we had dinner at my mother-in-law’s. And every Sunday turned into Marina’s one-woman show—the art critic and senior manager at the city’s trendiest gallery. “Her” gallery, as she liked to emphasize.
I looked at her and wondered if she saw anything beyond price tags and famous names. Did she notice the trembling line on a sketch, drawn by a genius’s hand in a moment of despair? Did she hear the silent scream frozen in a brushstroke?
“We just sold a piece the other day,” Marina went on, now addressing my mother-in-law, who listened with adoration. “Abstraction. Two by three meters. Do you know how much it sold for?”
She paused, savoring the effect.
“Two hundred thousand. Euros. Some collector from Belgium even offered three hundred, but we turned him down. The gallery’s reputation is more important.”
I looked up.
“Why did you turn him down?”
Marina looked at me as if I’d just asked why the sky was blue.
“Because he’s known for his… let’s say, questionable connections. We can’t allow works from our gallery to end up in such hands. It would damage the artist’s reputation—and ours.”
She said it with such pride, as if she were personally saving world art from disaster.
But I remembered the frightened eyes of the artist himself—a young, incredibly talented man who desperately needed money for his mother’s operation. He was willing to sell the piece to anyone.
I insisted on closing the deal with another buyer—less famous, but with a spotless reputation.
We lost some money, but preserved something far more important. Of course, Marina didn’t know this. For her, it was just another one of her “right” decisions.
“I think,” I said quietly, carefully choosing my words, “that sometimes the true value of a work isn’t who buys it, but what the artist put into it. Their story, their pain.”
Marina rolled her eyes and gave a laugh, full of venom and superiority. She turned to my husband and said the line meant to destroy me, to put me in my place.
“Olezhek, tell your wife. She’s lovely, domestic, cozy—but let’s be honest. You’re too stupid to understand art!”
She laughed, satisfied with her cruel joke. My mother-in-law chimed in with a condescending smile, and my husband… my husband just dropped his gaze to his plate.
I looked at Marina. Right in the eye. And for the first time that evening, I smiled. A real smile. She faltered, confused by my sudden calm.
She didn’t know that in three days, her “perfect” gallery would be facing an unscheduled audit. And that I would be the one conducting it.
On Wednesday morning, I put on a strict anthracite-colored pantsuit. No jewelry except barely-there platinum earrings.
My hair, which Marina was used to seeing in a messy bun, I styled in a smooth, cold wave.
My look was meant to say one thing: business. Nothing personal.
At exactly ten, I walked through the glass doors of the “Perspektiva” gallery.
My gallery. The smell of freshly brewed coffee, expensive perfume, and that invisible dust that always exists where canvases are kept.
I was greeted by my lawyer, the lean and always impeccably dressed Mr. Weiss.
“Good morning, Alina Andreevna. Everything is ready.”
Marina burst from her glass-walled office like an angry bird.
Seeing me next to Weiss, she froze mid-step. Her face stretched, showing a whole spectrum of feelings: from confusion to barely concealed irritation.
“Alina? What are you doing here?” She gave me a look up and down, lingering on the severe suit.
“Decided to get in touch with the beautiful? I told you we have a tough day today.”
“Good morning, Marina,” I said evenly and calmly. “Mr. Weiss, please introduce me.”
The lawyer stepped forward.
“Marina Olegovna, allow me to introduce Alina Andreevna Volskaya, head of the independent auditing company, hired directly by the gallery owner to conduct a full financial review.
Please provide her and her team with unfettered access to all documents and premises.”
Marina’s eyebrows shot up. She kept glancing from Weiss to me and back again, unable to reconcile the image of the “stupid wife” with that of a strict auditor.
“An audit? What audit? No one told me! The owner always discusses these things with me personally!”
“Apparently, this time he decided to make an exception,” Weiss said coldly.
Ignoring her outrage, I walked past her and straight to her desk.
“I’ll need all sales contracts for the last quarter. Especially the transaction for ‘Red on Black’ by Mark Gromov. And all invoices for the last exhibition.”
That was the very painting she’d boasted about over dinner.
Marina turned pale.
“Why do you need that? That’s confidential information! I can’t—”
“You can, and you must,” I interrupted, not raising my voice. My calm unsettled her far more than any shouting would.
“Or Mr. Weiss will explain the legal consequences of refusal. Let’s start with the catalogue.
Where is the work ‘Breath of the North,’ which is listed in the warehouse, but according to my information, was sold to a private individual two weeks ago with no documentation?”
I looked straight at her. Now her eyes held not anger, but fear. She suddenly realized this wasn’t a routine check. This was a hunt. And the hunter was looking her right in the face—and she had no idea who I really was.
On Friday evening, the main gallery hall was unusually crowded for the end of the work week.
I had ordered all key employees to attend, as well as several artists we worked with. In the center stood a long table. The atmosphere was electric.
Marina was pacing the hall, trying to regain control. She was calling my husband—her brother—and whispering furiously to him. Half an hour before the meeting, Oleg arrived at the gallery, looking lost.
“Alina, what’s happening? Marina’s beside herself. She says you’ve staged an inquisition here.”
“I’m just doing my job, Oleg,” I replied without looking at him.
At exactly seven, Mr. Weiss cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. I sat at the head of the table. Marina demonstratively sat across from me, arms folded on her chest.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Weiss began. “As you know, the last three days have seen an audit at the gallery. The preliminary results are, unfortunately, disappointing. Serious financial violations have been discovered.”
He paused, sweeping everyone with a stern look.
“We’re talking about hidden income, off-the-books sales, and systematically inflated event expenses.”
Marina jumped up.
“This is slander! I’ve run this gallery for five years! The owner completely trusts me! This is all her doing!” She jabbed her finger at me. “This woman knows nothing about our business, she just has a grudge against me!”
Tense silence filled the room. Artists and staff exchanged glances.
“The owner is aware of the situation,” Weiss continued in an icy tone. “And he is extremely disappointed with how his trust has been abused. He’s here to personally announce his decision.”
Everyone froze. Heads turned, searching for the mythical owner. Marina was looking around curiously too, a glimmer of triumph on her face.
She must have thought the owner would walk in, shake her hand, and throw me out.
Mr. Weiss slowly turned and looked at me.
And I stood up.
“Good evening,” my voice rang out clearly in the charged silence.
Marina stared at me, her mouth open but soundless. She looked at me, then at Weiss, then back at me. In her eyes, realization dawned—slowly, painfully.
“You…?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I confirmed calmly. “Alina Andreevna Volskaya. The sole owner of the Perspektiva gallery.”
I looked around at the stunned faces of the staff. I saw shock on my own husband’s face. Then I looked at Marina again.
“You once said I was too stupid to understand art. Maybe so. But I know for sure that art isn’t a way to stuff your pockets at the expense of talented people.
It’s not about lies or double bookkeeping. My father—whom you started out assisting, by the way—taught me that art has a soul. It seems you forgot that over the years.”
I took a step forward.
“You sold my father’s friends’ paintings behind their backs, undervaluing them on paper. You took kickbacks from suppliers. You refused to help young artists because you thought they were ‘not promising.’ You turned a temple of art into an ordinary shop.”
I turned to Weiss.
“Marina Olegovna is dismissed as of today. With no severance pay. Please escort her from the premises.
And make sure she doesn’t take anything from her office. Her activities will be investigated by the relevant authorities.”
Marina stood limp, like a rag doll. All her gloss and arrogance vanished in an instant. She looked at me with empty eyes, filled with terror. Her humiliation was total and public.
As she was led out, she glanced at her brother. But Oleg didn’t look at her. He looked at me. And for the first time, I saw not condescension in his eyes, but fear—and maybe a touch of respect.
I stood alone in the center of the hall. My hall. And for the first time in a long time, I felt that everything was as it should be.
We drove home in deafening silence. Oleg gripped the steering wheel so tightly his profile in the streetlights seemed carved from stone.
I watched the night city slide by, feeling neither triumph nor schadenfreude. Just a cold, crystalline clarity.
He broke the silence as we pulled into our yard.
“Why, Alina?” his voice was hoarse. “Why did you never tell me?”
I turned to him.
“What would that have changed, Oleg?”
“Everything!” He slapped his palm against the wheel. “It would have changed everything! I would have—”
“Would have what?” I looked at him, not angry, just tired. “Protected me from Marina?
Told her to stop humiliating me at every family dinner? You didn’t do that when I was just your wife.
Why would you do it, knowing I was your rich wife? Out of respect for me, or for my money?”
He was silent. No arguments left.
“This gallery is all that’s left of my father. I didn’t want it to be part of our life. I wanted us to have our own, separate life.
Where I’m loved not for what I have, but for who I am. I wanted to be just Alina. The homemaker. Cozy. The one you chose.”
I gave a bitter smile.
“But I was wrong. Because, by letting your sister talk to me like that, you showed again and again that you didn’t respect that ‘just Alina.’
You stayed silent when she called me stupid. You looked down. And in those moments, I realized that my secret wouldn’t change anything. It would only add more hypocrisy to our relationship.”
We parked. Oleg turned off the engine, and the car filled with half-darkness.
“I love you,” he said softly.
“I know,” I replied just as quietly. “But now it’s not enough. I’m no longer the woman who’ll silently endure humiliation just to keep the peace in the family. That Alina ended tonight, in the gallery hall.”
I opened the car door.
“I’m not asking you to choose between me and your family. I’m giving you another choice. Are you ready to be the husband of the woman I really am?
Not a quiet housewife, but a business owner who makes tough decisions and demands respect. Think about it.”
I got out of the car and walked to the entrance without looking back. I didn’t know if he’d follow me.
But I knew that, for the first time in my life, I was walking my own path. And whatever I became along the way, I would never again let anyone call me stupid.