Len, I’m heading out, I’ll be late! Don’t wait up if you’re going to bed!” Ivan shouted from the hallway to his wife. “Stop!” Lena shouted back.
She emerged from the bathroom with a towel on her head. “Why are you going to be late today? Did they change the work schedule at the office? Or did you get a part-time job stoking boilers there at your organization? What’s going on?” she asked suspiciously. “Last week you came home after midnight four times! Before that, it was the same thing several times… Did you find someone else, Ivan?”
“What are you talking about?” Ivan’s face changed, and his eyes darted around. The man looked everywhere but at his wife.
“What did I say? You used to always come home from work by seven! And now you suddenly start staying late! What’s all this about?”
“Len, keep your voice down! Why do you start yelling right away? The kids might hear!”
“What are you talking about?” Elena was surprised. “What kids, they went to school over an hour ago! Daddy, indeed! Doesn’t even know if his kids are home!”
“Oh,” Ivan said. “That must have been when I was in the shower! I didn’t notice!” he smiled.
“I see, you’ve stopped noticing a lot of things, Ivan! So what’s happening at work that you’re planning to stay so late again today? Please explain!”
“It’s nothing special! Just a lot of work piled up!” Ivan replied to Lena.
“Well, I see, you couldn’t even bother to come up with a proper excuse! Thought I’d keep wearing your noodles on my ears! Right?”
“What excuses? What are you talking about, Len? If you don’t believe me, call Igor, he’ll confirm everything! And tell you that we really are staying late!”
“Maybe I’d better call your boss, I have his number somewhere! I wonder if he’ll confirm your words? And maybe even explain what one can be doing in the office at the computer until midnight?!”
“Len, there you go getting yourself worked up again! Filling your head with nonsense and then just getting nervous and taking it out on me!”
“I wouldn’t get myself worked up if you didn’t start acting strange! I wouldn’t say a word against you if you weren’t blatantly lying to me and treating me like a fool! I feel like you’re just lying to me!”
“Where did you get the idea that I’m lying to you?” asked Ivan, again looking away.
“From the fact that you can’t even look me in the eye! You’re looking anywhere but at me right now! And that’s the first sign of your lying! Look, you’ve even started sweating!” Elena pointed to her husband’s forehead.
“Oh, Len, stop making things up! Maybe you just want me to quit and stay home? To be only with you? Well, I can quit, and then you can support all four of us! It’s not hard for me!”
“Why do you always jump to extremes? What does quitting have to do with anything? You’re just lying to me, that’s all! And you start making up all kinds of nonsense! That always happens when a person has nothing else to say!”
“Anyway, Lena, I’m going to work! And I’m not going to talk to you about this topic anymore, and I certainly don’t intend to justify myself to you! Call anyone you like! Just remember, if you embarrass me in front of the boss like that, I really will quit and sit at home on your neck! Got it?”
“Wait, how could I embarrass you in front of your boss? I can’t even understand that? You, I see, have lied yourself into a corner… Well, I won’t call anyone! I’ll just come by your office myself today, and let your boss confirm your words!”
“Just try it!” suddenly Ivan roared.
And Lena now, when she spoke of going to his workplace, was exactly expecting this reaction from him.
“Anyway, my dear!” the woman began sternly. “Either you tell me who she is right now, and nicely pack your things and leave without any fuss, like a man! Or I’ll make you so famous at work, and among acquaintances and friends, that, believe me, you’ll be sorry! And your father, he’ll tear your head off for this!”
“What does my father have to do with this?” Ivan didn’t understand.
“You think about it! Remember… If you don’t want to, I’ll remind you! He told you in front of you, that, God forbid, you ever cheat on me, he’ll rip your arms and legs off! And evict you from this apartment! Remember?”
“Are you going to complain about me to my father?” Ivan’s hands trembled.
“Oh, how nervous you got all of a sudden! So who is she, someone from work? Do I know her?”
“There’s no one but you!” Ivan started to panic. “Stop constantly suspecting me of every mortal sin!”
“Why are you yelling? Don’t raise your voice, you hysterical!” Lena replied calmly. “Why are you so nervous? It means you have something to hide!”
“Enough, I don’t want to talk to you about this topic anymore! If you don’t trust me, that’s your personal problem! And I,—” the man quickly glanced at his watch, “—will be late for work because of you now! I’m leaving!”
“Nothing terrible, you’ll make up for it at night!”
Ivan glared at his wife, then opened the front door and left the apartment.
Lena took the towel off her head, wiped her hair a bit, and went to the bedroom for her phone. She had no desire to go to her husband’s workplace. So she quickly found her boss’s number in the phone book and called him directly.
The phone was picked up almost immediately.
“Hello! – a rough male voice answered. – Who is this?”
“Hello, Vyacheslav Konstantinovich! My name is Elena, I’m the wife of one of your employees, Ivan…”
“Ah, yes-yes-yes! Understood, hello, Elena! – he softened his voice. – How can I help?”
Sponsored Content
Herbeauty Never eat potatoes with these products: the third one will surprise you! Learn more — My question might be strange… But… I wanted to know, do you have some kind of backlog there at work? Are they, I mean your office staff, and especially my husband, really working until night, sitting there?
“Where did you get that from?” the man asked in a questioning tone. – No! They all work until six as they always did! And Ivan has even been leaving early lately! What happened?
Lena fell silent for a few seconds. Then she gathered herself and replied to her husband’s boss.
“Nothing special! Thank you, Vyacheslav Konstantinovich! I found out everything I wanted to know! Goodbye!” Lena disconnected.
The woman’s mood was already almost gone, and after the words of her husband’s boss, it completely disappeared. She now needed to get ready for work, but her head was filled with completely different things. She wasn’t thinking about work at all.
She dried her hair, got ready, and still went to work. But there, Elena could not concentrate on her tasks at all. All kinds of strange thoughts kept creeping into her mind, which she couldn’t just brush off. She realized that her husband, with whom they had been married for almost fifteen years, was simply cheating on her. And all that was left for her was to catch him red-handed. To finally, irrevocably.
Her work ended exactly at five, an hour earlier than her husband’s. The children had already written to her that they were home. So she gathered herself and drove her car to the office where Ivan worked.
When she arrived and parked near the office building, her husband’s car was still there. But it wasn’t even five minutes later when Ivan suddenly came out of the building. At that moment, he was talking on the phone.
His wife’s car he didn’t even notice, so absorbed was he in the conversation. Although it was only four cars away from his own. He got behind the wheel and started moving. Lena, without much thought, followed him. She immediately wanted to call him under the guise that she was heading home and find out where he was now. But she didn’t do that. The woman decided to follow her husband to the end.
The journey took Lena about forty minutes. She didn’t fall far behind her husband, but she also tried not to get too close to him.
Eventually, this whole game of private detective led the woman to a very familiar district. One where one of Lena’s friends lived. And this thought troubled her.
“No, it can’t be!” she tried to convince herself. “Vika isn’t the only one who lives here!”
But a little later, when Ivan turned into one of the yards, into the very yard where this Vika lived, and parked his car next to her entrance, all doubts vanished.
Ivan got out of the car and headed to the entrance. Lena stopped, waited about ten minutes, and then decided to take her phone and call her friend. But then suddenly she changed her mind, got out of the car, and headed to Vika’s entrance.
Victoria was one of her best friends. With whom she practically always shared everything that happened in Lena’s life. And not so long ago, just a month and a half ago, her husband left. And Vika told Lena that she caught him with a mistress.
Approaching the entrance, she thought about how to play her visit to Vika so that she would open the entrance door for her without questions through the intercom. But she didn’t have to do that, because children ran out of the entrance right in front of her, and she quickly slipped through the open door.
Taking the elevator to the sixth floor, the woman was determined. She approached the door of her friend’s apartment and rang the bell. Lena knew that Vika should be home at the moment, since she wasn’t working temporarily and was looking for a job.
But they were not in a hurry to open the door for Lena. So she pressed the bell button again and held it until the door finally opened.
Standing in front of Lena was a flustered Vika in a bathrobe and disheveled hair.
“Where is he?” Lena sternly asked her friend.
“Who?” Vika tried to pretend she didn’t understand.
“You know exactly who I’m talking about! Move aside!” Lena said and simply pushed the hostess aside.
“Have you lost your mind?” the friend started to protest. “Lena, where are you going with your shoes on?” Vika shouted after Lena.
But Lena wasn’t listening to her anymore. She charged forward like a tank. Opening the door to Vika’s bedroom, she found the person she had come for. Ivan at that moment was frantically trying to pull his pants on.
“Lena, please don’t yell! I’ll explain everything to you now!” Ivan pleaded with his wife.
“Don’t explain anything to me, I’m not blind!” the wife calmly replied to her husband.
She entered the bedroom, approached her husband closely, and with all her might, kneed him between the legs. So hard that Ivan even squealed like a piglet. From pain and shock, he fell to his knees in front of his wife and held his groin, while Lena, instead of simply turning around and leaving, managed to kick him several more times, and again in the same place.
Ivan turned blue and red at the same time. His eyes, the woman thought, would simply pop out of their sockets.
Vika stood behind and was afraid to even squeak. Lena calmly turned around, looked at her friend, and walked towards her.
“Lena, calm down, I’ll explain everything to you now!” Vika began to wail.
“Another one!” the woman sneered.
She sharply grabbed Vika by the hair and yanked her towards herself. Vika, by inertia, began to fall onto Lena, and the latter simply stepped aside. She didn’t kick her friend, although she very much wanted to.
The woman left her friend’s apartment, went down the stairs, got into her car, and thought that she would just burst into tears now. But no, there wasn’t a single tear in her eyes. There was just resentment and pain. She started the car and drove home, where her daughter and son were waiting for her.
About twenty minutes later, after she was home, Ivan walked into the apartment.
“And what are you doing here? You can turn around and scram back to where you work late!”
“Len, let’s talk!” he walked forward from the door and tried to take his wife by the hand.
“Get away from me, and don’t you dare touch me with your filthy hands! You have someone to touch, go there, even if you wear yourself out! You’re no longer welcome here! I’ve already filed for divorce!” the wife waved a phone in front of her husband.
“Len, let’s not rush! Why destroy everything like this? Over some trifle! I sent Vika away, I won’t set foot there again! I don’t want to lose you! Please forgive me!”
“At this moment, I’m hardly interested! You can go back to her! By the way, I called your father on the way home! And I told him all about your escapades! He said he’d be here soon!”
Ivan turned pale again when he heard about his father. Although he was almost thirty-six years old, he still feared his father like fire. Because sometimes, in a burst of conversation, if he didn’t like his son’s words, especially if the son complained about his wife and children to his mother in his presence, he could honestly hit him in the face. And he didn’t care whether it hurt Ivan or not, whether he would have a bruise or not. His father simply couldn’t stand whiners and those who betray their loved ones.
And the interesting thing is that all these years, Lena, Ivan, and their children, whom Ivan’s father adored, lived in the grandfather’s apartment, which he never transferred to his son.
After his father arrived, Ivan also got a talking-to from him. Although, unlike his wife, his father didn’t hit him. And he told Ivan that his son shouldn’t even dare to appear in this apartment again. Because after they divorced, he would transfer this apartment to his daughter-in-law and grandchildren. And he would no longer consider Ivan his son.