Igor dropped his fork. It clattered against the plate, leaving a greasy streak of sauce on the white porcelain.
He didn’t even notice. His eyes were fixed on his phone screen, and a strange, vacant smile froze on his lips.
“Something interesting?” I asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.
“Huh? Oh, just work,” he said reluctantly, putting the phone aside. “More reports, numbers… I’m so sick of it all.”
He sighed as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. I looked at him and thought about how much he had changed over the past year. Our year.
When we got married, he was different. Or maybe I just wanted to see him that way.
He used to talk about love, about how it didn’t matter who I was or how much I earned.
And I, a simple accountant at a tiny firm called “Horns and Hooves,” believed him. I desperately wanted to believe him.
“Can you believe our commercial director’s wife just bought herself a new car?” he suddenly said.
“Just like that. Felt like it,” Igor poked at his cold chicken with a look of disdain. “And when was the last time we went to the sea?”
I stayed silent. That wasn’t a question meant to be answered. It was a jab at me. At us.
At our little, cozy apartment on the outskirts of the city — which he called “a birdhouse.”
Lately, conversations like this had become our norm. He talked more and more about money.
Other people’s money. The beautiful life happening out there, beyond the windows of our “birdhouse,” a life that had nothing to do with us.
“I met some really interesting people today,” he said suddenly, his eyes lighting up with that same fire I once mistook for love. “Serious investors.”
“They’ve got these projects, such opportunities!”
He went on passionately. Especially about one of them — Karina. Smart, ambitious, successful. Lives alone, built everything herself.
“She has an apartment in the city center, can you imagine? With panoramic windows, a view of the whole city. Designer interiors, Italian furniture…” he rolled his eyes as if savoring every word.
I listened, and something inside me slowly froze into ice.
He described that apartment in the ‘Aquamarine’ complex with such admiration that I recognized it instantly. Of course I did.
Because I was the one who had rented it to this Karina.
“We’re light-years away from that,” he said bitterly, glancing around our kitchen. “Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in this… simplicity. In this hopelessness.”
He looked at me. There was no warmth in his gaze.
Only a cold, calculating assessment. As if he were evaluating my worth — and didn’t like the result.
“Is this really it?” he asked quietly, almost in a whisper, looking right through me. “Is this really our life?”
The experiment I had started a year ago had failed spectacularly.
My naive idea — to be loved not for my father’s millions, but for who I really am — had shattered against the harsh wall of human greed.
Igor turned out to be not who he pretended to be. Or worse — he was exactly who he always was. I just hadn’t noticed.
He started coming home later and later.
He smelled of someone else’s expensive perfume — I recognized the scent, remembered it.
He brought coldness and detachment with him.
Our “birdhouse” now seemed to physically disgust him.
“Can’t we just buy a decent coffee machine?” he grimaced in the morning, staring at our old drip coffee maker.
“Karina’s machine grinds its own beans, makes ten kinds of coffee. We discussed it during a business meeting at her place.”
“This one makes coffee too,” I replied calmly, feeling myself tighten inside.
I could have bought a café. A whole chain of them. But I kept playing my role.
“That thing doesn’t make coffee. It makes brown sludge,” he snapped.
Karina became the gold standard for everything. Karina wore designer clothes.
Karina dined in Michelin-starred restaurants. Karina drove the latest Audi model.
Karina, Karina, Karina… He spoke of her as if she were a deity descended to show him, the pitiful mortal, what real success looked like.
One evening, I overheard him on the phone in another room. He was laughing — carefree and happy, in a way I hadn’t heard in a long time.
“No, of course she doesn’t know,” he said in a lowered voice. “She’s too… simple for that.”
“Get it? She has no ambition, no drive. With her, it’s just survival.”
I stood behind the door, and the floor seemed to fall out from under me. Simple. That word hurt more than any insult.
All my efforts, my attempt to build something honest — all of it erased by that one word.
I decided it was time to end this charade.
That evening, when he came home, I was waiting in the kitchen. He walked in without looking at me, tossed his jacket onto a chair.
“We need to talk, Igor.”
“About what?” he opened the fridge, peeked in, then slammed the door shut in disgust. “About how we have no money again? I’m tired.”
“I want you to leave.”
He turned to me slowly. His face didn’t show surprise, more like relief. As if I’d spared him the unpleasant task of starting this conversation himself.
“Seriously?” he sneered. “You’re kicking me out? Of this shack?”
He gestured around our tiny kitchen. His eyes locked on mine, full of contempt and barely disguised triumph.
“I was planning to leave anyway!” he barked. “You think I want to spend my life here, counting pennies?”
“I’ve met a woman who values me! Who can give me everything I’ve dreamed of! I’m leaving for wealth, and you can stay here in your poverty!”
He spit the words with such venom and delight, as if he were avenging all his failures on me.
He stood in the doorway, handsome, smug, convinced he was right.
He didn’t yet know that his new “wealthy” life would take place in my apartment. On my terms.
I gave him two hours to pack. Then I changed.
I took off my “simple accountant” office outfit, put on a cashmere dress, and ordered a business-class taxi.
Forty minutes later, I was at the Aquamarine complex.
I didn’t ring the intercom. I used my key and went up. Music and laughter spilled from behind the door. Their laughter.
I used my key again. The door opened silently.
They were standing by the panoramic window with champagne glasses. Igor was holding Karina by the waist, whispering something in her ear. She laughed, her head thrown back.
“Hope I’m not interrupting,” I said, closing the door behind me.
The music cut off. They both spun around. Igor’s face first showed confusion — then anger.
“You?! What are you doing here? How did you get in?” he took a step toward me.
“I have keys,” I calmly placed my bag on the designer console. “To all my apartments.”
Karina looked from me to Igor. Her champagne glass trembled.
“What is this, Igor?” she asked coldly.
“This… this is my wife,” he stammered. “Ex-wife.”
“Not quite,” I corrected him. “Still legally married. But that’s not the point. The point is — this apartment. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
I glanced around the living room. Igor froze like a statue. It was starting to sink in.
“What are you talking about? This is Karina’s apartment,” he hissed.
“You’re mistaken. It’s my apartment. The one I’ve been renting to your Karina,” I turned to her. “By the way, Karina, you’re late on your utilities for last month.”
“But that’s irrelevant now. According to the lease, I can terminate it unilaterally if the tenant breaks house rules.”
“And shacking up with married men counts. You’ve got 24 hours to vacate.”
Karina’s face went white as the wall behind her. She stared at Igor with such hatred that he backed away.
“You… you lied to me?” she whispered.
But Igor was staring only at me. His eyes wide with panic. His dream-built world had collapsed in an instant.
His smug grin vanished, replaced by a pathetic, lost expression.
“Wait… what? But you’re… an accountant…”
“I own the company I ‘work’ for as an accountant,” I shrugged. “I wanted to see if you could love me, not my money.”
The experiment failed. But I’m not bitter. Everyone chooses what they’re capable of. You chose the shiny display.
I turned and walked toward the exit.
“What about… me?” his broken voice followed.
I paused in the doorway without turning.
“You can stay in poverty. Like you wanted. Only this time — it’s real.”
I walked out and closed the door behind me. I didn’t feel triumph or revenge.
Just a gentle fatigue. And a strange, crystal-clear understanding: you can’t make someone see gold when their eyes are blinded by glitter.
The first call came three days later. I didn’t answer. Then came the texts.
Dozens of them — begging for forgiveness, mixed with accusations and threats.
He said I ruined his life. That he loved me and I deceived him.
I read them with cold calm and blocked his number. But he kept finding new ones.
A week later, he ambushed me outside my office.
He looked haggard. His expensive clothes hung awkwardly on his slumped frame. His eyes were full of despair.
“Anya, we need to talk!” he grabbed my hand.
“There’s nothing to talk about, Igor,” I gently pulled my hand free. “I’ve filed for divorce. The papers will come by mail.”
“I won’t let you divorce me!” he shouted. “I love you! I was a fool — I see that now!”
“That Karina… she just messed with my head! But I was only ever thinking about you, about us!”
“Us?” I laughed bitterly. “You were thinking about your future.”
“One where I was just an obstacle — until a better option came along.”
“And then it turned out the best option was right beside you all along. But the problem, Igor, is that I’m not an option. I’m not a lottery ticket.”
He looked at me, not understanding. He still thought it was about Karina, about the affair. He didn’t get that it was about him. His nature.
“I’ll fix it! I’ll prove it to you! Just tell me what to do!”
That’s when I realized I was finally free. Not from him — from the naive girl I had been a year ago.
I no longer needed proof of love. I knew what love should look like — and what it shouldn’t.
“Nothing,” I said. “There’s nothing you can do. Because you can’t fix something that never existed. And we never had the one thing that mattered — respect.”
“You never respected me. You despised my ‘simple’ life, my job, our home. And when someone despises you, they can’t love you.”
I walked around him and headed to my car. He shouted something after me, but I no longer listened.
A month later, the divorce was finalized. I sold the ‘Aquamarine’ apartment. And our old “birdhouse,” too.
I bought myself a small house outside the city and shifted to remote management of the company.
Sometimes, I think about him. Not with anger or pity.
But with a kind of distant curiosity, like a character from a book I once read. He got what he desperately wanted — a lesson.
A cruel, but fair one. A lesson that chasing glitter always ends in darkness.
And that true wealth isn’t about what you own — it’s about who you are when everything else is stripped away.