— “No, we haven’t decided yet. I want to knock this wall down, combine it with the kitchen, turn it into a studio, but Kira’s still digging her heels in. You know women—they have to think everything over a hundred times. It’s fine, I’ll wear her down.”
Kira heard the phrase as she was walking past the living room to her office. Slava’s voice—loud and deliberately casual—was meant for his buddy on the other end of the line, but it hit her nerves like a jolt of static. She stopped for a second in the doorway, looking at his relaxed pose in her favorite chair. His feet, in house slippers, were propped on the expensive coffee table made from a solid slab of oak—the one she’d hunted down at a designer sale. He was talking about her apartment, the walls in her home, with the kind of confidence of someone who already had an approved remodeling plan in hand. She merely winced then, chalking it up to empty chatter and his constant need to seem more important than he was.
He settled in fast. When they married a year ago and Slava moved in, he was quiet and respectful. He admired her taste, her apartment, her success. He tiptoed around, afraid to break something or put it in the wrong place. Kira, forever immersed in her projects, drawings, and renderings, even found his timidity endearing at first. He seemed like a reliable, cozy rear guard—someone who wouldn’t compete with her, just be there. But Quiet, Respectful Slava evaporated within three months. He didn’t just settle in. He began methodically and systematically conquering the space.
It started with little things. His mug—always the biggest one—permanently sat in the most prominent spot on the kitchen counter. His game console and scattered discs took over an entire shelf in the bookcase, shoving aside her art albums. He began commenting on her décor choices, calling a statuette by a trendy sculptor a “dust collector” and a minimalist floor lamp “a stick with a bulb.” Kira joked it off or ignored it. She was working too much to waste energy on arguments over trifles. She thought he was just trying to make the place his too, to bring in a bit of himself. She didn’t even notice when his attempts to “settle in” turned into a bid for control.
The first truly alarming bell rang when, after grueling negotiations with a client, she came home to find her massive work desk—placed by the panoramic window for natural light—pushed into the darkest corner of the room. In its place, front and center, stood the enormous TV Slava had bought the week before.
— “This way it’s much more comfortable to watch, you’ve got to admit,” he said without a hint of doubt when he saw her frozen face. “It was awkward to watch before.”
He hadn’t even asked. He simply decided that his comfort watching football was more important than her comfort doing the work that—incidentally—paid for that comfort. That evening, without a word, she waited for him to fall asleep and single-handedly, straining with the weight, dragged the heavy desk back. She didn’t make a scene. It felt disgusting and humiliating to explain to a grown man that he wasn’t on his own turf. She just fixed what he had broken and buried herself in work again, trying not to think about it.
But not thinking about it got harder. Slava started issuing directives. He could stand in the middle of the living room and loudly pronounce that “this couch should be replaced, the color’s depressing,” or “we’ll need to call in contractors, the parquet’s not great here.” He said “we,” “us,” “we should,” but made all the decisions in his head alone. He walked around her apartment like an inspector evaluating someone else’s property and figuring out how to improve it for himself. He was no longer a guest, or even a partner. He had stepped into the role of master of the house, and he clearly loved the part. Kira watched the metamorphosis with a growing cold detachment, not yet realizing it was just the prelude to the main act her husband was staging behind her back.
— “You’re awfully pensive today. Everything okay at work?” Slava pushed away his empty plate and leaned back, pleased with himself.
Friday evening was following its usual script. Kira had cooked dinner—porcini mushroom risotto, his favorite. They ate and discussed some work bits. Or rather, she did most of the talking, describing a new complex project and a temperamental client. He half-listened, nodded, topped up her wine, and waited. She could feel his impatience like a physical thing. He was like a child who’d spent the day hiding a “treasure” he’d found in the yard and now, at last, couldn’t wait to unveil it to the world.
— “It’s fine, I’m just tired. It’s been a crazy week,” she said, taking a small sip of wine. “And what did you do today? You got back earlier than usual.”
He’d been waiting for that question. His face instantly took on a weighty, almost ceremonial expression. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and looked at her like a man about to announce no less than the salvation of humankind.
— “I was taking care of our future, Kira. Our shared, bright future. I’ve thought everything through, weighed all the pros and cons, and decided it’s time for us to move on. To expand.”
He paused meaningfully. Kira watched him in silence, trying to guess where this pompous prologue was going. Sales up in his department? A promised bonus?
— “In short, I’ve decided,” he said the word decided with special emphasis, as if stamping a royal seal on a decree. “We’re selling this apartment.”
For a second she thought she’d misheard. That it was some stupid, out-of-place joke. But he went on, face deadly serious. More than that—it shone with pride in his own farsightedness.
— “Don’t look at me like that. The plan is brilliant. This place is okay, sure, but the neighborhood’s not what it used to be, and it’s cramped for us anyway. I’ve run the numbers. We sell it, add our savings, and get a gorgeous three-bedroom in the center. I’ve already found a couple of options—you’ll be blown away! Huge living room, two bathrooms, city view. We’ll live like civilized people, Kira! We’ll invite guests—no shame in it.”
He spoke quickly, animatedly, waving his hands. Each word fell into the growing silence like a stone into a deep well. In her head there was no anger, no outrage. Only a ringing, icy bewilderment. She looked at his animated face, the sparkle in his eyes, and couldn’t reconcile this man with the Slava she’d married. He wasn’t asking her opinion. He wasn’t proposing. He was presenting her with a fact he had created in his own mind.
— “I even called a solid realtor,” he finished her off, glowing with his own enterprise. “He said places like ours are in demand right now. I’ve practically got buyers lined up! A colleague of mine has been looking in this area forever. So it’ll all go fast—you won’t even have time to blink.”
He wrapped up his tirade and leaned back, waiting for rapture. He expected her to throw up her hands, fling herself at his neck, and thank him for taking such smart, far-sighted care of their shared well-being. He looked at her with a smug smile, fully confident his plan was flawless.
— “Well? What do you say? Genius, right?”
Kira said nothing. She didn’t look at him; her gaze was fixed on the dark window, where their brightly lit kitchen and his beaming, expectant face were reflected. He waited. The air in the room thickened, taut as a string on the verge of snapping. And it did snap. Only not with a scream or tears.
A soft, gurgling sound burst from her throat and quickly grew into laughter. Not joyful or happy laughter. Cold, sharp, almost spiteful. She laughed with her head thrown back, and each peal lashed Slava like a whip. His smug smile slowly slid off his face, giving way first to bewilderment, then to open offense. He didn’t understand. He had brought her good news, and she was laughing in his face.
— “What’s so funny?” His voice came out dull and hostile. “Did I say something wrong? I’m looking out for our future and you’re cackling like a lunatic. It’s my apartment too, I’m the man of the house here, and I’ll decide where and how we live!”
Kira stopped laughing abruptly. She lowered her head and looked straight at him. The eyes that had been shining with laughter a second ago turned into two icy points. She rose slowly from the table, setting her wineglass aside in one smooth motion. She walked around the table and stopped directly in front of him, looking down at him.
— “Is that so? Your apartment? You’re the master here? Did you buy it, Slava? No. Then shut up, because there’s only one mistress here—and that’s me. And you are merely my husband.”
He stared at her like at a stranger, mouth slightly open in shock. He wanted to object, to jump to his feet, but her gaze pinned him to the chair. She took a step closer, and he involuntarily pressed back.
— “Let’s break down your brilliant plan point by point, ‘benefactor.’ ‘We sell.’ Who’s ‘we’? You and your imaginary friend? You were going to sell my apartment. The one I bought five years before I even knew you existed. The one where every nail and every outlet was paid for out of my pocket. ‘I decided.’ You decided? You, a middle manager who in a whole year of marriage hasn’t contributed even a quarter of what I contribute to our budget, decided to dispose of my main asset? That’s not even funny. That’s gall of galactic proportions.”
She spoke calmly, almost matter-of-factly, and it was scarier than any shouting. She wasn’t accusing; she was stating facts, driving them one by one into his self-satisfied, softened brain.
— “But… Kira… I did it for us…” he mumbled, trying to regain some scrap of control. “We’re a family. We should build our future together. I meant well…”
— “Family?” She smirked, but this time it was just a crooked smile. “Slava, family is partners who consult each other. Who respect each other’s property. What you proposed isn’t partnership. You’re a thief trying to steal my property under the sauce of ‘caring about the future.’ You even found buyers and arranged things with a realtor behind my back! You weren’t building a family. You were prepping a con, hoping I’d nod along like a docile fool to whatever my great ‘man of the house’ decreed. But you miscalculated.”
The words thief and con hung in the kitchen air, heavy and suffocating like smoke from a fire. Slava’s face cycled through several stages: from shocked confusion to a purplish rage. He finally found his voice, and it cracked into a falsetto, full of the righteous wrath of a man unjustly accused.
— “Are you out of your mind? What con? I… I just wanted things to be better for us! I cared about us! And you twisted everything, made me out to be some kind of monster, a crook! Do you even hear yourself?”
— “I hear myself perfectly, Slava,” she said with an almost otherworldly calm. She didn’t raise her voice, didn’t gesticulate. She simply stood before him like a judge with the verdict already written. “For the first time in a long while, I hear everything very clearly. And I finally understand what kind of man you are. It’s not just about this apartment. This is simply the last straw—the apotheosis of how you treat me.”
She began to walk around the room, her steps quiet and measured. She ran her hand along the back of her chair—the very one he loved to lounge in with his feet on the table.
— “It started with little things I—fool that I was—overlooked. You moved my work desk because it was inconvenient for you to watch TV. You constantly criticized my choice of décor, my things, my taste. You paced through my home like an auditor, assessing what else to ‘improve’ for yourself. You weren’t trying to become part of my life—you were trying to refashion it, to bend it to you, to make it convenient. You respected neither me, nor my work, nor my home. You didn’t see a partner—you saw a resource. A convenient, well-paid resource to be used for your own comfort.”
He looked at her, and his anger began to turn into fear. He understood this wasn’t just a fight. This was the end. He tried to switch tactics—from rage to pleading.
— “Kira, baby, what are you saying… That’s not what I meant, really. Maybe I presented it clumsily, I’m no silver-tongued devil, you know that… But I love you! I just wanted things to be normal for us…”
— “ ‘Normal’ is when a man respects the woman he lives with,” she cut him off before he could finish. She stopped and looked him straight in the eyes. There was no love there. No pity. Only fatigue and a cold, hard resolve. “And now, Slava, I want you to do one thing. A very simple one.”
She turned and left the kitchen without another word. He heard the bedroom door open, then the latches on the overhead storage click. A minute later she returned. In her hands was his large rolling suitcase—the very one she’d given him last birthday, before their vacation, which—once again—she had paid for. She set it down in the middle of the kitchen, next to the wine stain on the tablecloth.
The gesture spoke louder than any words. The suitcase stood between them like a headstone over their marriage. Slava stared at it, and the full scale of the catastrophe finally dawned on him. This was real.
— “Kira… don’t… wait…” He jumped up, rushed to her, tried to take her hands. “Let’s talk. I get it now. I was wrong, I was an idiot! I’ll fix everything, I’ll never again—”
She gently but firmly freed her hands.
— “Pack your things, Slava.”
— “But where am I supposed to go? It’s Friday night!” His voice trembled, with openly pathetic, childlike notes.
— “You have friends. You have parents outside Moscow. There’s that realtor you were so pleased with—maybe he’ll find you something. That’s no longer my problem,” she said, walking to the window and turning away to show the conversation was over. “I want you gone by morning.”
He stood in the middle of the kitchen, crushed and humiliated. He looked at her motionless back, at the suitcase, at the spilled wine. His brilliant plan had turned into total collapse. He had lost everything: the warm perch, the comfort, the woman he now realized he had never bothered to truly know. He thought he was the master here, but it turned out he had been just a guest with an expired visa. And he had just been asked—very politely, but firmly—to leave.