“I’ve transferred everything. Nothing belongs to us anymore.”
Oleg tossed out the phrase as casually as he would throw his car keys onto the hall table.
He didn’t even look at me, pulling off the expensive tie I’d given him as a gift for our last anniversary.
I froze with a plate in my hand. Not from shock. From a strange, resonant anticipation, like the vibration of a taut string.
Ten years. Ten long years I had been waiting for something like this. Ten years I had been spinning this web in the very heart of his business, weaving threads of revenge into the dull fabric of financial reports.
“What exactly is ‘everything,’ Oleg?” My voice came out unnervingly even, not a quiver. I slowly set the plate on the table. The porcelain clinked softly against the oak tabletop.
At last, he turned to me. In his eyes swirled thinly veiled triumph and a flicker of irritation at my Olympian calm. He had been expecting tears, a tantrum, curses. I wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction.
“The house, the business, all the accounts. All assets, Anya,” he said with relish. “I’m starting a new life. From scratch.”
“With Katya?”
For a moment his face turned to stone. He hadn’t thought I knew. Men are so naïve.
They think that a woman who reconciles the debits and credits of their multimillion-dollar company won’t notice regular “business expenses” the size of a top manager’s annual salary.
“That’s none of your business,” he snapped. “I’ll leave you your car. And I’ll rent you an apartment for a couple of months until you get back on your feet. I’m not a monster.”
He smiled magnanimously. The smile of a well-fed predator convinced he had cornered his prey and could now toy with it.
I walked slowly to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. Folded my hands on the tabletop and looked him straight in the eyes.
“So, everything we built over fifteen years—you just gave it all to another woman? Just handed it over?”
“This is business, Anya, you wouldn’t understand!” he started to boil, his face blotching red. “It’s an investment in my future! My peace of mind!”
His, not ours. He had erased me from the equation so easily.
“I understand,” I nodded. “I’m an accountant, remember? I understand investments. Especially high-risk ones.”
I looked at him, and I felt no pain, no hurt. Only cold, crystalline calculation.
He didn’t know I had been preparing my surprise for him for ten years. Since the day I first found a text on his phone: “Waiting for you, kitten.” I hadn’t thrown a scene then.
I just opened a new file on my work computer and named it “Reserve Fund.”
“You signed a deed of gift for your share of the charter capital?” I asked in a businesslike tone, as if we were talking about another quarterly bonus.
“What’s it to you?” he barked. “It’s over! Pack your things!”
“Just curious,” I smiled faintly. “Do you remember that extra clause we added to the charter back in 2012? When we expanded the business?
The one about transferring assets to third parties without notarized consent from all shareholders?”
Oleg froze. His smug smile began to slowly slide off his face. He didn’t remember. Of course, he didn’t.
He never bothered reading the papers I slipped him. “Anya, what’s in there, everything clean? Hand it here, I’ll sign.”
He signed everything, confident in my blind devotion and professional thoroughness. And he was right. I was thorough. Down to the last comma.
“What nonsense are you talking about?” he laughed nervously, but the laugh came out like a croak. “What clause? We never added anything like that.”
“We—meaning you and I. Co-founders of LLC Horizon. Fifty-fifty. Clause 7.4, subparagraph ‘b.’ Any transaction transferring a share, whether sale or gift, is void without written, notarized consent of the other shareholder.
That is, me. I insisted on that clause, remember? Said it would protect us both from a hostile takeover. You even laughed and called me paranoid.”
I spoke calmly, almost lazily, as if explaining multiplication tables to a first-grader. Each of my words fell into the sticky void of his incomprehension.
“You’re lying!” He pulled out his phone, fingers darting across the screen. “I’ll call Viktor right now!”
“Go ahead,” I shrugged. “Call Viktor Semenovich. He’s the one who notarized that version of the charter. He should have a copy in his archive. He’s a stickler, you know that. He keeps everything.”
Oleg’s face elongated. He realized I wasn’t bluffing. Viktor Semenovich had been our lawyer since the company’s founding. And his loyalty was not to Oleg, but to the law and the letter of the contract.
Oleg still dialed the number. I heard scraps of phrases: “Viktor, it’s Oleg… Anya says… 2012 charter… clause about transfer…”
He walked to the window, back to me. His shoulders tensed. I saw him gripping the phone so tightly the plastic creaked. The call was brief.
When he turned around, his face was a mix of rage and confusion.
“This… this is some kind of mistake! It’s illegal! I’ll sue you! Everything was registered to me; you never had a share.”
“Go ahead. Just note that your gift deed is legally just a scrap of paper. But the attempt to siphon off company assets by the CEO? That’s very real.
That qualifies as large-scale fraud.”
He collapsed into the chair opposite me. The predator’s generosity had evaporated. Now a cornered, panicked animal sat before me.
“What do you want, Anya?” he hissed. “Money? How much do you want? I’ll give you severance! A good severance!”
“I don’t need your severance, Oleg. I want what’s rightfully mine. My fifty percent. And I will get it. As for you… you’ll be left with what you came to me with fifteen years ago. One suitcase and a mountain of debt.”
“I won’t give you the company! I built it!”
“You were its face,” I corrected him. “I built it. Every invoice, every contract, every tax return. While you were off having fun at ‘business meetings.’”
He jumped up, knocking over the chair.
“You’ll regret this, Anya! Bitterly regret it! I’ll destroy you!”
“Before you destroy me, you should call your Katya,” my voice was quiet but steely.
“And ask if she’s received the notice of early loan repayment demand.”
Oleg froze.
“What loan? I bought her house! Paid cash!”
“No,” I shook my head and smiled my sweetest, most accountant-like smile. “You didn’t buy her a house. You convinced me that it would be beneficial for the company to acquire a property as an investment.
Company Horizon bought that house, then ‘sold’ it to your mistress. And she, in turn, signed a loan agreement with our company for the full amount.
Secured by that same house. I personally drafted the documents, Oleg. It was a perfect scheme to hide money from taxes. Your idea, remember? I just implemented it.
And yesterday, as the sole legitimate shareholder, I initiated foreclosure proceedings.
Your Katya has thirty days to pay the full amount. Otherwise, the house returns to the company’s books. Meaning, to my books.”
His face turned into a grotesque mask. He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.
Not quiet, compliant Anya, but someone utterly alien and dangerous. He snatched up the phone and, never taking his eyes off me, dialed.
“Katya? It’s me. Listen carefully… What do you mean ‘screw you’? What notice?”
I watched the show with interest. At first his voice was commanding, then confused, then pitiful. Someone was clearly yelling on the other end.
He retreated to the corner, babbling about “I’ll fix it,” “it’s a misunderstanding,” but no one was listening anymore. He threw the phone onto the couch so hard it bounced.
“You…” He turned to me, choking with rage. “You cold-blooded bitch!”
He took a step toward me. Another. Loomed over me, huge, red with fury.
“You think this is funny? You think I’ll let some gray mouse destroy my life?”
He grabbed my shoulders and shook me. Hard. My head snapped back.
“I’ll grind you into dust! I wasted fifteen years on you! The best years! I should have dumped you after that miscarriage! You couldn’t even give birth properly, you defective—”
And then. Click.
Whatever still smoldered inside me—maybe pity, maybe the ghost of old feelings—crumbled to dust.
A ringing void formed inside. I looked at his twisted face, his hands gripping my shoulders. And I felt nothing. No fear, no pain.
“Let me go, Oleg,” my voice sounded muffled, as if from the bottom of a well.
He recoiled as if burned. I slowly rubbed my shoulders and looked up at him.
“You’re right. I did calculate everything. But you can’t even imagine how far.”
I stood, walked to my desk in the corner of the living room, and pulled out a thin gray folder.
Not the one with the company documents. Another one. My personal one.
“You think our business is just LLC Horizon? You think I didn’t know about your ‘side’ contracts?
About the kickbacks you took in cash? About the shell company in Cyprus you laundered money through?”
He turned pale. So fast that his flushed face became corpse-gray.
“You’re talking nonsense. You have no proof.”
“Oh, I have everything,” I opened the folder. “Here are copies of the accounts. Here are recordings of our conversations, where you brag about how you ‘bent’ the tax office.
Here’s the breakdown of your offshore transfers, which you thought I didn’t know about.
I’ve kept double books all these years, Oleg. One—for you and the tax office. The other—for me. And for some very interested authorities.”
I pulled a flash drive from the folder and placed it on the table.
“The full archive with all documents, recordings, and schemes was sent via secure channel to the Economic Crimes Unit an hour ago. Anonymously.
I was just waiting for the right moment to tell you. You created it yourself.”
He stared at the folder, the flash drive, me. His lips moved soundlessly. He wanted to say something but couldn’t.
“So you don’t need to worry about Katya’s house. Or about the company. You won’t need any of that soon. And yes, don’t bother packing. I’m afraid all you’ll need for the foreseeable future is a prison uniform.”
The doorbell rang. Short, insistent. Not the way friends or neighbors ring. The way people ring when they don’t need permission to enter.
Oleg flinched as if struck. He looked at the door, then at me. His eyes held no more rage. Only primal, animal terror. He understood everything.
I silently walked over and opened the door. Two men in plain clothes stood on the threshold.
“Good evening. Popov Oleg Igorevich? We need you to come with us to give testimony. We’ve received some information.”
Oleg didn’t try to run. He didn’t scream. He just stood in the middle of the room, slumped, suddenly aged twenty years.
All his fake bravado, his predator’s confidence drained away, leaving only an empty, sagging shell.
They didn’t handcuff him. They simply, politely but firmly, led him to the door. As they walked him past me, he stopped and looked me in the eyes. He was searching for an answer to the one question: “Why?”
And I looked at him and saw not a husband, but a stranger who once decided he had the right to trample my life. And I simply hadn’t let him.
The door closed behind them. I was alone in our huge house, now mine alone.
I didn’t feel triumph or joy. Only immense, all-consuming relief. As if I had been carrying an unbearable weight and finally set it down.
Six months later.
I sat in his former office, now mine. New contracts lay on the desk in front of me.
After the high-profile financial fraud case, LLC Horizon went through bankruptcy. But long before that, as the key witness who helped expose the scheme, I managed to transfer my share and the most valuable assets into a new, crystal-clear company.
It was now Perspective Holding. My company.
Oleg got eight years. He made a plea deal, gave up all his accomplices, hoping for leniency.
Katya vanished as soon as the house was repossessed for debts. She didn’t even try to fight.
I didn’t seek a new life. I simply reclaimed my own. The one I had built brick by brick, number by number, line by line in a report.
He thought I was just the support staff in his one-man show. But I turned out to be the director, the screenwriter, and the main audience.
I looked out the window. The city lived its life, rushed, buzzed. And I was part of it. Not a shadow, not an appendage to someone, but an independent force. And I liked this new math.
Another three years passed.
One morning, sorting through the mail, I found a thin envelope with an unfamiliar return address.
The handwriting was crooked, hesitant. I opened it without much interest.
It was a letter from Oleg. He wrote from the penal colony.
He didn’t ask for forgiveness. He didn’t threaten. He simply reflected. About how he works in the sewing shop, how he’s learned to appreciate simple food, and how much he’s thought.
“You were always smarter, Anya,” he wrote. “And I was too arrogant to notice. I thought strength was in audacity and risk, but it turned out to be in patience and precise calculation. You just waited.
Like a good accountant waits for the reporting period to close to reconcile the balance. You reconciled it. I still can’t figure out when exactly I became a line in your ‘losses’ column.”
I finished the letter and set it aside. I felt no gloating, no pity. Nothing.
It was a voice from the past that no longer had any power over me. He was just a line in the accounting book of my life. A line in the “written-off assets” column.
I walked to the window. My Perspective had grown into a major holding. I’d opened two branches in other cities.
I worked hard, but for the first time in my life, that work brought me not only money but satisfaction. I was no longer the “gray mouse,” the “accountant wife.”
I picked up my car keys from the desk.
Today, for the first time in many years, I decided to leave work early. Simply because I could. Because my balance reconciled. And in the “profit” column stood an entire life. My life.