SMS from the bank arrived at 7:15 a.m. “Debit transaction in the amount of…” I swiped the notification away without opening it.
Dima often transferred money for building materials for the dacha. I was used to it.
The second came a minute later. The third—while I was filling the kettle. The phone vibrated without stopping, insistently, like a fire bell. Irritation gave way to anxiety.
I opened the banking app, and the familiar world collapsed. The joint account we used to pay for the apartment, the car, for life—empty.
Zero. Completely. The savings account—the one “for old age,” “for the kids’ weddings”—was zeroed out too. Down to the last kopeck. The money we’d been saving for a quarter of a century.
I walked into the bedroom on rubbery legs. The bed was made with military precision, just the way Dima liked it.
His half of the wardrobe gaped emptily. Inside hung only my dresses, lonely and bewildered. No suits, no silly graphic T-shirts. He’d taken everything.
There was a white envelope on the pillow. Not sealed.
“Anya, forgive me. I’m tired. I want to live for myself while it’s not too late. I’ve met someone else, and it’s serious. Don’t look for me, don’t call. You’ve got enough for the time being. You’re a smart girl—you’ll figure something out.”
“For the time being.” I looked at my payroll account. There was about a hundred thousand.
That, in his opinion, was supposed to be enough. After twenty-five years of marriage.
I didn’t cry. The tears stuck somewhere in my throat like an icy lump. I slowly walked around the apartment the way a forensic investigator examines a crime scene. There was his armchair.
There the shelf with his books about “success.” There the photo on the wall—us with our grown children, smiling. Fake. All of it had been fake.
He had planned it all. He left on a Thursday, knowing that on Fridays I always go to the dacha. He had a three-day head start. Three days to pack up his life and scrub out ours.
I sat down at the table and picked up my old laptop. I opened a very different tab, the one only I knew the password to.
Twenty years ago, after Kirill was born, I received a small inheritance from my grandmother. Dima waved it off at the time: “Spend it on yourself, on dresses.” And I did spend it. Only not on dresses.
I opened a brokerage account. It became my secret. My second life. All these years I kept double books. Small sums from tutoring—which my husband thought I did “for the soul”—money saved on groceries: it all went there.
Correspondence from the broker went to a P.O. box, and for online access I had a separate email no one knew.
Once a year I filed a separate tax return as self-employed. Dima just chuckled.
“Anya, what kind of businesswoman are you,” he’d say. “Your business is the home, the coziness. I’ll earn the money.”
And he did. Not badly, but always tight. And I kept quiet. Silently bought shares, read analysis at night, reinvested dividends.
My portfolio loaded on the screen. The numbers glowed a calm, confident green. I looked at a seven-figure number in dollars and at my husband’s pathetic note.
He thought that by taking everything he had destroyed me. But he’d overlooked one thing. He simply didn’t know that all these years I had been building my own ark. And now, when his flood crashed down on me, I realized I was standing on the deck of an ocean liner.
I smirked. For the first time that morning.
First, I called the kids. Kirill and Olya popped up on the video chat—smiling, unsuspecting.
“Hi, Mom! Where’s Dad? Run off to his fishing again?” my son asked cheerfully.
I took a breath. In an even, calm voice I told them everything. About the empty accounts. The empty closet. The note.
The smile slid off Kirill’s face. Olya covered her mouth with her hand.
“He… took everything?” my son repeated, and there was steel in his voice. “Mom, do you have money? I’ll come right now.”
“I’m fine, sweetheart. There’s money, don’t worry. I just… wanted you to hear it from me.”
“Did he… say anything? Call?” Olya’s voice trembled. “Maybe it’s a mistake?”
I shook my head. There was no mistake. There was a precise, cold calculation.
After the call I ordered the locks changed. Then I called the bank and blocked all third-party access. Toward evening, Dima’s number flashed on my phone. I let it ring almost to the end, then answered.
“Yes.”
“Hi,” his voice was chipper, even cheerful. “So, how are you? Not panicking?”
I was silent.
“Anya, what’s with you? I’m being reasonable here. Listen, to the point. The car is registered to you. I need you to come by tomorrow and sign a deed of gift. I’ll send the address.”
“I’m not coming.”
A pause hung in the line.
“What do you mean? Anya, don’t start. I need the car.”
“It’s marital property, Dima. Bought during the marriage.”
He laughed. Nasty.
“Now you remember the marriage? Don’t make this hard. Just sign the papers.”
“I won’t sign anything until I talk to a lawyer.”
That was a punch to the gut. Me—quiet, homey Anya—saying the word “lawyer.”
“What lawyer now? Are you out of your mind? Anya, I took what I earned! I left you the apartment! Be grateful and don’t do anything stupid.”
“The apartment that has my parents’ money in it.”
“Enough!” he barked. “Tomorrow at ten I’ll be waiting. If you don’t come—blame yourself. You know me.”
And he hung up. He was sure I’d be frightened. Break. But that Anya died this morning. I opened my laptop and typed: “Best divorce lawyer.”
The lawyer, Marina Sergeyevna, was a woman with a sharp gaze and a steel haircut. She listened, looked through the statements.
“The situation is lousy, Anna,” she said. “Proving deliberate siphoning of funds is hard. The case could drag on for years. We’ll file to freeze his assets, but if he’s already transferred everything to his new flame…”
“What do you suggest?”
“To start—with a divorce filing and division of property. The car, the dacha. We’ll fight over the money. The main thing now is no sudden moves. He’ll try to provoke you. Wait.”
In the evening my son called.
“Mom, Dad called. He said you’ve gone crazy, hired a lawyer to strip him bare. Said you’ve always been a spendthrift and he saved. He asked us to ‘talk some sense into our mother.’”
There it was, his style. Hit the sorest spot. Use the children.
“And Olya?”
“She told him to get lost. I tried to talk… I told him he was wrong. You know what he said? ‘You’ll crawl back to me when your mother leaves you without your pants.’”
There it was. The point of no return. He tried to trample the only thing I had left. My children. Their faith in me.
Enough. No more defense. Only attack.
I opened my laptop again. Logged into my brokerage account. My quiet life, my secret. Now it would become my weapon.
I sold a small part of my shares. The amount that hit my account was comparable to Dima’s annual income.
Then I found the contacts of the best private detective.
“Good afternoon. I need all the information on a person. Dmitry Volkov. And on his… companion. Kristina.
Everything you can find. Accounts, real estate, business projects, debts. Especially debts. I’ll pay whatever it takes.”
The game by his rules was over. The game by mine was beginning.
A week later the first part of the report lay on my desk. The detective confirmed: all the money had gone into Kristina’s beauty salon.
An unprofitable salon. Dima, buoyed by the dream of “his own business,” had put everything into it and even talked Kristina into taking out a loan secured by her apartment.
The detective dug deeper and found old, unpaid debts Dima owed former partners.
I handed the folder to Marina Sergeyevna. She flipped through the documents, and a predatory smile touched her lips.
“Well then, Anna. Looks like the game is turning. We’ve got leverage.”
Our plan was simple and elegant. It took almost a month. Through a financial consultant Marina hired, we reached Dima’s old creditors. They were angry, cheated people.
We offered to buy his debt. All of it, with interest. Hardly believing their luck, they agreed.
Now Dima no longer owed them. He owed an anonymous investment fund. That is, me.
At the same time, Marina’s lawyers, through an intermediary firm, began buying up the beauty salon’s debts—to suppliers, to the landlord. Step by step we tightened the ring around his new life.
He rushed over a month later. He didn’t call—he barreled in. Angry, looking ten years older.
“What’s going on, Anya?” he hissed from the doorway. “Why are collection agencies calling me?”
I walked into the kitchen without a word.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is your new life, Dima.”
“Don’t play dumb! This is all you! Where did you get that kind of money?”
I laughed.
“The only thief here is you, Dima. And I… I just invested for twenty years. In stocks.”
I turned the laptop screen toward him. He stared at the numbers, and his face slowly turned ashen. He understood.
“That’s… that’s impossible…”
“Possible. While you were telling me my place was in the kitchen, I was earning. More than you could imagine.
And now all your debts—and your darling’s debts—are mine. Your whole pretty life is mine. And I can switch it off.” I snapped my fingers.
He collapsed into a chair. Animal fear in his eyes.
“Anya… Anechka… forgive me. I was an idiot. I’ll leave her right now! We’re a family…”
At that moment the front door opened. The kids came in.
“Dad?” Kirill looked at him not with hatred, but with cold contempt. “What are you doing here?”
“Son… Olya… Talk to your mother! She… she wants to destroy us!”
Olya came over and stood behind my shoulder.
“You destroyed us, Dad. The day you robbed Mom and ran. Leave. We don’t talk to you anymore.”
Dima shifted his gaze from one cold face to the other. He was a stranger. He stood up, swaying, and shuffled toward the exit. In the doorway he turned.
“Anya… I love you…”
I only smirked in reply.
A year later.
I sat on the terrace of my new house overlooking a pine forest. A tablet with stock charts lay on my knees. It was no longer a secret. It had become my work.
I didn’t bankrupt the salon. I simply sold its debts to a specialist agency, which quickly put the place up for auction.
Kristina’s apartment was taken by the bank. What became of them afterward, I wasn’t interested. I crossed him out of my life like a bad investment.
I sold the car, and with the proceeds I bought Olya a trip to Italy. My son Kirill, with my help, opened a small IT company. We became closer than ever.
Sometimes I thought about Dima. Not with anger—no. With cold curiosity. He was sure that strength lies in money you can take.
He didn’t understand that real strength lies in the ability to create it. In knowledge, in discipline, in patience. In what can’t be stolen.
My divorce wasn’t a story about revenge. It became a story about liberation. Not from my husband.
From that quiet, accommodating Anya I’d been for twenty-five years. The one who hid her mind behind the role of “keeper of the hearth.”
The phone on the table vibrated. It was Olya. Her smiling face with the Colosseum behind her filled the screen.
“Hi, Mom! It’s so wonderful here! Thank you!”
“I’m happy for you, darling.”
We chatted for a few minutes. And when I hung up, I looked at the forest and realized that for the first time in many years I was truly happy.
Not because I had a lot of money. But because I had finally become myself.