Lena remembered the day Igor came home with a broad smile and a bottle of champagne in his hands. It was four years ago, when they still laughed together in the kitchen, when he still kissed her in the mornings before work, when she still believed they were a couple and not a master and a maid.
“Lenka, you won’t believe it!” He had spun her around the living room then, and she laughed, pressing against his shoulder. “They made me head of the department! Can you imagine? Head of the department! Salary, plus a percentage of the department’s revenue! That’s three times what I was making before!”
She was happy for him. Igor had worked toward it for so long—late nights, courses, trainings. He had earned that promotion. And back then it seemed to her their life would only get better.
For the first few months, that’s how it was. Igor glowed with happiness, bought her gifts, took her to expensive restaurants. They planned a vacation in Italy, talked about children, about a bigger apartment. Lena was moving up too—at the ad agency where she worked, her projects were winning awards, and clients were asking for her by name.
But gradually something began to change. Igor stayed at work later and later, showed less and less interest in her affairs. And then, about six months after the promotion, he suddenly said:
“Len, why do you need that job? Think about it—I make good money now, I can support the family. You could take care of the house, yourself… I feel awkward when colleagues ask what my wife does and I have to say she does some advertising somewhere.”
“What do you mean, ‘some advertising somewhere’?” Lena didn’t even understand at first whether he was joking. “Igor, I’m a lead specialist! I have a team of twelve, my projects…”
“So what?” he shrugged. “We have money now. Why do you need the nerves, the stress? At home you’ll be a queen, not some… ‘creative.’”
Lena thought he was just tired, that it would pass. But Igor kept insisting. He said real wives of successful men don’t work, that her career was child’s play compared to his responsibility.
“I’m the one supporting the family!” he repeated. “And you? You play with your pictures and slogans?”
Lena resisted for months. But Igor grew more persistent, and their relationship colder. In the end, she gave in. She submitted her resignation, said goodbye to her team and to the projects that felt like her children.
“See how nice this is,” Igor said when she met him at home with a cooked dinner for the first time. “Now you’re a real wife.”
But “real wife” turned out to be a bitter title. Igor increasingly treated her like staff. He didn’t ask—he ordered. He didn’t thank her for dinner—it was taken for granted. When colleagues or friends came over, he didn’t ask whether Lena wanted to cook—he simply presented her with a fait accompli.
“Sergei and Max are coming tomorrow. Make something with meat. And buy a cake, a good one.”
And Lena nodded obediently, because she loved him. Because she believed it was temporary, that he would change, that things would get better.
But everything changed in the opposite direction.
Igor came home that evening black as thunder. His face was gray, his hands trembled. He sat on the couch and was silent for a long time.
“What happened?” Lena asked.
“Fired,” he said quietly. “They just up and fired me.”
“How—fired? For what?”
“They say I took kickbacks. That I negotiated discounts with clients for a cut. Total nonsense!” Igor slammed his fist on the table. “Vitalik set it up! That bastard I beat out for the appointment. He fed them lies about me and they didn’t even look into it. They just threw me out!”
Lena hugged him, stroked his head. She told him everything would be all right, that he’d find a new job, that he had experience, connections…
But months passed, and there was no job. No one would take Igor anywhere. Rumors about his dishonesty spread through the industry fast, and his résumé went straight to the trash as soon as HR saw his name.
Lena had to look for work. But after a two-year break it turned out to be almost impossible. In the end she got hired as a junior creative at a small agency—in the position she’d held eight years earlier. The salary was a quarter of what she used to earn.
Meanwhile, Igor turned into someone else. He drank. At first in the evenings, then during the day. He yelled at Lena over any little thing. He blamed her for not making enough money, for cooking badly, for the apartment being dirty.
“I supported you! I gave you everything! And where’s your gratitude now?!” he shouted. “You can’t even properly provide for the family!”
Lena worked twelve hours a day, tried to rebuild her connections, make up for lost time. At home she found dirty dishes, an empty fridge, and a drunk husband with complaints.
Worst of all, Igor wasn’t looking for work. He sat online all day, dreaming up plans to take revenge on Vitalik. He read forums discussing their former company, filed anonymous complaints with the tax authorities, tried to dig up dirt.
“I’ll destroy him,” he muttered, staring at the laptop screen. “I’ll show everyone who he really is.”
“Igor,” Lena said carefully, “maybe it’s better to focus on the job search? I know a few companies where…”
“Shut up!” he barked. “You don’t understand anything! First I’ll deal with that scum, and then…”
“Then” never came.
Lena cried at night in the bathroom so he wouldn’t hear. She cried from exhaustion, from humiliation, from the fact that the man she loved had turned spiteful, unjust, and alien.
But she endured it. She thought it was temporary. That he would get through the crisis and become himself again.
And then that day came.
Lena was at the office, finishing a concept for a major client. The deadline was tomorrow morning, and the designer’s materials had arrived only an hour earlier. She understood she’d have to stay late.
At seven in the evening, the phone rang.
“Hello,” Igor said, annoyed. “I expect you home by eight. Oleg and Andrei are coming. You’ll cook meat and buy beer. Clear?”
“Igor, I have a deadline, I can’t…”
“What?” His voice went dangerously quiet.
“I have an important project due tomorrow morning. I won’t make it home by eight.”
“I don’t give a damn about your project! You must be home!”
And he hung up.
Lena sat staring at the dead phone. The office was quiet—everyone had gone home. Only she was hunched over layouts, trying to finish the work that could bring the agency a big contract.
At half past eight, the phone rang again.
“Where the hell are you? I told you I have guests tonight!” Igor raged into the phone.
Lena was silent. She listened to his shouting, insults, accusations. Listened as he called her selfish, said she didn’t respect him, that she was a bad wife.
Then she simply hung up.
She got up from the computer, gathered her things, and went home.
The apartment door was open—the guests were smoking on the balcony. Igor was pacing the living room, waving his arms and explaining something to his friends. Seeing Lena, he rushed at her:
“Where have you been?! We’ve been waiting for two hours! Oleg and Andrei came and there’s nothing to eat!”
Lena walked past him into the bedroom. She took a large bag from the closet and began putting his things into it. Shirts, jeans, socks, underwear.
“What are you doing?” Igor stood in the doorway, watching.
Lena said nothing. Methodically, she packed his clothes, his books, his shaving kit.
“Lena, what are you doing?!” he repeated, louder.
She didn’t answer. She zipped the bag, lifted it, and carried it to the front door. Igor followed her, saying something, but she wasn’t listening.
She opened the door and set the bag on the landing. Then she went back for the next load.
“Lena, are you out of your mind?!” Igor yelled. “What are you doing?!”
The guests on the balcony fell silent, peeking into the room with a mix of curiosity and embarrassment.
“Guys,” Lena said calmly, “I’m sorry, but the evening is over. Please leave.”
Oleg and Andrei hurriedly grabbed their jackets and slipped out the door, mumbling about “bad timing” and “we’ll be in touch.”
And Lena kept carrying out Igor’s things. His shoes, his briefcase, his favorite mug with the logo of his former company.
“Lena!” Igor grabbed her by the arm. “What’s wrong with you? At least explain!”
She shook off his hand and took out the last of his things. One of the bags fell, some clothes spilled out, and then the laptop ended up perilously close to the edge of the step. Igor lunged for the bags, started picking them up, yelling that she was crazy, that you can’t do this, that this was his home too.
“Tomorrow I’m filing for divorce,” Lena said quietly, standing in the doorway.
“What?!”
“Tomorrow morning I’m going to a lawyer. I’m filing for divorce.”
“Lena, you can’t… We’re a family! I love you! I’m just going through a rough patch…”
“The rough patch has been going on for two years,” she said. “And I’m not going to be part of it anymore.”
“But where am I supposed to go? I have no money, no job…”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Lena, wait! We can talk it out, I’ll change, I’ll find a job…”
“Goodbye, Igor.”
She closed the door and leaned her back against it. For a long time she could still hear his shouting, pleas, threats on the other side. Then the sounds faded.
Lena went to the bathroom, turned on the water, and for the first time in two years cried not from grief, but from relief.
The next morning she really did file for divorce. And a week later, the concept she had finished that night brought the agency the biggest contract in the company’s history. Her boss offered her the position of art director.
For several more months Igor tried to come back. He called, texted, lurked outside her office. He promised to change, to find a job, to be the man he once was.
But Lena remembered that evening. She remembered his voice on the phone: “Where the hell are you?” She remembered the years of humiliation, coercion, disrespect.
And she realized that the old Igor was gone. Maybe he had never existed at all. Maybe he had just been hiding behind a mask that slipped when money and power appeared.
A year after the divorce, Lena bought a small apartment in the city center. She got a promotion. She met a man who asked her opinion, took interest in her work, and never raised his voice at her.
Igor still hadn’t found a job. The last she heard from mutual acquaintances was that he was working as a courier at a small firm and still plotting revenge on his former colleague.
Lena no longer cried at night. And she didn’t regret that evening when, for the first time in years, she put her own life above his whims.
Sometimes, walking past their old building, she remembered the Igor she had once loved. And she felt sad not about the marriage she’d lost, but about how a person can change. How money and power can turn a loving husband into a tyrant, and the loss of them—into a bitter failure.
But she was no longer willing to sacrifice herself for someone else’s ambitions and hang-ups. She had learned to value herself. And that was the most important lesson of the whole story.
Lena walked through the evening city to her new home, where a warm dinner, a good book, and silence awaited her. Where no one yelled, demanded, or humiliated.
Where she was finally free.