“Nastya, come in,” Igor Petrovich’s voice sounded routine, almost lazy.
But Anastasia, who had learned to distinguish dozens of shades of his mood over twenty years at the company, understood at once—this wasn’t good.
She stepped into his glass “aquarium,” feeling a dozen and a half people behind her freeze and prick up their ears. Every keyboard click in the open space suddenly stopped.
Igor Petrovich didn’t offer her a seat. He ostentatiously studied the city panorama, as if deciding which high-rise to buy next.
“The company, Nastya, is entering a new stage of development. A restructuring is coming. Process optimization, rejuvenation of the workforce, synergy… you know, all those trendy words.”
He said it as if reciting a speech memorized at a business training. Anastasia kept quiet.
She had joined the firm when it huddled in two rooms of a semi-basement. She remembered how its founder, old Semyonych, drew diagrams of future success on napkins—and she believed him.
“My department has exceeded the plan by forty percent for the second year in a row,” her voice came out even, without a trace of agitation. “What kind of optimization do we need, Igor Petrovich?”
He finally turned. In his eyes sloshed a mix of fatigue and poorly concealed irritation.
“Numbers aren’t everything. Your methods are outdated. You cling to old clients, you’re afraid to take risks.
“You don’t let the young ones spread their wings; you stifle their initiative with your ‘experience.’ You’ve become deadweight for the company, Nastya.”
The word cut like a scalpel. Not “valuable employee,” not “mentor.” Deadweight. Useless ballast.
“I see,” was all she could manage, feeling an icy lump rise to her throat. “What are the terms?”
“Everything per the law. A resignation at your own request, two months’ salary as severance. I’ve prepared everything so you won’t be inconvenienced.”
He held out a sheet of paper. She took it and, through the thin veil of shock, saw beyond the glass Sveta, her deputy.
The girl Anastasia had hired three years earlier as an inexperienced intern and taught everything was now quickly typing something on her phone and wearing the faintest of smiles. In that second Anastasia understood everything.
She signed in silence. In silence she walked to her desk under sympathetic, cowardly—and a few gloating—glances.
Packing twenty years of life into a cardboard box took ten minutes. A photo of her college-age son, a funny mug colleagues had given her for an anniversary, a stack of work notebooks.
No one came over. No one said a word. They were afraid.
Already in the elevator, as the steel doors cut her off from the past, she dialed her husband.
“Seryozha, that’s it. He said it. Word for word.”
A heavy pause hung on the line for a moment.
“Then they’ve signed their own sentence. The lawyers are just wrapping up due diligence on the acquisition target. Now we have every reason.”
Anastasia pressed the button for the first floor. There were no tears or resentment inside. Instead, a strange, cold calm was spreading.
The calm of a surgeon before a complex operation.
The following month, Anastasia did not rest.
She spent days and nights with her husband’s team of analysts and lawyers. Turned out, Sergey’s investment fund had been negotiating for six months to buy a controlling stake in her company.
The firm was promising, but its leadership was weak and ineffective. Igor Petrovich was one of the main problems.
He slowed development, bloated budgets, and surrounded himself with talentless yes-men.
Firing Anastasia, their best manager, was the last straw for Sergey.
It wasn’t just stupidity—it was sabotage. He accelerated the deal, using insider information Anastasia provided about the departments’ actual state of affairs to drive down the price.
Meanwhile, a managed chaos began inside the company. Having seized power, Sveta’s first demand was a new coffee machine for herself and to repaint the walls in a “more creative” color.
She canceled all the planning meetings, replacing them with “brainstorms” in a messenger—endless, pointless spam.
The two oldest and most profitable clients, whom Anastasia personally handled, after their very first conversation with Sveta requested a meeting with top management to discuss terminating their contracts.
Igor Petrovich panicked. He called Anastasia, but she didn’t answer. He could see the ship was sinking, but he couldn’t grasp who had holed the hull.
The denouement came on Monday. All employees received a brief email: “At 15:00 an urgent all-hands meeting in the main conference room. Attendance strictly mandatory. New board of directors.”
The conference room crackled with tension. Igor Petrovich sat at the head of the table, trying to project control.
At exactly three, the door opened. Anastasia walked in.
She had changed over that month. She wore a perfectly tailored pantsuit the color of a stormy sky.
A calm, appraising gaze. Behind her came her husband Sergey and two unfamiliar men in expensive suits.
“Nastya? What are you doing here?” Igor Petrovich forced out, red blotches blooming across his face.
Without deigning to answer him, Anastasia went to the table and took the chair at the head, which he hurried to vacate.
“Working, Igor Petrovich. Unlike some,” her voice was quiet, but in the electric air of the room, everyone heard it.
“Allow me to introduce myself. Anastasia Vladimirovna Orlova. Acting CEO and Chair of the Board.”
She paused, letting her eyes sweep over the frozen faces.
“As you know, our company has been acquired by the Horizon investment fund.
“My husband,” she nodded toward Sergey, “heads this fund. And I, as the principal shareholder, have returned to set things in order here. And we’ll have to start by getting rid of… ballast.”
Her gaze locked onto Igor Petrovich.
“Anastasia Vladimirovna… This is some misunderstanding!” he fawned. “I’ve always valued you! The dismissal—it was a demand… from above!”
Anastasia gave a cool smile and opened the folder before her.
“From above? Igor Petrovich, at least don’t lie now. The previous owner had no idea until the last moment that you were going to fire me.
“It was your personal initiative.
“You were afraid that next to my department’s results your incompetence would become too obvious to the new investors. You decided to sacrifice me to save your own skin.”
She took a printout from the folder.
“And here is the report on your protégé’s performance,” she looked at the deathly pale Svetlana. “In three weeks, losses in your department amounted to ninety-seven million.
“You lost clients this company had cultivated for ten years. You are the ‘fresh blood’ that gave the company sepsis.”
“I… I didn’t know… I tried!” Sveta whimpered.
“No, you didn’t try. You performed activity. You thought a title gave you the right to bully the secretary and pick wall colors.
“But a title is responsibility. And you don’t even know what that word means.”
Anastasia stood.
“Igor Petrovich, you’re fired. For ‘causing major financial damage.’
“Our legal department will consider initiating proceedings against you. Svetlana, you are fired for total professional unfitness.
“Security will see you out. You each have five minutes to collect your personal belongings.”
The two suited men politely but firmly took the stunned ex-managers by the elbows.
When the door closed behind them, Anastasia once again surveyed the hushed staff.
“Now let’s talk about you. I’m not going to stage a witch-hunt. Though I remember perfectly well who behaved how a month ago.
“As of today, the rules change. We work for results. Intrigue, gossip, brown-nosing—all that stays in the past. If you don’t agree, put your resignation on my desk.
“The rest—get to work. I expect all department heads in my office in an hour. With concrete turnaround proposals.”
She looked at their frightened yet timidly hopeful faces. And for the first time in many years, she felt she was doing everything right.
Epilogue. A year later.
Horizon Media, as it was now called, became the market leader.
Anastasia proved to be a tough but fair leader. She won back old clients and brought in new ones.
She instituted a system in which every employee’s pay depended directly on their real contribution to the common cause—not on how well they could please the boss.
She never saw Igor Petrovich again. Rumor had it he fought a long legal battle, lost, and now scraped by on small consulting gigs, having shed all his polish.
Svetlana, after unsuccessful attempts to find a job, married well and now posts on social media photos with captions like “the most important thing in life is to be your man’s muse.”
One day a young designer, Lena—the very one who, on the day of Anastasia’s firing, was the only person to approach her desk and silently lay down a chocolate bar—knocked on Anastasia’s door.
“Anastasia Vladimirovna, I’ve put together a project…” she said shyly, handing over a folder.
Anastasia studied the sketches carefully. They were fresh, bold, and very talented.
“Excellent, Lena. Develop it. I’m giving you a budget and two people to help. You’ll lead the working group.”
The girl stared at her, stunned.
“But… I’m just a designer…”
“I don’t see a title. I see potential. And I’m ready to invest in it. We don’t have ‘ballast’ in this company anymore.
“There are only those who want to work—and those who will soon have to look for another place.”
That evening, sitting with her husband on the terrace of their country house, Anastasia watched the sunset.
“You’ve become someone else entirely,” Sergey said, putting his arm around her. “Iron.”
“No,” she smiled. “I’ve simply become myself. The one I always was, but was afraid to show.”
It turned out that to make the ship sail faster, it wasn’t the ballast that had to be thrown overboard—you just needed to change the captain.