The text message 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. It was routine.
The second came a minute later. The third—while I was pouring water into the kettle. The phone started vibrating nonstop, insistent, like an alarm bell. Irritation gave way to anxiety.
I opened the banking app, and my familiar world collapsed. The joint account we used to pay for the apartment, the car, life—was 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 saved for a quarter of a century.
I walked into the bedroom on legs like cotton. The bed was made with military precision, the way Dima liked.
His half of the closet yawned empty. Inside hung only my dresses, lonely and bewildered. No suits, no goofy graphic T-shirts. He’d taken everything.
A white envelope lay on the pillow. Unsealed.
“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’ll have enough for the first little while. You’re a smart girl, you’ll figure something out.”
“For the first little while.” I looked at my payroll account. There were 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 a lump of ice. I slowly walked through the apartment like a crime scene investigator. There was his armchair.
There the shelf with his books about “success.” There the photo on the wall—us with our grown children, smiling. A fake. All of it was fake.
He’d planned it all out. Left on Thursday, knowing that on Friday I always go to the dacha. He had a three-day head start. Three days to pack up his life and clean out ours.
I sat down at the table and took my old laptop. I opened a completely 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 brushed it off then: “Spend it on yourself, on dresses.” And I did spend it. Just not on dresses.
I opened a brokerage account. It became my secret. My second life. All these years I kept double books. Small amounts from tutoring—which my husband thought I did “for fun”—the money I saved on groceries—it all went there.
The broker’s correspondence went to a P.O. box, and for online access I used a separate email no one knew about.
Once a year I filed a separate tax return as self-employed. Dima only chuckled.
“Anya, you’re no businesswoman,” he’d say. “Your job is the house, the coziness. I’ll earn the money.”
And he did earn money. Not badly, but always just enough. And I kept quiet. Silently bought stocks, read analysis at night, reinvested dividends.
My portfolio loaded on the screen. The numbers glowed a calm, confident green. I looked at the seven-figure number in dollars and at my husband’s pitiful note.
He thought that by taking everything he had destroyed me. But he failed to account for 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.
The first thing I did was call the children. Kirill and Olya appeared on the video call screen—smiling, suspecting nothing.
“Hi, Mom! Where’s Dad? Run off to his fishing again?” my son asked cheerfully.
I took a breath. And in an even, calm voice 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 steel crept into his voice. “Mom, do you have money? I’ll come over right now.”
“I’m fine, sweetheart. I have money, don’t worry. I just… wanted you to know. From me.”
“Did he… say anything? Call?” Olya’s voice trembled. “Maybe it’s a mistake?”
I shook my head. It wasn’t a mistake. It was precise, cold calculation.
After the call I ordered the locks changed. Then I called the bank and blocked all third-party access. Dima’s number rang in the evening. I let it ring almost to the end, then answered.
“Yes.”
“Hi,” his voice was chipper, even cheerful. “How are you? Not panicking, are you?”
I was silent.
“Anya, what’s with you? I’m being nice. Listen, to business. 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 won’t come.”
There was a pause on the line.
“What do you mean? Anya, don’t start. I need the car.”
“It’s our joint car, Dima. Bought during the marriage.”
He laughed. Cruelly.
“Now you remember the marriage? Don’t make it complicated. Just sign the papers.”
“I won’t sign anything until I talk to a lawyer.”
It was a punch to the gut. Me—the quiet, domestic Anya—and the word “lawyer.”
“What lawyer? 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 my parents’ money went into.”
“Enough!” he barked. “I’ll be waiting at ten tomorrow. If you don’t come—blame yourself. You know me.”
And he hung up. He was sure I’d be scared. 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 keen gaze and a steel haircut. She listened to me and looked through the statements.
“It’s a rotten situation, Anna,” she said. “It’s hard to prove deliberate asset stripping. The court could drag on for years. We’ll file to freeze his assets, but if he’s already moved everything to his new flame…”
“What do you propose?”
“To start—file for divorce and division of property. The car, the dacha. We’ll fight over the money. The main thing now is not to make any sudden moves. He’ll try to provoke you. Wait.”
In the evening my son called.
“Mom, Dad called. He said you’ve lost your mind, hired a lawyer to ruin him. Said you’d always been a spendthrift and he was the one who saved. Asked us to ‘influence Mother.’”
There it was—his style. Hit where it hurts most. Use the children.
“And Olya?”
“She told him to get lost. I tried talking… Said he was wrong. You know what he answered? ‘You’ll come crawling back to me when your mother leaves you without a shirt on your back.’”
There it was. The point of no return. He tried to trample the only thing I had left. My children. Their faith in me.
That’s it. Enough. No more defense. Only offense.
I opened the laptop again. Logged into my brokerage account. My quiet life, my secret. Now it would become my weapon.
I sold a small portion of the 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 everything on a person. Dmitry Volkov. And on his… companion. Kristina.”
“Everything you can find. Accounts, property, business projects, debts. Especially debts. I’ll pay any money.”
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 went into Kristina’s beauty salon.
An unprofitable salon. Dima, elated by the dream of “his own business,” invested everything there 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 leafed through the documents, and a predatory smile touched her lips.
“Well then, Anna. It seems the game is turning. We have 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 people he had deceived.
We offered to buy his debt. All of it, with interest. Disbelieving their luck, they agreed.
Now Dima didn’t owe them. He owed an anonymous investment fund. That is, me.
At the same time, Marina’s lawyers, through a shell company, started buying up the salon’s debts. To suppliers, to the landlord. Step by step we closed a ring around his new life.
He came rushing a month later. Didn’t call—rushed over. Angry, aged by ten years.
“What’s going on, Anya?” he hissed from the doorway. “Why are collection agencies calling me?”
I silently walked into the kitchen.
“I don’t know what you mean. 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.
“This… this is impossible…”
“It’s 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—mine. And I can switch it off.” I snapped my fingers.
He collapsed into a chair. There was 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 children had come.
“Father?” Kirill looked at him without hatred, 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. Go. We’re not speaking to you anymore.”
Dima shifted his gaze from one cold face to the other. He was a stranger. He stood up, swaying, and staggered toward the door. In the doorway he turned back.
“Anya… but I love you…”
I only smirked in reply.
A year later.
I sat on the terrace of my new house overlooking a pine forest. On my lap—a tablet with stock charts. It was no longer a secret. It had become my work.
I didn’t bankrupt the salon myself. I simply sold its debts to a specialized agency, which quickly put the establishment up for auction.
The bank took Kristina’s apartment. What became of them after that, I didn’t care. I crossed him out of my life like a bad investment.
I sold the car and with the proceeds 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 away.
He didn’t understand that real strength lies in the ability to create it. In knowledge, discipline, patience. In what can’t be stolen.
My divorce wasn’t a story of revenge. It became a story of liberation. Not from my husband.
From that quiet, accommodating Anya I had 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 appeared on the screen against the backdrop of the Colosseum.
“Hi, Mom! It’s so amazing here! Thank you!”
“I’m happy for you, sweetie.”
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.