Anna’s very first memory was not of the warmth of a mother’s hands or the sweet scent of New Year tangerines. It was a pricking, ice-cold thing, stamped on the wrong side of her soul like a scar that would ache all her life. She was six. Into the neat, polished-to-sterility world of the orphanage—smelling of institutional porridge and chlorine—they let in a sliver of the outside world in the person of her own aunt. A woman with a face worn down by the endless struggle to survive looked at little Anya with a frightened, guilty gaze.
She ran her finger over papers for a long time, signing something, and then, sighing heavily, said to the caregiver in a voice ringing with genuine fatigue and hopelessness: “I can’t, Marya Ivanovna. Honestly, I can’t. I’ve already got six mouths at home, my husband’s never there, working two jobs. How can I take on one more mouth?” The phrase “one more mouth” sounded like a sentence. A brand. Anna didn’t fully grasp its meaning, but with every fiber of her being she felt the freezing chill of rejection. She was extra. Unwanted. A burden.
It was at that very moment, standing in the cool corridor and watching her aunt walk away, that a searing, all-consuming dream of money was born in her child’s heart. Not fairy-tale treasure chests from books, not trunks of gold, but simple, hard, ringing coins and crisp banknotes. Money that becomes a shield. Money that would never again let anyone say she was “one more mouth.” For her, money was synonymous with freedom, dignity, the right to exist. The right to breathe deeply without justifying or apologizing for the mere fact of being alive.
While other kids tore around the sun-drenched yard playing tag or stole apples from a cranky neighbor, Anna found her refuge in the orphanage library—a small room that smelled of dust and old bindings. Books became her friends, her teachers, her guides to other worlds. She devoured pages, believing that knowledge was the magic key that would one day unlock the door out of this gray, humiliating existence. The caregivers, seeing her unnatural diligence for a child, only shook their heads with a mixture of pity and incomprehension. “You’ll just bash your head against a wall, Anechka. You can’t jump higher than your head. Believe me,” the laundress Aunt Katya would call after her, dumping soapy water into the yard. The children teased her—“grind,” “nerd”—and pointed at her threadbare but carefully mended dresses. But Anna only pressed her lips together and buried herself in a book. Every line she read, every problem she solved was a brick in the wall she was building between herself and the wretched lot the world had mapped out for her.
In her imagination she drew bright pictures: there she was, elegant and self-assured, a student at a prestigious university in the capital. There she was in her own office with a huge window, a diploma on the wall behind her and respect in her colleagues’ eyes. She built castles in the air out of formulas and quotations, hoping they would withstand the onslaught of a harsh reality.
Reality crashed down on her on June ninth, right after a graduation party that felt more like a wake. The state, with bureaucratic generosity, allotted her a room. Not an apartment—no. A room in an old, rotten-through barracks building at the very edge of the city, where freight trains thundered past in the mornings, shaking the flimsy walls. The walls of her “new home” were blotched with sinister greenish mold, and the sole dusty window looked out onto a blank, cheerless fence of corrugated slate. The air always smelled of damp, despair, and hopelessness.
But that was only half the trouble. With no connections and no money for tutors or bribes, the doors of decent universities slammed in her face with a deafening, final screech. The most a provincial orphan girl could hope for was the local vocational school, the seamstress or cook track. That prospect felt not like a way out, but like one more, final circle of hell—a life sentence of poverty, the assembly line, survival at the edge.
Anna decided to fight. She came up with a plan: work for a year, save every kopeck for prep courses, cram day and night, and the next year try for the universities again. But the world seemed to have taken up arms against her. All the places that paid even halfway decent money were filled. Everyone demanded experience, connections, or a “pleasant appearance” for work as a waitress or sales clerk. Weeks turned into months, the deadlines for applications—and for that hated vocational school—slipped away for good. Despair, a quick, darting little creature, started gnawing at her from the inside, scratching at her soul with tiny claws. To keep from starving, she had to step over the last remnants of pride. She went downtown and got a job as a dishwasher in a small but pretentious restaurant called Déjà Vu.
The restaurant’s administrator, Viktor Pavlovich, was around thirty, well-groomed, with a perfect coif and cold, gimlet eyes that could judge and belittle with a single glance. He hated Anna from the first moment. Skimming her meager application—where a humiliating dash gaped in the “work experience” field and the address line listed the number of that very barracks—he curled his lip as if he had caught the odor of poverty.
“You see, Vorontsova,” he said in a saccharine, poisonous tone, “a dishwasher is also, in a sense, the face of the establishment. And you, if you’ll forgive my bluntness, are not exactly… presentable. You’d be better suited to some factory canteen…” He paused meaningfully, making it clear the audience was over.
Anna had already turned around in her mind, ready to flee, burning with shame, when the door to the tiny office creaked and an older woman in a spotless—if well-worn—kitchen apron appeared on the threshold. This was Irina Petrovna, the head chef and the restaurant’s unofficial power behind the throne. Her word here counted far more than Viktor’s pompous orders.
“Vitya, why are you making the girl blush?” she barked without preamble. “I’m drowning on that line, up to my elbows in suds, and you’re throwing salon parties in here!”
“Irina Petrovna, I’m just… she doesn’t meet—” the administrator began to mumble, but the woman cut off all objections with a flick of her hand.
“She meets them. I said so! Or do you want me to call Sergey right now and ask why his administrator is turning away new hires when our own people are pulling double shifts? He’s worried about the turnover, by the way…”
At the mention of the restaurant owner—a complicated man who doted on Irina Petrovna—Viktor Pavlovich’s face twisted into a mask of obsequiousness and spite. He had been publicly humiliated, and he decided to take it out immediately on the defenseless girl.
“Fine,” he forced out through clenched teeth. “You’re hired. But!—” He raised an index finger, his voice low and menacing. “On probation. One month. And mind this: the slightest infraction, even the pettiest complaint, and you’ll be out of here before you know what happened. I keep a particularly close eye on… graduates of children’s homes.”
Anna nodded silently, without raising her eyes, swallowing a bitter lump of hurt. She needed the job like a drowning person needs a gulp of air. Irina Petrovna turned out to be a golden soul. Over endless mountains of greasy plates and scorched pans, she quickly drew from Anna her whole sad story and felt a sincere, almost maternal pity for her.
“Don’t you mind Vitya,” she comforted her, stirring something in a huge cauldron as she walked. “He’s not a bad guy, but he’s a rare bastard. Wants to curry favor with the bosses, so he plays the big shot. Do your job well and everything will be tip-top.”
That’s exactly what Anna did. She came in before everyone and left after everyone, scrubbed her station and the sinks to a shine, and tried to be invisible, to dissolve into the background so she wouldn’t cross the path of the vindictive administrator. She could physically feel his prickly, hateful stare on her back.
Once, on a day when Viktor Pavlovich was legitimately off, the restaurant’s atmosphere changed at once, as if someone had defused a ticking bomb. The pressure disappeared, the cooks hummed under their breath, the waitresses, huddled around the coffee machine, laughed and traded gossip. In the short lull after the lunch rush, one of them—a freckled, giggly girl named Olga—beckoned to Anna.
“Anya, come sit with us, grab some tea while the storm’s passed. Don’t pine all alone at your sink.”
Anna’s heart gave a start at the unexpected attention. Gratefully, she sat down at the small table in the corner reserved for staff. For the first time since she’d started working there, someone had invited her to be part of their little world, even for a minute. It was unfamiliar, piercingly pleasant, and a little frightening.
Just then the junior cook poked his head through the service door to the back yard.
“Girls, Uncle Misha’s here,” he whispered, as if giving a password.
Uncle Misha was a neighborhood fixture—a quiet, harmless drifter with a philosophical outlook whom everyone around knew and fed when they could. Olga snatched up a clean plate and quickly piled on the remnants of the just-finished business lunch: some soup, mashed potatoes with a cutlet, a light salad.
“Anya, would you take it out to him?” she asked. “My tables are already filling—I can’t get away.”
Anna gladly agreed. She was desperate to do something kind, to feel not like an outcast but a member of this little fraternity of mutual help. She stepped into the yard, dazzling in the noonday sun, and with a light, almost happy smile handed the plate to the gray-haired, weather-beaten old man in worn but tidy clothes.
“Thank you, child,” Uncle Misha mumbled, and in his eyes there flared such sincere, bottomless gratitude that tears pricked Anna’s eyes. “God grant you health…”
At that very moment, like a shadow raised in hell itself, Viktor Pavlovich appeared behind her. He should have been resting, but apparently his black soul had brought him in for a surprise inspection.
“What a touching scene,” he hissed, his snide, venomous whisper chilling the blood. “So you’re our newly minted philanthropist, Vorontsova? Helping yourself to other people’s property, handing out our products left and right?”
Anna went cold. Her moment of happiness crumbled to dust. Her first thought was to keep Olga out of it.
“It’s… it’s yesterday’s, Viktor Pavlovich,” she stammered. “We would’ve thrown it out anyway…”
“Yesterday’s?” He cocked an eyebrow theatrically, playing to the gallery. “Very interesting. Well then, I’ll deduct the cost of this ‘yesterday’s’ full business lunch from your already meager salary. And remember: if I see you encouraging this bum rabble at the threshold of a respectable establishment again, you’ll be fired with no pay. Is that clear?”
He raked her with a destroying, contemptuous look and, without waiting for an answer, turned and swept back inside. Anna stood in the dusty yard, feeling scalding, treacherous tears of helpless humiliation roll down her cheeks. Uncle Misha watched her, guilty and bewildered, helplessly clutching the ill-fated plate.
That evening, when the main wave of guests had ebbed, Olga came up to Anna, hands balled into fists at her own powerlessness, distraught. She had heard everything from behind the door and now wanted to sink through the floor.
“Anya, forgive me, darling, I didn’t think that hyena would show up today!” she whispered, glancing toward the administrator’s office. “May he choke!”
“It’s nothing,” Anna answered quietly, almost soundlessly, though cats were scratching at her soul and everything inside her tightened with bitter hurt. “It’s fine.”
Olga sighed and, to change the subject, shared the big news agitating the entire staff.
“They say Sergey is selling our Déjà Vu. Some buyer’s already showed up. Everyone’s in a panic—afraid the new owner will sweep the whole team out and bring in his own people. For Irina Petrovna it’s the end of the world—where will she go at her age?”
They fell silent, each lost in gloomy thoughts. For Anna, losing this job—even this humiliating, low-paid one—meant a quick fall back into the pit of hopeless poverty she had barely crawled out of. And then, as they talked about possible layoffs and final paychecks, lightning struck her.
“Oh,” she blurted out. “I still haven’t gotten a bank card for my wages! Viktor Pavlovich said to do it the very first week, and I forgot, got tied up…”
Olga’s eyes rounded in disbelief.
“You’re serious? Anya, he’ll close the payroll without you on purpose, and then to hell with it! See if you ever find your hard-earned money! How could you?”
Anna gave a bitter little smile.
“What’s there to worry about? That card will always be at zero anyway. What difference does it make if I get my nothing this Thursday or next?”
But her friend’s words stuck and stirred up unease. Knowing the administrator’s vindictive nature, she understood he would be only too happy to “forget” to put her on the list, leaving her without even those pennies.
“Fine,” she said firmly. “Tomorrow morning, before my shift, I’ll run to the bank. I’ll get it done quickly.”
“Run,” Olga nodded. “With that tyrant there’s no relaxing. Keep your ears pricked.”
The next morning Anna stepped for the first time in her life into a big bank. A huge hall bathed in soft light, the cool air smelling of money and expensive polish, the quiet, weightless hum of the electronic queue—it all frightened and confused her and, at the same time, fascinated her. She stood uncertainly by the entrance, not knowing who to approach or where to go. A young man in a perfectly fitted suit with an easy, unforced smile came up at once. A neat badge on his jacket read: “Aleksandr. Manager.”
“Good morning. May I help you?” he asked in a gentle, velvety voice.
“Yes, I… I need to open a card. For my salary,” Anna murmured, embarrassed, feeling like a gray mouse against all that shine.
He nodded and led her to his desk—an orderly table with two monitors. The process didn’t take long. Aleksandr asked questions calmly and clearly, his fingers flying over the keyboard. His composure and kindness slowly melted the ice of uncertainty in Anna’s soul. While he was filling out the form, she lifted her eyes for a second and accidentally met his. He was looking at her not with routine politeness but with some deep, unfeigned interest.
“Forgive me for being tactless,” he said suddenly, flushing slightly. “But you have… an incredibly sincere smile. I saw it when you came in. But there’s so much sadness in it. As if you were carrying a very heavy burden on your shoulders.”
Anna blushed to the tips of her ears. No one had ever paid her such a compliment. Not about her looks, but about something intimate, hidden deep inside. She felt heat spread across her cheeks and quickly lowered her head, burying herself in the form.
Aleksandr, a little embarrassed himself, returned to work. He entered her passport details into the system—and his eyebrows climbed in astonishment.
“That’s odd…” he muttered under his breath. “The system shows there’s already an account in your name at our bank. More than one, in fact.”
“That’s impossible,” Anna said with certainty, shaking her head. “This is my first time here. There must be some mistake.”
“That’s what I thought, but…” He double-checked the information several times, matching the numbers. “Anna Igorevna Vorontsova? That exact date of birth? It all matches. Excuse me, I need to step away for a minute.”
He went off somewhere, spoke with an older colleague in a severe suit, and when he returned his face showed a mix of extreme astonishment and professional concern.
“Anna Igorevna, please come with me. This is very important.”
He led her through an inconspicuous door into the bank’s sanctum—the vault, with rows of massive, cold-looking metal boxes. The air here was even cooler and thrummed with the power of the air-conditioning systems. Opening one of the boxes, Aleksandr drew out an old, time-worn cardboard file folder and, with almost reverent care, handed it to Anna.
Inside, under a transparent plastic sleeve, lay an envelope of thick, expensive paper yellowed with age. On it, in crisp, calligraphic ink, was written: “To my only granddaughter, Anna. To be delivered into her hands personally.”
Anna’s fingers suddenly turned numb and clumsy. With difficulty she opened the envelope and drew out several written pages. The letters blurred in places, the handwriting shifted—now firm and confident, now weak and trembling, as if the writer could barely hold a pen. It was a confession. A letter from the grandfather she had never known.
Once an influential, powerful, unimaginably wealthy man, he had dictated people’s fates without a thought for the consequences. He wrote how, many years ago, driven by monstrous class arrogance, he had forced his only son—her father, Igor—to leave her mother, a simple, unremarkable girl “not of their circle.” The son, raised to obey without question, obeyed. But it brought no happiness. A month after his wedding to a “suitable” bride, he crashed his sports car. Everyone wrote it off as an accident, but the grandfather knew—his son had taken his own life, unable to bear the weight of his betrayal.
Her mother, left alone, pregnant, without support, couldn’t withstand the grief and pressure. Slowly but surely she drank herself to the bottom and died soon after giving birth, leaving little Anya to the care of the state. When the grandfather learned of her existence, he was shattered. But his pride was not yet fully broken. He hired the best detectives to find his granddaughter, but having found her, he didn’t dare appear in her life; he couldn’t look into the eyes of the child whose fate he had ruined. Then came illness—terminal cancer. Dying alone in a luxury apartment, he finally grasped the horror of what he had done. His last act—of atonement and repentance—was his will. He left her everything. Every last thing of his unimaginable, colossal fortune. Every ruble, every share, every piece of property.
Anna sat on a chair in the cold vault, staring blankly at the trembling lines. The world had turned upside down. Her whole life, all her loneliness, all her pain turned out not to be a chain of random misfortunes but the result of someone’s monstrous, fateful mistake—a long-ago tragedy of which she was the victim. She was not a mistake. She was not “one more mouth.” She had a family—stolen from her by blind pride.
Aleksandr, tactfully giving her time to compose herself, returned with several printouts. He laid them silently before her. The figures were so long that her mind refused to process them. They were not thousands, not even millions. It was a fortune that covered with ease all her childhood dreams of “a cheerful jingle in the pocket.” It was enough not just to buy courses or an apartment, but an entire life. A dozen lives. Her cherished, hard-won dream had come true with such a thunderous, overwhelming crash that in its place there remained only a ringing, frightening emptiness. She had received everything she had so desperately dreamed of. And now she had a single question: what next?
And in that very deafening silence, in that emptiness, a new dream was born. It was bold, reckless, desperate—and truly hers. Anna slowly lifted her head and looked at Aleksandr, who was watching her with quiet anxiety and genuine concern.
“Aleksandr,” her voice sounded surprisingly even and firm, with no trace of her former timidity. “Answer me honestly. Have you ever dreamed of running your own restaurant?”
He started, taken aback by the unexpected question. Then he laughed—quietly, with a hint of hidden sadness.
“You know, as a child—yes.” He looked off into the distance, as if recalling something very dear. “I imagined a place where people don’t just come to eat, but to become happier. Where there’s warmth and soul. But…” he spread his hands, “life made its adjustments. Banking, a mortgage, stability. Dreams stayed dreams.”
“What if I said we could bring your dreams back?” Anna looked at him without blinking. “And make one of mine come true along the way.”
There was no trace of sadness or confusion left in her eyes. In them burned a steady, confident, almost ominous fire of resolve. She had already decided everything for herself. Aleksandr looked silently for several seconds at this fragile girl, suddenly transformed, and understood that she was utterly serious.
Anna stood up. All her former insecurity, the cringing posture of a humiliated dishwasher, evaporated without a trace. Her back was straight, her gaze direct and clear. She knew now, absolutely, what she would do first.
Exactly two days later, a taxi rolled to a smooth stop at the entrance to Déjà Vu. Anna stepped out. She wore an elegant dark-blue pantsuit, perfectly fitted, and light pumps. A touch of barely there makeup set off the features of her face, and her hair was styled simply but impeccably. But it wasn’t the clothes. Something else had transformed her—the aura of absolute, unshakable self-confidence, the calm, sovereign dignity with which she held her head and looked the world straight in the eye.
As expected, Viktor Pavlovich was already waiting for her on the threshold. At the sight of her, his face twisted into a mask of malice.
“Vorontsova!” he hissed, unrestrained in his choice of words. “Where have you been for two days?! You’re fired for absenteeism! Don’t even try to beg for your severance—I’ve already tallied all your fines, and you’ll still owe me!”
Anna didn’t deign to answer. With regal calm she walked past him into the half-empty morning dining room and took the best table by the window.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” he screeched, losing his grip. “Get up at once and leave! That table is for guests!”
Anna turned her head very slowly. The same sincere smile Aleksandr had once noticed played on her lips. But there was no trace of sadness in it now. Only a cold, steely certainty.
“You know, Viktor Pavlovich,” she said in a quiet but perfectly clear voice that carried through the tomb-like hush, “I thought for a long time about what to spend my first serious money on. And do you know what I decided? I bought this restaurant. And do you know why? For one pleasure only—to fire you personally. You’re fired. No severance and no references. I hope your next job will be… more presentable.”
At that very moment the front door swung open and the former owner, Sergey, walked in. He headed straight to their table and, smiling broadly, announced loudly, for the entire room of waiters and cooks who had poured out from the kitchen:
“Friends, colleagues! Allow me to introduce the new owner of Déjà Vu—Anna Igorevna Vorontsova! Please give her your warm welcome!”
The look on Viktor Pavlovich’s face was a truly Shakespearean sight. It ran the gamut—from a deep crimson of rage through a purple of astonishment to a deathly ashen white. He opened and closed his mouth, moving his lips soundlessly like a fish thrown onto shore. No sounds came. As if he had been permanently deprived of speech.
A few minutes later Aleksandr entered the restaurant. Sergey introduced him to the staff as the new manager. And to his credit, he threw himself into the work with incredible enthusiasm and a deft touch. He not only radically changed the atmosphere, making it truly homey and welcoming, but also helped Anna draw up a detailed plan for her further education, hiring the best university tutors.
They started spending more and more time together. It turned out that their shared dream of a restaurant was only the first chapter, a preface to another, far more important and beautiful story—the story of their love.
Having come through filth, poverty, and humiliation, Anna gained in the end not soulless wealth, which she had longed for so feverishly as a child. She found the work of her life, a true and devoted love, and most important—she found and came to love herself. The very self once branded “one more mouth.” And that “mouth” had now learned not only to eat well, but to laugh, to take joy in life, and to speak words of love.