The evening air was cool and damp, but inside the luxury car it smelled of overheated leather and Alexander’s expensive cologne. Elena sat in the passenger seat, clutching her handbag, a nameless anxiety swelling in her chest. Alexander had been silent almost the entire drive, and when they pulled up along a deserted embankment, he turned to her with a cold, predatory smirk.
“Well, Lena, that’s it. Our, so to speak, little get-togethers are over,” he said, his voice oddly even, stripped of any emotion.
Elena blinked in confusion. She didn’t understand. It had to be some stupid, cruel joke. Only yesterday they’d been discussing their weekend plans; he’d promised to introduce her to his friends from the yacht club.
“Sasha, what are you talking about? I don’t understand… Is this a joke?” Her voice trembled.
His smirk widened, but his eyes stayed icy.
“What kind of joke would that be? Do I look like an idiot?” He leaned closer, and his gaze made her truly afraid. “Or did you think I wouldn’t figure out what you were up to? You decided that if you got pregnant, I’d run with you to the registry office? How naïve.”
Elena’s world didn’t just wobble—it shattered into a thousand sharp shards that drove straight into her heart. She couldn’t breathe. The accusation was so monstrous, so unjust, she couldn’t force out a single word.
“No… no, that’s not true…” she finally whispered, tears spilling over and blurring the city lights. “It’s a coincidence… It… God gave us a baby, Sasha! How can you think that?”
“Leave God out of this,” he cut her off harshly. “Deal with the gods on your own time. I told you plainly: I don’t want this.”
He leaned back in his seat and raked her from head to toe with a contemptuous look.
“Did you really think that I, Alexander Vorontsov, would marry you? A nobody dragged out of your village swamp? I don’t need a child from… someone like you. Got it?”
Those words were worse than a slap. They killed, burning everything alive inside her. And then, as if to finish the execution, he casually pulled a white envelope from the glovebox and tossed it onto her lap.
“There’s money in there. For an abortion and a ticket back home to your village. I don’t want to see you again. And don’t you dare call me.”
The door slammed. Tires squealed. A moment later, only the fading growl of the engine remained on the embankment—and Elena: alone, crushed, humiliated, clutching the price of betrayal in her hands.
Time stopped. Elena sat on a cold bench by the river, feeling neither the piercing wind nor the chills racking her body. She didn’t cry—the tears had run out back in the car. Inside there was only a hollow, ringing emptiness. Her hands, as if they belonged to someone else, opened the envelope. Inside lay a neat stack of brand-new U.S. bills. He’d planned it all in advance. The thought slashed her anew. He hadn’t doubted, hadn’t hesitated. He’d erased her from his life like an annoying mistake—and even priced her in foreign currency.
“Miss, are you all right?”
She flinched and looked up. Beside her stood a middle-aged man in a tailored overcoat, a briefcase in hand. His face—neatly trimmed beard, thin-rimmed glasses—looked vaguely familiar. He was watching her with genuine concern.
“Excuse me, you’re Elena, aren’t you? From Philology? I’m Nikolai Ivanovich—remember, I taught you foreign literature last semester.”
She didn’t recognize him right away. A teacher’s face, so familiar behind a lectern, looked different here in the half-light of the riverbank. But his calm, considerate voice began slowly to draw her out of her stupor.
“Nikolai Ivanovich…” she whispered, her lips trembling again.
He lowered himself gently onto the bench beside her, keeping a respectful distance.
“I was coming back from a late meeting and saw one of my students sitting here all alone. It’s late; the metro will close soon. If I’m not mistaken, you live on the other side of the city, don’t you? Come to my place—I live just over there, the next building. You can have some hot tea, warm up, and in the morning decide what to do. It’s not right to stay out like this in your condition.”
Elena had no strength to argue, no will to think. She was broken, and the unexpected care of a man who was essentially a stranger felt like a lifeline thrown to a drowning person. She nodded silently, unable to speak. He understood, took her lightly by the elbow, and helped her stand. Leaning on his arm like the only solid support in a collapsed world, Elena let him guide her into the dark of a side street, away from the scene of her humiliation.
Nikolai Ivanovich’s apartment was the complete opposite of Alexander’s cold, minimalist loft. Here there was peace and harmony. Tall bookshelves up to the ceiling, an antique desk under a green-shaded lamp, the soft glow of a floor lamp falling over a cozy armchair and a stack of magazines on the coffee table. It smelled of wood, old books, and freshly brewed tea.
“Come in, don’t be shy,” said Nikolai Ivanovich, helping her out of her coat. “It’s a bachelor’s place, but I try to keep it in order. When a home is cozy, loneliness doesn’t sting as much.”
That last sentence was so simple and so true that it plucked at some still-living string in Elena’s soul. The tears she thought had dried up forever welled again. He pretended not to notice and slipped into the kitchen, returning with two steaming cups of lemon balm tea.
Over tea, in an atmosphere of quiet, intelligent sympathy, Elena found herself telling him everything. Her love—naïve and blind—her pregnancy, Alexander’s cruel words, and the envelope of money still burning her fingers in her handbag. Nikolai Ivanovich listened without interrupting, and in his eyes there was neither judgment nor pity—only deep human understanding.
When her halting story ended, he said gently:
“You need rest. And not only you,” he nodded tactfully toward her belly, for the first time acknowledging what he had already guessed. “Take my bedroom—the linens are fresh. I’ll make do here on the sofa in the living room. Don’t argue; you need peace right now.”
In the morning he greeted her in the kitchen with the smell of fresh coffee and an omelet. Elena felt somewhat rested, but utterly lost. She didn’t know what to do next. Stirring sugar into his cup, Nikolai Ivanovich made her the most unexpected proposal of her life.
“Elena, I thought a lot last night,” he began, calm and serious. “I have a proposition for you. It may sound strange. I’ve been offered the chair of Slavic Studies at a European university—the job of my dreams. But there’s a condition—unspoken, but real: they prefer faculty who appear settled, family people. It projects stability and reliability. And as you can see, I’m alone.”
He paused to let her absorb this.
“I’m proposing a marriage of convenience. I’ll give your child my name and patronymic. I’ll provide for you. You’ll be able to finish your studies, give birth, and raise the baby without worrying about money or daily struggles. And in a few years, when everything is settled, we can quietly divorce if that’s what you want. Think about it. There’s no rush.”
They spent the next week together. He didn’t pressure her, didn’t hurry her—he was simply there, surrounding her with unobtrusive care. They walked a lot and talked about books and life. Elena saw a man who was intelligent, kind, and extraordinarily decent. And she agreed. Their modest wedding passed almost unnoticed. Then life began. The sham marriage quietly grew into something more. Respect became attachment, attachment—deep, steady love. Five years later they had a daughter together, whom they named Zhenya. And the elder boy, Kirill Nikolaevich, grew up amid a love and care Elena had never dared dream of, and he regarded Nikolai Ivanovich as his only, very best father in the world.
Twenty-five years passed. In a luxurious office on the top floor of Vorontsov Tower sat its owner, Alexander Igorevich Vorontsov. He had long since stopped being the dashing “Sasha,” preferring the weighty “Alexander Igorevich.” He was fabulously rich, powerful—and utterly alone. A sharp, slicing pain twisted his gut so violently he doubled over, nearly sliding off the crocodile-leather chair.
Life had gone exactly as he’d planned: money, power, status. There had been a marriage—to a partner’s daughter. It ended in a scandalous divorce, leaving behind only deeper cynicism and a mute distrust of women. There were no children in that union—there was no time. His parents, once figures he respected and slightly feared, had died in a car accident several years earlier, reinforcing his innate dislike of doctors who, in his opinion, “couldn’t do anything.”
He’d known about his ulcer for a long time. His personal Swiss physician had been nagging him about surgery for six months, but Alexander brushed it off. Surgery was for the weak. It meant admitting that your body had failed you. He, Alexander Vorontsov, could not allow that. He dulled the pain with expensive drugs and kept up his breakneck pace, closing million-dollar deals.
But this pain was different—impossible to ignore. It was agony. He groped for the call button, but his fingers wouldn’t obey. His vision blurred. Through the haze he saw his personal doctor rush in—apparently summoned by an alarmed assistant.
“Alexander Igorevich! I warned you!” the doctor’s voice came from far away. “Perforation! To the hospital, now! The ambulance is on its way. I’ve arranged for you to be admitted to the best clinic in the city. Just hang on!”
The last thing Alexander remembered was the faces of the panicked paramedics and a raw animal fear in the face of the inevitable.
The hospital corridors ran together into a single white strip. Ceiling lights flashed overhead like a strobe. Half-conscious, he was wheeled toward the operating room. Fear—cold and viscous—paralyzed what was left of his awareness. A man who had never believed in God or the devil found himself grasping for fragments of a childhood prayer he’d heard from his grandmother. “Lord, save and protect…” thudded in his temples.
The anteroom bustled with focused activity. Masks, gowns, the metallic gleam of instruments. They moved him to the cold operating table. Someone fitted a mask over his face. Through the rising nausea he saw another figure in blue scrubs approach the table. A woman. She adjusted the lamp above him and the light struck him full in the eyes. For an instant their gazes met. He couldn’t see her face, only her eyes—gray, calm, painfully familiar. And in that second, just before the anesthetic plunged him into blackness, one thought seared his mind: “Elena? No… that’s impossible.”
The surgery was complicated. The assistant, a young surgeon, watched Elena Arkadyevna with awe and a tremor of reverence. She worked like a flawless mechanism, like an android out of a sci-fi film. Not a wasted movement, not a second’s delay. Her gloved hands fluttered over the field with incredible precision.
“Clamp,” her voice was calm and even despite the crisis. “Sponge. Suction. Another clamp here. Pressure’s dropping—anesthesiologist!”
She moved fast, hard, unerringly. After three tense hours she set down the last instrument and said:
“Suture.”
In the staff room, with mask and cap off, she looked deadly tired. Damp strands of hair clung to her forehead.
“Elena Arkadyevna, that was virtuoso!” the assistant couldn’t help blurting out. “You literally pulled him back from the other side. Such a tough case.”
Elena walked to the window and looked out at the night city. Then she turned to her colleague.
“Andrei, do you have a cigarette?”
He raised his brows in surprise. Everyone knew the head of surgery, Professor Romanova, didn’t smoke and wouldn’t tolerate smokers. Wordlessly he handed her a pack and a lighter. She clumsily shook out a cigarette, brought it to her lips, but didn’t light it—just held it between fingers that trembled.
“Elena Arkadyevna, is something wrong?”
She gave a bitter, crooked smile at the white stick in her hand.
“I’ve hated that man for almost all my conscious life,” she said quietly, almost in a whisper. “And by every rule, by all medical ethics, I shouldn’t have operated on him today.”
When Alexander came to after surgery, the first thing he felt wasn’t pain but the return of his sense of superiority. He had survived. Which meant he was back in control. His first order, rasped at the duty nurse, was to summon his attending physician immediately. He needed to be sure those eyes he’d seen before anesthesia weren’t a hallucination.
Elena entered his private luxury suite. A crisp white coat, hair pulled into a tight knot, a tablet with his chart in her hands. Her face betrayed no emotion—only professional courtesy.
“Good afternoon, Alexander Igorevich. How are you feeling?”
He ignored the question. He looked at her, a faint, self-satisfied smile touching his lips.
“Lena. So I was right. Hello. I’m glad to see you,” he said, pointedly switching to the familiar “you,” trying to collapse the distance and drag them back to a past he had conveniently rewritten.
“My name is Elena Arkadyevna. I’m your attending physician,” she corrected coolly, holding his gaze. “Please observe professional boundaries.”
That only spurred him on. He was sure it was just a defensive mask.
“Are you married?” he asked bluntly, with the insolence of a man used to getting whatever he wants. “Doesn’t matter. Know this—I’ve always gotten my way. I intend to get you back. I will correct that old mistake.”
Elena silently made a note on the tablet and turned toward the door.
“I’ll stop by on evening rounds. Please try to rest.”
From that day the siege began. Alexander deployed the tried-and-true tactics that had always worked on other women. Every morning a massive, lavish bouquet of the most expensive flowers arrived at the office of the head of surgery, accompanied by a short note: “From your Sasha.” And every day, in full view of the entire department, Elena Arkadyevna quietly carried the bouquet out of her office and set it in a vase at the nurses’ station with the words, “Girls, this is for you—something to cheer you up.” It was a public, humiliating defeat—but Alexander didn’t give up. He decided the hospital walls were in the way. He would wait for her discharge and ambush her after work. Alone, without witnesses, he could surely break through her resistance. He had faith in his charm and his money.
On the evening of his discharge, feeling almost fully recovered, Alexander waited by the hospital’s service entrance. When Elena appeared on the steps in an elegant coat, he stepped toward her.
“Lena, wait!” He grabbed her by the arm. Her skin was warm and alive, and it emboldened him. “We need to talk. I was young and stupid. I made a terrible mistake, I know. But I understand everything now! Let me make it right. Our feelings… we can bring them back! I know it!”
He spoke ardently, convincingly, pouring all his honed seduction into the words, failing to see how wide of the mark he was. Elena tried to pull her arm free; her face was unreadable.
At that very moment a gleaming white SUV glided up to the steps. The driver’s door opened, and out stepped a tall, striking young man in a stylish cashmere coat. He looked exactly like Alexander had twenty-five years ago—the same dark hair, the same confident gaze, the same cut of the jaw. Alexander froze, involuntarily loosening his grip.
The young man approached them.
“Mom, is there a problem?” His voice was calm, low, and very firm. He politely but decisively removed Alexander’s hand from his mother’s elbow. “Dad and Zhenya are already waiting for us at the restaurant. We’re late.”
“Mom… Dad… Zhenya…” The words hit Alexander harder than a surgeon’s scalpel. He stood turned to stone, finally letting go of Elena’s arm. He stared at the young man—his son—and couldn’t breathe.
Kirill seated his mother in the car, carefully closing the door behind her. Before he got behind the wheel, he glanced back at the stunned Alexander, still rooted to the spot on the pavement.
“I’ve known who you are for a long time,” Kirill said quietly but distinctly. There was no hatred in his voice—only a cold statement of fact. “And I’m asking you—please, stay away from our family. Always. Otherwise I’ll have to stop you.”
He got in, and the white SUV slipped away, dissolving into the city lights.
Alexander sank down slowly, like an old man, onto the cold granite steps of the hospital entrance. He stared after the departing car. He had just seen his happiness. He had seen the son he had rejected—handsome, intelligent, self-assured—who now called another man father. He had seen the woman he had lost forever—strong, accomplished, beloved and loving. He had billions in the bank and a power others could only dream of. But at that moment he was absolutely, crushingly empty. And for the first time in his life, there was nothing he could pay to get back what he had lost.