— “What inheritance?” Pavel asked incredulously when Anya pulled away from him, walked into the living room, and sank onto the sofa. His anger instantly turned into greedy curiosity. “From whom?”
“From my cousin-grandmother,” Anya answered, still trying to grasp the news. The bag was still standing in the hallway, a symbol of her interrupted escape.
“Cousin-grandmother? Is that the old lady you mentioned once in your life? And what did she leave you? A tea set? A jewelry box?” Pavel smirked, but stopped short when he saw her expression. “Something serious?”
Anya looked up at him. Her gaze was distant, appraising. “The notary said I’m the sole heir. I don’t know anything else.”
Pavel changed at once. The fury evaporated, giving way to bustling practicality. He sat down beside her on the sofa and tried to put an arm around her shoulders. “Anechka, why didn’t you say anything! This is… this is such news! An inheritance! Maybe there’s an apartment? What if it’s in the center? My God, what luck! We… we’ll finally start living!”
The word “we” sounded so natural, as if there had been no ultimatums, no shouting, no five years of humiliation. Anya slowly removed his hand from her shoulder. “I don’t know anything yet, Pasha. And let’s not count our chickens before they’ve hatched.”
But Pavel was unstoppable now. He jumped up and began pacing the room, gesturing and making plans. “Listen, if it’s an apartment, we’ll sell it right away! We’ll buy me a new car, this one’s falling apart. There’ll be enough for the dacha! We’ll chip in for Mom’s renovation, she’s wanted it for ages. And a vacation, Anya—Turkey, five-star hotel! No more counting pennies!”
He was so carried away by his fantasies that he didn’t notice Anya’s face turn to ice. She looked at this fidgety stranger and realized that the notary’s call would not save their marriage. It had merely illuminated all his rotten essence.
“Call your mother, make her happy,” he tossed over his shoulder as he headed to the kitchen for water. “Tell her she doesn’t need to apologize anymore. We’ve got other things to worry about now!”
Anya didn’t move. She could hear him excitedly talking to Tamara Igorevna, triumph ringing in his voice. She had won. But not the way she’d thought. Her victory wasn’t money, but clarity. Final and irreversible.
The notary’s office was in an old building in the city center. Anya went there alone. Pavel offered to drive her, but she coldly refused, saying she wanted to walk.
The notary, Pyotr Vasilievich, turned out to be an elderly, gray-haired man with intelligent, perceptive eyes. He spoke quietly and to the point. “Anna Viktorovna, your cousin-grandmother, Antonina Sergeevna Pokrovskaya, left you all her property. Namely: a three-room apartment in this very building, one floor up; a bank deposit in the amount of…”—he glanced at the papers—“one million seven hundred thousand rubles; and certain antique items located in the apartment. The will is flawless and was notarized by me personally three years ago. Antonina Sergeevna was of sound mind.”
Anya listened, her head spinning. A three-room apartment. In the center. She could barely grasp the scope of this fortune. “But why… why me? We hardly kept in touch.”
Pyotr Vasilievich sighed and looked at her over his glasses. “Antonina Sergeevna was a lonely and observant woman. She told me: ‘I have a grandniece, Anechka. A good girl, but unhappy. Married to a mama’s boy, and her mother-in-law eats her alive. I want her to have her own place and her own money. So she can find her feet and give them all a proper answer. Let it be her fortress.’ Those were her exact words.”
Tears welled in Anya’s eyes. A distant, almost forgotten relative had seen and understood her pain better than her own husband. She hadn’t just given her money and square meters. She had given her a chance at another life.
With a copy of the will and all necessary instructions in hand, Anya stepped outside. She didn’t go home. She went up one floor and stood for a long time before a massive oak door clad in darkened leather. This was the door to her new life. To her fortress.
The apartment greeted her with silence and the scent of old wood, books, and something subtly floral, like lavender. High ceilings with plasterwork, huge windows overlooking a quiet courtyard, herringbone parquet she hardly dared to tread upon. And the furniture… Carved wardrobes, a sofa with curved legs, a round table beneath a velvet tablecloth, a piano with yellowed keys. Everything was covered with the finest layer of dust, yet it didn’t feel abandoned. It seemed the owner had just stepped out for a minute.
Anya wandered through the rooms, touching the objects, and felt years of tension ease. Here she was safe. Here she didn’t have to report to anyone or ask anyone’s forgiveness.
In the evening she returned to her old life. Pavel and Tamara Igorevna were already waiting. Her mother-in-law had rushed over to “help with plans” and brought her signature Napoleon cake—the sure sign of a grand celebration.
“Well, Anechka? Tell us!” Tamara literally bounced on the chair. “Is the apartment big? We’ll sell it quickly! I’ve already found a realtor—through a friend—Verochka, the best in the city!”
“We aren’t selling anything,” Anya said calmly, sitting down across from them.
Silence fell. Pavel and his mother exchanged glances. “What do you mean?” Pavel was the first to break it. “Are you out of your mind? What do we need that old junk for? We need money!”
“I don’t need money from selling that apartment,” Anya enunciated, stressing the word “I.” “I’m going to live there.”
“Live? Alone?” screeched Tamara Igorevna. “What about your husband? Your family? What is this scheme, you swindler?! Decided to appropriate family property and run?”
“Excuse me, what ‘family property’?” Anya took the copy of the will from her bag. “Here, in the document, there’s one name in black and white: mine. Anna Viktorovna. Neither your name, Tamara Igorevna, nor yours, Pavel, appears here. This is my personal property. Under Article 36 of the Family Code, property received by one spouse during marriage by way of inheritance is his or her own and is not subject to division upon divorce.”
She spoke so confidently and calmly that Pavel was taken aback. Tamara, however, was not. She was furious. “You snake! We warmed you on our chest! All lawyered up! You arranged all this! You manipulated that poor old woman to get her apartment!”
“I saw that ‘poor old woman’ twice in my life, the last time fifteen years ago,” Anya parried. “And yet she, it seems, saw and knew far more. She knew how you were poisoning my life and wanted to help me.”
“Pasha, do you hear what she’s saying?!” Tamara screamed, turning to her son. “She’s insulting your mother! She’s a thief! Do something!”
Pavel finally came to his senses. His face turned purple. “Anya, are you sane? That’s OUR money! I’m your husband! What’s yours is mine! We’re selling that apartment, end of story! I said so!”
“You can say whatever you like,” Anya stood up. “But it will be as I say. It’s my apartment. And I’m going to live in it. Alone. I’m filing for divorce.”
She turned and went to the bedroom, leaving them with the half-eaten Napoleon and their collapsing plans. Through the door came her mother-in-law’s furious shrieks and her husband’s bewildered exclamations. But Anya didn’t care. She was packing a suitcase, and for the first time in many years there was a smile on her face.
The move was quick and quiet. Anya took only her clothes and books. The rest—the jointly acquired property—she generously left to Pavel. The next day she was already in her new-old apartment. The first thing she did was find a law firm online with good reviews and book a consultation about the divorce.
Then she met her neighbor. The door opposite opened, and on the threshold stood a petite, wiry old lady in a perfectly pressed housecoat, with a high hairdo and lively, mocking eyes.
“So you’re Anya,” she said without preamble, eyeing Anya from head to toe. “And I’m Elizaveta Petrovna. Just Liza. Your Granny Tonya and I were friends for sixty years. Come in for tea, heiress. Tell me how you plan to fight off the vultures.”
Startled, Anya accepted the invitation. Elizaveta Petrovna’s apartment was a mirror image of her own, only lived-in and cozy. It smelled of coffee and fresh pastries.
“Tonya told me everything about you,” Liza said, pouring tea into antique cups. “About the spineless husband and the energy-vampire mother-in-law. She worried about you a lot. She’d say, ‘Liza, you’ll see, that girl will show some backbone yet. She’s got steel inside; they’ve been bending it all her life, but they can’t break it.’”
Anya listened, feeling as if she were talking to a relative. “They want to sue to take the apartment. They say I tricked her.”
Elizaveta snorted. “Trick Tonya? She could out-argue any prosecutor—even from beyond the grave! Don’t be afraid, dear girl. A will is a will. This isn’t peeking into a pot of borscht. Everything’s by the book. The main thing is, find a good lawyer and don’t fall for provocations. They’ll press on your pity now, threaten, sling mud. Your motto: ‘Calm, only calm.’ As one acquaintance of mine said—Karlsson. He also lived on a roof, almost like we do.”
Anya laughed. For the first time in many weeks. Beside this ironic, wise woman, everything seemed much less frightening.
The “vultures” didn’t keep her waiting. Pavel and Tamara hired a lawyer—a slippery fellow with shifty eyes—who advised them to file a suit to have the will declared invalid. They began gathering “evidence”: questioning neighbors from Anya’s old building, trying to fish out any compromising tidbits, calling her few friends.
Aunt Valya blew up her phone, now sobbing and begging her to “think about the family,” now cursing and threatening “divine punishment.”
But Anya, guided by her lawyer and by Elizaveta Petrovna, was impenetrable. She changed her phone number and communicated with her former family only through her attorney.
The proceedings dragged on for several months. For Pavel and his mother, it was a time of hopes and schemes. For Anya, a time of finding herself. She threw herself into renovations. She didn’t go for a “Euro-renovation,” but decided to preserve the spirit of the old apartment. She had the parquet sanded, and it creaked anew, cozily. She restored a few armchairs. She found a craftsman to tune the old piano and in the evenings picked out simple melodies from her childhood. She kept working at the salon, and her regular clients, seeing her transformation, were only happy for her.
One day, coming home from work, she found Pavel at her door. He looked thinner and gaunt. “Anya, we need to talk,” he said, staring at the floor.
“There’s nothing to talk about, Pavel. Any issues go through the lawyers.”
“No, wait!” He stepped toward her. “I… I get it now. Mother was wrong. And I was wrong. I behaved like an idiot. Forgive me. Let’s start over? I’ll move out from my mother’s, we’ll live here, just the two of us. I’ll carry you in my arms!”
He looked at her with hope, but Anya saw not remorse in his eyes, only cold calculation. He’d simply realized he was losing and decided to change tactics.
“Too late, Pasha,” she said quietly, opening the door. “You made your choice when you demanded that I apologize for a humiliation I suffered myself. You didn’t choose me. And now I’m not choosing you. Goodbye.”
She shut the door right in his face. That was the last “goodbye.”
The court dismissed Pavel and Tamara Igorevna’s suit as completely unfounded. Their lawyer threw up his hands, pocketed his fee, and vanished. The inheritance remained with Anya. Soon after, the divorce was finalized.
Fate punished the guilty not with prison or poverty, but far more elegantly. It simply gave them exactly what they wanted.
Pavel stayed with his mother. He moved back into his childhood room under her constant control. Tamara got her “Pashenka” for full and exclusive use. She cooked him proper breakfasts, made sure he wore a warm scarf, and scolded him for coming home late. But instead of gratitude, she saw only dull irritation and gloom in her son’s eyes. Their perfect little world, built on the bones of Anya’s patience, turned into a stuffy prison for two. Gossipmonger Zinka from the grocery now gleefully told everyone how “Pavlik ran back to his mommy from his rich wife.”
Anya, on the contrary, blossomed. She didn’t spend evenings with a glass of wine at the window, musing about freedom. Her life was filled with simple, genuine joys. She befriended Elizaveta, and they often drank tea, discussing everything under the sun—from apple pie recipes to string theory, which Liza read about in science journals. “You know, dear,” Liza would say, “the universe is expanding, galaxies are rushing apart. And some people just sit in their tiny universe of grievances and claims. Silly, isn’t it?”
She kept working, because she loved her craft. The hands that used to create beauty for others now created coziness for herself. She wasn’t looking for new relationships, but she was open to the world. She had learned the main thing—to value and respect herself. Her fortress, gifted by a wise cousin-grandmother, protected her not only from enemies, but from her own fears.
Once, while watering the flowers on her windowsill, Anya saw in the window opposite—Elizaveta’s apartment—her old acquaintance, that very refined client from the salon. They sat at the table, sipping tea and chatting animatedly. It turned out they had been friends for years. The world can be wonderfully small when the right people appear in it.
Funny, isn’t it? Everyone probably has their own “Tamara Igorevna” in life. Not everyone has their own “Granny Tonya,” though. Or maybe we just don’t always notice her help