“You live off everything that’s already done for you, you haven’t put in a single kopeck of your own!” my mother-in-law hissed while I silently set the table in the apartment whose renovation I had paid for down to the last ruble. They thought I would endure it forever. They didn’t know I had already called the movers so that they’d be spending the night on bare concrete, in the very middle of their own greed.
“Lena, did you put any salt in this soup at all?” my mother-in-law’s voice—Svetlana Petrovna—rang through the silence of the kitchen like a taut string. “Or do you think that since you’re not the one buying the groceries, you don’t have to try?”
Lena flinched and lowered the spoon. She stared into her bowl of soup, which just a minute ago had seemed perfect to her. Thick, rich, with a strong, appetizing aroma.
“I did, Svetlana Petrovna. According to the recipe. Maybe you’d like to add some more?”
“Add some more!” the mother-in-law snorted, pushing the bowl away. “We have to teach you everything. How to cook, how to use salt. You’ve made yourself comfortable, that’s for sure. Living in a finished apartment, everything ready for you. Your husband works, we help with your father-in-law, and you only manage to ruin soups.”
Lena lifted her eyes to her husband. Pavel was sitting there, staring at his phone, pretending nothing was happening. That was his usual behavior. The moment his mother started one of her tirades, he turned into a ghost.
“Pasha?” Lena called quietly.
He reluctantly tore himself away from the screen. “Mom, the soup is fine.”
“Fine for him!” Svetlana Petrovna instantly switched to him. “Go on, keep defending her! She’s got you completely under her thumb. I fought for this apartment for you, your father did the renovation, and you’re ready to defend any stray who shows up!”
“Fought for this apartment… father did the renovation…” Lena’s jaw clenched. She stayed silent. She had been silent for three years. Ever since the day she and Pasha got married and decided to live in this “three-room place.” The apartment had been a “killed” Khrushchev-era flat, with mustard-colored wallpaper and squeaky parquet floors.
“Mom, stop it,” Pavel mumbled weakly, already burying himself back in his phone.
“What do you mean, stop?” she wouldn’t let up. “The truth hurts, that’s all! At her age I’d already raised two kids and worked three jobs. And she sits at home all day ‘making it cozy.’ Cozy! What kind of cozy can there be if she can’t even make soup properly?”
Her father-in-law, Anatoly Sergeevich, who had been silently spooning up soup till then, joined the conversation.
“Svet, enough. We’re eating.”
“What do you mean, enough? I’m just saying it like it is!” She swept the kitchen with an appraising look. The new glossy cabinets, the induction stove, the built-in fridge. “We did everything for her, created every condition. Just live and be happy. But no, not even a word of gratitude.”
Lena felt something snap inside. She had always been patient. She kept telling herself it was for the sake of the family. For Pasha, whom she believed she loved. She thought they would get used to each other, that her mother-in-law would calm down. But each day only made it worse. The reproaches had become a daily ritual, like brushing your teeth.
She got up from the table, trying to keep her hands from shaking.
“I’m not hungry anymore. Thank you for dinner.”
“Well, there we go!” Svetlana Petrovna announced triumphantly to her back. “At the slightest thing—off she goes to cry in her room. So delicate.”
Lena closed the bedroom door behind her and leaned against it. Her heart was pounding in her throat. She looked around the room: an Italian bedroom set, heavy blackout curtains, a large flat-screen TV on the wall. All of it had been bought with her money. With the money from the sale of her grandmother’s house—a large plot of land in a picturesque spot on the riverbank. When her parents handed her that money, they sighed, sorry to part with the family home: “This is your starting capital, daughter. Invest it wisely.” And she had. In this apartment. In this family.
She went over to the dresser and pulled out the bottom drawer. Under a stack of bed linen there was a thick folder. Lena took it out. Inside were neatly stacked receipts, contracts with construction crews, invoices for furniture and appliances. Every ruble invested in this apartment was documented. The total came to nearly three million.
She gave a bitter smile. “Freeloader.” “Sponger.” Today something had changed. The last straw—the one people write about in books—had fallen into her cup of patience. And that cup shattered with a deafening crack. She would not be silent anymore. But she wasn’t going to argue either. She would simply take what was hers.
Lena barely slept that night. Pavel came to the bedroom an hour after dinner, muttered something like “just ignore her, you know what my mom’s like,” then turned to face the wall and started snoring. For him, everything was as usual. Another minor quarrel you just have to outlast. He had no idea that for Lena, this was the point of no return.
Lying in the dark, she replayed the whole chain of events that had led her into this trap. It had all started out so rosy three years ago. She and Pavel, happy bride and groom, were discussing their future.
“Len, listen, I’ve got an idea!” he’d said back then, gesturing excitedly. “Remember my grandmother’s apartment by the River Station? It’s standing empty. Let’s not get a mortgage, let’s invest your money into renovating that place instead! We’ll do everything the way we want it, it’ll be our family nest!”
The apartment was inherited, in a dreadful, “killed” state, but the idea itself seemed brilliant. Lena, blinded by love, agreed. She threw herself into the renovation completely. She drew the design plan herself, chose the materials, hired the crew. Her money flowed out like a river: replacement of all wiring and plumbing, straightening the walls, expensive laminate, Italian tiles. Pavel’s parents came by once a week, clicked their tongues and handed out “valuable advice.” Pavel’s father helped once—he installed the new toilet, which Svetlana Petrovna had mentioned at every possible occasion since as the “major renovation your father did.”
When it was all finished, the apartment was transformed. From a dull Khrushchev box it turned into a stylish, modern home. And then, when the last appliance had been bought and the plush sofa unwrapped, her in-laws arrived with a new “brilliant” idea.
“Kids, we’ve been thinking…” Svetlana Petrovna began in a honeyed tone, looking around the sparkling kitchen. “You’ve made such beauty here! A real family nest. And your father and I are all alone in our two-room place. Why live apart? We’ll sell our apartment and move in with you! We’ll all live together as one big, happy family!”
Lena had been stunned. This had never been part of the plan.
“We’ll help you with money,” her father-in-law chimed in, “and around the house Svetlana will be your main helper. And when the grandkids arrive, we’ll always be nearby!”
Lena tried to object, said that young couples should live separately, but Pavel didn’t back her up. “Len, what are you doing? Those are my parents! They want what’s best; they want to help us. You’re not going to kick them out, are you?” he pressured her in the evenings.
In the end, Lena gave in. The in-laws sold their old two-room apartment in no time and moved in with them with two suitcases. The money from the sale, they said, they put in the bank “for the future grandkids.” And from that moment on, Lena’s life turned into hell. Her mother-in-law’s “help” became total control. She ran the kitchen that Lena had paid for, slept in the guest room on the bed Lena had chosen, and every day methodically drummed into her that she, Lena, was nobody here. A lodger in the home she herself had created.
Lena sat down on the bed and opened the folder with the receipts again. Each receipt was a tiny shard of her broken illusions. Here was the contract for the kitchen—450,000 rubles. Here were the receipts from the appliance store—another 300,000. The sofa—150,000. The bed and mattress—200,000. And on and on and on. She flipped through the papers, and cold, ringing fury pushed out the hurt and the tears.
She looked at the sleeping Pavel. He mumbled something in his sleep. He knew nothing. Felt nothing. He lived in the cozy world she had built with her money and let his family wipe their feet on her.
“Well then,” Lena thought, typing “movers urgent services” into the search bar, “let’s see how you like living in what you actually paid for.”
A clear, merciless plan was already taking shape in her mind.
The next few days Lena was the perfect wife and daughter-in-law. She endured all the little jabs in silence, cooked her husband’s and mother-in-law’s favorite dishes and agreed with everything. Her meekness lulled the family’s vigilance. Svetlana Petrovna walked around with a triumphant look: once again she had “put the insolent daughter-in-law in her place.” Pavel was glad that peace had returned to the home.
Lena, meanwhile, led a secret life. She called three different moving companies, compared prices and terms. She chose the one that could provide a large truck and a team of four strong movers on Saturday morning.
“I need to move all the furniture and major appliances out of a three-room apartment,” she said in an even voice over the phone while Pavel was in the shower. “Yes, everything. You handle the packing. It has to be done as quickly as possible.”
Friday evening was supposed to be the peak of her humiliation. It was Anatoly Sergeevich’s birthday. A modest celebration, just family. Naturally, Lena was the one who had to set the table. She spent the whole day in the kitchen making his favorite Olivier salad and herring under a fur coat, roasting meat “French-style.”
The guests—Pavel’s parents and his aunt, Svetlana’s sister—arrived at seven. Tired but wearing a forced smile, Lena brought out the last dishes.
“Well, Lenochka, bring the main course,” her mother-in-law ordered in a commanding tone, settling at the head of the table.
When Lena put the steaming meat with its cheesy crust on the table, Svetlana Petrovna grimaced.
“Again everything drowned in mayonnaise. Lena, I’ve told you a hundred times, it’s unhealthy and outdated! In respectable homes they don’t cook like that anymore. Oh well, what can you expect from you.”
Aunt Galya, her sister’s carbon copy, immediately chimed in: “You’re right, Sveta. Nowadays it’s all about healthy eating. But fine, for variety’s sake it’ll do.”
Lena kept quiet and sat down. Pavel poured his father a glass of cognac, said a toast. Everyone drank, started eating.
“Pashka, you’re a good lad,” his father said, approvingly patting him on the shoulder. “Good job, good provider. Look at the wife you brought into our apartment. She lives like a queen.”
That was when Svetlana Petrovna finally burst. Maybe it was the wine, maybe she just needed to assert herself in front of her sister.
“What wife, come on!” she declared loudly. “You can’t live off looks. Gratitude is what matters. And she… I look at her, Galya, and I’m amazed. Came in here to everything ready. Your father and I broke our backs all our lives, left our son an apartment, and she’s planted herself here like a queen. Not a kopeck of her own, never really worked a day in her life. She just hangs off her husband’s and our necks. A freeloader, pure and simple!”
Pavel tensed. “Mom, it’s his birthday…”
“So what if it’s a birthday? I’m just telling the truth!” she went on. “You could at least say thank you, Lena! For taking in a little beggar like you! For letting you live like a human being and not with your mother in that two-room dump on the outskirts!”
Each word landed like a slap. “Beggar.” “Took you in.” Lena felt the blood drain from her face. She looked at Pavel. In his eyes she saw a plea: “Just hold it in, don’t start.” Once again, he chose his mother.
That was the last straw. Not one that simply overflowed the cup, but one that turned the water inside it to ice.
Lena slowly stood up. The room fell silent. All eyes were on her.
“You’re right, Svetlana Petrovna,” she said quietly, but with steel in her voice. “Absolutely right. I am very ungrateful.”
She turned and walked toward the bedroom.
“There, you see? She’s offended!” her mother-in-law shouted at her back. “The truth always hurts!”
Pavel stood up to follow her, but his mother stopped him: “Sit down! Let her cool off. Maybe she’ll get some sense.”
They didn’t know that Lena had gone to the bedroom not to cry. She took out her phone and sent a short message to the foreman of the movers: “Everything is on. Tomorrow at 9:00. Be ready to work fast.”
Then she packed a small bag with her documents, that folder with the receipts, her laptop and some clothes. She would be back here tomorrow. But no longer as the mistress of the house—rather as a court bailiff for herself.
Lena came back to the kitchen ten minutes later with the same unreadable expression. She sat down and even pretended to eat. The relatives, deciding the storm had passed, continued the meal. Pavel cast guilty glances her way but didn’t dare come up to her.
She spent the night on the couch in the living room. When Pavel tried to persuade her to go to bed, she answered coldly:
“I don’t want to sleep in the same bed with someone who lets people wipe their feet on me. You sleep there. In our bed. While you still can.”
She almost whispered the last words, and Pavel didn’t catch them. He shrugged, offended, and walked away.
All night Lena carefully laid out her plan in her mind. Fate seemed to be on her side: she knew the family’s plans for Saturday, and they were perfect for her. Pavel and his father had long been planning a fishing trip to a faraway lake—from early morning till late evening. And Svetlana had announced earlier in the week that on Saturday she’d go to her sister Galya’s dacha to help with canning. That meant the apartment would be completely at Lena’s disposal practically all day, so she could carry out Operation “Liquidation” quietly and without interference.
At 8 a.m. everything went according to her ideal scenario. The men, excited for a good catch, loaded their rods and thermos into the car and drove off to their lake. Svetlana, holding a bag of treats for her sister, headed for the commuter train. As she left, she threw back at Lena: “I want everything spotless and dinner on the table when I get back tonight!”
As soon as the door closed behind her mother-in-law, Lena took a deep breath. Showtime.
She dressed quickly, took the bag she’d packed in advance and stepped into the stairwell. Right at 9:00 a large moving truck drove into the courtyard. Four sturdy men in work overalls got out. The foreman, a big man named Igor, shook her hand.
“Elena? We’re ready. Where do we pull up?”
“Right up to the entrance. Third floor. There’s a freight elevator.”
She opened the door to the apartment and looked around.
“So, here’s the task,” Lena said clearly and firmly, surprising even herself. “We take out everything. Absolutely everything. From the living room: the sofa, the armchairs, the wall unit, the TV. From the bedroom: the bed, the wardrobe, the dresser, the nightstands, the TV. From the kitchen: the table, chairs, fridge, microwave. The washing machine from the bathroom. We even take the light fixtures and curtain rods. My goal is to leave bare walls.”
The movers exchanged glances.
“What about the kitchen cabinets? They’re built in,” Igor clarified.
“Those too,” Lena answered without hesitation. “Dismantle them carefully. They’re bolted together, I know. If something gets damaged, it’s not a big deal. The main thing is to take it all.”
Work began to hum along. The movers worked quickly and smoothly. First to “sail out” of the apartment was the huge leather sofa. Then the flat-screen TV.
Soon curious neighbors began appearing in the stairwell. The first, of course, was Baba Zina from the first floor—the local news service.
“Lenochka, dear, what’s going on? Are you moving out? And where’s Pasha? And Svetlana?”
Lena had been expecting this moment. She walked over to the old woman with a polite but cold smile.
“Hello, Baba Zina. No, we’re not moving. I am. Alone.”
“How alone?” the neighbor gasped, and two more women immediately joined her.
“Just like that,” Lena raised her voice so everyone could hear. “You know, for three years I’ve been told I’m just a freeloader here, living off everything that’s already done. So I decided to be grateful and free the owners from my property.”
“So this… all this is yours?” the woman from the apartment opposite asked incredulously.
Lena took the folder out of her bag.
“Every last bit, down to the very last chair,” she said, pointedly waving the folder of receipts. “Everything was bought with my personal money. The renovation, the furniture, the appliances. And since I’m so awful and ungrateful, I’m taking my things with me. I don’t want to burden these wonderful people anymore. Let them live in their apartment. In the state it was before me.”
A murmur swept through the stairwell. The neighbors started whispering, passing the news along. The performance Lena staged made a tremendous impression. She wasn’t just taking her things—she was reclaiming her reputation. Publicly.
By late afternoon the work was almost done. The movers, incredibly efficient, carried out the remaining sections of the dismantled kitchen. Lena did one last round of the empty rooms, checking everything. She’d made sure they took everything: from the expensive interior doors she’d bought herself to the curtain rods. All that was left were bare walls with fresh holes from the anchors, the cold laminate she had chosen so carefully, and a single bare bulb hanging forlornly from the ceiling in each room. The apartment she had poured her soul and all her savings into had turned back into a faceless concrete box.
“That’s it, ma’am. All done,” Igor reported.
“Great. Take everything to the address I gave you. It’s a storage facility.”
She paid the crew generously. When the last mover stepped out, Lena took one last look at the empty rooms. In the corner of each room sat large black trash bags—she had carefully, but without the slightest regret, stuffed all of Pavel’s and his parents’ clothes and personal belongings into them, pulling everything out of “her,” now former, closets. Nothing remained of the life she had tried to build. Nothing except the ringing emptiness, those black bags, and a dizzying sense of freedom.
She took the keys from her pocket, laid them on the dirty windowsill and left, closing the door firmly behind her. She had to go down the stairs in complete silence—the neighbors had all hidden in their apartments, stunned by what they’d seen.
Closer to eight in the evening, Anatoly’s car drove into the yard. Pavel and his father came back from their fishing trip frozen and tired, but overall pleased with their day in nature. Svetlana arrived at the entrance at about the same time, returning from the dacha.
“Well, fishermen, did you catch anything?” she smirked, nodding at the empty buckets.
“It’s not about the catch, it’s about the process!” Anatoly waved her off, climbing the stairs.
They went into the building together.
“It’s suspiciously quiet today,” Svetlana remarked while they waited for the elevator. “Usually all the old biddies are on the benches, and now no one.”
“It’s a day off, everyone’s at home resting,” Pavel said casually, already dreaming of a hot dinner and a warm apartment. He put the key in the lock.
The door opened. The first thing they saw was the ringing emptiness of the hallway. The coat closet was gone, along with the shoe cabinet, even the doormat.
“What kind of joke is this?” Pavel muttered, stepping inside. “Mom? Lena?”
He walked into the living room and froze. The room, lit by the cold light of a single bulb, was completely empty. Bare walls with marks where shelves used to hang and bits of wires where the TV had been.
“Dad, come here!” he yelled, not believing his eyes.
Anatoly came in, and the empty fishing bucket in his hand dropped with a deafening clang onto the bare laminate, emphasizing the ringing silence.
“What… what happened here? Robbed?!”
They rushed around the apartment in a panic. The bedroom—empty. The kitchen—empty. The washing machine gone from the bathroom. They looked like ghosts wandering through the shell of their own, but already someone else’s, life.
“Robbed us!” Pavel shouted, clutching his head. “They took everything! We have to call the police!”
He grabbed his phone and started dialing 112 with shaking fingers. At that moment the front door they hadn’t closed creaked again, and Baba Zina appeared in the doorway.
“So, my little doves, you’re back?” she asked with malicious glee, looking around at the empty apartment. “Enjoying the view?”
“Did you see anything, Baba Zina?” Anatoly ran up to her. “Were there thieves?”
“What thieves?” she snorted. “It was your Lenochka. With movers. They were at it all day, quite the show. Took all her stuff. Said she’s tired of being a freeloader and living off everything that’s already done.”
A dead silence fell. The three family members stared at her, unable to believe what they’d heard.
“Lena… how?” Svetlana whispered. “What did she take?”
“Oh, she took everything,” Baba Zina said with relish, reveling in her role as the harbinger of doom. “Furniture, TVs, fridge… they even took apart and hauled off your pretty kitchen. And the curtain rods with the drapes. She said everything was bought with her money, showed the neighbors the receipts. Said that since you don’t need her, then you don’t need her things either. Left you, so to speak, what’s rightfully yours. Bare walls.”
Pavel stared blankly at the neighbor. His brain refused to process it. Lena? Quiet, meek Lena? Did that?
Svetlana swayed and leaned against the wall.
“What… what do you mean, her money? We… it was all shared…”
“Well, apparently not that shared, if she has receipts for everything,” Baba Zina said sharply and, satisfied with the effect, disappeared into her apartment.
The family was left alone in the wreckage. Pavel, as if in a dream, walked into the bedroom. In the corner of the room were piled those large black trash bags. He tore one open. Out spilled his clothes—sweaters, shirts. The other bags held his parents’ things. All their possessions had been tossed together like garbage.
Slowly, the realization dawned. This wasn’t a robbery. It was revenge. Cold, calculated, humiliating.
“She… she even put our clothes in trash bags,” Pavel said dully.
Svetlana burst into silent sobbing, sinking down onto the dirty floor. It was fully dark outside now. The apartment, stripped of curtains, furniture and comfort, filled with cold gloom. It no longer felt like a home. It felt like a crypt. And that crypt was where they were about to spend the night.
The cold autumn evening seeped into the apartment through the bare windows. The solitary bulbs on the ceiling cast harsh, uncomfortable shadows. The silence pressed on their ears, broken only by the wind outside and Svetlana’s sobs.
She sat on the floor in the middle of the living room, hugging her knees, rocking back and forth.
“How could she… how could she do this? Took everything and left us… Snake… I let her into my home and she…”
“Stop it, Sveta,” Anatoly said hoarsely. He stood by the window, looking down at the dark courtyard. “It’s our own fault.”
“Our fault?!” she flared up. “How is it our fault? Because we took her in? Because we were afraid to say a word so as not to offend her?”
“You weren’t afraid,” he cut her off. “Especially you. You ate her alive every day. Well, now you’ve eaten your fill.”
“It was for a reason! For a reason! She was living off us!”
“Apparently not off us,” Anatoly sighed. “If she took everything. She’s a smart girl. Kept quiet, endured, then solved everything with one stroke.”
Pavel was sitting in the corner, staring at his phone. He tried calling mutual friends, Lena’s parents. The friends didn’t answer or said they knew nothing. His mother-in-law listened to his confused story and replied in an icy tone: “My daughter is an adult and makes her own decisions. If she did this, she had serious reasons. Don’t call me again,” and hung up.
He felt empty and lost. His cozy, well-oiled world had collapsed in a single day. The sofa he liked to lie on, the TV he spent his evenings in front of, the bed he slept in… all gone. And it turned out none of it belonged to him. It belonged to Lena. That very same Lena he hadn’t defended from his mother.
“So what do we do now?” he asked into the void. “Where do we sleep? What do we eat?”
Pavel went into the empty kitchen, desperately hoping to find something edible. Surprisingly, there was food. On the windowsill stood neatly arranged bags of grains, pasta, sugar. The apples and potatoes his mother had brought were scattered across the floor. But all of it was a cruel joke. You can’t cook porridge without a stove. You can’t have hot tea without a kettle—there wasn’t one. There was no fridge to store anything either. Lena had left them food but taken away the very possibility of cooking it.
“We’ll go to Galya’s,” Svetlana suggested, meaning her sister. “We can spend the night there.”
Anatoly gave a bitter little laugh.
“And what will we tell her? That our ‘beggar’ daughter-in-law kicked us out of our own home, hauling away everything down to the last screw? What a disgrace…”
But there was no choice. Sleeping on the bare floor in a cold apartment was impossible. Svetlana staggered to her feet.
“I’ll… I’ll call her now.”
She went off to a corner and started explaining something in a low voice. Judging by her tone, the conversation was difficult. A few minutes later she came back, her face gray.
“Galya says… her nephews came to visit. No space.”
It was a lie, and they all knew it. Baba Zina had surely already phoned half the building, and the news of their shame had reached Aunt Galya too. No one wanted to take in a family who had treated their daughter-in-law so cruelly.
They were alone. The three of them. In an empty concrete box that that morning had been their fortress.
Pavel walked to the window and looked out. Warm light glowed in the windows of the neighboring houses, life was going on. They had been thrown out of that life.
“We need to find something warm, at least old coats,” Anatoly muttered; his teeth chattered from the cold seeping into the apartment. “We can’t just sit here all night like this.”
Pavel silently went to the bedroom, dragged one of the large black bags back, and ripped it open with fury. Their clothes spilled out onto the bare floor, crumpled like unwanted junk.
“There,” he said in a flat voice, nodding at the heap. “All our blankets, all the coats. Our past life. We can cover ourselves with that. She thought of everything.”
They silently started sorting through the humiliating pile, pulling out anything that could serve as bedding on the floor. The thickest down jackets and old coats went on the bottom as makeshift mattresses. Sweaters were rolled up to use as pillows. It was more humiliating than simply sleeping on the bare floor—building a bed out of your own clothes, tossed out of your closets, like homeless people in your own apartment.
Pavel tried to sleep, but the cold and the hard floor wouldn’t let him. All he could see was Lena’s face—calm, resolute, and utterly unfamiliar. For the first time he realized he had never really known the woman he’d lived with for three years. And for the first time he understood that he had lost her. Forever.
Toward morning, when all three of them finally dozed off, stiff and exhausted, Svetlana whispered into the darkness:
“We have to find her. Talk to her. Get her back…”
But she didn’t finish the sentence. It was unclear what exactly she wanted back: the furniture, Lena, or her shattered pride.
Lena rented a small one-room apartment on the other side of the city. The first night she slept on an air mattress she bought on the way. She had nothing but a bag of clothes and the folder of receipts. But she felt incredibly free. As if she had taken off a heavy, crushing shell.
She spent the next day fussing about. She arranged for some of her things to be brought from storage—the bed, a table, a couple of chairs, the fridge and microwave. She bought the bare minimum of dishes and bedding. By evening, her small apartment was starting to look like a home. Her own home.
She knew they would look for her. And she had a pretty good idea how. Pavel would certainly start calling all her friends. Her weak link was Katya—a kind, soft-hearted soul who had helped her find this apartment at the last minute. Lena was sure Pavel would play on her sympathy, tell a heart-wrenching story about his sick mother and remorse, and Katya, unable to withstand the pressure, would give away the address. Her guess was confirmed when, on the third day, the intercom rang. Her heart skipped, but she answered calmly.
“Who is it?”
“Lena, it’s me, Pasha. Please open up. We need to talk.”
She was silent for a second, pulling herself together.
“We have nothing to talk about, Pavel.”
“Lena, please!” There was desperation in his voice. “We’ve been living like bums for two days! Mom is sick, Dad is in a terrible state. Please, let’s talk. We’re standing at your building.”
She sighed. This had to happen. Better to finish it once and for all.
“Come up.”
A few minutes later the doorbell rang. All three of them were on the doorstep. Pathetic, haggard. They were wearing whatever they’d managed to pull from the bags, and looked the part—clothes crumpled, not quite clean, shapeless. Svetlana looked at her with open hatred mixed with fear. Anatoly couldn’t meet her eyes. Pavel looked like he hadn’t slept at all.
“Lena…” he began, but his mother cut him off immediately.
“What have you done, you monster?!” she hissed. “You tossed us out into the street! Shamed us in front of everyone!”
“I just took what’s mine, Svetlana Petrovna,” Lena answered calmly, not letting them into the apartment. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You wanted me out, wanted your apartment back. I did exactly that. What’s the problem?”
“But… what about us?” Pavel broke in. “The apartment is empty, it’s freezing! We can’t live there! At least give us back the bed and the fridge!”
Lena looked straight at him.
“Give them back? Are you serious? After everything that’s happened? After three years of you all telling me I’m nothing and living at your expense?”
“Lenochka, daughter…” Anatoly suddenly spoke up, taking a timid step forward. “We were wrong. Got carried away. Forgive us, if you can. Let’s put everything back the way it was. Come home.”
Lena gave a bitter little smile.
“‘Home’? I don’t have a home there anymore. And to be honest, neither do you. Because a home isn’t the walls. It’s respect, warmth and support. And there was none of that in that apartment.”
She saw Pavel’s lips tremble. He wanted to say something—probably about love—but Lena got in first.
“I won’t come back, Pasha. And I won’t give you the things. But I can sell them to you.”
All three stared at her, stunned.
“What?” Pavel repeated.
Lena took a sheet of paper from her pocket where she’d done the math beforehand.
“All the furniture and appliances I took were bought with my money. Here,” she handed him the folder with the receipts. “The total comes to two million eight hundred and seventy thousand rubles. Taking into account three years of wear and tear, I’m ready to sell it all to you for one and a half million. The whole lot. If you’ve got the money, my movers will bring everything back and reinstall it tomorrow.”
Svetlana gasped in outrage. “One and a half million?! Where are we supposed to get that kind of money? You’ve lost your mind!”
“That’s not my problem,” Lena replied coolly. “You can get a loan. You’ll finally pay for the things you used for free for three years. Think of it as your mortgage.”
Pavel stared at her, and in his eyes there was not only despair, but a very late awakening. He finally saw in front of him not a quiet, beaten-down girl, but a strong, confident woman. A woman he had lost through his own stupidity.
“Lena… I… I love you,” he whispered.
“Too late, Pasha,” she said softly but firmly. “Love doesn’t live where there is no respect. And you never respected me, my feelings, or my contribution to our life.”
She began slowly closing the door.
“You have a week to decide about my offer. After that I’ll start selling things off individually. Goodbye.”
She shut the door right in their faces and turned the lock. On the other side came Svetlana’s shrieks and Pavel’s pleading voice. But Lena no longer listened.
She leaned her back against the door and took a deep breath. For the first time in a long while, she breathed freely. Ahead lay uncertainty, a new life that she would have to build from scratch. But she was no longer afraid. She knew she would cope. Because she hadn’t just reclaimed her furniture and appliances.
She had reclaimed herself.
And that was the most valuable acquisition of her life