— Where are you going? I said you stay home.
Dima stepped out of the kitchen into the narrow hallway and, getting two steps ahead of Lera, planted his broad palm against the doorframe. His body completely blocked the exit. In the dim light of the single bulb, his figure looked massive and motionless—like a post driven into the ground. From the kitchen came the acrid smell of onions burning in a frying pan, and that ordinary, domestic odor made what was happening feel even wilder and more absurd.
Lera slowly raised her eyes to him. Her gaze was calm, almost bored. She didn’t stop—she simply slowed down, coming nearly right up to him. Her eyes slid from his face to his hand brazenly barring her way, then back to his eyes. She stayed silent, giving him the chance to assess just how stupid his position was.
— I’m waiting for an answer, he said with pressure. — Tanya can manage in her café without you. You’ve got a man—you should be with him.
— Dima, are you out of your mind? Her voice was even, without the slightest hint of fear or outrage. It was the tone of someone speaking to an unreasonable child. — Did you forget whose apartment you’re in?
He smirked, but it came out crooked and uncertain. He had clearly expected a different reaction—tears, pleading, shouting. Not this cold, dissecting calm.
— That doesn’t matter. I’m your man, and I decide where you go and with whom. It’s my way of taking care of you, if you don’t understand. I don’t want you wandering around at night God knows where.
Lera took a tiny step back, creating distance. She looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. Not the quiet, slightly lost guy she’d taken in six months ago when he’d been kicked out of his rented place, but someone completely different—strange, brazen, and unpleasant.
— You’re not my man, she enunciated, each word like a lash. — You’re a freeloader I let stay out of pity while you looked for a job. You live on my territory, eat my food, and sleep in my bed. And you won’t tell me what to do. Do you understand me?
His face flushed dark red. Her words landed straight in the vulnerable spot—his humiliating situation, which he’d been trying so carefully to disguise with the role of a caring, dominant male. He clenched his fists.
— You’ll regret those words…
— No, Dima, you will, if you don’t move your hand, she cut him off in the same icy tone. — One more word like that, and I’ll call my father. He’ll explain very quickly and very clearly who makes the decisions here and whose apartment this is.
The mention of her father worked. Dima knew him—taciturn, solid, with heavy hands and a direct, no-arguments look. The threat was more than real. His posture immediately went soft. The hand that a second ago had seemed like a steel barrier slid helplessly off the frame. He stepped aside, pressing himself into the hallway wall. In his eyes wasn’t rage, but a confused, angry hurt—the hurt of someone whose power grab had been cut off roughly and humiliatingly.
— You wouldn’t call… I’d like to see you try, he muttered under his breath, looking away.
Lera didn’t dignify him with a reply. In silence she took her small handbag from the entry table, checked that her keys were there, and without turning back walked out the door. She knew this wasn’t the end. It was only a declaration of war. And now the enemy lived under the same roof, lying low until the next attack.
The week after that blowup was quiet. But it wasn’t the quiet of peace—it was the quiet of a lull before the storm. The air in the apartment thickened, grew dense and heavy, as if you could scoop it up with a spoon. They stopped talking. They moved on different orbits within those sixty square meters, trying not to intersect—like two celestial bodies whose collision would mean an inevitable explosion. Any word could become a detonator.
Dima changed tactics. Open aggression gave way to a sticky, silent pressure. He no longer tried to forbid her from leaving. But when she came home, she always found him sitting in the kitchen in the half-dark with a cup of cold tea. He didn’t look at her, yet she physically felt his stare drilling into her back while she took off her shoes in the hallway. He didn’t ask anything, but his silence was louder than any question. It screamed: Where were you? With whom? I see everything. I know everything.
He began leaving traces of his resentment all over the apartment: an uncapped tube of toothpaste, a dirty mug on her work desk, crumbs on the kitchen floor that he pointedly “didn’t notice.” Tiny jabs meant to provoke her, to make her snap and start the conversation first. But Lera didn’t snap. She cleaned up, fixed things, ignored him—silently. She accepted the rules of this quiet war and played her hand with cold, detached persistence. She knew he was waiting for her reaction, and she didn’t give him the pleasure.
The breaking point came on Thursday. Lera needed to pick up an order from an online store, and in the morning she’d withdrawn cash on purpose—two large, crisp bills she put in a separate pocket of her wallet. In the evening, getting ready to go out, she opened her bag. The wallet was in its place. She unzipped it and looked into that exact pocket.
It was empty.
Lera froze. She didn’t frantically check every compartment, didn’t dump her bag onto the bed. She simply stared at the empty fabric slot. There was no panic in her head, no surprise. Only a dull, icy emptiness—and final understanding. He’d crossed the line. The last one. This wasn’t just stupid self-assertion anymore. It was theft. Petty and humiliating, like a spit in the face.
She slowly zipped the wallet, put it back into her bag, and stepped out of the bedroom. Dima was sitting in the living room on the couch, watching some idiotic TV show with exaggerated interest. He didn’t even turn his head when she came in, but his whole body was tense with anticipation. He knew she’d discovered the missing money. He was waiting.
Lera sat down in the armchair opposite him without a word. She looked at his profile, at the smug crease at the corner of his mouth, at the way he pretended to be absorbed by what was happening on the screen. And in that moment, all the pity she’d once felt for him evaporated without a trace. Only pure, cold contempt remained. She saw not a man who’d lost his way, but a small parasite who, once attached, decided he had the right not only to live at her expense, but to handle her things.
She took her phone from her pocket. Her fingers didn’t tremble. She unlocked the screen and found the right number in contacts. She wasn’t calling yet—just staring at the name on the display. It was her last defensive line, her final argument, the thing she hadn’t wanted to use. But he’d left her no choice.
He cracked first. The silence she’d created with her quiet presence in the chair pressed on him harder than any shout. He demonstratively turned up the volume with the remote, but the fake laughter from the TV only emphasized the unnaturalness of the moment. He shot her an irritated, sideways glance.
— What, glued to your phone again? Can’t you relax for once?
Lera slowly lifted her eyes from her phone screen and looked straight at him. Her face was completely unreadable, like a poker player holding a winning hand.
— There’s money missing from my wallet, she said evenly, without a questioning intonation. This wasn’t a question. It was a statement. — Two large bills I put there this morning.
His face twitched for a second, but he immediately pulled himself together, putting on a mask of surprise mixed with light contempt. He went on the offensive, choosing what seemed to him the best tactic—attack.
— So? You’re telling me this? You’re always shoving them somewhere and then forgetting. Check your jacket pockets. Or look on the entry table. What does it have to do with me?
He spoke confidently, even brazenly, staring her in the eyes. He tried to crush her with his gaze, make her doubt herself. But Lera didn’t look away. She kept watching him calmly, with a faint, barely noticeable squint, as if examining under a microscope some especially unpleasant specimen.
— They’re not in the jacket. And not on the entry table either, her voice stayed just as colorless. — They were in the wallet. Now they’re not. And besides the two of us, no one has been in this apartment.
— Oh, that’s what this is! he threw his hands up theatrically, raising his voice. — You’re saying I took them? Have you lost your mind? You think I’m a thief? Maybe stop hanging around cafés with your Tanya all the time—then your money will stay put, and you won’t have anyone to suspect!
That was his miscalculation. The last one, and fatal. He didn’t just deny the obvious—he tried again to tell her how to live and how to spend her own money. In that moment something finally went out in her eyes. The last spark of doubt, the last trace of the past. Now she saw him with complete clarity.
— And who gave you the right to boss me around here, Dima? You asked to stay with me until you got your job and housing sorted out! If I need to, my dad will come over and throw you out of here!
Her words hung in the air. It was a direct, naked ultimatum. His feigned confidence began to crack like thin ice. But he still couldn’t believe she was serious. His mind refused to accept how shaky his position really was. And he did what all fools do at the edge of a cliff—he took one more step forward and smirked.
— What, calling your daddy? he forced out, trying to save face.
Lera looked at the phone in her hand, then back at him. A faint, cold smile touched her lips.
— Yes, she answered calmly and brought the phone to her ear.
She hit call. Dima stared at her, and the smirk slowly slid off his face, replaced by confusion. The line rang, and then a man’s voice came on.
— Dad, hi. Can you come by? She paused, looking straight into Dima’s frozen eyes. — I need help taking out the trash. It’s very heavy.
She ended the call and set the phone on the armrest of the chair. The living room went quiet. Even the TV seemed to fall silent. Dima stared at her, unable to say a word. He understood. He understood everything. But it was already too late.
The time it took her father to arrive stretched into a thick, wavering eternity. It couldn’t have been more than half an hour, but for Dima every minute lasted a full hour. He got up several times, paced the room, sat back down. His swaggering self-assurance evaporated, leaving behind a sticky, cold fear. He tried to talk to Lera, to start a dialogue that could fix everything, rewind the film.
— Lera, listen… he began, stepping toward her. — I overreacted. Let’s talk like adults. Don’t drag—
She didn’t even turn her head. Her gaze was fixed on the dark phone screen on her lap. She simply sat and waited. Her calm was more frightening than any hysterics. It was absolute. It meant the decision was made, the sentence passed, and there was no appeal. To her, he was no longer a person—just an object that needed to be removed from her space.
— Lera, I’m begging you! pleading notes broke into his voice. — This is stupid! Over some money… I’ll give it back, you hear me?
She slowly lifted her eyes to him. There was no anger there, no hurt. Only cold, tired disgust.
— It’s not about the money, Dima. It’s about you.
And she turned away again. He understood that the wall between them had become impenetrable. He sat back down on the couch, clutching his head in his hands. He still couldn’t believe this was really happening. It felt like a bad dream, a ridiculous farce.
A sharp, short ring of the doorbell sounded like a gunshot. Dima flinched with his whole body. Lera, on the contrary, rose smoothly, without haste, and went to open the door. She moved lightly, as if a crushing weight had just been lifted from her shoulders.
Her father stood on the threshold—a large, silent man in a simple dark jacket. He didn’t say hello. His heavy взгляд slid over his daughter, lingered for a split second, then moved into the room, unerringly finding the target. He asked no questions. The code phrase about “heavy trash” needed no explanation.
Without a word he stepped into the apartment, taking a wide stride over the threshold. His movements were economical and precise, like a man used to physical work. Dima instinctively pressed himself into the back of the couch, trying to become smaller, less noticeable. It was useless. Lera’s father walked straight up to him.
— Pack your things, he said. His voice was low and even, without the slightest hint of emotion.
— I… I’ll… right now… Dima babbled, trying to stand, but his legs wouldn’t obey.
Her father didn’t wait. With no visible effort he grabbed Dima by the collar of his hoodie and yanked him up off the couch in one motion. Dima dangled in his grip like a rag doll. No swing, no punch, no struggle—only simple, inevitable physical superiority. Just as silently, her father dragged him toward the exit. Dima’s feet tangled; he barely managed to shuffle along the floor.
Lera stood by the wall, watching with the same detached expression. She didn’t say a word.
Her father pushed him out onto the landing and let go. Dima staggered, barely keeping his balance. Then her father returned to the hallway, picked up Dima’s backpack leaning against the wall, and without looking tossed it out after him. The backpack thudded dully against the opposite wall and dropped to the floor.
The door slammed shut. The lock clicked.
Lera didn’t even turn around. She heard the sound of hurried, stumbling footsteps retreating down the stairs. Her father walked into the kitchen in silence, turned on the tap, and washed his hands. Then he returned to the hallway and looked at his daughter. In their eyes there were no words of comfort, no pity, no questions—only complete, absolute understanding.
— That’s it, he said. Not a question, a statement.
— Yes, Lera answered quietly. — Thanks, Dad.
He gave a short nod and left. The apartment belonged to her again…