The glass in Oleg’s hand flashed predatorily under the light of the crystal chandelier. The dinner he’d thrown for “his closest people” was in full swing.
An expensive apartment in the city center, a table set as if for a reception at an embassy, exquisite dishes whose aromas barely broke through the cold scent of success.
“…and now, ladies and gentlemen, we drink to my Veronika,” his voice—velvety and commanding—settled over the table, making the guests, Yegor and Sveta, tense without meaning to. “To her, so to speak, numerous talents.”
He paused with practiced precision, savoring his power over the moment. Yegor—his longtime friend and business partner—slowly set down his fork. Yegor’s wife, Sveta—once Veronika’s best friend—drew her head into her shoulders.
“Recently she decided she’s a photographer. Can you imagine? My wife. Bought herself this… toy with my money.”
Oleg swept his gaze over those present, and in his eyes sloshed open, lazy contempt—aimed like a focused beam at his wife sitting opposite him.
“She showed me her work. Some blurry little flowers, kittens… Incredible depth, right?”
I told her—darling, your place is here, at home. Creating comfort for the man who works. Not spending his money on this… hobby.
He said the word “hobby” as if it were an insult. Sveta coughed nervously and looked away, pretending to study the pattern on the tablecloth. Yegor, on the contrary, raised his eyes and looked at Oleg.
In his best friend’s gaze there was something cold—something Veronika had never seen before.
“But she’s got spirit,” Oleg went on, his smile growing wider and uglier. “Thinks she’s some unrecognized genius. Thinks this is her calling.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, and looked straight at his wife.
“Tell me, Veronika. You still believe you’ll make something of yourself? Or have you already realized your fate is just to be a pretty accessory to a successful man?”
The air in the room thickened into gel. It wasn’t just a question. It was public branding—a sentence delivered with cold, sadistic cruelty.
And at that moment Veronika looked up at him.
Instead of tears, instead of hurt, a quiet—almost tender—smile bloomed on her face. She didn’t say a word.
He humiliated me in front of everyone at dinner, and in response I only smiled.
Then, with a slow, precise movement, she leaned down and pulled out from under the table a small, perfectly black box tied with a matte ribbon.
And she slid it across the table to her husband.
Oleg frowned; his self-assurance cracked for a moment. He expected anything—a hysterical scene, a silent exit, tears. But not this. Not a calm smile and a gift.
“What is this?” he asked, his voice losing its velvet.
“A present. For you,” Veronika replied just as softly.
Her calm was frightening. It felt unnatural—alien in this house where the air had long been soaked in the scent of his expensive cologne, pushing out every other aroma.
Even now, through the fragrance of truffles and wine, she could feel that sharp, cold note.
Once, their home had smelled different.
It had smelled of fresh lilies Oleg brought her every Saturday, and the bitter aroma of coffee they brewed together in the mornings.
Back then he was different. He admired her passion, her ability to find beauty in the ordinary.
It was he who gave her her first real camera on their first anniversary. Heavy. Professional. She remembered what he said that night: “You see the world the way no one else does. Show it to me, Veronika.”
And she did. Their first small apartment was covered with her work: a black-and-white portrait of Oleg asleep, raindrops on the window like tears, a sunbeam lost in her hair.
He was proud of those shots. He’d take guests around the apartment and say, “Look—Nika took this. Talent!”
But then his business took off. And their marriage went off the rails. At first it was little things. “Why do you need that dusty camera when you’ve got an iPhone?” he tossed out one day after another meeting.
Then came the “jokes” in front of new, wealthy friends. “Veronika’s our artiste,” he’d say with a crooked smirk. “Photographing nonsense while I earn real money.”
His words were small, poisonous pricks that slowly poisoned everything between them.
He stopped looking at her photos. He stopped seeing her at all. She became just a function—part of the décor of his successful life. The worst part was how he began to invade her space.
He consigned her father’s old armchair to a resale shop without asking, because it “didn’t fit the new design.”
He “accidentally” deleted a folder on her computer containing five years of photo archives because he “urgently needed space for work files.”
Her little studio became his second office. “It’s more practical, darling. You hardly work anyway,” he explained, not looking her in the eye. Her camera—the one he’d given her—now lay in a closet, buried under his business papers.
Their last conversation happened a month ago. She found out she was pregnant. In a surge of desperate hope that it would bring everything back, she told him. He was silent for a long time, staring out the window at the city lights. Then he turned, and his face was cold and unfamiliar.
“A baby? Now? Veronika, do you have any idea how untimely this is? I’ve got the biggest deal coming up. That’s enormous stress. And you—with your… surprises.”
That night she lost more than the baby. She lost her last illusion. A week later the doctor said there was nothing to be done—she wouldn’t be able to carry this child; it was quite possible stress was to blame.
And then, in the emptiness that formed inside her, a cold, clear resolve was born.
She took her old camera out of the closet. And a small voice recorder. She began methodically documenting her life. Not for him—for herself.
Oleg stared at the black box in confusion. Sveta and Yegor froze.
He reached out and touched the matte ribbon.
“Well, let’s see what my talented wife prepared,” he said with a forced smirk, trying to take control back.
Veronika watched him in silence. Her smile didn’t waver.
Oleg untied the ribbon and lifted the lid. Inside, on black velvet, lay a stack of glossy photographs. He snorted. He took the top one.
And the smirk slid off his face. The photo was sharp, professional—but the subject…
It was a bruise.
A large, ugly bruise on the pale skin of a woman’s forearm, with distinct finger marks. His fingers. That night when he’d ripped the phone from her hand.
He jerked his eyes up at Veronika, but she looked back with the same calm smile. He hurriedly flicked the first photo aside.
The second was her face, shot in a mirror. Swollen. Tear-streaked. She’d taken it the night he first called her “a nobody.”
The third photograph—her studio, turned into his office. In the foreground, beneath a heap of his folders, the lens of her old camera was visible.
He kept flipping, and each photo was a blow. There she was alone in a restaurant, at a table for two, on their anniversary. There—his phone with an open chat thread. There she was, asleep on the living-room couch.
This wasn’t just an exhibition.
It was a record of destruction.
Sveta gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. Yegor, seated next to Oleg, saw every frame. His face shifted from a polite mask into a grimace of disgust. He slowly edged away from his “friend.”
At the bottom of the box, beneath the last photograph, lay a small black voice recorder.
Oleg stared at it blankly. Veronika reached across the table and pressed “Play.”
The room filled with his own voice.
“…do you have any idea how untimely this is? I’ve got the biggest deal coming up…”
“Who needs you and your stupid pictures? Without me you’re nothing, you hear me? Nothing!”
“Stop crying—you exhaust me. Get it together, you rag.”
Each phrase—once thrown out in the privacy of their home—now sounded like a verdict in this public court.
Under the recorder lay the final exhibit: a hospital form folded in quarters. With trembling hands, Oleg unfolded it. Diagnosis: “Spontaneous miscarriage.” Cause: “Acute stress reaction.”
Everything froze. Oleg’s mask fell away. His face turned ash-gray. He looked at Veronika, and in his eyes there was no longer anger, but animal, primal fear.
Sveta was the first to break the paralysis. She rose slowly. She didn’t look at Oleg. She looked at Veronika.
“I think it’s time we go,” she said. Yegor stood up silently after her. He tossed a crumpled napkin onto the table.
“Oleg,” Yegor began, his voice firm. “Tomorrow morning our lawyers will contact you. Consider our partnership terminated as of this moment.”
Oleg opened his mouth, but only a hoarse sound came out.
And Veronika stood. She smoothed her dress, picked up a small purse from her chair. She no longer looked at her husband. He had become just another piece of furniture.
She calmly walked around the table. As she passed Sveta, she gave her the slightest nod.
At the doorway she stopped—but didn’t turn around.
“The keys are on the hall table. I’ve already moved my things out,” her voice was even. “It was an interesting performance. But I’m no longer taking part in it.”
And she left, quietly closing the door behind her.
She simply walked down the night street. Streetlights pulled fragments of the world out of the darkness.
She stopped and took her old camera from her purse. She raised it, looked through the viewfinder—and for the first time in many years she saw not the reflection of her pain, but simply the world.
The shutter’s click sounded like the first breath after a long suffocation.
She didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.
There was no euphoria, no feeling of flight. Only a heavy, hard-won emptiness inside. And that emptiness was filled with possibility.
Epilogue. Two years later.
In a small, sunlit studio gallery on a quiet side street, the air smelled of fresh paint and wood.
Large black-and-white photographs hung on the white walls. They were portraits: elderly faces, a laborer’s hands, a child’s eyes. Each shot was a story of dignity, fragility, and invisible strength.
Veronika stood by one wall. She had changed. The anxious thinness was gone; calm warmth had appeared in her eyes. She was speaking with a gray-haired man who studied her work with interest.
“Your photographs… there’s no falseness in them,” he said. “They’re honest.”
“I’m just trying to see,” Veronika answered. “Not to look—really to see.”
Her first solo exhibition was called Protocols of Life.
The divorce from Oleg was quiet. He gave her everything without bargaining. Out of fear. His business empire crumbled. Yegor’s departure was only the first stone. Almost everyone turned away from him.
Once, half a year ago, she happened to see him across the street. He was getting into a car far more modest than before.
He looked older and somehow… gray. She looked at him and felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. She simply watched him like a stranger passing by—and kept walking.
A young woman with a notebook approached.
“Veronika, may I ask a couple of questions? Your series… it’s very powerful. Tell me, what inspired you?”
Veronika thought for a moment. She looked at her photographs.
“Yes,” she said at last. “There was a moment when I understood that the best thing you can do is turn your pain into art. Not for revenge. But to survive. And to help others see.”
She smiled—the same quiet, calm smile. Only now there wasn’t a drop of ice in it. Only light.
Outside the gallery window, evening was beginning. The city lit up. Veronika adjusted the camera strap on her shoulder.
There were still so many faces ahead. So many stories. And she was ready to tell them—and to find a real man for herself, to build a family