Part 1. The Architecture of Greed
The monitors flickered with a cold, bluish light, stacking endless lines of code in front of Victoria’s eyes. The deployment had gone smoothly, but the system still demanded attention—like a spoiled child about to wake up and start screaming. Victoria nudged her glasses up the bridge of her nose, feeling the familiar ache tighten across her neck. Being a DevOps engineer meant living in constant anticipation of failure, predicting the disaster before it could crash the servers.
In her private life, she followed the same approach: backups, audits, perimeter defense.
Her husband, Yura, was “working his magic” in the kitchen. The coffee grinder tearing through the evening silence no longer felt comforting. Once, Victoria thought being a barista gave him a certain charm, a bohemian vibe. Five years into marriage, the charm had worn off, leaving only a bitter residue—like over-roasted arabica.
“Vika, come taste it! New blend—Ethiopia with bergamot notes!” Yura shouted.
Victoria stepped into the kitchen. Spacious, bright, with a huge solid-wood table—this two-bedroom apartment was her fortress. Her Uncle Yuliy’s inheritance, from an eccentric man who had adored his niece, had landed in her lap six months earlier. Uncle Yuliy couldn’t stand freeloaders and always said, “Vikusya, money is freedom from fools.” Once the transfer came through, she moved fast, like an automation script: found the right place, closed the deal, started renovations.
Yura handed her a cup with a perfectly even tulip in the foam.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking,” he began—and that particular tone in his voice was the one Victoria had learned to recognize as an alarm. “We’ve been living here for half a year. The renovation’s almost finished. We should sort out the paperwork.”
“What paperwork?” Victoria took a sip. The coffee was good, but the conversation was flat.
“Well… the ownership. Put my share on paper. Half, like it should be.” Yura smiled as if he were asking her to pass the salt. “We’re a family. Everything’s shared.”
Victoria set the cup down carefully. Porcelain clicked against wood.
“Yura, this apartment was bought with my uncle’s money. It’s inheritance. By law and by basic fairness, it’s mine. Where does ‘shared’ come into this?”
Her husband’s smile bent slightly, turning into the pout of a child who’s had his tablet taken away.
“What do you mean? We’ve been together for years. We lived at my mom’s place, crammed in and miserable. We crashed at your sister’s. Then those rental dumps… I suffered right along with you! I have a moral right to compensation for all those years of discomfort.”
“Suffered?” Victoria felt irritation begin to wind up inside her like a flywheel. “You lived rent-free while we were at your mother’s. You didn’t put a single ruble into buying this place. Your contribution was picking the color of the baseboards—which I paid for anyway.”
“You’re so materialistic,” Yura muttered, turning to the sink. “I thought we had love, but you’ve got a calculator instead of a heart.”
NO.
That word lit up in Victoria’s mind like a red warning sign. She wasn’t going to let him manipulate her.
“Love isn’t measured in square meters you expect to be gifted for nothing,” she snapped, and went back to her servers.
But the code wouldn’t settle in her head anymore.
Part 2. A Toxic Coalition
Yura didn’t calm down. His resentment spread through him like mold, fed by outside support. A couple of days later he went to his parents. His mother’s apartment was soaked in the smell of old furniture and mothballs—the same suffocating atmosphere they’d once escaped.
Gennady, Yura’s father, sat in an armchair like it was a throne from a cheap TV show. He had always believed a man was king of nature—even if this king couldn’t change a lightbulb without making it a scandal.
“She won’t sign it over?” Gennady frowned, his thick eyebrows sinking low. “Look at her, acting like some queen. You went soft, Yurka. A wife needs to know her place. Today she’s stingy with a share, tomorrow she’ll toss you onto the street. Are you a man or what? Pressure her. Tell her the family’s falling apart because she doesn’t trust you.”
Larisa, Yura’s mother, fussed nearby, topping up tea. She didn’t like the situation, but for a different reason. She remembered her own mother-in-law—a domineering woman who had made life hell over an old Volga car signed over to the “wrong” relative.
“Gena, don’t wind the boy up,” she said quietly. “But still… it is strange. Vika could show her husband some respect. At least sign over a third. So Yurochka has his own corner. Otherwise he’s living like a hanger-on. That’s disrespect.”
“Exactly!” Yura brightened. “Disrespect! I supported her when she was studying, taking those courses, sitting up all night. I brought her coffee!”
“Coffee, huh,” his father snorted. “You need to demand it. Put the question on the table. Either she gives you a share, or…”
“Or what?” Larisa asked, uneasy.
“Or let her know her husband isn’t happy!” Gennady finished vaguely—unwilling to offer a real ultimatum, since Yura had nowhere to go. His sister’s room was occupied, and the living-room couch was already crushed and sagging.
Yura came home. He watched Victoria typing away, absorbed in her work, and he saw not a wife but an enemy who’d seized a resource. She looked calm, confident, independent. That only made him angrier. His barista paycheck at a trendy café felt like pocket money next to her income, and the inequality burned at his pride, demanding compensation in the form of property.
For the next week he picked at her with little jabs.
“Oh, new shoes again? Bought with our shared money or your ‘uncle’s’ money?”
“Maybe I should sleep on the doormat. The apartment isn’t mine, after all.”
Victoria stayed silent. She analyzed logs, built load graphs, and watched. In her monitoring system for married life, warning lights kept blinking one after another.
Part 3. A Party for Exposure
On Friday they were expecting guests. Victoria didn’t want to see anyone, but Yura insisted.
“We need to celebrate the apartment—show our friends how we’re living now,” he said.
He needed an audience.
Arkadiy came—Victoria’s colleague, a quiet system administrator. Marina, an old school friend. And Tolya, Yura’s coworker from the café: a guy with would-be restaurateur dreams and an empty wallet.
The table was piled with food Victoria had ordered. Yura poured wine, playing the role of a generous host. He paced the living room, stroking the walls as if he’d laid every brick himself.
“Yeah, the renovation wasn’t easy for us,” Yura declared, refilling his third glass. “So much work, so many nerves. We picked everything together, every tile. I stayed up nights looking at designs.”
“Great place, Vik,” Arkadiy said, ignoring Yura’s theatrics. “You putting a server rack in the storage closet yet?”
“In progress,” Victoria smiled.
Yura cut in.
“You know what’s hilarious? We both invest, we both pour our souls into it—and Vika thinks it’s all hers. Imagine that. I say, ‘Honey, let’s be fair—fifty-fifty.’ And she refuses. What, she thinks I’ll run off with half the kitchen?”
A heavy, awkward pause settled over the room. Marina looked away. Tolya chuckled into his fist, feeling loyal to his buddy. Arkadiy frowned.
“Yura, we’re not discussing this with guests here,” Victoria said, her voice icy.
“Why not?” Yura felt himself getting bold. The alcohol and his father’s words churned in his blood. “Let the friends judge. Hey, Tolyan—would you live with a woman who doesn’t trust you? Who keeps you on temporary permission?”
“Well, that’s rough, bro,” Tolya backed him up. “Family is trust.”
“You HEAR that? Trust!” Yura raised his voice. He stepped toward Victoria, who sat upright in her chair. “I do everything for you! I put up with your mother, I bounced through rental holes while you built your career! I might’ve spent my best years!”
Victoria slowly lifted her head. There was no fear, no embarrassment—only cold, analytical calculation, mixed with the contempt you feel for a bug you can’t patch.
Part 4. The Dam Breaks
“And what exactly have you done that’s so significant that I should sign a share of my apartment over to you?” Victoria asked her husband. Her voice was quiet, but clear enough to cut through the background music.
Yura froze. The question was simple, logical, and for that reason, devastating. He had expected excuses, tears, accusations—anything but a demand to present measurable proof, a KPI of his usefulness.
“What have I done?” he choked, outraged. “I… I lived with you! I was there! I’m your husband!”
“That’s a title, not a contribution,” Victoria snapped, and hysteria began to crack through her voice—though this wasn’t the hysteria of a victim. It was the fury of someone who’d had enough of stupid prayers. “You lived with me? You lived off me most of the time! While I studied and worked two projects, you were ‘finding yourself’ and switching coffee shops every six months! You talk about patience? I paid off your father’s debts when he wrecked someone else’s car! I bought this apartment so we’d have somewhere to live—and you’re demanding half just for the fact that you’re standing here!”
“Shut up!” Yura roared. The truth sliced into him, humiliating him in front of their friends.
“NO, I WON’T SHUT UP!” Victoria sprang to her feet. She was shaking, but her stare was terrifying. “YOU’RE A PARASITE, YURA! A HOUSEHOLD PARASITE, THAT’S ALL YOU ARE! You want a share—FOR WHAT? For pretty latte art in the mornings? GET OUT OF MY HOME!”
Yura snapped. There were no words left—only the blind rage of a wounded ego. He swung and slapped her hard across the face.
The crack of the blow sounded like a starter pistol.
Marina shrieked. Arkadiy shot up instantly.
But Victoria didn’t fall. She only swayed slightly, pressed her palm to her cheek, and looked at her husband. In that look, Yura read his sentence. It wasn’t a wife’s gaze.
It was a judge signing a verdict with no right of appeal.
“Out,” she whispered.
Yura tried to shout something, to add the last word, to prove his power—but Arkadiy, a solid guy used to hauling server gear, had already clamped onto his elbow. Tolya started to interfere, but one look from Victoria deflated him.
“Get out, you piece of trash,” Arkadiy growled, pushing Yura into the hallway.
“You’ll regret this!” Yura screamed as he was dragged toward the door. “No one needs you like this!”
The door slammed. Silence swallowed the apartment.
Part 5. The Final Audit
Yura wandered the streets for two hours. The autumn wind cooled his temper, but it didn’t add any wisdom. In his head, he built a reconciliation plan: he would come back, they would talk, he would—fine—apologize for the slap (though she pushed him to it!), and Vika, scared of being alone, would become more cooperative. Women liked decisive men, he told himself.
He bought a bouquet of roses from an all-night kiosk—a budget-class symbol of repentance.
As he climbed the stairs to the apartment, he was already rehearsing his speech. But on the landing he got a surprise.
A mountain of bags. Black trash bags, tightly stuffed. On top sat his favorite coffee grinder, leaning sadly against a sack of clothes.
Next to the pile stood his mother, Larisa.
“Mom? What are you doing here?” Yura blurted.
The door opened. Victoria stood in the doorway. Her cheek was still red, but her face was utterly calm—stone.
“Vika, sweetheart, we got carried away—who hasn’t, right…” Yura started, stepping forward.
“STAY THERE,” Victoria’s voice stopped him better than a concrete wall. “Your things are here. I didn’t forget anything. I even found your expired credit cards.”
She nodded toward his mother.
“Larisa Petrovna, take your treasure back. I’m done carrying this dead weight.”
“Vika, why so extreme,” his mother tried, without much conviction. “You’re family… you fight, you make up. He hit you—yes, that’s bad, but you provoked him…”
“Provoked him by not gifting half my property to a freeloader?” Victoria smiled—and it was pure poison, laced with triumph. “By the way, Yura, I pulled the account statements for the last two years. Remember how we were saving a ‘safety cushion’? Turns out you were regularly withdrawing small amounts. For betting? Or for your ‘business ideas’? Either way, consider your ‘share’ of this apartment spent covering your theft from the household budget.”
Yura went pale. He’d assumed she wouldn’t notice. She was an IT woman, money grew on trees for her—why would she track small things?
“And one more thing,” Victoria said, taking out her phone. “I sent a report to your employer. Screenshots of your messages where you discuss skimming coffee beans from the shop and selling them on the side. I think your barista career may run into… complications.”
“You… you couldn’t…” Yura whispered.
“I can do anything,” Victoria said evenly. “I solve problems systematically. You became a critical vulnerability. The vulnerability has been removed.”
She looked at his mother again.
“Larisa Petrovna, he’s yours. Feed him, water him, listen to his fantasies about greatness. I’m changing the locks. Right now.”
A locksmith in work overalls stepped out from behind Victoria with a toolkit.
“Go ahead,” she told him with a nod.
The door shut in Yura’s face. The click of the lock sounded like the final chord.
Yura stood there, squeezing the useless flowers. His mother sighed heavily and lifted the first bag.
“Pick up your stuff. Let’s go. Your father’s going to be furious.”
The landing smelled of dust and hopelessness. Yura understood he hadn’t just lost an apartment and a wife. He’d lost the comfortable shell he’d been feeding off for years—and now he was going back to a world where you paid for everything yourself.
Victoria’s blow—delivered not with a fist, but with facts and action—was crushing. She didn’t cry into a pillow.
She dismantled his world while he took a walk in the park.