Alla Nikolaevna went rigid on the sofa, as if she’d never imagined she’d hear an answer like that. Her eyes widened, her eyebrows shot up, and her lips tightened into a thin line. Her fingers jerked, crushing the corner of the same little slip of paper she’d brought with her.
Ilya sat beside his mother, staring at the floor in silence. Yana saw his shoulders tense, the way his hands locked together on his knees, the vein twitching at his temple. That tiny tell gave him away completely—this talk between him and his mother had happened long before tonight. More than once.
Yana worked as a dentist in a private clinic on the edge of the city, out where new apartment blocks and shopping centers kept multiplying. Her schedule was punishing, almost no days off: patients started at eight in the morning and sometimes didn’t stop until after midnight—especially when she had complex surgeries, implants, or multiple prosthetics cases back-to-back. The responsibility was huge: every person in her chair trusted her with their health, their smile, their confidence.
Over the years, she’d learned not only to handle a drill and a scalpel with precision, but to read people—by their eyes, gestures, and tone. When a patient was scared but tried to hide it, she still caught the tremble in their hands, the rapid blinking, the forced swallows. When someone lied about brushing habits or flossing, she heard the false note in their voice. Those instincts weren’t useful only at work.
The apartment—modern, in a new building by the river—had been bought by her grandmother, Evgenia Pavlovna, long before Yana ever got married, back when she was just starting medical school. Her grandmother had saved for it her whole life: putting money aside from her pension, selling jars of jam and pickled cucumbers and tomatoes at the market, even knitting shawls, socks, and mittens for neighbors on request.
She lived simply in a worn one-room flat on the outskirts, where wallpaper peeled off the walls and the radiators heated only when they felt like it. But she never complained. She wanted one thing—that her granddaughter, her only precious blood, would never be left without a roof over her head.
When Yana turned twenty-three and was already working as a clinic assistant, her grandmother came over with a folder of documents. She sat down in the kitchen, poured herself tea into an old chipped mug with a crack down the side, and said quietly, without drama:
“Here’s my gift to you, sweetheart. Live your life and don’t be afraid of anyone. This is yours. Forever.”
Yana cried on the spot. She hugged her grandmother, buried her face against her shoulder, and couldn’t let go for a long time. Evgenia Pavlovna stroked her hair, whispering soft, calming words. Then they went together to a notary, signed a deed of gift, and registered ownership properly. Everything was clean, legal—no loose ends, no loopholes.
A year later her grandmother passed away—peacefully, in her sleep, with a faint smile, as if she knew she’d done the right thing. Yana still remembered her last words, spoken a few days before, when she lay in the hospital bed: “Take care of yourself and your home, Yanechka. Don’t give it to anyone. It’s what you’ll stand on.”
After the wedding, Ilya moved in with Yana. He worked as a sales manager in a construction company, handling material supplies for big projects. He earned decent money—somewhere between sixty and eighty thousand a month, depending on his targets. He was cheerful, attentive, brought her flowers, took her to the movies and cafés, helped around the house.
Yana registered him at the address without thinking twice. Husband and wife—why make things complicated? But he wasn’t an owner. They even discussed that calmly over dinner, without any undertones. Ilya nodded, said he understood: the apartment was a gift from her grandmother and he wasn’t claiming anything.
“Of course, Yanochka. I get it. It’s your place, your home. I’m just happy I get to live here with you,” he’d say, kissing her cheek.
Yana believed him. She was happy. She genuinely thought they were a team—that together they could handle anything.
At first, her mother-in-law, Alla Nikolaevna, behaved politely. She’d visit with cake or fruit, compliment the renovation Yana had done long before meeting Ilya—new floors, light walls, furniture hunted down during sales and in online shops. She’d say her son was “lucky to land well,” that “an apartment like this is any young man’s dream,” that “the view is straight out of a postcard.”
Yana tried not to pick at every remark. But something in her mother-in-law’s tone always made her wary. As if the compliments hid a calculation—like a cool-eyed appraiser measuring someone else’s property and silently deciding how to take it.
Once, in their first year of marriage, while they were washing dishes after lunch, Alla Nikolaevna asked casually, almost in passing:
“Yanochka… have you ever thought about making a will? Life is unpredictable. God forbid something happens to you—then Ilya would be left with nothing.”
Yana only smiled.
“Alla Nikolaevna, I’m twenty-six. It’s a little early to plan for death.”
Her mother-in-law nodded, but her gaze stayed sharp and possessive. Yana remembered that moment. It was the first warning bell.
Everything shifted when Ilya’s job started falling apart. The company got hit by sanctions, deliveries froze, orders dried up, and salaries were delayed for months at a time. Ilya became tense, smoked on the balcony at night, sometimes standing there until dawn, staring at the city lights and talking to coworkers. He started using the same words over and over: “instability,” “crisis,” “safety net”—insisting they didn’t have one.
Yana supported him the best she could. She cooked his favorite meals, didn’t interrogate him, didn’t scold him for sleepless nights, offered money if they needed it for groceries or gas.
“Thanks, Mashenka, but I’ll handle it myself,” he’d say. “A man should fix his own problems.”
But his eyes looked empty, far away.
She could tell something was happening inside him. He became withdrawn and irritable, left the house more often, claiming he was meeting friends or searching for work. When she tried to talk, he brushed her off: everything’s fine, don’t worry.
Then one evening Alla Nikolaevna showed up right after Yana came home from work. Yana had barely taken off her coat and was about to start dinner when her mother-in-law sat down in the living room like she owned the place and got straight to the point. She didn’t even ask for tea. She simply pulled papers from her purse, spread them across the coffee table like a fan, and looked at Yana with a challenge in her eyes.
“Yanochka, dear, we need a serious talk,” she began with a smile that never reached her eyes. “You understand family is one unit. And if that’s true, then property should be shared. For security, you know? Anything could happen—to you or to Ilya. We have to make everything proper.”
Yana slowly set her half-finished coffee on the table. Her fingers rested on the cup handle, steady—even though inside something hot and unpleasant was starting to boil. She studied her mother-in-law’s face: every wrinkle, every movement of her eyes, every bend of her mouth. Alla Nikolaevna had prepared for this. Neat hair, strict outfit, a heavy chain around her neck—the kind she wore only for “important meetings.” Her gaze was firm, determined.
“What exactly are you talking about?” Yana asked, in the same even tone she used with patients before an exam.
“Well, look,” her mother-in-law said, sliding the papers toward her and tapping them with a fingernail. “Ilya and I thought it would be smart to give him a share of the apartment. Not all of it, of course—we’re not monsters. But at least half. Or a third, if that makes you feel safer. Just for order. So he feels like a real хозяин—a real owner—rather than a guest in his own home.”
Yana picked up the pages. It was a draft agreement printed on someone’s home printer—crooked margins, typos, several lines underlined with marker. And it was obvious Alla Nikolaevna had thought through every detail: shares, rights, obligations, how the apartment would be “used.” All it needed was Yana’s signature and a notary stamp.
“Is this… a finished document?” Yana asked, looking up.
“More or less,” her mother-in-law said, pleased with herself. “The notary will rewrite it properly, but the idea is here. We figured this would be easier. You read it, sign it, and that’s it.”
Ilya sat there beside his mother, silent. The lowered eyelids, the clenched jaw, the nervous bouncing leg, the arms folded across his chest—it all screamed that he’d already agreed to this. Yana felt her fingers tighten, her neck go stiff, her throat pinch with hurt and disappointment. She looked at her husband, waiting—hoping—he’d say something: that this was a misunderstanding, that he hadn’t known, that he’d shut it down.
But he kept staring at the floor.
“And what does your son have to do with any of this?” Yana said, steady and final. “My grandmother bought this apartment for her granddaughter.”
The room went quiet. Even the wall clock seemed to stop ticking. Outside, a car passed, the front door downstairs slammed, someone laughed in the street. But inside the apartment it was dead still.
Alla Nikolaevna tried to smile, but it looked like a mask about to crack. She leaned back, crossed her arms, narrowed her eyes, and tilted her head.
“Yanochka, what are you saying?” she replied in a harder, more pressing tone—almost threatening. “You’re husband and wife. How can you treat each other like this? There has to be trust. And trust means everything is shared—no mine and yours—family is one whole. My late husband and I always split everything. The apartment, the summer house, the car, money—everything. That’s how normal families live. And what do you have? You’re the owner and he’s what? A freeloader?”
Yana listened without interrupting, her gaze cool and distant. She could see the tactic clearly: pressure through “tradition,” shame, guilt. But Yana wasn’t the kind of woman who folded under manipulation. She knew what words cost. She’d heard a thousand promises in her dental chair—“I’ll stop eating sweets,” “I’ll floss daily”—and watched them evaporate a week later.
“Alla Nikolaevna,” she said calmly, weighing each word, “I understand your reasoning. But our situation is different. This apartment was bought by my grandmother with her personal money and gifted to me under a deed of gift before I married. It isn’t marital property. It’s mine alone, and legally it isn’t subject to division. There’s simply no basis to assign a share to Ilya.”
For the first time, Ilya lifted his head and added cautiously, almost in a whisper:
“Yanochka… we can think about the future. Anything can happen. What if you need something and I have no rights here? I can’t do anything without your consent. A share isn’t a tragedy. It’s just… for peace of mind. For order.”
Yana turned to him and studied his face as if she’d never seen it before. And in that moment it truly felt like she was meeting him again—not the cheerful man with flowers and movie dates, not the caring husband who brought her coffee in bed, but someone sitting next to his mother, calmly, without shame, asking her to hand over the last gift her grandmother ever gave her.
“Ilya,” she said slowly, forcing her voice to stay even, “why does our future have to be built on taking someone else’s gift? Why can’t you earn a place of your own? Or earn a home for both of us, if you want something shared? Why this apartment? Why the one thing my grandmother left me?”
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He shrugged, looked away, and dropped his gaze again.
Alla Nikolaevna raised her voice. Her face reddened, blotches spread across her neck, and her eyes narrowed to slits.
“So you don’t respect your husband? He’s nobody to you, is that it? Living in your home like some parasite, like a stray dog? You should be ashamed! In our day, women didn’t behave like this. A man is the head of the family. He needs rights. And you—what are you doing? Humiliating him!”
Yana answered evenly, looking her straight in the eyes without blinking.
“Respect isn’t measured in square meters, Alla Nikolaevna. Ilya knew the arrangement when he moved in. We discussed it openly. If it no longer suits him, he can say that honestly—like a man—instead of hiding behind you and sending his mother to fight his battles.”
The argument dragged on for two hours. Alla Nikolaevna wouldn’t stop. One minute she appealed to Yana’s conscience, the next she hinted that “other daughters-in-law don’t act like this,” that “the girl in the next building signed the whole apartment over to her husband and nothing happened,” and then she claimed outright that Ilya felt “awkward living without his share,” that “he’s a man, not a boy,” that “his friends laugh at him.”
Yana listened, quiet, but with every minute her patience thinned like a thread about to snap. She understood: this wasn’t a discussion. It was pressure. An attempt to break her down with guilt and fear of losing her marriage.
Finally, when Alla Nikolaevna repeated for the tenth time that “normal families share everything and you’re just showing off,” Yana stood up. She walked to the window and looked out at the night city lights, the river, the bridge glowing blue, the cars crawling along the embankment. This apartment was her fortress—the safe place her grandmother had built for her. And Yana wasn’t handing it over to anyone.
Then she turned to them and said plainly:
“There will be no deeds of gift, no powers of attorney, no shares. The apartment was given to me under a deed of gift and belongs to me alone. This is not up for discussion. Period.”
Alla Nikolaevna sprang up, grabbed her papers, crumpled them, stuffed them into her purse. Her face twisted with rage; her lips trembled.
“So that’s it, is it? Fine. Son, now you see who she really is. Greedy. Heartless. Cold. You live with her, you try, and she won’t even treat you like a person—like you’re a servant!”
Ilya rose slowly. He looked at Yana, then at his mother, then back at Yana. He was pale, sweat glistening on his forehead. And then he said quietly, but firmly:
“Mom’s right. I’m uncomfortable. I can’t do this anymore. If you won’t give me even a part, it means you don’t trust me. And without trust, what kind of family is this? It’s not a family—it’s just… living together.”
Something inside Yana snapped. Not from pain, not even from insult—more from sudden clarity. She understood that the man she’d loved, the man she’d relied on, wasn’t who he pretended to be. He was weak, dependent on his mother, ready to betray her for square meters and maternal approval.
“Alright,” she said softly. “If that’s how it is, then there’s nothing more to talk about.”
When Ilya kept siding with his mother and continued pushing—threatening to leave, talking about “thinking about our life”—and when Alla Nikolaevna started screaming that “women like you die alone,” Yana made her final decision.
She didn’t scream back. She didn’t cry. She didn’t beg him to stay. The next day, during her lunch break, she booked a consultation with a lawyer in the neighboring building. She listened. She learned that an apartment received as a gift under a deed of gift is not marital property and cannot be divided under any circumstances. She learned that if there are no underage children and no jointly acquired assets, divorce can be filed through the civil registry only if both spouses agree and apply together. If one spouse refuses or avoids it—then it’s court.
Ilya refused. He wouldn’t go to the registry office. He demanded “compensation for the years of marriage,” tried in court to argue he’d renovated the apartment (even though the renovation had been done long before he appeared, back when Yana was still studying), claimed he’d bought furniture and appliances (even though much of it had been there since her grandmother’s time and Yana had purchased the refrigerator and washing machine herself).
He brought his mother as a witness. Alla Nikolaevna swore he’d “invested” in the apartment, that he bought paint and wallpaper, replaced plumbing. But there was no proof. No receipts, no invoices, no photos. The court didn’t budge. And her testimony carried no weight without evidence—she was an interested party.
Yana filed a counterclaim for divorce and for his eviction. The process lasted months. Ilya tried to delay it, requested continuances, dragged in “witnesses”—neighbors, friends, acquaintances who supposedly saw him “doing repairs” and “carrying cement sacks.” But it all hit the same wall: the renovation date was two years before he even met Yana. An expert review confirmed it. Documents confirmed it.
In the end, the ruling was clear: the marriage dissolved, and Ilya was required to vacate the apartment within one month after the decision became legally binding.
When it did, Ilya came to collect his things. He packed quietly, avoiding Yana’s eyes, saying nothing. She stood in the hallway and watched him fold clothes into boxes, toss in books, discs, phone chargers, small belongings. When he finished and set the last box by the door, she held out her hand, palm up.
“The keys.”
He placed them in her palm without a word, without meeting her gaze. Then he turned, lifted the boxes, and left. The door clicked shut behind him.
Yana locked the door, leaned her back against it, and exhaled—long and deep, like releasing something poisonous from her lungs. For the first time in months she felt relief, lightness, as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
The apartment her grandmother bought for her granddaughter stayed exactly where it belonged—with the granddaughter. No conditions. No additions. No чужие претензии—no one else’s claims.
She walked into the living room and sat on the sofa, right where Alla Nikolaevna had sat that awful evening. She looked out at the city, the river, the bridge, the lights. Everything was in its place. Her home was her home. And no one could take it anymore.
A few weeks later, Yana heard from mutual acquaintances that Ilya had moved back in with his mother—into her one-room apartment on the other side of the city. Alla Nikolaevna, as the same people reported, still called Yana “a greedy selfish woman who ruined her son’s life” and “a cold-hearted witch who threw her husband onto the street.”
Yana didn’t care. She’d learned long ago: people see what they want to see. She saw the truth—and the truth was on her side.
Sometimes in the evenings, when work ended early and she had a rare pocket of free time, she took out an old photo album. She’d turn the yellowed pages and study the faces. Her grandmother was there—young, beautiful, with tired but kind eyes, wearing a simple cotton dress and a headscarf.
In one picture, Evgenia Pavlovna stood by the entrance of that very building, holding the keys to the new apartment and smiling at the camera. On the back of the photo, in her large uneven handwriting, it read: “For my granddaughter. So she always has her own corner. Love you.”
Yana smiled whenever she looked at it.
Her grandmother had been right. Your own corner isn’t just walls and a roof, not just an address and square footage. It’s confidence in tomorrow. It’s the ability to say “no” to people who want to use you. It’s freedom. It’s solid ground under your feet—your air, your life.
And Yana was grateful for that gift. Grateful that her grandmother had taught her the most important lesson of all: never give away what you truly value to people who don’t value you. And never let anyone dictate how you live in your own home.