The wake felt like a slow-motion replay of an old, worn film reel. The scent of kutya, cheap brandy, and candle soot tangled with the heavy perfume of dying carnations. Svetlana sat at the head of the table—rigid, unnaturally pale—like a porcelain figurine someone had forgotten to put back in the display cabinet. A black widow’s scarf pressed tight across her forehead, sharpening the angles of her cheekbones. She had the strange certainty that if she moved even a finger, she would crumble into dust right there, in front of the pitying neighbors and her husband’s former colleagues.
Vovchik—Vovchik, the cheerful, noisy man forever bursting with ridiculous ideas—was gone. A stupid accident on an empty highway, the scream of brakes, and then silence. The same silence that had now taken up residence in their two-room Stalin-era apartment, the only truly valuable thing they owned.
Guests slowly filed out. Some patted her shoulder awkwardly; others murmured the usual lines about “time healing everything.” Only Nikolai remained—Vova’s best friend since their schooldays. Kolya was the complete opposite of the dead man: broad and heavy, with a weighted stare and the habits of someone who took whatever he wanted from life without asking permission.
“Svetochka… my condolences,” Kolya said, coming up behind her. His voice was thick and sticky, like syrup. “May Vovchik rest in peace. He was a good guy… even if he was a bit of a daredevil.”
Svetlana raised cloudy eyes to him. “Thank you, Kolya. You were always there. Vova valued you.”
Nikolai didn’t look away. Instead of leaving, he lowered himself into the chair beside her. He smelled of expensive cologne and something metallic. He reached into the inner pocket of his well-tailored jacket and pulled out a sheet of paper folded in half.
“Since we’re alone now… take a look. This is a document.”
Svetlana stared at the page, not understanding. The letters swam. “Promissory note.” “I, Vladimir Sergeyevich Petrov, undertake to repay…”
“What is this?” she whispered, a cold knot of fear forming inside her.
“He owed me three million, Sveta. Cash. Secured by this apartment.”
Svetlana snapped upright; her scarf slid onto her shoulders. “What millions, Kolya? What are you talking about? We lived paycheck to paycheck! I saved for three months just to buy him new boots! Vova couldn’t… he would have told me…”
“That’s not my problem, Svetochka.” Kolya shrugged indifferently and tapped the date at the bottom with a thick finger. “He lost it playing cards. Or sank it into some ‘business,’ I didn’t bother asking. He always wanted to ‘jump higher than his head,’ you know that. The deadline was yesterday. While Vovchik was alive, I kept quiet. I waited. But now…”
His eyes swept the room: the high ceilings with decorative molding, the old but solid parquet floors, the antique mirror in the hallway.
“So, my dear, start packing. The apartment is mine now. Friendship is friendship—but money likes counting.”
The words punched the air from her lungs. Svetlana tried to breathe, but her chest felt flooded with lead. She stared at Nikolai and didn’t recognize him. A man who had been drinking tea with them a week ago, calling her “little sister,” was now looking at her like an inconvenience standing between him and property.
“I have nothing, Kolya… absolutely nothing. Where am I supposed to go?” Her voice broke into a hoarse rasp.
“That’s sentiment, Sveta. Legally I have a notarized document in my hands. I’ll give you three days—out of respect for the deceased, let’s say. On the fourth day, people will come to change the locks.”
Nikolai rose, slipped the note neatly back into his pocket, and headed for the door. At the threshold he turned.
“And don’t you dare run to lawyers. You’ll waste money you don’t have. Vovchik signed everything himself. In his own handwriting.”
The door slammed with a heavy click. Svetlana was left alone in the empty apartment, among dirty dishes and the smell of death. She went to the window. Outside, rain was starting—gray and sticky, promising a long, bitter winter. In the glass she saw her own face: gaunt, with dark circles under her eyes.
“Three million,” her temples hammered. That was the price of the entire apartment—every crack in the ceiling, every book on the shelf. Everything that had made up her life for the last fifteen years had been sold in a single evening at a card table or in a drunken haze of “business plans.”
She sank to the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees. Grief over losing her husband suddenly blended with a burning sense of betrayal. Yet behind it lurked something else—thin, barely perceptible at first: Vova had never known how to lie. He was painfully honest about the smallest things. Could he really have hidden a debt like that?
Svetlana lifted her head. Her gaze fell on her husband’s work desk, buried under papers and old blueprints. Somewhere in that chaos, the truth had to be there. And if Nikolai thought she would simply hand over the keys and vanish into the night, then he knew the wife of his “best friend” very poorly.
The first night after the “ultimatum” was endless. Svetlana didn’t lie down once. She sat in Vovchik’s chair, wrapped in his old wool cardigan that still held a faint trace of his cologne and tobacco. Every half hour she went to the door and checked the locks, as if Nikolai might materialize from the hallway shadows at any second.
In the morning, when gray dawn barely brushed the curtains, Svetlana stood up with decision. Fear had burned away, leaving a dry, practical fury. Three million. For their family, it was an astronomical sum. She worked as a librarian; Vova was an engineer at a design bureau. Their savings covered only a modest vacation once every couple of years and the endless repairs in their Stalin-era apartment, which Vova did with his own hands.
“Where did you hide it, Vov? Or what did you spend it on?” she murmured, stepping up to the massive oak bureau.
That bureau had belonged to Vova’s grandfather. Heavy, with dozens of small drawers and hidden compartments, it had always been his “sacred territory.” Svetlana never opened it without asking—not out of fear, but out of respect for his private space. But now respect stepped aside for survival.
She began going through his papers methodically. Gas bills. Technical drawings. Old warranty cards for the refrigerator… Nothing that suggested luxury or secret debts. Hour after hour passed. Svetlana sorted through everything—from letters he’d written in the army to newspaper clippings about fishing.
Near noon her fingers found a strange unevenness beneath the felt lining of one drawer. She pressed harder—there was a dry click. The side panel shifted, revealing a narrow slit. Inside lay a small leather-bound notebook and a flash drive.
With trembling hands, Svetlana opened the notebook. It wasn’t a diary. It was a ledger. But the entries were unsettling.
“March 12. N. — 50,000. Paid back.”
“April 20. N. — 100,000. Took for ‘Orion’ project.”
“June 15. N. demands a share. Threatening.”
Svetlana went cold. “N.” had to be Nikolai. But if these notes were true, it wasn’t Vova owing Kolya—Vova had been caught in some joint arrangement where Kolya kept squeezing money out of him. The last entry was dated the day before the crash:
“Kolya has completely lost it. He’s demanding I sign blank forms. Says otherwise I won’t ‘accidentally’ make it home. I recorded our conversation on the flash drive. If something happens, Sveta must know…”
The notebook slipped from her hands. So the IOU was a fake? Or Vova had been forced to sign it under pressure—whether a metaphorical gun or a real one.
She rushed to the laptop and plugged in the flash drive. Several audio files appeared. She clicked the newest one.
At first there was only static and road noise—recorded in a car, probably. Then Nikolai’s voice came through: sharp, stripped of the syrupy tenderness he’d used at the wake.
“Listen to me, you lousy engineer,” Kolya snarled. “You stepped into this filth with me. Those drawings you ‘fixed’ for the tender—they’re bogus. The building will start failing in two years, but we’ll take the money now. I need your signature on the guarantee letter.”
“I’m not signing that, Kolya,” Vova’s voice trembled, but held firm. “Those are people’s lives. I recalculated everything. The foundation is wrong. Tomorrow I’m going to the commission.”
“You’re going nowhere,” Nikolai cut him off. “Either you sign the apartment as collateral so I can be sure you’ll keep quiet, or… Svetochka is a pretty woman, alone. You never know what can happen in a dark stairwell.”
The recording ended with the screech of brakes and cursing.
Svetlana covered her face with her hands. The world that had already collapsed with her husband’s death turned into rubble. Her gentle, kind Vovchik had tried to stand up to a monster. And now that monster was claiming their home.
Just then the doorbell rang—insistent, as if the person on the other side already owned the place. Svetlana went to the peephole. Nikolai stood on the landing. Two solid men in leather jackets flanked him. One of them held a heavy tool bag—clearly meant for changing locks.
“Sveta, open up!” Kolya shouted through the door. “I decided not to wait three days. I’ve got a great offer lined up for renting the place, so let’s speed this up. You can move your stuff later—I’m not a savage, I’ll let it sit in storage.”
Nausea rose in her throat. She looked at the laptop where the audio player was still open. She had proof of blackmail, but she was up against a man with money, connections, and a “notarized” piece of paper. If she opened the door, they would throw her out and take the flash drive.
She ran to the kitchen. The window opened onto a fire escape—one of those quirks of old Stalin-era buildings. Living on the third floor had always been convenient; now it was her only chance.
She grabbed a bag, shoved the laptop, the notebook, and the apartment documents inside. She threw a coat over her robe. From the hallway came a scraping sound—they were drilling the lock.
“Sveta, don’t be stupid! You’ll only make it worse!” Nikolai’s voice was closer now.
She climbed onto the windowsill. Cold wind slapped her face; rain soaked her hair instantly. Her heart hammered so hard it felt like it would burst. The fire escape steps were slick and glazed with ice. She started down, forcing herself not to look.
When her shoes hit the asphalt in the courtyard, she heard the crash of the door being forced upstairs. A second later, Nikolai’s silhouette appeared in her kitchen window.
“There she is! Get her!” he roared.
Svetlana sprinted through the connected courtyards. She knew the neighborhood like the back of her hand. Around the corner was an old legal office where one of Vova’s former classmates worked—a strange guy named Artem, whom everyone called a loser because he only took “hopeless” cases.
Behind her came shouts and the thud of heavy boots. Svetlana shot onto the main street, nearly getting clipped by a taxi. She ducked into a basement entrance under a sign that read “Legal Aid,” slammed the heavy metal door, and slid the bolt.
Inside a cramped room piled with folders sat a thin man in glasses. He looked up from his monitor in shock.
“Sveta? What are you doing—God, you’re soaked! What happened?”
“Artem…” She fought for air, trying to get the words out. “Vova was killed. Not a car accident. Nikolai killed him. And now he’s coming for me.”
A blow struck the door from the other side. Then another.
“Petrova, come out!” Nikolai’s voice sounded muffled through the metal, but the threat in it was unmistakable. “Hand over the flash drive and live wherever you want. Don’t—and you’ll wish you’d been driving in that crash!”
Artem rose slowly, his face hardening into steel. He crossed to a safe, pulled out an old reporter’s voice recorder, and switched it on.
“Sveta, sit down and tell me everything. From the beginning. On the record.” Then he shouted toward the door, “Go ahead—break it down! There’s a camera here streaming straight to the Interior Ministry cloud. Tomorrow you’ll be giving statements somewhere else.”
The pounding stopped. Silence settled, broken only by rain tapping the tiny basement window.
“We don’t have much time,” Artem said, turning back to Svetlana. “An IOU for three million, you say? To challenge it, we’ll need to prove not just blackmail, but that Nikolai never had that kind of legitimate money to lend in the first place. We’ll put him through financial hell. But first… tell me about Project Orion.”
Svetlana opened the notebook. The battle for her life—and for Vova’s name—was only beginning.
Artem’s basement office smelled of old paper, cold coffee, and that faint electrical ozone that hangs around machines that never sleep. Outside, an ominous quiet had returned. Nikolai and his men were gone, but it brought no relief. It only meant the predator had backed off to change tactics.
Artem set a mug of scalding tea in front of Svetlana. His hands—thin, long-fingered like a pianist’s—flew across the keyboard as he copied the flash drive’s contents.
“Do you understand what he got dragged into, Sveta?” Artem pushed his glasses up; the lenses reflected lines of code. “‘Orion’ isn’t just some project. It’s a massive shopping and entertainment center built with government subsidies. If Vova’s notes are true, Nikolai used shell companies to supply low-grade concrete and counterfeit steel beams. The price difference went straight into pockets. Your husband was the lead engineer—he was supposed to sign off on acceptance.”
Svetlana wrapped both hands around the mug, trying to steady the shaking.
“Vova always said Kolya was a wheeler-dealer, but not a criminal,” she whispered. “He trusted him… right to the end. And Kolya used him as cover.”
“Look at this,” Artem said, turning the monitor toward her. A folder titled “Calculations_Reality” was open. “Vova ran his own assessment. The building really is dangerous. There’s a critical foundation shift already, even before finishing work. If he’d gone to the commission, construction would’ve been frozen, inspections would’ve started, and Nikolai would’ve gotten fifteen years for fraud—plus attempted mass murder.”
A chill crawled down Svetlana’s spine.
“So the crash…”
“Brakes,” Artem said flatly. “There’s a scanned police complaint in these files—one Vova didn’t have time to submit. Time stamp: two hours before the accident.”
Svetlana closed her eyes. She saw her husband on that last day—unusually quiet, starting to say something more than once, then only hugging her tighter before leaving. She had assumed it was work stress. It had been goodbye.
“Now, about the IOU,” Artem continued. “Nikolai shoved it at you to silence you and take the apartment as payment for his risk. He knows that if you start digging, the trail leads back to him. The apartment is just a way to throw you onto the roadside of life where no one hears your voice. But he made a mistake.”
“What mistake?” Svetlana looked up.
“He’s greedy. Three million is too much for a ‘card loss’ from a design-bureau engineer. Any court will order handwriting analysis. If Vova signed under coercion—or if the signature was forged—that’s criminal. But we’re not just saving the apartment. We need to break him before he breaks us.”
Artem grabbed his phone and dialed.
“Igor? I’ve got a case in your lane. Corruption on Orion, collapse risk, and a murder disguised as a traffic accident. Yes, it’s that serious. I need a warrant for a search at Techno-Service—Nikolai’s company.”
Svetlana listened to Artem speak with calm authority, and for the first time in days the fear loosened its grip.
“What do I do now?” she asked.
“You can’t go home,” Artem said. “Kolya has keys, he’ll plant people there. You’ll stay with my sister—she’s a doctor, gated complex, security. And one more thing… I need access to Vova’s cloud storage. He must’ve backed things up there.”
Svetlana hesitated. “I don’t know the password. He never told me…”
“Think,” Artem leaned closer. “Vova loved symbols—dates, names, your private codes. It’ll be something only you know.”
She tried everything—wedding date, the day they met, the name of their first dog that died five years ago. Nothing. She closed her eyes and replayed their last conversation in detail. Then a phrase surfaced: “Svety, if anything happens—remember our happiest place.”
“Our happiest place…” she breathed. “The abandoned lighthouse outside town. We celebrated our tenth anniversary there. He gave me a seagull pendant.”
She typed: Lighthouse2020. The system paused—then opened. Hundreds of photos and documents filled the screen. Artem whistled softly.
“Wow… your husband was more careful than I thought. This isn’t only Orion. This is Nikolai’s bookkeeping for the last five years. Sveta, do you realize what we have? This isn’t just an apartment. It’s a one-way ticket for Nikolai—to prison for life.”
At that moment someone knocked on the basement door again—but this time it wasn’t a heavy удар. It was a quiet, coded scrape. Artem tensed; his hand went to a heavy hole punch—the only “weapon” nearby.
“Who is it?” he shouted.
“Artem, it’s me—Marina,” came a woman’s voice. “Your upstairs neighbor. There’s a black car by your entrance. Three guys got out. They’ve got guns. Run—use the back way!”
Artem swore. “Now, Sveta. Grab the bag!”
They bolted deeper into the basement past shelves of dusty archives. A small door led into a ventilation passage that opened into the next alley. Svetlana crawled through the narrow space, lungs filling with concrete dust. One thought pounded in her head: Vova, why didn’t you tell me earlier? I would’ve helped. I wouldn’t have left you alone with that monster.
They spilled out into a snow-dusted yard just as a loud blast erupted from the basement they’d fled—Nikolai hadn’t bothered with subtlety and simply blew the door open with a grenade or a heavy charge.
“Get in!” Artem shoved her toward an old battered Nissan. Tires screamed as they launched forward. In the rearview mirror Svetlana saw Nikolai’s figure—standing in the street openly, watching. A phone in his hand. He wasn’t chasing. He was observing, as if enjoying the hunt.
“Does he know where we’re going?” Svetlana clutched her bag to her chest.
“No,” Artem panted, gripping the wheel. “But he owns this city—patrol cops, judges, everyone. Now it’s real war. He’ll file that IOU in court tomorrow morning. If we don’t get these files to Igor at the Investigative Committee first, the apartment will be auctioned off through a fast-track scheme, and we’ll be wanted for ‘stealing documents’ or something even worse.”
“Who is Igor?” Svetlana asked, staring at the night lights sliding past.
“The only honest cop I know,” Artem said. “And the only one who hates Nikolai as much as we do. Nikolai once set up his brother.”
The Nissan shot onto the embankment. Svetlana looked at the black river and felt something new waking inside her. No tears. No helplessness. Only a cold, crystal-clear resolve. She wouldn’t just keep the apartment. She would make Nikolai pay for every day of fear and every tear she’d shed at her husband’s grave.
“Artem,” she said quietly. “Turn.”
“What? We have to get to Igor!”
“No. Nikolai expects us to run to the police. He has people there. We need a different place.”
“Where?”
“Television. Live broadcast on a morning show. My classmate works there. If we dump all of this in front of a million viewers, no judge will dare look away.”
Artem glanced at her with real respect.
“You’re a dangerous woman, Svetlana Petrova,” he said, almost smiling. “Vova had good taste. All right… let’s go to Ostankino. Buckle up—looks like we’ve got a tail.”
Behind them, bright xenon headlights flared in the dark. A black SUV was closing in.
The chase had begun.
The night city streaked past in blurred neon. Nikolai’s black SUV clung to them, sometimes blasting high beams through the mirrors. Artem drove the Nissan to the limit of its aging engine.
“Hold on, Sveta!” he shouted, throwing the car into a sharp turn toward the TV center. “If we get through the barrier, they won’t risk shooting under security cameras.”
Svetlana gripped the door handle. A reckless plan had crystallized in her mind. Paper and audio were a flimsy shield against bullets—but in the digital age, the one thing you can’t erase is public exposure. She typed a message to her classmate Katya, a producer for the popular morning talk show “Morning for Everyone.”
“Katya, I have proof about the Orion mall—the one Techno-Service is building. This is huge. We’re being chased. Give me five minutes on air or I won’t live to sunrise.”
A reply came a minute later:
“You’re insane. Service entrance #4. I’ll clear it. If you’re telling the truth, we’ll blow up the ratings. If you’re lying, they’ll lock us both up.”
“Artem—checkpoint four!” Sveta ordered.
The SUV rammed them from behind. The Nissan fishtailed, but Artem wrestled it straight. They flew toward the barrier. An охранник, already warned by Katya, hit the button at the last second. The barrier shot up, the Nissan slipped through—and the pursuers had to brake hard as the arm dropped again and armed security guards poured out.
In the studio it smelled of hairspray and fresh coffee. Three minutes until live broadcast. Svetlana stood in the makeup room as an artist frantically tried to hide the signs of sleeplessness and tears under a thick layer of powder.
“You’re sure about this?” Katya—an elegant blonde in a sharp suit—twisted a tablet nervously. “Nikolai is serious. He has connections everywhere.”
“He doesn’t have connections with millions of people watching,” Svetlana said, placing the flash drive and Vova’s notebook on the table. “It’s all here: fake invoices, the foundation report on Orion, threats against my husband—and the IOU he shoved at me at the wake.”
“Thirty seconds!” an assistant yelled.
They led Svetlana into the studio. The floodlights blinded her for an instant. She sat opposite the host, who looked stunned by the sudden script change.
“You’re watching ‘Morning for Everyone,’ and today we have an emergency segment,” the host began, hearing Katya in his earpiece. “Our guest is Svetlana Petrova, widow of engineer Vladimir Petrov. Svetlana says her life—and the lives of hundreds of citizens—are in danger.”
Svetlana looked straight into the camera. She imagined Nikolai watching from his office or his car. She could see his face—twisted with rage and helplessness.
“Five days ago I buried my husband,” her voice trembled, then steadied. “They told me it was an accident. It wasn’t. It was an execution. My husband, Vladimir Petrov, refused to sign acceptance documents for the Orion shopping center because it’s built with stolen, substandard concrete—and it could collapse at any moment.”
Behind her, images of documents appeared on the big screen.
“Nikolai Demidov—the man my husband called a friend—tried to silence me with a fake IOU for three million rubles. He wanted to take our apartment and shut my mouth. This is that paper. And this—” she held up the device, “—is an audio recording where Mr. Demidov threatens my husband with death.”
She pressed play. Nikolai’s voice filled the studio:
“Either you sign the apartment as collateral… or Svetochka is a pretty woman, alone…”
A dead silence fell. Camera operators froze. Offstage, Katya clenched her fist as the online viewership climbed by the second.
An hour after the broadcast, the TV center was surrounded by police—but this time it was the real kind. Igor, the honest investigator Artem had mentioned, personally escorted Svetlana out under спецназ protection.
“You did the impossible, Svetlana,” Igor said, his eyes lowered. “This case is now under the Prosecutor General’s direct supervision. We took Demidov right outside the courthouse as he came to register the claim on your apartment. He had documents on him linking him to the tampering that caused your husband’s crash.”
Svetlana stepped onto the entrance steps. The rain had stopped, and pale morning sun broke through the gray clouds. Artem stood beside her, rubbing his glasses with tired hands.
“Well, Sveta,” he said quietly. “The apartment is yours. And Vova’s name is clean.”
“The apartment is just walls,” she answered. “What matters is he didn’t break Vova. Not even after death.”
A month passed.
Svetlana stood in her living room. No memorial kutya on the table now. The window was open, and a fresh spring breeze stirred the curtains. The court officially ruled the IOU invalid. All of Nikolai’s assets were seized to compensate victims of his schemes. Construction on Orion was frozen, and the city began reinforcing the structure.
Svetlana walked to the old bureau and carefully placed her husband’s notebook back into its hidden compartment. Now it was no longer evidence—it was a memory of a man who had loved her more than his own life.
The doorbell rang. This time it wasn’t an enemy’s demanding knock or the scrape of a burglar’s tools. It was a gentle, polite chime. Artem stood on the doorstep holding a small bouquet of mimosa.
“I came to see how you’re doing,” he said. “And… I brought news. We’re starting a foundation to help widows who’ve suffered from legal abuse. We’re calling it ‘An Engineer’s Honor.’ Will you join as a co-founder?”
Svetlana smiled for the first time in a long while. She looked at Vova’s photo on the wall. For a moment it seemed to her that he winked—his familiar, playful half-smile.
“I will, Artem,” she said softly. “There’s still so much we need to set right.”
Life went on. But now it was a life worth fighting for.