The voice coming through the speaker was so shrill that Igor had to pull the phone away from his ear. He was sitting in his office chair, lazily scrolling through the news feed, feeling like the master of his own perfect little world. But that call instantly knocked the arrogance out of him, replacing his relaxed satisfaction with a hot wave of irritation.
His mother — the holy woman who had sacrificed her whole life for her children — was standing somewhere out there in the stairwell, humiliated and insulted by the very woman they had allowed into their family.
“Mom, calm down. I’m coming right now!” Igor barked into the phone, jumping to his feet. “Don’t go anywhere!”
He didn’t even bother listening to explanations. Why would he? The picture had already formed in his head: Anastasia, always dissatisfied, always complaining, had shown her true character again. How many times had he told her that family must be respected? But no, apparently she had decided she could do whatever she wanted.
Igor rushed out to the parking lot, searching for his car keys as he moved. His car was a black, powerful crossover — his pride, his symbol of status. He jumped behind the wheel, started the engine, and the vehicle tore away, leaving behind an invisible trail of his outrage.
The drive home took twenty minutes, but to Igor it felt endless, filled with boiling anger. With every traffic light, he wound himself up even more.
“What the hell?” he thought, slamming his palm against the steering wheel. “Throwing my mother out? My mother! Who does she think she is? So what if she works? So what if she earns money? That doesn’t give her the right to act like some queen!”
When the elevator took him up to the seventh floor, he saw his mother. She was standing near the garbage chute, clutching her handbag to her chest, looking so miserable and abandoned that something twisted inside Igor. Beside her, his younger brother Ivan shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. Apparently, their mother had called him too.
“Igoryosha!” she cried when she saw her eldest son. “Can you imagine? She just opened the door and threw me out! She told me never to set foot here again!”
Igor’s eyes darkened with fury. He said nothing to his mother. He only nodded to Ivan and strode toward the apartment door. The key barely found the lock; his hands were trembling with the desire to restore justice.
He flung the door open so violently that it slammed into the wall, leaving a dent in the wallpaper.
“Where are you?!” he roared, storming into the hallway.
Anastasia was standing in the living room.
She wasn’t crying. She was looking at the shards scattered across the parquet floor, her face as pale as chalk. But Igor didn’t notice that. He didn’t notice her condition, or even what exactly was lying broken on the floor. All he saw was the enemy who had dared to offend his sacred mother.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” Igor rushed up to his wife and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Have you completely lost your mind? Throwing my mother out? Out of my house?”
Anastasia raised her eyes to him. There was no fear in them — only a vast, deep astonishment that quickly turned into something dark and heavy.
“Igor, let go of me,” she said quietly.
“I’m not letting you go until you go out there and apologize! Right now!” He shook her so hard that Anastasia’s head jerked. “Go and crawl at her feet until she forgives you! Do you understand me? Damn it, do you understand?”
“Don’t you dare touch me,” she said, her voice hardening.
But Igor no longer heard her.
Anger covered his eyes like a red veil. He felt as if his wife were mocking him, as if her calmness were a direct insult to his manhood.
“You will do what I said!” he roared, and, losing control, he swung his arm.
The slap landed across her cheek.
The sound was dry and sharp. Anastasia’s head snapped to the side, and a red mark immediately began to bloom on her cheekbone. She staggered but stayed on her feet, grabbing the edge of the dresser.
“You hit me?” she asked.
There was more threat in that question than in any scream.
“And I’ll do it again if you don’t understand!” Igor raised his hand once more, intoxicated by the feeling of power. He was teaching her. He was putting an insolent woman in her place.
At that moment, Ivan rushed into the apartment. He saw his brother’s raised hand, saw the red mark on his sister-in-law’s face, and threw himself between them.
“Igor, what are you doing? Cool down!” Ivan shouted, grabbing his brother by the elbow. “Have you lost your mind? You don’t hit women!”
“Get off me!” Igor snapped, yanking himself free. “Stay out of this! She insulted our mother!”
“Stop it!” Ivan tried to restrain him again, but Igor, blinded by rage, spun around and punched his own brother in the jaw.
Ivan flew back against the wall, knocking down a picture, then slid to the floor, shaking his head.
“Get out!” Igor screamed, spraying spit as he shouted. “All of you, get out! Until this filth apologizes!”
His mother appeared in the doorway. She watched the scene with the look of a person who believed justice had finally been served. She didn’t rush to Ivan. She didn’t stop Igor. She simply waited.
She waited for Anastasia to break.
But Anastasia did not break.
Inside her, where a second earlier there had been shock, something suddenly burst open like a valve on a giant boiler under pressure. These were not the tears of a victim. This was an avalanche.
She straightened. Her face twisted into a frightening, almost cheerful grimace, and a sound tore from her chest like metal scraping against metal.
“APOLOGIZE?!” Anastasia screamed so loudly that Igor, ready for another attack, recoiled. It didn’t even sound human. There were so many decibels in her voice that the glass in the cabinet trembled. “APOLOGIZE TO HER?!”
She jabbed a finger toward her mother-in-law, who was still standing in the doorway, though now her smug smile was starting to slip.
“Shut up!” Igor tried to shout over her.
“NO, YOU SHUT UP!” Anastasia grabbed an empty crystal glass from the shelf and hurled it at the wall near her husband’s head. The glass exploded into thousands of shards, showering Igor with tiny fragments. “DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY I THREW HER OUT? DO YOU?!”
She wasn’t speaking — she was spitting the words out with every breath. She was shaking, but not from fear. It was the tremor of uncontrollable destructive energy.
She jumped toward the pile of broken pieces on the floor — the pile Igor had ignored.
“LOOK!” she screamed, pointing down. “LOOK WHAT SHE DID!”
Igor, stunned by her reaction, finally lowered his eyes.
On the floor lay the remains of an antique porcelain figurine — a ballerina.
It wasn’t just an object. It was the only keepsake Anastasia had from her mother, something she had protected like a treasure, carefully dusting it and guarding it from the smallest harm.
“She came here…” Anastasia began moving toward her husband, and Igor — the so-called master of life — suddenly began backing away. In her eyes burned madness mixed with absolute clarity. “She came here and demanded two hundred thousand! She said you were ashamed to ask me yourself, so she was asking instead! For dental work! For new teeth! And when I said we didn’t have spare money because you lost your bonus playing cards last month, she grabbed my mother’s ballerina…”
Anastasia sucked in a breath, her face flushed with fury.
“She said, ‘If you’re too stingy to help your mother, then you don’t value things either!’ And she threw it on the floor! My mother! She smashed the memory of my mother!”
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the room. The only sound was Anastasia’s harsh breathing.
Ivan, who had already gotten up and was rubbing his bruised jaw, turned to look at his mother. She stood pressed against the doorframe, her eyes darting nervously.
“Mom?” Ivan asked in a low voice. “Is that true? Did you break Nastya’s mother’s figurine?”
“I… it was an accident…” his mother began stammering, losing all her fighting spirit. “I just waved my hand… and she started yelling… I was only trying to help you… Dental work is expensive these days…”
“You demanded money?” Ivan took a step toward her. “Is Nastya telling the truth?”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?!” their mother suddenly shrieked, switching back to attack. “She has more than enough money! She could have given some! And that little trinket… so what? Just some old junk!”
“Old junk?” Anastasia suddenly burst out laughing. It was a terrible, barking laugh. “Old junk…”
Ivan turned to Igor.
“Did you hear that?” he asked his brother. “Mom came here demanding money and smashed the only memory Nastya had of her mother. And you came flying in without even finding out what happened, and hit your wife. And me.”
Ivan spat blood onto the floor.
“I’m sorry, Nastya,” he muttered. “I didn’t know.”
But Anastasia no longer needed Ivan’s apology.
She was looking at Igor.
He stood there, blinking in confusion. All his anger, all his certainty had vanished like smoke. He realized he had made a mistake. But he still hoped he could smooth it over. After all, he was her husband.
“Nastya, well…” Igor began, trying to make his voice softer. “Mom went too far, yes, but that happens. You weren’t exactly innocent either. Why scream? You could have called me, explained everything… Let’s not turn this into a circus.”
Anastasia turned sharply toward him.
Her hysteria ended as suddenly as it had begun. The screaming was replaced by coldness. Absolute, icy coldness — more frightening than any outburst.
“A circus?” she repeated. “You’re right. The circus is over.”
She walked to the front door, flung it wide open, and pointed toward the stairwell.
“GET OUT!” she shouted so loudly that his mother flinched. “ALL OF YOU!”
“Nastya, enough,” Igor said, forcing a smile as he took a step toward her. “We lost our tempers, that’s all. We’re family.”
“You don’t have a family,” Anastasia said clearly. “You have your mother. So go live with her.”
She rushed into the hallway, grabbed Igor’s jacket and coat from the hanger, swept up everything she could reach, and threw it all onto the dirty stairwell floor.
“Hey! What are you doing?!” Igor protested. “That’s my coat!”
“Yours?” Anastasia spun toward him. “What here is yours, Igor? This apartment?”
Igor drew in a breath to object, but Anastasia cut him off, moving forward. She jabbed her finger into his chest, forcing him back toward the exit.
“This apartment was left to me by my aunt! You’re not even registered here! You’re nobody here! A complete zero! A guest who overstayed his welcome!”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” Igor snapped, but fear was already creeping into his voice.
“How should I talk to you? Like a kept man?” Anastasia was flying on the wings of her rage. “Car keys. Give them to me. NOW!”
“What?” Igor froze.
“THE KEYS!” she screamed, holding out her hand. “That’s my father’s car! I let you use it to drive your backside to work — not to rush here and hit me!”
Igor, not even understanding why he obeyed, pulled the key fob from his pocket. Anastasia snatched it from his hand.
“Phone,” she demanded.
“Nastya, this is nonsense…” Igor whined. “The phone is mine…”
“Yours?” she laughed bitterly. “Who bought it a month ago? Whose card was charged? Mine! You complained that your old one wasn’t ‘respectable’ enough. Hand it over!”
As if hypnotized, Igor gave her the smartphone. And suddenly he realized that without that phone, without the car, without this apartment, he was standing in a vacuum.
“Take off the sneakers,” Anastasia ordered.
“What?” Igor’s eyes widened.
“Take off the sneakers, I said!” She grabbed an old pair of worn-out house slippers from the shelf — the ones he used at the country house — and threw them at his feet. “I bought those Nikes for twenty thousand! You didn’t earn them. Take them off!”
Ivan stood leaning against the wall, shaking his head. Igor’s mother huddled near the elevator, afraid to make a sound. She had never seen her daughter-in-law like this.
This was no longer just a woman. This was a fury.
Igor, red with humiliation, began unlacing his shoes.
“You’ll regret this,” he hissed, lifting his eyes to her. “You’ll come crawling back, Nastya. Who’s going to want you? A divorced woman?”
That was his final mistake.
Anastasia stepped right up to him.
“I’d rather be alone than be with someone like you,” she said quietly.
Then, with all the strength she could gather, she slapped him across the face.
Once.
And then again.
Twice.
Igor’s head jerked like a bobblehead doll.
“That one was for me,” she said. “And for my mother’s ballerina.”
She looked at him with such contempt that it was as if he were empty space.
“I’m not bringing out your laptop. That was bought with my bonuses too.”
Anastasia disappeared into the room and returned a minute later with an armful of shirts. She dumped them into the hallway, straight onto the dirty floor.
“Get out,” she said calmly. “And take your mother with you. Let her buy your suits from now on.”
“Nastya…” Igor stood there in his socks and undershirt, clutching his old slippers in his hands. He looked pathetic. All his shine, all his fake confidence had disappeared.
He understood now.
Only now, when the cold air from the stairwell touched his feet, did he understand that he had lost everything.
He had lost his comfortable life. He had lost the ease he had grown used to and taken for granted. He had lost the woman who solved all his problems. He had lost the bank card that never seemed to run out.
“Get out!” Anastasia shouted, shoving him hard in the chest.
Igor stumbled out onto the landing.
Ivan silently walked past him without offering a hand and started down the stairs on foot. Their mother, lips pressed tight, hurried after him, muttering curses — but quietly enough that Anastasia wouldn’t hear.
Igor remained standing in front of the closed door.
He heard one lock click.
Then the second.
Then the bolt slid into place with a heavy metallic sound.
He stood there in a pile of his belongings, without car keys, without a phone, without money. In his trouser pocket, only a few coins jingled.
“Damn it,” he breathed into the emptiness.
The echo of the stairwell repeated his words back to him mockingly.
Behind the door, everything was quiet.
Anastasia wasn’t crying.
She went to the kitchen, took a broom and dustpan, and began calmly, methodically sweeping up the broken pieces of the ballerina.
With every shard she collected, she felt lighter.
For the first time in a long while, the air in the apartment felt clean.