“You just don’t know how to present yourself,” Kristina drawled, stirring her cocktail with a straw. A bracelet studded with stones glittered on her wrist.
She said it with that light, almost careless condescension that was her calling card.
“It’s not about presentation,” Olya Yeremina answered quietly, studying a crack on her cup of cheap tea. “I don’t have the right experience for this position.”
“Experience, experience… how boring,” Kristina sighed theatrically. “What matters is a sparkle in your eyes and expensive shoes. And you have neither.”
Kristina Belskaya gave her an appraising once-over that made Olya want to shrink into herself—as if she’d been scanned and stamped with a verdict: “defective, scrap.”
“Listen, I’m trying to help,” Kristina leaned forward and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “You’re my best friend. Who else is going to tell you the truth?”
Olya stayed silent. Best friend. The words stuck in her throat—prickly and foreign.
“You have to understand, in our world they judge by your clothes—and see you off by your connections. You’re a gray little mouse with no money. Until you accept that, you’ll keep trudging to penny-ante interviews.”
Every word hit dead center. Not at her brow, but in the solar plexus, knocking out the last of her air.
“I’m about to launch a project,” Kristina went on, clearly savoring the effect. “I’ll need people for the most basic tasks. Sorting papers, meeting couriers.”
She paused, giving Olya a moment to appreciate her good fortune.
“I can take you on. For the time being, of course. Until you find something ‘to your liking,’” she added, with a barely visible smirk.
Olya lifted her eyes. Her gaze was unexpectedly calm, as if something inside had gone still and turned into a smooth, cold stone.
She looked at Kristina—at the perfect blowout, the disdainfully curved lips, the bracelet worth Olya’s annual salary.
She didn’t see a friend. She saw a predator drunk on her own power and on Olya’s humiliation.
“Thank you for the offer,” Olya said slowly. “But I think I’ll pass.”
Kristina’s eyebrows shot up. She clearly hadn’t expected that.
“You’re turning it down? You? Turning down my offer?” her voice sharpened with hauteur. “Well, suit yourself. Just don’t come running to me in tears later when you can’t pay for your rented apartment.”
She demonstratively pulled a few large bills from her bag and tossed them onto the table, more than covering her check.
“My treat,” she threw over her shoulder and headed for the exit without a goodbye, her heels ticking across the marble floor.
Olya Yeremina remained seated alone. She didn’t touch the money or her cooled drink. She just looked out the window at the expensive cars flashing past.
And for the first time in her life she felt not despair, but a rush of excitement.
It didn’t evaporate the next morning. It hardened into a cold, ringing energy. Olya had always been inconspicuous. But she knew how to listen and to notice what others missed—details, connections, hidden motives. It was her only non-convertible capital.
She sat down at her old laptop and drew up a plan.
She offered her services on a freelance marketplace—“search and analysis of unstructured information.” It sounded vague, but Olya knew exactly what stood behind it.
The first months were hell. Tiny jobs, nitpicky clients, pay that barely covered food and rent.
More than once she was on the verge of calling Kristina and giving up. But the image of that contemptuous smirk stopped her better than any wall.
The breakthrough came six months later. A small law firm hired her to gather intelligence on competitors before a complex court case. Olya sank her teeth into the work.
She worked a week without sleep. She found not only public data, but weak points, internal conflicts, hidden assets.
Her report helped the lawyers win.
They didn’t just pay her triple. They became regular clients and recommended her to their partners.
That’s how Olya gained a trickle of steady orders. Two years later she could rent a tiny office on the outskirts and hire her first assistant.
Sometimes Kristina called. From the sound of her voice, her life was an endless party.
“Olenka, hi! I’m on a yacht in Monaco with partners. And you, still sitting in your little hovel? Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
“Hi. No, I don’t. I’m working,” Olya would reply, scanning financial statements for a new client.
“Wor-king?” Kristina drew out the word. “Don’t be shy, say it. My offer to make you a go-fer still stands. You can make coffee for my new assistant.”
The jab was calculated, but it missed. Before, Olya would have cringed with humiliation. Now she felt only mild irritation.
“Thanks, no. I have my own agency.”
“An agency?” loud, unembarrassed laughter crackled through the line. “An agency for mopping floors?
“Olya, don’t make me laugh. You have neither the grit nor the money. What could you possibly build? Call me when your ‘agencies’ run out along with your grocery money.”
She hung up. Olya set the phone aside. She didn’t yet know that cracks were already appearing behind the shiny façade of Kristina’s life.
That her “project” was propped up by one very influential investor who was beginning to lose patience.
Four years passed since that café conversation. The Yeremina & Partners agency occupied a stylish downtown office.
There were five analysts on staff. Olya had become a specialist in corporate intelligence and risk analysis. Her clients were companies that valued substance over sparkle.
That was when Kristina struck.
It began with a call from her biggest client—the Horizon investment fund.
“Good afternoon, Olga. Vorontsov here. We have a problem. Competitors got access to your latest analytical report.”
Olya froze. That report was the pinnacle of her work.
“How… how is that possible?” was all she could manage. “Access was limited to you and my team.”
“We’ve just received a ‘business proposal’ from a consulting firm called Belskaya Group,” Vorontsov’s voice was icy. “They’re offering us a ‘deeper analysis’ of the same asset.
“And as a sample, they sent over several key slides from your report. If information about the deal leaks to the market, we’ll lose millions.”
Belskaya Group. Kristina.
Olya hung up. The air in her office grew thick. She refused to panic. First thing, she launched an internal investigation. Within a few hours she found the breach.
One of her junior analysts, a young guy with big debts, admitted that he’d been approached by a “charming business lady” who first turned his head and then, learning about his problems, offered a “simple solution.”
Kristina hadn’t hacked servers. She hacked a person.
She didn’t just steal Olya’s work. She used Olya’s own employee to drive the knife into her back.
She didn’t cry. There were no tears—only a ringing, hollow space inside. The very space where fear had once lived.
Enough.
It wasn’t an emotional outburst. It was a conclusion—dry and mathematically precise.
Olya sat down at her desk. She opened a new folder on her computer and named it “Project: Belskaya.” For the next three days she barely slept. She dug. Not as a slighted friend, but as a professional.
She found everything. About the “strategist” Rodion Vyazemsky, fired for industrial espionage. About the stolen business plan. But most importantly—she found the financial holes in Belskaya Group.
Kristina was living beyond her means, spending the investor’s money on luxury rather than growth. The company was on the brink of bankruptcy. Stealing Olya’s report had been her last, desperate bet.
Olya packed it all into a flawless analytical report. Not a single emotion. Then she wrote a short letter to Kristina’s investor. And without hesitation, she clicked “Send.”
The phone rang a day later. It sounded like a saw shrieking.
“What have you done, you bitch?!” Kristina screamed into the receiver. “You ruined everything!”
“I simply provided your investor with a risk assessment,” Olya replied evenly. “That’s my job. You yourself said I had no grit. I just took your advice.”
“You’ve destroyed my whole life!” Kristina screeched. “Arkady Borisovich is suing me for fraud!”
“What a nuisance,” Olya said in the same flat tone. “But the main thing is the sparkle in your eyes, not some contracts. You never had a problem with that.”
She ended the call.
Two more years went by.
The rooftop restaurant of a skyscraper shimmered with lights. Olya Yeremina was celebrating a milestone birthday.
She had chosen the venue on purpose—the most expensive, flashy place in the city, a recent client of her agency.
At some point a waitress approached their table. She moved uncertainly, trying not to lift her eyes. She wore the standard uniform.
One of the guests asked for water. The girl looked up, and her gaze met Olya’s. It was Kristina. Time had not been kind. The former shine was gone without a trace.
She froze with the tray in her hands. Recognition in her eyes shifted to horror, then to a wave of helpless hatred.
Olya looked at her—calmly, without gloating. She merely inclined her head a fraction, acknowledging her presence as a matter of course. Then she turned away and went on with her conversation.
The gesture was harsher than any slap. It meant Kristina no longer existed for her. She was just a function.
Kristina blanched, bit her lip, and almost ran toward the service exit.
Olya followed her with her eyes. She understood that the world is arranged with a certain logic. Sometimes the one who calls you a mouse simply doesn’t notice when she herself ends up in a mousetrap. And that isn’t revenge. It’s just balance.
Epilogue
Another six months passed. Olya’s business went international. One evening, sifting through her mail, she came across a message from a mutual university acquaintance.
“…Can you imagine, I saw Kristina Belskaya recently. She’s working as an administrator at a gym out on the edge of the city. They say she was fired from that restaurant the same night—made a scene… She tried to borrow money from me, complained that everyone had betrayed her, that the world is unfair…”
Olya finished reading and closed the laptop. There was neither satisfaction nor pity. Kristina’s story was no longer hers.
The next day, passing a shop window, Olya caught her reflection. A confident woman looking straight ahead.
She remembered Kristina’s words about “a sparkle in your eyes and expensive shoes.” Her shoes were indeed expensive. But the sparkle hadn’t come from them.
It came from knowing her own strength—from understanding that real value isn’t what you wear, but what you build.
She walked into her office. A new, complex project was waiting on her desk. She sat down, and a slight smile touched her lips.
The gray mouse hadn’t turned into a predatory cat.
She had become what she’d always been, but had been afraid to admit—a smart, unobtrusive hunter who knows the price of information and how to wait for her moment.
And that moment had come.
