The gravel under my car’s wheels rustled irritably as I turned onto the familiar country lane. I was smiling. Igor thinks I’m meeting friends in the city, but I’m racing to him instead. A surprise.
He’d said there was a crunch at the dacha—he had to finish some urgent project that required total concentration. Our “work” dacha, as he called it. A place where no one bothered him.
Strange—the gate was ajar. Igor always locked it with two full turns, even if he was just running to the store for five minutes. His little obsession.
I left the car by the road so I wouldn’t tip him off too soon and quietly stepped onto the property. The air was saturated with smoke—thick, spicy, nothing like the kind that hangs around when Igor is doing his magic at the grill. With him it’s a whole ritual, perfected over years. But this smell was… чужой. чужая. чужое. Foreign.
For some reason my heart started beating a little faster. Nonsense. I was probably just nervous to see him.
I walked along the narrow path, keeping to the cover of lush lilac bushes. Voices drifted from the veranda.
One was Igor’s—tight, strangled. The other was a man’s voice I didn’t recognize. Low, velvety, with lazy notes of authority.
“You do understand, Igorek, that this isn’t a request,” the voice was saying. “It’s simply a statement of fact. We’re back in the game.”
I froze, peering through the leaves.
On the veranda, at our table, sat my husband. He looked as if he’d just been hauled out of icy water—pale, drawn in on himself.
Beside him sat a woman in a строгий business suit, her face as impassive as a mask.
And by the grill… by my wrought-iron grill that Igor and I had spent six months choosing, stood him. The owner of that velvety voice.
A tall man in an expensive shirt with the sleeves rolled up. With professional ease he turned the skewers, and there was such calm in his movements, such confidence—like he’d been born here.
He didn’t look like one of Igor’s friends. He looked like a predator who’d walked into someone else’s house and was already deciding where he’d sleep.
I stepped out of my hiding place. The conversation broke off mid-sentence. Three pairs of eyes locked onto me.
“Lena?” Igor jumped up, knocking his chair over. “You… what are you doing here?”
His voice trembled. There was no joy in it. Only panic.
The man at the grill slowly turned his head. His eyes—cold and gray—ran over me from head to toe. He smirked.
“And here is the lady of the estate. Igor, you didn’t say your charming wife would honor our… meeting.”
I ignored him, staring straight at my husband.
“You said you were working. Reports.”
“This is work,” the woman at the table cut in, her voice dry as last year’s leaf. “We’re just discussing some old projects.”
And then I understood. It was him. The man whose name Igor had begged me to forget. The man because of whom we’d almost lost everything five years ago.
A ghost from the past—one my husband had assured me would never appear in our lives again.
“Vadim?” I whispered, and the air around us seemed to thicken.
The man lifted a skewer of perfectly grilled meat off the grill and held it out to me.
“Vadim Andreevich,” he corrected, smiling in a way that sent an unpleasant chill down my spine. “For you, Elena. Help yourself. We’ll be seeing each other often now.”
I stared at the smoking skewer in his hand. The smell hit my nose and nausea rose in my throat. I took a step back, shaking my head.
“I’m not hungry. Igor, I’m waiting for an explanation.”
My voice came out steadier than I expected. My confusion vanished instantly, replaced by icy fury.
“Lenochka, come on—” Igor stepped toward me with his hands out, but stopped halfway when he met my gaze. “It’s… it’s complicated.”
“Then try,” Vadim cut in, enjoying the scene. He set the skewer on a plate. “Your husband simply decided to renew some old business connections. Very profitable ones, I might add.”
He swept his gaze over our house, the garden, the gazebo.
“You’ve got it nice here. Cozy. Anna and I,” he nodded toward the woman in the suit, “were just looking for something like this. A place to escape the city noise.”
I looked from Vadim to Igor. My husband stood with his head lowered, studying a crack in the veranda tile. Silent. And that silence was more frightening than any shout.
“What does he mean?” I asked Igor without taking my eyes off Vadim.
“He means your husband is in debt,” Vadim drawled. “And it’s not about money, my dear Elena. Money is dust.”
It’s a debt of honor. Five years ago I saved his hide—I pulled him out of such a pit that he should still be sweating from fear. And now it’s time to pay the bill.
The woman named Anna opened a thin leather briefcase and took out several sheets of paper.
“Everything is legally impeccable,” she said, her voice devoid of emotion. “Your spouse has transferred to us the rights to use this property as… collateral for future dealings. Here is his signature.”
She held the document out to me. I saw Igor’s bold signature—one I could recognize out of a thousand.
My ears rang. I looked at my husband. At last he raised his eyes to me, and there was such torment in them, such pleading, that for a second I felt sorry for him. But that pity drowned immediately in a surge of anger.
“You swore to me,” I hissed. “You swore you were done with this man and his business forever. You looked me in the eyes and lied!”
“Lena, I had no choice!” he shouted. “He would’ve destroyed me! Us!”
Vadim laughed—quietly, without malice, which somehow made it worse. My hands started to shake.
“There’s always a choice, Igorek. You just chose your own skin again—not her peace of mind. Same as last time.”
He stepped close enough that I caught the scent of expensive cologne mixed with smoke.
“Don’t blame him. He’s a weak man. And weak men need strong patrons. Now I’m his patron. Which means I’m yours too. Get used to it.”
The words “get used to it” clicked in my head like a switch. All fear and confusion evaporated, leaving a cold, ringing emptiness—and a single thought: Enough.
I looked calmly at Vadim. Then at the paper in Anna’s hands. And finally at my husband.
“Get used to it? No, Vadim Andreevich—you’ll have to get used to it. To a new reality.”
I took my phone out of my purse.
“Anna, I take it you’re a lawyer?” The woman nodded, watching me with curiosity. “Then you know that agreements made under pressure are void.”
“And you should also know this dacha—like everything we own—was bought during the marriage. But it was registered in my name.”
For the first time, Anna’s mask of indifference twitched. She shot a quick look at Igor.
Vadim stopped smiling.
“What did you say?”
“What you heard. This house is mine. This grill is mine. And the land under your feet is mine too.”
“And the signature of my… husband,” I forced the word out, “on that little piece of paper isn’t worth the ink it’s written in.”
I turned to Igor. His face went whiter than chalk. He stared at me as if he’d never seen me before.
“You… you registered everything to yourself? When?”
“Right after you ‘finished’ with Vadim five years ago. I’m not an idiot, Igor.”
“I saw how afraid you were of him. And I understood he’d come back someday. I simply gave you a chance to be a man and deal with your problems. You didn’t use it.”
A pause fell. Only the coals crackled in the grill.
Vadim slowly turned to Igor. The lazy authority was gone from his eyes—replaced by cold, calculating rage.
“So you brought me here knowing it wasn’t your property? You decided to set me up, Igorek?”
“I… I didn’t know!” Igor babbled, backing away. “Lena, tell him! I swear I didn’t know!”
But I was looking at Vadim.
“You have exactly five minutes to remove your things—and yourselves—from my land.”
“Otherwise I call the police and report unlawful entry. And believe me, my lawyer will find plenty to add to that report once he digs into your shared past with Igor.”
Without a word Anna began quickly packing the papers back into her briefcase. She threw Vadim a short, warning glance.
Vadim looked at me one last time, then at Igor, and a smirk returned to his lips—but now it was sharp and cruel, like a snarl.
“You’ll pay dearly for this, Igorek. Very dearly.”
He turned and walked to the gate. Anna followed.
Igor and I were left alone. He stood in the middle of the veranda—pathetic, crushed—looking at me with a kind of childish resentment.
“You could’ve told me…”
“Told you what?” I cut him off. “That I don’t trust you anymore? That I’m tired of being your mommy and covering for your cowardice? You knew all of that yourself, Igor.”
I walked to the table, grabbed the plate of шашлык Vadim had cooked, and flung it into the trash.
“Get out.”
“Lena… where am I supposed to go?”
“Somewhere people solve their problems instead of hiding behind a woman’s skirt. The door’s open.”
He hesitated for a moment, then silently turned and trudged after his “patrons.”
I stayed behind. I looked at my house—my garden, my grill. And for the first time in many years I felt I could breathe fully. The air was clean.
The first few days afterward were filled with a strange, almost deafening peace. I changed the locks.
Filed for divorce. My attorney—an elderly, unflappable man named Boris Markovich—listened to my story, nodded, and said only one sentence: “You did the right thing, Elena Sergeyevna. Long overdue.”
I thought Vadim wouldn’t let it go. But one week followed another and nothing happened.
I started to believe he’d just taken his anger out on Igor and forgotten about me. A stupid hope.
The first warning came at work. My department head—a cautious man, always pointedly polite—called me in.
“Elena Sergeyevna, we received a request… from the tax service,” he said, avoiding my eyes. “Regarding your declarations for the last five years. They say there are some discrepancies. It’s just a formality, I’m sure, but…”
But I understood everything. Vadim hadn’t gone for direct threats. He was smarter than that. He’d started strangling me with a bureaucratic noose.
A few days later my personal bank account was frozen. “A technical error,” they told me over the phone. Then, during a roadside check, it turned out my car suddenly had issues with its documents.
Every day brought a new petty sabotage—nerve-shredding, time-draining. He was trying to prove to me that without his “protection,” my life would become hell.
I held on. Boris Markovich coolly deflected the attacks, but it was a war of attrition. I could feel the ring tightening.
One late evening, coming back from work, I saw him. Igor was sitting on the bench by my building. He’d lost weight, gone hollow-eyed. He wore the same rumpled suit I’d last seen him in.
“Lena,” he jumped up when I approached. “Please—don’t go. Just two minutes.”
I stopped at a distance.
“What do you want, Igor?”
“I have to warn you. It’s all Vadim. He won’t stop.”
“I figured,” I answered flatly.
“No, you don’t understand!” Desperation rang in his voice. “This is only the beginning. He… he found something.”
Five years ago, when he pulled me out, I didn’t just sign promissory notes. I signed a confession. To something I didn’t do. Financial fraud in his old company.
He pinned it on me and kept the confession as insurance. Now he’s going to use it. And he’ll frame it so it looks like you were my accomplice. He wants to take everything you have.
All the blood drained from my face. There it was—the main blow he’d been preparing.
“Why are you telling me this?” I whispered.
Igor looked at me, and for the first time in a long while I didn’t see fear or hurt in his eyes. Only endless exhaustion.
“Because I should’ve done this five years ago. Told you the whole truth and gone to the police. But I was scared. And now… now I have nothing left. And you still have your life.”
“And this house.” He handed me a flash drive—tiny, cold in his fingers. “He told me to give it to you as a ‘final offer.’ It has a copy of my ‘confession’ and his demands.”
“But there’s something else in it too. In a hidden folder. I found it by accident. It’s his real bookkeeping. Evidence against him. He doesn’t know about it.”
He pressed the cold metal into my palm.
“Forgive me, Len. If you can. And run.”
He turned and walked away quickly, dissolving into the evening dusk.
I stood there, clutching the little flash drive. It was both a death sentence and a key to salvation.
And I understood I wasn’t going to run anywhere. The game had moved to a new level. And now it was my move.
Two years later.
I was sitting on the same veranda, in the same chair. In my hands was a cup of fragrant herbal tea, and the air smelled not of чужой, тревожный smoke, but of freshly cut grass and roses I’d planted last spring.
Boris Markovich sat beside me. He came every couple of months now—not as a lawyer, but as an old friend. We drank tea and talked about nothing important.
“Do you remember, Elena Sergeyevna, when you brought me that flash drive?” he said suddenly, looking out at the garden. “Your hands were shaking, but your eyes burned like a tigress’s.”
I smiled. I remembered. That night in his office, when we opened the files together, was the longest night of my life.
The компромат on Vadim was serious enough that the investigators grabbed it eagerly.
The trial was long and filthy. Vadim tried to pressure, threaten, bribe. But the machine of justice we’d set in motion was already gaining speed. His “empire,” built on fear and blackmail, crumbled like a house of cards.
He got a hefty sentence for economic crimes and extortion. Anna, his loyal lawyer, got a suspended sentence as an accomplice.
“And Igor?” I asked, though I knew the answer. I asked every time, as if checking whether anything had changed.
“Served his suspended term,” Boris Markovich sighed. “Works somewhere as a sales manager. Quiet as a mouse. He signed the divorce without a single objection.”
“I think he’s even grateful to you. You dragged him out of that swamp—though in a harsh way.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t his savior or his executioner. I was simply saving myself.
Igor tried calling a few times at the very beginning. Said he’d realized everything, that he wanted to start over.
But I didn’t answer. You can’t build something new on the ruins of the old—especially when the foundation has rotted through.
I finished my tea and stood up. Barefoot, I crossed the warm wooden veranda to the grill.
It stood in its old place, polished to a shine. Now I cooked on it myself—for me, and for friends who filled the house with laughter and warmth.
I looked at the gate. It was firmly shut with a new, reliable bolt—not because I was afraid,
but because now I decided who got to enter my life.
The sun was setting, painting the sky in soft, peach tones. And in that calm, peaceful light, I felt absolutely free.
The story was over.
Mine was only just beginning
