— “Vitya, your wife didn’t give me the money you promised me! Deal with her yourself as quickly as possible, or I’ll tell everything to our parents and you’ll have to talk to Dad about it!”
Alina’s voice—thin and sharp as a shard of glass—hit Viktor at the exact moment he turned the key in the lock. He hadn’t even taken off his shoes, hadn’t even exhaled after a long day at work. He’d simply stepped into his own hallway and immediately found himself pinned to the wall—not physically, but morally. His sister stood in front of him, feet planted wide in expensive ankle boots, hands on her hips. Her coat was unbuttoned, and her face—usually pretty and spoiled—was now twisted with open malice. She wasn’t just waiting for him. She’d ambushed him.
Viktor went pale. The fatigue that had built up all day evaporated in an instant, replaced by a familiar, icy terror. The mere mention of his father always worked on him flawlessly, paralyzing his will and making his stomach clench into a tight, cold knot. He set his laptop bag on the floor, and the sound seemed deafeningly loud.
“Your Sveta has gotten completely out of hand,” Alina hissed, stepping forward and shrinking the already tiny distance between them. She smelled of perfume and street frost. “I came for the money, like you said. For my miserable twenty grand for shopping. And she—can you imagine?—refused me! Said she has a budget, and there’s no money for my ‘wants.’” Alina pronounced the word with exaggerated contempt. “Who is she to decide anything?!”
Viktor helplessly glanced toward the kitchen door, as if looking for salvation there. He really had promised. Last weekend, when Alina complained about being bored yet again, he’d absentmindedly blurted, “Drop by during the week—we’ll figure something out.” It was his standard tactic: promise something to get her off his back, and then deal with it later. But ever since Svetlana had taken control of their finances, “dealing with it” had become nearly impossible.
“Alina, just understand… we’re saving up,” he began to mumble, and he himself could hear how pathetic it sounded.
“I don’t give a damn what you’re saving for!” she cut him off, her voice snapping from a hiss into a ringing fury. “You have money! You work, she works! And I’m your sister! Your only one! Dad always said you have to take care of me! And you will! Or I’ll call him right now!”
She demonstratively reached into her coat pocket for her phone. Viktor instinctively stepped toward her, ready to grab her hand, stop her. He knew what would happen after that call. First, a long, humiliating conversation with his mother, and then—a heavy, short summons from his father, after which you wanted to sink into the ground.
And at that exact moment, the lock on the kitchen door clicked.
Svetlana stood in the doorway. She wore a house sweater and an apron, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. Her face was completely calm. She didn’t look at Alina. Her gaze—straight, clear, and cold as a winter sky—was fixed precisely on her husband’s eyes. She didn’t raise her voice, didn’t jump into the quarrel. She simply stated a fact.
“I heard everything too, Vitya. Especially the part about Dad.”
She paused briefly, letting the words soak into the stale hallway air. Alina fell silent for a moment, thrown off by that unexpected calm. She’d expected shouting, counter-accusations, a woman’s squabble. But Svetlana continued looking only at Viktor.
“So,” she went on in an even, emotionless tone, “let her tell him. And you choose. Either you settle this issue with your sister and her financial demands—right now, once and for all. Or starting tomorrow, we have separate budgets. Everything that comes to your card stays with you. Everything that comes to mine stays with me. And you’ll save for the apartment on your own. And I…” she gave the faintest tilt of her head, “…for my own separate one.”
After saying that, she didn’t wait for an answer. She didn’t linger to savor the effect. She simply turned around and, as quietly as she’d appeared, went back into the kitchen, closing the door firmly behind her. Viktor remained in the hallway, trapped between his sister’s furious stare and the dull kitchen door behind which the foundation of his familiar world had just collapsed. He was trapped. And both exits led to catastrophe.
Alina snorted, looking her brother up and down with venomous contempt. Her game had been ruined—roughly and unexpectedly. Svetlana hadn’t joined Alina’s performance; she’d simply changed the set and left the main actors to deal with it themselves. Unable to come up with a worthy reply, Alina threw over her shoulder:
“Fine. Sit under that hag’s heel. Just don’t think this is the end. I’m waiting for your call by tomorrow morning.”
She spun sharply, the hem of her expensive coat whipping Viktor’s legs, and left—without slamming the door, but closing it with a slow, deliberate click. That sound—quiet and final—rang through the stunned silence of the hallway louder than a gunshot. Viktor remained standing, staring at the smooth surface of the door. He felt as if the air had been let out of him. He couldn’t move, couldn’t even really breathe. The two women most important in his life had just played the first round of a war where the battlefield was his soul—and the main prize, his future.
Gathering the last scraps of will, he slowly took off his jacket, hung it on the hook, and walked into the kitchen. Svetlana stood at the counter with her back to him. She didn’t turn. Methodically, with a cold, steady rhythm, she was shredding cabbage for a salad. The sharp knife fell onto the cutting board with a dull thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. It was the only sound in the apartment, measuring out the seconds of his humiliation. Something sizzled in a pan on the stove, filling the kitchen with the smell of fried onions and meat—the smell of a home dinner that now felt completely out of place.
“Sveta,” he began, and his own voice sounded чужим and weak to him.
She didn’t stop. The knife kept moving in the same monotonous pattern.
“Why did you do that? We could’ve handled it calmly. She would’ve left.”
“She would’ve left today,” Svetlana answered without turning. Her voice was as even and cold as the blade in her hand. “And then she’d come back in a week. And then again two weeks later. Vitya, it would never have ended.”
“But she’s my sister…” He took a step forward, stretching out his hand to touch her shoulder, but pulled it back at the last second. “It’s not the last of our money. It’s only twenty thousand…”
At that moment the knife stopped. Svetlana set it down on the board, wiped her hands, and slowly turned around. Her face was calm, but there was such cold in her eyes that Viktor felt uneasy.
“Twenty thousand this time. Fifteen last month ‘for new shoes.’ Thirty two months ago ‘to urgently close the semester.’ I opened our expense sheet before you came home, Vitya. Over the last year and a half, since we started saving, we’ve given Alina four hundred and twenty thousand rubles. Four hundred. Twenty. Thousand.”
She spoke each number separately, clearly, hammering them into his consciousness like nails.
“Do you understand what that is? That’s almost half of our down payment. That’s a year of our saving. A year in which I denied myself new clothes, we didn’t go on vacation, and we chose groceries in the store by the discount tag. We handed over a year of our lives to your sister’s ‘wants.’”
The arguments were undeniable. Viktor knew it. He had simply preferred not to think about it, not to count, not to notice. It was easier for him to give than to argue, easier to agree than to listen to a scandal. But Svetlana counted everything. Every ruble.
“But you know my father…” That was his last, most desperate argument. “He… he’ll hold it over me my whole life. He told me to take care of her.”
Svetlana stepped right up to him. She didn’t shout. She spoke almost in a whisper, and that whisper sent a chill down Viktor’s spine.
“He told you. Not us. He’s your father, Vitya, not mine. And she’s your sister. You’re a grown man who will soon have his own family and his own apartment. Or you won’t. Because you still fear your father more than you fear losing your wife’s respect. I gave you my ultimatum. And I won’t back down. Now go and decide, Vitya. Are you the man in this house—or just your sister’s older brother, carrying out your father’s orders?”
She walked past him, took plates from the table, and began setting the table for dinner as if this conversation were as ordinary a part of the evening as chopping salad. And Viktor remained standing in the middle of the kitchen, stunned not by yelling, but by that icy, murderous logic. He felt stripped bare. His familiar tricks, his attempts to smooth corners, his fear—everything had been dragged into the light and dissected with surgical precision. He was cornered not only by circumstances, but by his own spinelessness. And ahead of him waited a call from his father—inevitable as death.
The night passed in icy silence. They went to bed turned away from each other, and the space between them on the huge bed felt like an impassable chasm. In the morning they moved around the apartment like two ghosts, carefully avoiding even accidental touches. Viktor poured himself coffee while Svetlana was in the bathroom. She made herself breakfast when he was already getting dressed in the bedroom. Not a word. Not a reproach. Not a question. That silence was worse than any fight. It was thick, sticky, pressing on the eardrums and making him flinch at every domestic sound: the click of the kettle, the squeak of the wardrobe door, the clink of a spoon against a cup.
The day at work turned into torture for Viktor. He couldn’t focus; numbers in reports blurred, and his colleagues felt distant and unreal. He waited. Every minute he waited for the call. And it came exactly during his lunch break, when he sat in his car in the parking lot, trying to force himself to eat a tasteless sandwich. The screen showed “Mom.” His heart dropped somewhere low.
“Yes, Mom,” he answered, trying to make his voice sound as casual as possible.
“Vitenka, what’s going on over there?” his mother’s worried, tearful voice sounded in the receiver. “Alinochka called me, completely upset. She says your Svetlana threw her out of the house, wouldn’t give her money, was rude… Lord, Vitya, what kind of wife is that, who sets brother and sister against each other?”
He closed his eyes. Everything was going according to the most predictable script.
“Mom, it’s not exactly like that. Sveta didn’t throw her out. It’s just… right now every kopek matters. We’re saving for an apartment.”
“Saving for an apartment!” hysterical notes crept into his mother’s voice. “And your own sister will be left with nothing? Vitya, you’re the older brother! Your father always said you’re responsible for her! Ever since that Svetlana showed up, the family’s unrecognizable. What, is she more important than blood? You have to influence her! You’re a man, after all! Calm your wife down and give the girl as much money as she asks! She’s already suffered enough…”
Viktor listened to that stream of accusations and wanted to simply hang up. He mumbled something back about the budget, about a shared goal, about Alina not being a child anymore. But his words drowned in his mother’s lamentations, never reaching the target. He was guilty of everything: choosing the “wrong” wife, daring to have his own plans, not rushing immediately to fulfill his sister’s whim. The conversation ended in nothing. His mother hung up, leaving him with a feeling of filth and helplessness.
In the evening he came home. Svetlana was sitting in an armchair with a book. She lifted her eyes to him when he entered, and there was no question in her gaze. She knew everything without words—from his gaunt face, his hunched shoulders. He walked up to her, stopping a couple of steps away.
“Mom called.”
“I figured,” she replied calmly, setting the book aside.
“Sveta, I’m begging you,” his voice broke into a desperate whisper. “Let’s just give her that money. Just once. And it’ll be over. I’ll talk to her, I’ll tell her it’s the last time…”
She looked at him in silence. Just looked. And there was so much disappointment in that silence that Viktor felt physical pain. She didn’t repeat the part about four hundred and twenty thousand. She didn’t remind him about her ultimatum. She simply looked at her husband, who after the first attack was ready to surrender and sacrifice their shared future for a minute of his own peace.
And then his phone rang. Again.
The screen showed: “Dad.”
Viktor froze. This call was worse. His mother could be endured. His father—no. He slowly pressed the answer button, lifting the phone to his ear as if it were red-hot iron.
“I’m listening, Dad.”
There were no greetings, no questions. Only a low, rumbling voice that always made Viktor’s hands go cold.
“So I take it phone talks don’t work on you. Then we’ll talk in person. Tomorrow evening I’m coming. Be home.”
And the short beeps.
His father didn’t threaten. He didn’t yell. He simply announced his decision—like something inevitable. Like a natural phenomenon. Viktor lowered the hand holding the phone. He looked at Svetlana. She understood everything from his deathly pale face. He didn’t say a word to her. And what was there to say? The sentence had been handed down. The execution was set for tomorrow. And he knew that tomorrow he wouldn’t be choosing between his wife and his sister. He would be choosing between his life—and fear.
The next day dragged on for Viktor like a bad, endless dream. He wasn’t living; he was functioning on autopilot, waiting for evening with the same fatalism a condemned man waits for dawn. Svetlana, by contrast, was the embodiment of composure. There was no panic in her, no anger. She moved around the apartment with cold, detached grace, doing ordinary things. But her calm was scarier than any hysteria. It was the calm of a surgeon before a complex operation, confident in every movement. She wasn’t packing. She wasn’t crying. She was simply waiting—and Viktor could feel in his skin that she wasn’t waiting for his father’s arrival, but for the moment when she would have to act.
The doorbell rang not like an invitation, but like the shot of a starter pistol announcing the beginning of the end. Viktor flinched, and Svetlana—sitting with a book in her chair—didn’t even lift an eyebrow. She simply closed the book with the bookmark inside and stayed seated, looking at the door.
Viktor opened it. His father stood on the threshold: tall, heavyset, with a stern, impenetrable face that seemed carved from granite. He didn’t enter—he carried himself into the apartment like a monument. His gaze slid over Svetlana with complete indifference, as if she were a piece of furniture, and fixed on his son.
“Well, hello, son,” his voice was low and devoid of emotion. He didn’t take off his shoes; he walked into the living room in dirty boots, leaving wet prints on the light laminate. It was a demonstration of power. He’d come into his house to restore his order.
“Dad, what are you—” Viktor began, but his father cut him off with an imperious gesture.
“Silence. I didn’t come to listen to your excuses. I came to look a man in the eyes—a man who forgot what family is and what duty is.”
He stopped in the middle of the room, towering over the seated Svetlana and the frozen Viktor. He spoke only to his son, pointedly ignoring his daughter-in-law.
“Your mother called me in tears. Your sister called me—humiliated in your own house. You let a woman decide how our family is going to live. You let her set conditions for your own blood. I didn’t raise you that way. Your sister is your responsibility. As long as I’m alive, that’s how it will be. And no…” he stumbled, never granting Svetlana a name, “…outsider will set the rules here.”
Viktor stood with his head lowered. Every word struck him like a lash. He felt like a small boy being scolded for a bad grade. His fear of his father was deep, ingrained since childhood, and it paralyzed any attempt to object.
“So now,” his father raised his voice, moving to the finale of his monologue, “you will go, take the money, and give it to your sister. She’s downstairs waiting in the car. And that’s the end of it. Understood?”
At that moment Svetlana silently rose from the chair. She didn’t say a word. Calmly, without looking at either her husband or her father-in-law, she walked past them and disappeared into the bedroom. Father and son followed her with bewildered looks. They expected anything: tears, shouting, a slammed door. But she simply left. A minute later she returned. In her hands was a laptop.
She walked to the coffee table, set the laptop down, and opened it. The screen lit her impassive face. She turned it so the numbers were visible to both Viktor and his father.
“In our joint savings account,” her voice was even, like a news anchor’s, without the slightest tremor, “there is one million two hundred forty-six thousand rubles.”
A click of the touchpad. The cursor moved.
“Exactly half of that amount is six hundred twenty-three thousand rubles.”
She calmly, methodically entered the amount into the transfer field, selected her personal account, and pressed “Confirm.” A notification of a successful transaction appeared on the screen.
The sound of the laptop lid snapping shut landed in the stunned silence like a period at the end of a long sentence. Svetlana lifted her eyes and looked straight at Viktor. Her gaze was empty—no hatred, no hurt, no love. Nothing.
“The remaining half is yours. You can give it to your sister. That should be enough so she doesn’t bother Dad anymore. Which means—she won’t bother you.”
With that, she turned and, just as silently, went back into the bedroom—this time closing the door firmly, but quietly, behind her.
The father, who minutes earlier had seemed like an unbreakable rock, sagged. His face stretched into bewilderment. He looked from his son to the closed door, unable to process what had happened. His power, his words, his authority—everything had just been destroyed by one quiet, businesslike action. Viktor stared at the closed bedroom door, and it slowly, painfully dawned on him what he had just lost. Not half the money. Everything. He was left alone in a ruined world, with his father’s order—and money that had just become the price of his future…
