“An old wife is worth more than two new ones,” Victoria heard a familiar voice behind her, and a chill ran through her.
She had stopped by a café for a quick lunch. Her schedule had been so packed lately that she barely had time to cook and usually survived on light snacks between meetings. The last thing she expected was to run into a piece of her past—a past that had once cut through her life without mercy. Or perhaps she was mistaken? Slowly, she turned her head and glanced toward the neighboring table.
No. She wasn’t mistaken.
It was the man who had once shattered her heart, sitting there with a friend.
“And it’s true what they say,” the friend went on. “You only start appreciating what you lost after it’s gone. Do you really think she’ll give you another chance?”
“Where would she go?” Pavel replied with smug confidence. “You remember how crazy she was about me. Feelings like that don’t just disappear. I’m sure she still loves me. And I haven’t changed a bit—if anything, I look even better now. I don’t spend all that time in the gym for nothing. I just need to make a little effort, that’s all. Soon enough, she’ll be mine again.”
Victoria tightened her grip on her fork so hard that the metal nearly marked her palm.
It was unpleasant—painful, even—because it was obvious he was talking about her.
They had been divorced for three years.
Back then, Victoria had been younger, naïve, and heartbroken. She had cried into her pillow night after night, convinced she would never learn how to live without him. But time had passed. Not only had she learned to live without Pavel, she had rebuilt herself completely—and become successful in the process.
She finished her lunch, paid the waiter, and slipped out of the café unnoticed, relieved that she and her ex-husband hadn’t crossed paths directly. Pavel had not been exaggerating about one thing: he was handsome. The kind of man many women dreamed about. Striking, polished, physically flawless. But beautiful wrapping does not always hide beautiful substance. In his case, it certainly hadn’t.
Once inside her car, hands resting on the steering wheel, Victoria drifted back into memory.
She remembered the first time they met.
Pavel had stepped in when a group of rowdy men started bothering her at a bus stop late one evening. She had been on her way home from university, delayed after class, standing alone in the dark with only the occasional headlights breaking the night. She barely remembered where that half-drunk crowd had come from, but Pavel had appeared like a knight out of nowhere. He had defended her, walked her home, asked for her number, and admitted right away that he had been captivated by her.
For a young and inexperienced Victoria, he became an instant ideal.
She fell in love quickly, enchanted by his courage and his looks. Their relationship moved fast. Pavel was never the type to waste time circling around what he wanted. He told her he wanted one woman for the rest of his life, proposed beautifully, and gave her no reason to say no.
At the time, Victoria felt as though she were floating. She thanked heaven for bringing him into her life, never imagining that within two years of marriage she would suffer so much she would begin to hate herself.
Pavel’s mother, Lyudmila Alexandrovna, made her opinion clear almost immediately. She declared that she did not like Victoria and that she was nowhere near good enough for her son.
“What did he even see in her?” she once complained to a neighbor. “She’s not pretty. If at least she had a lovely face—but there’s nothing there at all. My son deserves better.”
Victoria heard every word.
After that, she would stand in front of the mirror for long stretches, staring at her reflection and wondering if there really was nothing beautiful about her. In school, she had been considered the prettiest girl in class. Boys had constantly chased after her, but she had not wanted romance that early. Even holding hands had once seemed too intimate, too distracting. She had been focused on her studies, unsure whether any of it would lead to anything worthwhile. At university, she had stayed away from love affairs too. Boys had tried to win her over, but she had barely noticed them—until Pavel.
And now, with her mother-in-law insisting that she was plain and unworthy, Victoria started to believe it. She began noticing flaws in herself, trying to fix them, trying to improve, trying to become enough. But with every attempt, it became harder to remind herself that those cruel words were only words—that she still had value, that she was still worthy.
After the wedding, Pavel changed sharply.
He was no longer attentive or tender as he had been in the beginning. There was always something wrong. If Victoria cooked, he would criticize the food, compare it to his mother’s meals, and tell her she ought to learn properly if she had somehow missed the chance before. If she ironed his shirts, they were never done well enough. If she cleaned the house, it was never clean enough.
It felt as though Pavel was constantly searching for some excuse to make her feel guilty, inadequate, defective.
And he succeeded.
Little by little, Victoria stopped seeing herself as a bright, hopeful young woman with ambitions. Instead, she saw someone broken—a puppet with no strength of her own. Her heart ached, but she did not know how to fight it. Believing everything was her fault, she desperately tried to become better, kinder, more attentive, more perfect. But every attempt ended the same way: with his icy indifference and his mother’s disdain.
In the end, the marriage collapsed in the most cliché way possible.
Victoria came home earlier than expected one day and found her husband with another woman.
The pain of that moment could not be described in ordinary words. She was breathing, yet suffocating. Standing, yet falling into an abyss. Alive, yet dying inside. There was no screaming, no hysteria, no dramatic scene. The pain was too deep for that. It hollowed her out from within.
Victoria simply packed her things and fled the rented apartment they had shared since the wedding.
Every plan, every dream, every hope—destroyed in a single instant. Shattered against the reef of reality.
Pavel did not beg for forgiveness.
Instead, he behaved as though it were somehow her fault. He accused her and claimed that if she had been more loving, more affectionate, none of it would have happened.
“I wasn’t getting warmth or attention from you,” he told her. “So I had to look for it somewhere else. Don’t act like the victim. You brought this on yourself. Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen and give each other another chance.”
“No,” Victoria answered. “There won’t be another chance. I can’t forgive betrayal.”
“In that case, we’ll divorce. At least my mother will be happy. You were always a thorn in her side. I don’t even know why I put up with you for so long. I kept giving you chances, but now I see I wasted my time.”
And that was how their paths split.
For a long time, Victoria struggled to accept what had happened. She felt as though she were losing her mind. She cried until she had nothing left, drifting through life like a shadow for months. Then one day, something inside her clicked.
She realized the problem had never been her.
The problem was the people she had let too close—the people she had trusted blindly because of one intense rush of feeling. Her parents stood by her, worried about her, supporting her, and for their sake she had to pull herself together. She had to return to life—to the goals and dreams she had before Pavel.
Three years later, Victoria looked back on that failed marriage as a painful lesson, one she had paid for dearly.
Did she regret losing those years and not achieving more sooner? A little. But if it had not happened then, it might have ended far worse later. Pavel had taught her how to read people better, how to stop trusting blindly, and how to defend her own voice.
Her rapid career growth had not been luck.
It had been earned.
Victoria worked hard on herself. She completed every assignment thoroughly, exceeded expectations, and impressed her superiors. Over those three years, she earned enough to buy herself both a car and an apartment. Bonuses, additional payments, reward after reward for work done well—she moved steadily toward her goal. She dreamed of buying a little house by the sea for her parents. And maybe, someday, she would allow herself to fall in love again.
But not like before.
This time, she would not look at a man through rose-colored blinders, the kind that softened flaws and hid rot beneath charm.
Shaking her head, Victoria tried to clear away the memory of the conversation she had overheard in the café.
Even if Pavel had indeed been talking about her, he had no chance.
People do not truly change.
They adjust. They perform. They learn how to pretend better. But real change only comes when life hits hard enough to shake a person to the core. And nothing like that had happened to Pavel. He still lived under his mother’s wing. He had already married and divorced twice since their split—something mutual acquaintances had mentioned, though Victoria had never asked. His life did not interest her. She had assumed hers did not interest him either.
But something told her that conversation had absolutely been about her.
And that sooner or later, they would meet face to face.
She was right.
Only three days later, Pavel was waiting outside her office with a bouquet of flowers. Victoria did not even want to know how he had figured out where she worked. Had he been following her? Or had mutual acquaintances once again decided to help where they were not wanted?
Pretending not to notice him would have been ridiculous, so she walked up to him and studied him calmly.
“Well, this is unexpected,” she said with a polite smile, acting as though she had no idea why he was there. “Are you waiting for someone?”
“For you,” Pavel said immediately. “Vik, I miss you. I can’t help it. My life feels empty without you. I’ve realized all my mistakes. I know how wrong I was. And look—I brought you flowers.”
White chrysanthemums.
Once, Victoria had loved them. Now… well, the flowers themselves were innocent. They did not deserve to be wasted, so she accepted the bouquet.
“Vik, give me another chance,” he pressed on. “We’ve been through so much together. You loved me once. And I love you. We can rebuild everything. I swear—no more criticism, no more other women. I understand it all now. I only want to be with you.”
Victoria let out a faint, disbelieving laugh.
Once, she had stood where he stood now. She had promised to improve, to become softer, more attentive, more understanding. But he had gone on hurting her, again and again, without ever trying to change anything in himself. And now here he was, speaking of second chances. Strange words from a man who had seemed almost pleased by their divorce, all to win his mother’s approval.
“Now that you’re rich, my mother will accept you!” he suddenly blurted out. “Come back to me!”
Those words made Victoria laugh out loud.
So that was it.
Her money had attracted both Pavel and his mother. No doubt his mother was regretting losing a daughter-in-law like her now. Back then, she had dreamed of someone “worthy” of her son. Apparently, success was what counted.
“You’re wasting your time,” Victoria said at last. “You’re right about one thing: I did love you. But that’s in the past. I have a new life now, and there’s no place for you in it.”
“Who are you trying to fool?” Pavel snapped. “I can see the way you look at me. I know you haven’t had another man since me. Because you still love me. Vik, stop acting difficult. Nothing stands in our way anymore. My mother approves now. She won’t nag me that I chose the wrong woman. Come on. Let’s go to your place. I’ve missed you.”
He reached out for her.
Victoria stepped back, but her heel twisted and she nearly fell. Before she hit the ground, someone caught her.
It was Mikhail—the head of procurement at her company, a colleague she had been spending more and more time with lately, both for work and in casual conversation.
“Still dealing with obsessive admirers?” he said lightly, smiling. “Vik, how many times do I have to tell you? We really should make our relationship official so everyone can see your heart is already taken.”
Victoria froze for a moment, then instantly understood and chose to play along.
“Yes, we probably should,” she replied. “Are you done with work already?”
Watching the two of them as though he had suddenly become invisible, Pavel realized at last that he truly had no chance. Without another word, he turned and walked away.
He had lost his chance in the past, and there was nothing left for him now.
He was already bracing himself for the lecture waiting at home, because his mother had been insisting he should win back his ex-wife by any means necessary. But affection cannot be forced, and forgiveness cannot be demanded.
“Thank you, Mikhail,” Victoria said softly. “You really saved me.”
“A simple thank you won’t do,” he replied. “I just proposed to you, remember? And you said yes. I’d ask you to go straight to the registry office with me right now, but I won’t rush you. I’ve liked you for a long time. I just never knew how you felt about me. So… how about a date?”
“Right now?” Victoria asked, startled.
“Right now,” Mikhail said. “Why not? Work is over, and there’s still plenty of time for a warm evening walk together.”
Victoria did not say no.
She liked Mikhail too.
And she was finally ready to step into something new—something honest—and place a bold, final period at the end of everything old.
