Part 1. The Iron Throne
The enormous bucket slammed into the clay soil with a metallic roar, tearing out a chunk of earth as if ripping flesh from the ground itself. Igor felt the familiar vibration of the levers beneath his fingers. It gave him a sense of complete superiority. Here, inside the cab of his tracked excavator, he was king. Down below, tiny people in hard hats fussed about — surveyors with their ridiculous tripods, foremen with folders — while he towered above them all, commanding a machine of many tons.
“Semionych, take it more to the left, the soil’s shifting there!” the radio crackled.
Igor merely twisted his mouth and lowered the volume.
He knew better than anyone where the ground was moving. He had been digging foundations for ten years. His machine was an extension of his own hands. Leaning back in the seat, he watched the black soil spill into the back of a dump truck. His thoughts drifted far away from the construction site, into a world where he was not just a machine operator, but a free, promising man unfairly chained down by domestic life.
“Hey, Igorek,” said Sergey, his old friend who worked on the bulldozer nearby, poking his head into the cab during a pause. “You coming with us tonight? It’s Friday.”
“Nah, Seryoga,” Igor said lazily, pulling a lever and turning the boom. “Today is the day. I’ve made up my mind. Enough is enough. My daughter is three now, so my conscience is clean. Time to dump the dead weight.”
“You mean Alla?” Sergey scratched the back of his head under his dirty cap. “Well, it’s your business. But she doesn’t seem stupid. She earns money…”
“What money?” Igor snorted. “She sits at that computer all day ruining her eyes. ‘Unity,’ ‘assets,’ ‘scripts’… nonsense. She makes stupid games for idiots. I do real work. I build houses. And what does she do? I’m a man. I need space. But at home it’s always the same: this shelf isn’t fixed, that thing isn’t done, my mother — may she rest in peace — supposedly wasn’t buried properly. I’m sick of it. I want to live for myself. The apartment is mine. My mother left it to me. I’ll throw Alla and the kid out, and they can go running back to her parents.”
Igor smirked with smug satisfaction. It seemed to him that life was about to open the doors to a bright future, one without nagging requests or his wife’s reproachful looks. There would only be money, freedom, and respect.
He did not notice that the foundation of his plans was just as unstable as the soft, shifting ground beneath his tracks.
Part 2. Polygons of Estrangement
The monitor cast a cold bluish glow across the room. Lines of code rushed across the screen, transforming into visual shapes. Alla was not merely writing a program; she was creating an entire world. Working in the Unity engine required iron logic and creative chaos at the same time.
But now, the chaos was not in the code. It was inside her.
Or rather, it was not chaos at all. It was a cold, crystalline structure of rage.
Igor entered the room without even taking off his jacket. He smelled of diesel and tobacco — a scent that had once seemed to her like a symbol of reliability, but now made her feel nauseous. In the next room, their daughter was asleep, exhausted after her birthday celebration, where her father had appeared for exactly five minutes, eaten a slice of cake, and buried himself in his phone.
“We need to talk,” Igor announced, dropping onto the sofa.
Alla slowly, deliberately saved the project and turned toward him in her chair.
“I’m listening,” she said evenly, without emotion.
“I’m filing for divorce,” he blurted out, expecting hysteria, tears, pleading. “Our daughter is three now. You can work full-time again, not that you ever leave that computer anyway. We’re different people. I’m tired of dragging this burden.”
“Dragging this burden?” Alla repeated, and something dangerous flickered in her eyes. “Do you mean the burden from when you spent two years ‘finding yourself’ while I worked on two projects at once? Or the burden from when your mother was paralyzed and I changed her sheets because you had such a ‘sensitive soul’?”
“Don’t you dare bring my mother into this!” Igor snapped. “And the apartment, by the way, was hers. So pack your things. I’m giving you one week. I want to start a new life. A clean one. Without you.”
Alla stood up.
“So the apartment is yours?” she said quietly. “You’re sure of that?”
“Absolutely. I’m the only heir.”
“Fine, Igor. I heard you. Divorce it is. But remember this moment. You pressed Delete yourself.”
She turned back to the monitor, making it clear the conversation was over. Igor, unsettled by the absence of a scandal, stormed out and slammed the door.
He had no idea that Alla had been waiting for this conversation for six months.
And her folder of documents was already prepared.
Part 3. The Paper Trap
They agreed to meet on neutral ground — on a bench in a small park, away from curious ears. Igor arrived like a winner. In his mind, he had already repainted the apartment walls and bought the huge television he had always dreamed of.
Alla came with a thin plastic folder. She sat opposite him, placed it on her lap, and looked at her husband with an expression he could not decipher. It was contempt mixed with pity — the way one looks at a beetle crawling straight under the sole of a boot.
“Have you packed your things?” Igor began rudely.
“No,” Alla said, pulling out a sheet of paper with an official seal. “And I’m not going to. Read.”
Igor took the paper with disdain.
“Deed of gift…”
His eyes rushed across the lines. His face slowly turned red, then gray.
“What is this?” he croaked. “This is fake!”
“It is the original, certified by a notary three years ago,” Alla explained calmly. “Your mother, Svetlana Petrovna, was a wise woman. She saw what kind of person you were. She saw that you didn’t give a single kopeck for her treatment. She saw who actually cared for her. And she was afraid you would drink away or gamble away the apartment. So she transferred it as a gift to her granddaughter. To our daughter.”
“To my daughter? She’s three years old!”
“Exactly. And I am her legal guardian. Until our daughter comes of age, I manage the property. And we will be the ones living there. As for you, Igor…” She pulled out a second sheet. “You are nobody there. You have no right of residence.”
“You… you filthy snake! You tricked my mother!”
“I saved a roof over your child’s head. But that’s not all.”
Alla handed him a printed spreadsheet.
“Here are all the expenses for the last three years. Utilities, food, your mother’s treatment, clothes for the child. You contributed nothing, claiming you were saving up for a ‘business.’ Where is that money, Igor? Oh, right. It doesn’t exist. You simply lived at my expense. Now I’m filing for child support. And not only for our daughter, but also for my own support, because I cared for a child with a childhood disability related to asthma. You forgot about your daughter’s diagnosis, didn’t you? On top of that, I’m demanding compensation for half of the utility payments over the past three years, since you were registered there but were not the owner.”
Alla’s anger was not hot.
It was cold, like liquid nitrogen.
She had calculated every step. Every coin.
“I don’t have that kind of money!” Igor shouted. “I’ll destroy you!”
“Try,” Alla said, standing up. “Your things are packed in black garbage bags and waiting by the entrance. I changed the intercom code to our apartment. You can keep your keys. The locks are new. Good luck with your ‘promising life.’”
Igor remained sitting on the bench.
The world he had built inside his head collapsed, raising a cloud of dust like an old building blown apart.
Part 4. The Kitchen of Betrayal
Sergey’s apartment greeted Igor with the smell of fried potatoes and stale alcohol. It was not the refuge the proud excavator operator had imagined, but he had no choice. His pockets were empty, and his cards had been frozen — as it turned out, Alla had been faster there too, filing a motion to secure her claim.
Sergey was snoring in the room. Igor sat in the kitchen, staring blankly out the window. He hated everyone: his mother, who had “betrayed” him from beyond the grave; Alla, who had turned out to be a calculating witch; his daughter, who had “taken away” his apartment.
The door creaked.
Lena, Sergey’s wife, stepped into the kitchen. She wore a washed-out house robe, her hair tied into a careless bun. Igor tensed. He and Lena had shared a short, dirty story six months earlier — quick sex in a storage room at Sergey’s birthday party, when everyone had drunk too much. Igor had thought it was forgotten.
“Sitting here?” Lena asked, leaning against the doorframe.
“Sitting. Alla kicked me out. I’ll stay here for a while, all right?”
“No, Igoryusha. Not all right.”
Lena came closer. There was no sympathy in her eyes, only sharp, greedy insolence.
“I’m pregnant,” she said quietly.
Everything inside Igor went cold.
“By Sergey? Congratulations.”
“By you, you idiot. The dates match. And I’ll do a DNA test if I have to.”
Igor jumped up, knocking over the stool.
“You’re lying! It happened once!”
“Once was enough. Here’s how this is going to work. Sergey finds out, and he’ll kill you. He’s a simple man, but jealous. You know that yourself. Either you give me three hundred thousand right now for an ‘abortion’ and emotional damages so I can quietly handle everything, or I go to Sergey.”
“I don’t have money!” Igor hissed, feeling fear close around his throat like sticky fingers. “Alla took everything!”
“That’s not my problem. Sell a kidney. Borrow. Steal. You have twenty-four hours. Otherwise I’ll tell Sergey not only about the baby, but also how you laughed at him behind his back.”
Lena walked out, leaving him alone with his panic.
Igor began pacing around the cramped kitchen. He had nothing. No apartment, no money, no future. And now there was the threat of physical revenge from his bulldozer-driving friend, who was terrifying when enraged.
Only one plan formed in his head.
Run.
Run somewhere no one would find him.
Part 5. A Cage Without Bars
The train station of a small border town met him with dampness and gloom. Igor had spent two days traveling by different routes, covering his tracks. He felt like the hero of a spy thriller, though he looked more like a beaten dog.
He turned off his phone and threw away the SIM card. It seemed to him that he had outplayed everyone. So what if he had no apartment? He was free. He had hands. Someone would always hire him to operate an excavator. He would start over from scratch, somewhere on a remote work rotation, where wages were paid in cash envelopes.
A month later, he was already working at a remote quarry in the north. He lived in a trailer with three other miserable men. The conditions were brutal, but he comforted himself with the thought that Alla must be biting her elbows, getting no child support, while Lena and her belly were far away.
One evening, when internet finally appeared in the trailer through the foreman’s satellite dish, the men gathered to watch the news. Someone was scrolling through social media on a tablet.
“Hey, look at this, guys!” the neighbor on the bunk laughed. “Some new game came out! My kid says the whole world is playing it.”
Igor chewed a dry piece of bread without interest.
“There’s an interview with the developer. She’s one of ours, a Russian woman! Smart as hell. Says the main monster was based on her ex-husband. Can you imagine?”
Igor stretched his neck toward the screen.
Alla was glowing on the tablet. She looked incredible — stylish haircut, expensive suit, confident gaze.
“Yes, the character called ‘The Earth-Digger’ is a collective image of greed and stupidity,” she said with a slight smile. “He constantly digs holes for others, but in the end, he ends up at the bottom himself. We signed a contract with one of the largest mining corporations. They use my simulations to train their personnel.”
Igor felt the ground disappear beneath his feet.
“Hey, Igoryosha, her surname used to be the same as yours,” the bunkmate laughed. “Any relation?”
At that moment, the foreman entered the trailer — a grim man holding a tablet.
“You’re the new one?”
Igor nodded, struggling to swallow the lump in his throat.
“Pack your things. An order came from head office.”
“You’re firing me?” Igor asked with a flash of hope.
Maybe he could go even farther. Run again.
“No,” the foreman smirked. “Our company was bought yesterday by Svetlana Games Holding. Your surname showed up in the database as a persistent non-payer under an enforcement order. The owner gave instructions: you are not to be fired. You’re being transferred to the lowest-paid section — manual sewage cleaning. One hundred percent of your salary will go toward paying off your child support and legal debts. We’ll leave you only food rations. Your contract is indefinite. You signed it without reading, remember? Try to run, and we’ll charge you with stealing equipment. Our lawyers are beasts.”
Igor sank onto the filthy mattress.
“Oh, and one more thing,” the foreman added as he was leaving. “You got an email at your corporate address. From some Elena and Sergey. They wrote that there was never any pregnancy. They played you like a fool so you’d leave on your own.”
The door slammed shut.
Igor sat there, clutching his head in his hands.
He was trapped. Completely, hopelessly trapped in a deaf concrete corner.
Alla had not simply won.
She had turned his life into a level in her own game, where he was an eternal NPC doomed to clean filth for a ration of bread, working for the very woman he had considered useless.
His anger, his pride, his so-called “male right” — all of it had been ground down by her cold, sniper-precise calculation.
He was punished not by prison, not by violence, but by total, absolute, humiliating defeat.
And he had arranged every part of it himself.
