The door to the auto shop squeaked obnoxiously. The smell of gasoline and motor oil hit my nose—the scent of my past, the one I’d been running from for so long.
In the middle of the bay, beneath a Ford hanging on chains, stood him. Sergei. My ex-husband.
The same as ever—in a greasy coverall, a dirty rag sticking out of his back pocket. He was yelling at a young kid, practically a boy, and the sound of his voice made my jaw clench.
“…your hands must be growing out of who-knows-where, not your shoulders! I told you in plain Russian how to do it!”
I walked farther in, to a small glassed-in cubicle where the shop owner sat—an elderly, tired man with dim eyes. He looked up at me.
“How can I help you? If it’s about that dent, you need the mechanics.”
“It’s not about a dent,” I said, sitting down across from him. “It’s about your ad—the sale.”
The man perked up, leaning forward.
“Ah, so you’re a buyer? Seriously interested?”
“More than.” My gaze flicked back to Sergei. He’d just cuffed the kid on the back of the head—lightly, but humiliatingly.
The owner followed my gaze and sighed heavily.
“Yeah, my workers are no angels. Especially that one,” he nodded toward my ex. “He yells at everyone, scares off customers. But he’s a real pro, can’t deny it. Turns wrenches like a god.”
I smirked to myself. Oh, he could turn wrenches, all right. He could also tell me my place was in the kitchen and my “silly little programs” were a waste of time. That without him I was nothing.
“How much do you want for all of this?” I asked, sweeping my eyes over the grimy walls, the old lifts, the scattered tools.
He named a sum. For him, a small fortune—enough to retire to his dacha and see out his old age in peace.
For me—only a fraction of what I’d made on my “silly little” engine diagnostics program.
Just then Sergei noticed me. He wiped his hands on his coveralls and came up to the glass door, peering in.
Surprise flickered across his face, quickly replaced by his usual contemptuous smirk.
“Well, look who it is! What brings you here, Anya? Car break down? Told you you’d kill it in a month.”
It didn’t even occur to him I could be here for any other reason. In his world I was still the bewildered woman he’d tossed out with a single suitcase.
I looked at the owner, ignoring Sergei.
“I agree. Prepare the papers.”
The man blinked in astonishment. He’d clearly been bracing for a long haggle.
“J-just like that?”
“Just like that.”
I stood up. A thought flashed through my mind, sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel: the best revenge after a divorce is to quietly buy the auto shop where your boor of a husband works as a mechanic.
I turned and headed for the exit, feeling his astonished gaze on my back. He shouted something after me, but I wasn’t listening anymore. I walked across the asphalt, every step steady and sure. The game was only beginning.
A week later I walked into the shop not as a customer. I wore a tailored pantsuit, a folder of documents in my hands.
The former owner, Pyotr Sergeyevich, had already gathered all the staff: four mechanics, including Sergei, and that same apprentice kid, whose name was Vitya.
“Dear colleagues,” Pyotr Sergeyevich began, visibly nervous. “As of today our shop has a new owner. Please welcome Anna Viktorovna.”
He gestured toward me. A pause hung in the room so heavy you could almost touch it. Sergei, who’d been standing there with a cocky smirk, slowly straightened. His face lengthened.
“What kind of joke is this?” he rumbled, looking from me to Pyotr Sergeyevich.
“No joke, Sergei,” I replied in an even, cool tone. “Pyotr Sergeyevich sold me the business. I’m your boss now.”
“You? The boss?” He burst out laughing—loud, defiant, but with a hysterical edge. “You can’t tell a wrench from a screwdriver! What are you going to do here, Anechka? File your nails?”
Two of the other mechanics exchanged uneasy glances. Only the kid, Vitya, watched me with a kind of timid curiosity.
“First,” I stepped forward, and my voice came out unexpectedly firm, making Sergei fall silent. “To you I am Anna Viktorovna. Second, my job is to manage, yours is to work. And judging by the state of this place, there’s no shortage of work.”
I swept my gaze around the room.
“Starting tomorrow, we begin renovations. A complete reorganization. I’ve already ordered new equipment. And today—deep clean. I want everything to shine. That goes for everyone.”
“I’m not taking part in this circus,” Sergei hissed, folding his arms. “I’m a mechanic, not a janitor.”
“You’re mistaken.” I pinned him with a look. “You’re an employee. You’ll do what your employer tells you. Or you can write a resignation letter. Right now.”
I knew he wouldn’t leave. Where would he go? With his temper, no one kept him long. This shop was his last refuge.
He ground his teeth, muscles bunching in his jaw. He realized I wasn’t joking. This wasn’t a prank. It was a trap, and he’d walked into it.
“So, I expect everyone back in fifteen minutes in work gear. Cleaning supplies are in the storeroom,” I said, turning toward Pyotr Sergeyevich’s former office—which was now mine.
I sat at the desk, feeling my hands tremble. Not from fear. From excitement. I heard some grumbling outside the door, then Vitya’s voice:
“Where do you keep the buckets?”
One of the mechanics snapped something rude back at him. But the ice had broken. They complied. All but one.
My office door flew open so hard it hit the wall. Sergei stood on the threshold, face red, eyes shooting sparks.
“You think I’ll let you treat me like this?” he growled. “You’ll regret crossing me. I’ll make your life here—”
“Go ahead,” I cut him off calmly, looking up at him. “Just remember, Sergei: every infraction will be documented—tardiness, rudeness to clients, failure to follow orders.
“Then will come termination for cause. And believe me, I’ll make sure you won’t find work in this city even as a janitor. Now get out of my office—and close the door. From the other side.”
Sergei went quiet. But it was the stillness of a predator in ambush. He did his work in silence, sullen, and I could feel him waiting for his moment to strike.
That moment came two weeks later, when a nearly new SUV belonging to a well-known local businessman was brought into the shop.
The problem was in the electronics—exactly my area.
I personally hooked up my diagnostic suite—the very one that had made me wealthy. The new equipment I’d purchased didn’t just identify issues; it logged every action a tech took.
Sergei didn’t know that.
“The wiring’s a mess,” I told him, pointing at the laptop screen. “We need to replace this module. Do everything carefully. The car’s expensive, the client is jumpy.”
“Decided to teach me now?” he sneered, but he got to work.
An hour later he drove the car out of the bay.
“All set, boss lady. Sign it off.”
That evening the businessman called, furious.
“What have you done?! My transmission’s shot! The car won’t move! I’m going to sue you!”
My heart dropped. I rushed to the shop. Sergei was already there, wearing the look of an offended innocent.
“I told you her equipment is Chinese junk!” he was telling the others. “That’s what burned the transmission. And she tried to pin it on me!”
“Where are the camera recordings?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
“Funny thing, the cameras were in for maintenance today,” Sergei answered with a sly smile. “What a coincidence, right, Anna Viktorovna?”
He was sure he’d won. He’d thought of everything. Except one thing.
“We don’t need the cameras,” I replied calmly. I opened my laptop and brought up the diagnostics log.
“My program records not only errors, but the parameters of all systems in real time.”
And it recorded a sharp voltage spike on the transmission solenoid—a spike that could only occur in one case.
I turned the laptop toward him. A graph glowed on the screen.
“If, during the replacement, you feed power to it directly from the battery, bypassing the controller. You can’t do that by accident. You do it on purpose.”
Sergei’s face slowly changed color. The smirk slid off like a mask.
“This… this is fake! You set me up!”
“Really?” I tapped another key. “And this is the control unit’s own log. It recorded everything too.
“Shall we send it for an independent examination? Along with your fingerprints on the battery terminals. I think the police will quickly sort out what ‘intentional damage to property’ is.”
I looked him straight in the eyes. The hatred was gone. Only animal fear remained. He knew he’d lost. Completely.
“Your resignation. On my desk. And I don’t want to see a trace of you here in ten minutes.”
He didn’t say a word. Just turned and went to his locker for his things. The others were silent, stunned.
When the door closed behind him, I felt… nothing. No joy, no triumph. Only emptiness. Revenge turned out to be a dish with no flavor.
Vitya, the kid, came up to me.
“Anna Viktorovna… you really showed him.”
“I didn’t ‘show’ anyone, Vitya. I just defended what’s mine now,” I said, looking around the clean, renewed shop floor.
“You know what’s hardest? Not punishing the guilty. Building something that works after them. Want to learn diagnostics? For real?”
The boy’s eyes lit up.
“Of course I do!”
I nodded.
“Then tomorrow at nine. Don’t be late.”
In that moment I realized: my real victory wasn’t firing Sergei.
It was in this boy, in the new equipment, in this place’s future. Revenge is just a period at the end of one sentence. I was going to write a new book.
Six months passed. My auto shop—now called Techno-Formula—was thriving. Vitya turned out to be an incredibly capable student and was already handling complex diagnostics on his own.
The other techs, free of Sergei’s toxic influence, worked calmly and in sync. We became the best auto-electronics service in the city.
I’d almost forgotten my ex-husband. He’d simply vanished from my life, dissolved. The emptiness I’d felt after firing him had long since been filled with new plans, successes, and pride in my work.
Then I stumbled on a post in one of the city’s social media groups. An anonymous sob story about “an unfortunate mechanic thrown out on the street by a bitch of a wife who stole his business.”
It was written in syrupy tones and crammed with lies—how he’d built the shop from scratch, how she’d tricked him, how now he was sick and unwanted, scraping by on odd jobs.
There were hundreds of sympathetic comments under the post. People cursed the “spoiled business lady” and pitied the “poor guy.” I recognized Sergei’s style—his habit of playing the victim, milking pity.
Once, that would have destroyed me. I’d have rushed to type out refutations, to prove something. Now I only rubbed the bridge of my nose, tired. It was so petty. So pathetic.
I didn’t write anything in reply. I simply called one of my regular clients, the owner of the city’s biggest news portal, and asked him for a favor.
Two days later, the portal ran a big feature titled: “From Rags to Riches: How a Former Housewife Built the City’s Best Auto Shop.” It was my story.
No sugarcoating. About how I created the software from scratch, how my husband laughed at my “hobby,” how I sold the project and invested the money in a dying shop.
The article included interviews with satisfied clients and my staff. Not a word about Sergei. He wasn’t worth so much as a mention.
I found him a couple of days later. He was sitting in a cheap beer joint on the edge of town—hollow-cheeked, unshaven, in an old jacket. He stared into his beer mug as if he could see his future there.
I sat down across from him. He lifted bleary eyes to me.
“Come to finish me off? Have a laugh?”
“No.” I laid a printout of the article on the table. “I came to show you that you didn’t lose when I fired you. You lost when you decided you could destroy me.”
He looked at the headline, and his lips twisted.
“You took everything from me.”
“I didn’t take anything from you, Sergei. You gave it all away yourself—with your spite, your envy, your conviction that the world owed you.
“I just built my life. Without you. And you know what? It turned out much better.”
I stood to leave.
“Anya, wait…” Something new crept into his voice. Desperation. “What am I supposed to do now?”
I turned. For the first time in all this, I felt neither anger nor pity toward him. Nothing at all. He’d become a blank space to me.
“Start working,” I said. “Don’t whine, don’t blame others—just work. Like normal people do. Goodbye, Sergei.”
