The SMS from the bank came at 7:15 a.m.: “Debit transaction in the amount of…” I swiped the notification away without opening it.
Dima often transferred money for building materials for the dacha. That was normal.
The second message arrived a minute later. The third—while I was pouring water into the kettle. The phone vibrated non-stop, insistent, like an alarm bell. Irritation turned into anxiety.
I opened the banking app, and my familiar world collapsed. The joint account we used to pay for our apartment, car, life—empty.
Zero. Completely. The savings account—the one “for old age,” “for the kids’ weddings”—was also wiped out. To the last penny. The money we’d been saving for a quarter of a century.
I walked into the bedroom on trembling legs. The bed was made with military precision, just the way Dima liked it.
His half of the wardrobe gaped empty. Inside hung only my dresses, lonely and lost. No suits, no silly T-shirts with prints. He’d taken everything.
On the pillow lay a white envelope. Unsealed.
“Alya, forgive me. I’m tired. I want to live for myself while it’s not too late. I met someone else, and it’s serious. Don’t look for me, don’t call. You’ll have enough to get by for a while. You’re a smart girl, you’ll figure something out.”
“For a while.” I checked my salary account. About a hundred thousand rubles were there.
That, in his opinion, should have been enough. After twenty-five years of marriage.
I didn’t cry. The tears were stuck somewhere in my throat, a cold lump. I slowly walked around the apartment, like a forensic investigator examining a crime scene. Here was his armchair.
Here the shelf with his books about “success.” There the photo on the wall—us with our grown children, smiling. A fake. All of it had been fake.
He had planned everything. Left on a Thursday, knowing I always went to the dacha on Friday. He had a three-day head start. Three days to pack his life and clean out ours.
I sat at the table and took my old laptop. Opened a completely different tab, the one only I knew the password to.
Twenty years ago, after Kirill was born, I received a small inheritance from my grandmother. Dima brushed it off back then: “Spend it on yourself, on dresses.” And I did. Only not on dresses.
I opened a brokerage account. It became my secret. My second life. All these years I’d kept double books. Small sums from tutoring—Dima thought I did it “for the soul”—money saved on groceries, all went there.
Correspondence from the broker came to a P.O. box, and for online access there was a separate email, unknown to anyone.
Once a year I filed a separate tax declaration as self-employed. Dima just laughed.
“Alya, you? A businesswoman?” he’d say. “Your job is home, coziness. I’ll earn the money.”
And he did earn. Not badly, but always barely enough. And I stayed quiet. Quietly bought stocks, read analysis at night, reinvested dividends.
My portfolio loaded on the screen. The numbers glowed calm and confident in green. I looked at the seven-figure number in dollars and at my husband’s pathetic note.
He thought that by taking everything he’d destroyed me. But he hadn’t considered one thing. He simply didn’t know that all these years I had been building my own ark. And now, when his flood hit me, I realized I was standing on the deck of a huge liner.
I smirked. For the first time that morning.
The first thing I did was call the children. Kirill and Olya appeared on the video chat screen—smiling, unsuspecting.
“Hi, Mom! Where’s Dad? Ran away on one of his fishing trips again?” my son asked cheerfully.
I took a breath. And in a steady, calm voice, I told them everything. About the empty accounts. About the empty closet. About the note.
The smile slid off Kirill’s face. Olya covered her mouth with her hand.
“He… took everything?” my son repeated, steel creeping into his voice. “Mom, do you have money? I’ll come over right now.”
“I’m fine, sweetheart. I have money, don’t worry. I just… wanted you to hear it from me.”
“Did he… did he say anything? Call you?” Olya’s voice trembled. “Maybe it’s a mistake?”
I shook my head. There was no mistake. Just cold, calculated precision.
After the call I ordered the locks changed. Then I called the bank and blocked all third-party access. Dima’s number rang that evening. I let it ring almost to the end, then answered.
“Yes.”
“Hey,” his voice was lively, even cheerful. “So how are you? Not panicking?”
I stayed silent.
“Alya, come on. I’m being nice. Listen, down to business. The car’s in your name. I need you to come tomorrow and sign it over to me. I’ll send the address.”
“I’m not coming.”
A pause hung on the line.
“What do you mean? Alya, don’t start. I need the car.”
“It’s joint property, Dima. Bought during the marriage.”
He laughed. Cruelly.
“Now you remember the marriage? Don’t complicate things. Just sign the papers.”
“I’m not signing anything until I talk to a lawyer.”
That hit him like a punch to the gut. Me—the quiet, homely Alya—saying “lawyer.”
“What lawyer? Are you crazy? Alya, I took what I earned! I left you the apartment! Be grateful and don’t do anything stupid.”
“The apartment that my parents’ money went into.”
“Enough!” he barked. “Tomorrow at ten I’m waiting. If you don’t come—don’t blame me. You know me.”
And he hung up. He was sure I’d be scared. Break. But that Alya died this morning. I opened my laptop and typed: “Best divorce lawyer.”
The lawyer, Marina Sergeyevna, was a woman with a piercing gaze and a steel haircut. She listened to me, reviewed the statements.
“It’s a lousy situation, Anna,” she said. “Proving intentional asset withdrawal is hard. Court can drag on for years. We’ll file to freeze his assets, but if he’s already transferred everything to his new sweetheart…”
“What do you suggest?”
“First, we file for divorce and division. The car, the dacha. We’ll fight over the money. The main thing now is not to make sudden moves. He’ll provoke you. Wait.”
That evening my son called.
“Mom, Dad called. He said you’ve lost your mind, hired a lawyer to ruin him. Said you were always a spendthrift and he saved. Asked us to ‘talk sense into Mom.’”
That’s his style. Hit where it hurts most. Use the kids.
“And Olya?”
“She told him off. I tried talking… Said he’s wrong. You know what he answered? ‘You’ll come crawling back to me when your mother leaves you penniless.’”
There it is. The point of no return. He tried to trample the only thing I had left. My kids. Their faith in me.
Enough. No more defense. Only attack.
I opened the laptop again. Logged into my brokerage account. My quiet life, my secret. Now it would become my weapon.
I sold a small part of my stocks. The amount that hit my account equaled Dima’s annual income.
Then I found the contacts of the best private detective.
“Good afternoon. I need all the information about a man. Dmitry Volkov. And his… companion. Kristina.
Everything you can find. Accounts, property, business projects, debts. Especially debts. I’ll pay any money.”
The game by his rules was over. A new game began—by mine.
A week later the first report lay on my desk. The detective confirmed: all the money went into Kristina’s beauty salon.
A loss-making salon. Dima, carried away by the dream of “his own business,” invested everything there, and even convinced Kristina to take a loan secured by her apartment.
The detective dug deeper and found old unpaid debts Dima had to former partners.
I handed the folder to Marina Sergeyevna. She flipped through the documents, a predatory smile touching her lips.
“Well, Anna. Looks like the game is turning. We have leverage.”
Our plan was simple and elegant. It took almost a month. Through a financial consultant hired by Marina, we reached Dima’s old creditors. These were angry, cheated people.
We offered to buy his debt. All of it, with interest. They, hardly believing their luck, agreed.
Now Dima no longer owed them. He owed an anonymous investment fund. In other words, me.
At the same time Marina’s lawyers, through an intermediary company, began buying up the beauty salon’s debts. To suppliers, to the landlord. Step by step we were tightening the ring around his new life.
He showed up in a month. Didn’t call—he came in person. Furious, aged ten years.
“What’s going on, Alya?” he hissed from the doorway. “Why are collection agencies calling me?”
I silently walked to the kitchen.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s your new life, Dima.”
“Don’t play dumb! This is all you! Where did you get that kind of money?”
I laughed.
“The only thief here is you, Dima. As for me… I’ve just been investing for twenty years. In stocks.”
I turned my laptop screen toward him. He looked at the numbers, his face slowly turning ashen. He understood.
“This… this is impossible…”
“Possible. While you told me my place was in the kitchen, I was earning. More than you could ever imagine.
And now all your debts, and your sweetheart’s debts—are mine. Your whole beautiful life—mine. And I can turn it off.” I snapped my fingers.
He collapsed into a chair. In his eyes was animal fear.
“Alya… Alyonushka… forgive me. I was an idiot. I’ll leave her right now! We’re a family…”
At that moment the front door opened. The children came in.
“Dad?” Kirill looked at him without hatred, with cold contempt. “What are you doing here?”
“Son… Olya… Talk to your mom! She… she wants to destroy us!”
Olya stepped up and stood behind my shoulder.
“You destroyed us, Dad. The day you robbed Mom and ran. Leave. We’re not talking to you anymore.”
Dima looked from one cold face to the other. He was a stranger. He got up, staggering, and headed to the door. At the threshold he turned.
“Alya… I love you…”
I just smirked in response.
A year later.
I sat on the terrace of my new house overlooking a pine forest. On my lap—a tablet with stock charts. It was no longer a secret. It had become my job.
I didn’t bankrupt the salon. I just sold its debts to a specialized agency, which quickly auctioned off the place.
Kristina’s apartment was taken by the bank. What happened to them afterward didn’t interest me. I struck him out of my life like a failed investment.
I sold the car and used the money to buy Olya a trip to Italy. My son Kirill, with my help, opened a small IT company. We became closer than ever.
Sometimes I thought about Dima. Not with anger, no. With cold curiosity. He believed power was in money you could take.
He didn’t understand that real power is in the ability to create it. In knowledge, discipline, patience. In what can’t be stolen.
My divorce wasn’t a story of revenge. It became a story of liberation. Not from my husband.
From that quiet, compliant Alya I had been for twenty-five years. The one who hid her intelligence behind the role of “keeper of the hearth.”
The phone on the table vibrated. It was Olya. Her smiling face appeared on the screen, with the Colosseum in the background.
“Hi, Mom! It’s so amazing here! Thank you!”
“I’m happy for you, sweetheart.”
We chatted for a few minutes. And when I hung up, I looked at the forest and realized that for the first time in many years I was truly happy.
Not because I had a lot of money. But because I had finally become myself.
