“I’m pregnant,” I said, and a smile spread across my face on its own.
Kirill, who was standing by the window, froze. He didn’t even turn around, but in the glass I saw his shoulders tense.
I was waiting for a hug, for joyful shouts—anything but that strange, motionless pose.
“I am too,” came Lena’s quiet voice.
My sister walked out of our bedroom. She was wearing Kirill’s T-shirt—the very one, my favorite, that he slept in.
She brushed her hair back, and the gesture was so ordinary, so homely, that for a second my head swam.
Flashes of memories I hadn’t paid attention to before flickered through my mind.
Here’s Kirill “at a late meeting,” while Lena, who “just dropped by for a chat,” keeps glancing anxiously at her phone.
Here they are laughing at some joke only the two of them understand, and I’m standing next to them feeling like an extra at my own party.
“You’ve got a key, right, Len?” he’d ask her when we were leaving on vacation. “Please water the plants. There’s no one else I can trust.”
And I was happy about what a close-knit family we were.
“What?” I asked, though I had heard her perfectly. My voice sounded alien, wooden.
“Anya, I’ll explain everything,” Kirill finally turned around. His face was as white as a hospital wall. “It’s not what you think. It’s… a mistake.”
Lena looked straight at me. There was no remorse in her eyes. Only fatigue and a sort of bitter, stubborn resolve.
“It’s not a mistake,” she snapped, looking at Kirill. “Stop lying. At least now.”
He shot her a furious glance.
“Shut up!”
I looked from my husband to my sister. At the man with whom I’d been building a future for five years, and at the woman with whom I’d shared childhood secrets.
They stood two meters away from me, but it felt like a chasm lay between us.
And in that chasm all my “we” were drowning. Our plans. Our tenderness. Our future nursery.
“A mistake, is it,” I repeated, my lips twisting into a smirk. “Are the two of you going to have one mistake? Or one each?”
Kirill stepped toward me, reaching out his hands.
“Anyechka, sweetheart, let’s talk. Just not now. Lena, leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” my sister replied calmly, folding her arms. “We’re expecting a child. And I won’t let you pretend I don’t exist—again.”
I edged away from Kirill until my back hit the cold hallway wall.
“Out,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Out. Both of you.”
They didn’t leave. My word—so weighty five minutes ago—had turned into an empty sound.
“Anya, don’t act rashly,” Kirill began in that conciliatory tone I hated. The tone he used when he wanted me to “be reasonable.”
“You’re a smart woman. We’re both adults. Yes, I’m at fault. But right now we have to think not about emotions, but about the children. About our children.”
He stressed the last words, trying to bind us together again, to create the illusion of a shared future.
“What ‘our’ children are you talking about?” I asked, poisonously. “The one who’ll be raised by a single mother, or the one your mistress is going to have?”
Lena flinched and gave a small sob.
“Don’t call me that. You don’t know anything.”
“Really?” I turned to her. Cold rage was pushing out the shock. “Then enlighten me. What should I know? That you slept with my husband in my bed? Isn’t that enough?”
“It wasn’t like that!” her voice grew stronger. “We love each other. This isn’t just some fling.”
Kirill grabbed his head.
“Lena, I asked you!”
“I’m tired of staying quiet!” she shouted. “Tired of being a secret, a mistake that has to be fixed!
“Anya, you always got everything. The perfect husband, the perfect home. And me? I was always second best. Just ‘Anya’s sister.’”
Her speech was so saturated with old resentment that I was taken aback. She wasn’t making excuses. She was accusing me.
I remembered how, in childhood, Mom always said, “Anyechka is our smart one, and Lenochka is our pretty one. To each her own.” It seemed Lena had never managed to make peace with that “her own.”
“So you decided to take what’s mine?” I asked quietly.
“I took what belonged to no one,” she shot back. “He wasn’t happy with you. You just didn’t want to see it.”
I looked at Kirill. He avoided my eyes. And in that moment I realized Lena was telling the truth. Not about love—no. About how he had let her think that way. He had complained about me to her, forging a corrupt bond between them, fed by his weakness and her envy.
“Fine,” I said, and my calm made them both tense. “Suppose so. What do you suggest? The three of us live together? Or will you draw up a schedule?”
Kirill jerked his head up.
“Stop it! That’s not constructive. I suggest we… live apart for now. I’ll rent an apartment for Lena. I’ll help both of you. We need time to think this through.”
He spoke as if he were discussing a business project. Asset allocation. Risk management.
“So you want me to sit here, pregnant, and wait while you ‘think through’ which of your pregnant women to go back to?” I laughed. The sound came out harsh, grating.
“Anya, you’re making this complicated.”
“No, Kirill. You simplified it to the limit. Down to an animal level. Leave. And take her with you. You can collect your things later. When I’m not home.”
I pulled out my phone and dialed.
“Hello, security? There are unauthorized people in my apartment. Yes, they’re refusing to leave.”
Lena looked at me with hatred. Kirill—with astonishment. He hadn’t expected this from me. He was used to “good girl Anya,” who always understood and forgave. But that girl had just died.
My call was, of course, a bluff. Our complex had no real security service, only a sleepy concierge. But they didn’t know that. The word “security” sobered Kirill.
“You’ll regret this, Anya,” he hissed, grabbing Lena by the hand. “You’re throwing a pregnant woman out of your home. Your own sister.”
“I’m throwing my husband’s mistress out of my home,” I corrected, looking him straight in the eye. “And you—you’re just a traitor.”
When the door slammed behind them, I slid down the wall to the floor. But there were no tears. Only a scorched emptiness and adrenaline ringing in my ears.
The next day the hell began.
First my boss called.
“Hi, Anya. Listen, your husband called… Kirill. He’s very worried about you. Says that, because of the pregnancy, you’ve been… well… unstable.”
I went cold.
“What else did he say?”
“Well, he asked me to give you some time off. To look after you. Said you might not be entirely rational in your decision-making.”
I understood everything. He hadn’t just left. He had begun methodically destroying me, making me out to be insane. He struck at the sorest spots—my job, my reputation, my independence.
An hour later a courier delivered a letter from his lawyer. A thick envelope full of legal jargon boiled down to one thing: he was filing for division of property. And he wasn’t asking for half.
He wanted the entire apartment, claiming it had been bought with his personal funds before the marriage, while my contribution to the renovations was “insignificant.”
But the last page was the worst. He petitioned the court to order a psychiatric evaluation for me.
To determine whether I could be an “adequate mother” to our future child.
There it was. Rock bottom. He was going to take not just the apartment from me. He was going to take my child. My child. To use my pregnancy, my vulnerability, as a weapon against me.
Something snapped inside. The very thread that tied me to the old Anya—the understanding, forgiving, “good” one.
He thought I’d break. That I’d cry, beg, agree to his terms. He’d forgotten. He’d forgotten everything.
He’d forgotten who sat up nights with him when he was just starting his business, going over contracts. He’d forgotten who kept his “gray” books in a notebook because he couldn’t afford a real accountant.
He’d forgotten that I knew all his schemes, all his offshore accounts, all his “tax optimizations.”
I had been his shadow, his loyal squire. And he decided the squire was unarmed.
I went to the safe we’d bought together “for important documents.” My hands didn’t shake. I entered the code—known only to him and me.
Inside, under a stack of our marriage certificate and the apartment papers, lay a slim folder. The folder he’d asked me to “just keep safe” a couple of years ago.
“It’s insurance, Anyechka,” he’d said then. “Just in case. Keep it with you—you’re my most reliable one.”
He had been so sure of my blind devotion, my ignorance, that he made a fatal mistake. He himself had put the weapon in my hands.
I picked up the phone. But I wasn’t calling a lawyer. I dialed an old university friend who now worked in the financial crimes unit.
“Hi, Stas. I’ve got a very interesting story for you. About a very successful businessman.”
The effect of my call wasn’t immediate. Stas explained that an anonymous tip was only a reason to begin a review. The process would be long. But the machine started turning.
The first few months were torture. Kirill pressed me from all sides. His lawyers buried me in lawsuits.
He phoned our mutual friends, telling them I’d gone crazy from hormones. But I held on. I knew I had a trump card and simply waited.
He took the first hit six months later. A tax audit. Official and hard-hitting.
They froze his main accounts “pending clarification.” He called me; I didn’t pick up.
Lena tried to reach me too. She sent pitiful messages: “He left me. I have no money. Help me, you’re my sister.” I read them and deleted them.
The collapse wasn’t quick—it was agonizing. Like a slow poison. Partners, one by one, began turning their backs on him.
The reputation he cherished so much was cracking at the seams. He tried to sell the business, but no one wanted a “toxic” asset.
He called me when his card was declined at an expensive restaurant.
“What have you done, you idiot?!” he hissed into the phone. “You’re destroying my life!”
“No, Kirill,” I answered calmly, sorting through baby clothes I’d bought the day before. “I just turned on the light. The cockroaches scattered on their own.”
He threatened me, screamed that he’d ruin me. But the old confidence was gone from his voice. Only fear remained. He understood I wasn’t playing by his rules anymore.
He lost the property suit. My lawyer proved the apartment had been bought with jointly acquired funds, and his “personal money” had in fact been siphoned from his own company.
His petition for custody of the child was denied after the tax investigation came to light. He became unreliable.
In the end he lost everything. The business, the money, the status. He got a huge fine and a three-year suspended sentence with a ban on holding executive positions.
For a man like him, it was worse than prison.
Two years passed.
I was sitting in a cozy café, watching my son Misha concentrate on building a tower out of blocks.
Andrey sat beside me—a man I’d met at new-parent classes.
Calm, dependable, with kind eyes. He wasn’t trying to replace Misha’s father; he simply loved both of us.
Suddenly my phone buzzed. An unknown number. I answered.
“Anya? It’s Lena.”
I was silent, not knowing what to say.
“I… I just wanted to say… I’m sorry,” her voice trembled. “I was such a fool. I envied you my whole life. Your ease, your strength. I thought if I took him, I’d become you. But I became no one.”
“How are you?” I asked evenly.
“We’re… okay. I named my daughter Nadya. Kirill… he didn’t even come to the discharge. He had other things to do. He tried to borrow my last money and disappeared.”
I looked at my son, who had finally set the last block in place and clapped his hands in delight. Andrey smiled and gently ran his hand over mine.
“Len,” I said. “If you need help… for Nadya… you can count on me.”
She gave a little sob into the phone.
“Do you really… mean that?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But my door will always be open for my niece. And you and I… maybe someday.”
I hung up. Forgiveness wasn’t a fireworks display that freed me from the past.
It was a quiet decision. A decision not to drag the heavy load of resentment into my new, happy life.
The memory of the betrayal became part of me, like a scar that no longer hurts but reminds you that you survived.
I wasn’t the “good girl” anymore. I was a woman who had learned to defend herself. And I liked this version of me much more.
