— Yulya, Anya just called. She wants to talk.
Yulia didn’t immediately tear herself away from what she was doing. She sat at her work desk, which looked more like a spaceship control panel—crowded with lamps, sterilizing devices, and dozens of tiny bottles of bright nail polishes. Methodically, she wiped each drill bit with a special solution, laying them out on a snow-white napkin. It was her ritual, a meditative process she valued for its precision and order. Pavel hovered in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot. That guilty-ingratiating look—she had learned to recognize it without fail. It meant he was about to voice some request he himself felt awkward about.
“I’m listening,” she said without turning her head. A gleam from the lamp flashed off the shiny metal tool in her hand.
“Well, you know Anya is opening her salon in two weeks. Remember I told you? Great location, the renovation’s almost done. It’s going to be gorgeous!” He started from afar, with the enthusiasm of an ad man trying to sell a vacuum cleaner to an old acquaintance.
“I remember. And?”
“Well, she thought… we thought… Basically, she needs some help at the start. So clients come right away, you know? Create some buzz. And she’s offering you…” he trailed off, picking his words, “she’s offering you to work for her.”
Yulia put down the last drill bit and finally turned to him. She measured him with a calm, attentive gaze. It was the look of an appraiser who isn’t looking at a person but at a proposal, weighing all its hidden defects.
“Offering me a job? Does she have a workstation for me equipped to my standards? What are the terms? What percentage?”
Pavel visibly tensed. He’d expected those questions and clearly didn’t want to answer them. His cheerful enthusiasm evaporated in an instant, replaced by nervous fussing.
“Well, of course there’ll be a station! The best one! By the window!” He tried again to switch on his sales pitch. “As for the terms… Yulya, you understand, it’s a start-up. A new business. Every kopeck counts. She’s proposing that for the first little while you… well… help with promotion. A couple of months.”
Yulia was silent. She just looked at him, her face utterly expressionless. That way she could hold a pause always knocked him off balance. It seemed to him that in those moments she was calculating all his thoughts three steps ahead, seeing all the absurdity and nerve of his proposal, yet giving nothing away.
“For promotion,” she repeated slowly, as if tasting the word. “Meaning, for free.”
“Why call it ‘for free’ right away?” he hedged, avoiding her direct gaze and staring off into a corner. “It’s help! For family! You’ll bring your clients, they’ll see what a cool salon it is, tell their friends. Word of mouth! You yourself said that’s the best advertising. You’ll help my sister get on her feet, and then…”
“And then Anya will hire some girl for peanuts to work my already warmed-up client base?” Yulia finished for him. There was no anger in her voice, only a dry, cold statement of fact. “Pasha, is this supposed to be a joke?”
“What joke! Yulia, it’s Anya! My sister! We’re family!”
Yulia got up from the desk and walked to the window. Outside, an ordinary evening in a residential neighborhood was beginning. She looked at the lights in the buildings across the way and thought about how many such evenings she had spent not with her husband, but at her desk. About the professional development courses that cost as much as several of his salaries. About the sleepless nights when she practiced new designs on nail tips until her eyes ached. About the thousands of messages in messengers, about building personal rapport with each client, remembering their stories, their children’s names, and their dogs’ names. Her client base wasn’t just a list of phone numbers. It was the result of six years of her life. Capital built by her own hands, her eyesight, her back.
“Pasha,” she turned back to him; her voice was even and quiet, but in the thunderous silence of the apartment it cut like glass. “I want you to understand this very clearly right now. What you’re suggesting is not ‘helping family.’ It’s a proposal to devalue six years of my work. To hand over to a stranger a business I built brick by brick. Your sister wants to get everything at once, and for free at that. I didn’t start out like that. I sat in a rented corner, worked till midnight, put my last money into materials, and studied, studied, studied. And it never occurred to anyone to offer me anything ‘for promotion.’ Tell Anya I won’t work for her. Not for a percentage, and certainly not for free. My clients are my clients. Topic closed.”
Pavel hadn’t expected such a direct and chilly refusal. He had counted on coaxing, on haggling over percentages, on feminine whims—but not on a solid wall of logic, against which his primitive manipulation shattered to pieces. His face flushed; the ingratiating smile slipped away, revealing a nasty, stubborn expression. He stopped being a supplicant and turned into an accuser.
“Topic closed?” He stepped forward, invading her personal space by the window. His voice dropped lower and harsher. “You say it so easily? Like we’re talking about buying bread. This is my sister, Yulia! My blood! And you act like you’ve been asked to mop the floors in a station toilet.”
“The comparison is almost exact,” her calmness enraged him even more. “In both cases it’s unpaid work I didn’t sign up for. And the fact that Anya is your sister doesn’t magically turn her business project into a family celebration where I’m supposed to perform as a free clown.”
His nostrils flared. He looked at her with open hostility, as if she were some alien, adversarial person who had suddenly taken the place of his wife.
“You just don’t want to help! You’re stingy! Money matters more to you than people—I always knew it! You sit here with your little bottles like a miser guarding gold, afraid to spend an extra kopeck on anyone but yourself!”
Something clicked inside her. The icy composure cracked, but what burst out wasn’t a scream—it was a cold, razor-sharp fury. She straightened, and her gaze drilled into him so hard he involuntarily stepped back half a pace.
“What makes you think I would work for free in your sister’s salon? Because she’s your relative? She’s nobody to me. So no, I won’t be inviting my clients over to her. Let her make a name for herself the way I once did.”
“Oh really? That’s how you talk now? Do you even understand she’s my sister? Your husband’s sister! Your husband!”
“Just my husband’s sister. A stranger who wants to reach into my pocket and pull out my labor, my time, and the money I won’t earn while I’m entertaining her girlfriends. She’s a relative to you; to me, she’s a brazen girl who decided to build a business on someone else’s back.”
“You… you have no right to talk about my sister like that!” he exploded.
“I have every right to call things by their proper names!” Her voice didn’t break, but it gathered strength. “Let’s talk about family, Pasha, since you love that word so much. Where was your soulful sister Anya when we were saving up for this apartment? When I worked two jobs and you sat without a project for three months? Did she call even once to ask if we needed a loan? Maybe bring groceries? No! She showed up to the housewarming with a bottle of cheap champagne and said our wallpaper was tasteless.”
Each word struck precisely at his sorest spots—his sense of manly capability and the sanctity of his family ties. He wanted to object, but found nothing to say, because it was all true.
“Where was your family when I needed eye surgery because this ‘sitting job with little bottles’ ruined my vision to minus five? I paid for it myself! Where were they when we bought the car on credit? Did Anya offer to be a guarantor? No, she asked to be driven around the city at night with her girlfriends because ‘Yulya’s got wheels now.’ Your family only appears when they need something—when they can take advantage and get something for free!”
He stood stunned by the barrage of facts. The world where his family was something bright and unshakable was collapsing under the blows of her merciless memory.
“That’s not true… you’re exaggerating…” he muttered, but it sounded pitiful and unconvincing.
“I’m not exaggerating anything! I’m simply doing the math. Unlike you and your sister. She calculated that my six years of experience, my three-hundred-person base, and my name are worth zero rubles and zero kopecks. Just because I had the misfortune to marry her brother. Well then, tell her she made a very big mistake in her calculations. My work is expensive. For her it’s priceless—because she’ll never get it.” He stood there, stunned by the onslaught of facts, trapped by her impeccable memory. The world where his family was sacred and her work was just a cute hobby with “little bottles” was crumbling under the blows of her relentless logic. Unable to argue with facts, he decided to attack her character.
“You remember everything!” he spat, his voice a mix of anger and a kind of superstitious amazement. “Every little thing, every kopeck. You live with a calculator in your head instead of a heart! There’s no such thing as ‘help’ or ‘being there’ for you—everything’s a deal! You give me—I give you! Is that how people live? Is that a family?”
“Yes, Pasha, I remember everything. I have a professional memory,” her voice rang with cold steel. “I remember which shade of red each of my two hundred clients prefers, and I remember every time your relatives tried to climb onto my shoulders. And yes, I believe family means helping each other—not one party constantly draining the other’s resources while hiding behind pretty words.”
“Resources! You even talk like a robot!” he was almost shouting, waving his arms. He needed to knock her out of that icy equilibrium, to make her slip and scream so he could accuse her of hysteria. “There’s nothing human in you! Not a drop of warmth! My sister simply asked for help, and you set up a courtroom drama!”
At that very moment, at the peak of his accusatory tirade, his phone shrilled in the pocket of his jeans. It sounded like a gong announcing a new round. Pavel paused for a second, then a triumphant, spiteful grin appeared on his face. He pulled out the phone, saw “Anechka” on the screen, and ostentatiously showed it to Yulia as if presenting incontrovertible evidence.
“And there she is!” he said challengingly. “Now we’ll settle everything. Together. Like a family.”
Without waiting for her reply, he answered the call and, with an exaggerated, loud tap, switched on speaker. He did it like a gambler slamming his last trump card on the table, absolutely sure of victory. He tossed the phone onto the coffee table, and the room filled with his sister’s slightly distorted, petulant, demanding voice.
“Pash, so what? Did you talk to her? Did she agree? I need to make the schedule already, the girls at the front desk are asking,” Anya’s voice sounded as if the matter had already been decided and only minor formalities remained.
With a victorious look, Pavel glanced at his wife; his expression said, “Well? Swallowed it? Now you’ll have to answer not just to me.”
“Anya, hold on, Yulia here… is a little unsure,” Pavel began, playing the role of the wise, patient peacemaker trying to reconcile two unreasonable women.
“Unsure?” Anya’s voice rang with open bewilderment, mixed with poorly concealed irritation. The speaker conveyed every shade of her arrogance. “Yulya, what are you playing hard to get for? I was counting on you. Is it really so hard to help family at the start? It’s not forever, just a couple of months. People help each other for years, and you…”
Her voice kept droning in the background—confident, petulant, demanding. But Yulia no longer heard it. The entire surrounding world had shrunk to the size of her work smartphone’s screen in her hands. Pavel watched her; his face still wore that smug certainty. He thought she’d broken. That she would open her calendar, start mumbling about being busy, look for loopholes and excuses—and then he, as the magnanimous victor, would let her save face by negotiating “more convenient” terms with his sister. He was waiting for her capitulation.
But Yulia didn’t open the calendar. Her thumb, with a practiced, automatic motion, swiped away notifications and tapped the messenger icon—the very one where all her work chats lived. Pavel frowned. He recognized that green symbol. He’d seen it hundreds of times when Yulia answered messages late into the night, booked clients, and coordinated designs. This was her territory. Her fortress.
“Pash, hello! Is she silent over there or what?” came Anya’s impatient voice from the phone. “Tell her it’s publicity for her too! She’ll work in a beautiful new place instead of our broom closet. I’m even doing her a favor!”
Pavel nodded reflexively at the phone, not taking his eyes off his wife. Something about her focused face and the way her fingers darted over the screen unsettled him. It didn’t look like searching for excuses. It looked like preparing for battle. She opened her main chat—“Yulina’s Nails ✨”—with more than two hundred of her loyal, devoted clients. Women who booked two months in advance, waited for her after vacations, and entrusted her not only with their hands but with their secrets. That was her gold vein, her army, her reputation.
“What are you doing?” Pavel asked in a completely different tone now. There was no trace of his earlier superiority—only the cold, sticky premonition of disaster. He took a step toward her, trying to peek at the screen, but she held the phone so he couldn’t see.
“Are you deaf over there, Yulia?” Anya cut in again, her voice now openly rude. “I’m talking to you, you know! I need your decision now, I don’t have time for your antics!”
Yulia paid the outburst no attention. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. She didn’t hesitate or search for words. She knew exactly what she was writing. Each keystroke was a measured, precise blow. Pavel watched this mesmerizing, frightening scene. He saw something new appear on her previously inscrutable face—an expression of icy, vindictive satisfaction. She wasn’t just typing text. She was loading a weapon.
“Yulia, I’m asking you, what are you doing?!” he nearly shouted, feeling the situation spin out of control with terrifying speed. He reached out to snatch the phone, but she made a barely perceptible movement to the side, and his hand grabbed empty air.
She finished typing. For a few seconds her finger hovered over the screen, above the “send” button. It was the longest second of Pavel’s life. Then she raised her eyes to him. In them danced a cold, merry fire. She was no longer a victim cornered. She was a predator that had long pretended to be prey and was about to deliver the killing bite.
“Using my client base,” she said quietly, yet louder in the room than his sister’s shouting from the phone. She paused, savoring the look of pure horror on his face. “Just like you wanted. For promotion.”
And with a light, almost mocking smile, she tapped the blue circle with the arrow. There was a soft, barely audible whoosh of a sent message—a sound that, in that moment, struck Pavel like a gunshot. That was it. Done. Irreversible.
He froze, unable to move. His brain desperately tried to process what had happened but refused to believe it. He still saw before him the wife he had considered predictable and, deep down, pliable—not this cold strategist who had just burned every bridge with a single tap.
“Pash, what’s going on over there? I don’t get it—what is this, some kind of joke?” Anya’s voice from the speaker grew more irritated. She still didn’t grasp that she had just become the main character in a catastrophe she herself had provoked.
Without a word, Yulia turned the phone’s screen toward her husband. She held it steady, like a judge presenting incontrovertible proof of guilt. Pavel didn’t want to look, but couldn’t tear his eyes away. On the bright screen, under the title “Yulina’s Nails ✨ (237),” was her message, the most recent in the thread:
“Ladies, heads up! A new salon is opening in the city—my sister-in-law’s. Address such-and-such. I strongly DO NOT RECOMMEND. They value family ties over a master’s labor. Quality to match.”
Pavel’s breath caught. He stared at those short, lethal lines and physically felt the future of his sister’s not-yet-opened salon collapse. This wasn’t just a refusal. It was a public execution of reputation. Anti-advertising launched through the most effective channel—word of mouth among her devoted clients who trusted her every word. He didn’t just see the text. He saw two hundred thirty-seven women reading it, forwarding it to friends, posting it in their chats. He saw his sister’s name, which hadn’t even had time to become a brand, turning into a synonym for unprofessionalism and nepotism.
At that very moment, the screen came alive. Notifications began to pop up at the top. One. Two. Three. Little banners with avatars and the first words of messages: “Yulya, wow! ”, “Whoa, thanks for the heads-up!”, “That’s wild! I was just thinking of checking it out…”, “Got it—crossing it off!” The phone vibrated in her hand from the stream of incoming reactions—hearts, flames, crossed-finger emojis. It was like water beginning to seep through a crack in a dam, then turning into an unstoppable torrent sweeping everything away.
“You…” Pavel croaked. That was all his voice could manage. He looked from the screen to his wife’s utterly calm face. Horror mixed with belated, helpless understanding. He had put this weapon into her hands himself. He had led her to this decision with his cajoling, pressure, and accusations. He was an accomplice.
“Pavel, what’s going on? I don’t understand anything!” Anya’s voice on the phone rose to a screech. She had apparently heard his strangled rasp and realized things were bad.
Yulia slowly lowered the phone and looked straight into her husband’s eyes. Her gaze was clear, cold, and devoid of any emotion. She wasn’t gloating, angry, or defensive. She was merely stating a fact.
“What did I do?” she echoed his unspoken question. “Nothing special. I just helped your sister. Helped her make a name for herself, just like you asked. Now her salon will definitely be known. Even before it opens.”
She slipped the phone into the pocket of her lounge pants. The stream of notifications didn’t stop, and now their vibration thudded faintly against her hip like the ticking of the timing mechanism of a planted bomb.
Pavel stood in the middle of the room, crushed and destroyed. He looked at his wife and realized he had never known her at all. He heard his sister’s shrieks from the speaker of the phone lying on the table. He saw, in his mind’s eye, the screen with the verdict spreading across the city. This was the end. Not just of a quarrel. The end of everything he had considered his family. And in the deafening silence, broken only by the phone’s screeching and the dull vibration from Yulia’s pocket, he understood there was no way back. Never again.
