“Good riddance! — his voice thundered through our tiny entryway. — Without you, I’ll only be better off!”
He was so sure he was right. So drunk on his sudden “freedom.” He had no idea he’d just signed, with his own hands, a death sentence for his business and his future. He thought he’d gotten rid of dead weight, but in reality he had thrown away the only life preserver he had. And just a month later he was standing on the threshold of my new office. Begging for help. But it was already too late. My answer was short. And it destroyed him.
“You just sit on my neck, Alyona! A freeloader!” Sergey’s voice boomed so loudly it seemed the glass in the old sideboard rattled.
Alyona stood in the middle of their small living room, hugging herself as if to fend off his words. They hurt worse than a slap. Ten years together. Ten years, of which the last five she’d lived inside his auto shop—his brainchild that had become her child too.
“Seryozha, how can you say that?” her voice trembled. “I’m there from morning till night! I keep all the books, I negotiate with suppliers, I calm clients when your guys mess up! Petrovich called again yesterday asking when the advance is coming, and I—”
“What did you do?!” he cut her off, his eyes flashing with malice. “You ‘help’! It’s my business, I built it! And you just shuffle papers and chat on the phone. Any secretary for pennies could do that! I slave away like a damned ox, and you create the appearance of activity and spend my money!”
It was a lie. A brazen, disgusting lie. Before she came along, his “business” was a semi-basement garage with two perpetually drunk mechanics. She was the one who found a more respectable space, secured a low-interest loan, set up parts inventory, built a client base. She’d gone without sleep when she had to urgently find a rare part for an expensive foreign car or smooth out a conflict with the tax office. She had put not only her time but her soul into that shop.
“Your money?” she laughed bitterly. “Seryozha, we haven’t bought me a new fur coat in three years because ‘we have to invest in the lift.’ We didn’t go on vacation because ‘we have to settle with the suppliers.’ I’ve been wearing the same puffer coat for a fourth winter! Where is this money of yours that I’m supposedly spending?”
“Oh, so that’s it! Not enough money for you!” He grabbed at the phrase like a drowning man at a straw. “I knew it! All you women only want money! That’s it, enough! I’m tired of pulling this cart by myself! Tired of your sour face and constant problems!”
He went to the wardrobe, yanked the door open, and hurled her things onto the floor. The old puffer, a couple of sweaters, jeans…
“What are you doing? Stop!” she cried, rushing toward him.
“I’m freeing my life from ballast!” He shoved her so hard she flew back against the wall. “Get out! I want to live for myself! I want to spend money on myself, not on ‘business development’! I want a pretty, cheerful woman next to me, not a gloomy bookkeeper!”
He grabbed a big trash bag, scooped her things off the floor into it, and flung it toward the door.
“There! Your dowry! Take it and get lost!”
Alyona looked at him, and there were no more tears in her eyes. Only a cold, ringing emptiness. The man she loved, the one she had pulled out of every scrape, the one she believed in, stood before her with his face twisted into an ugly grimace of anger and contempt.
“Seryozha…” she whispered in one last, desperate attempt.
“Get out!” he roared, flinging open the front door. “Hear me? Out of my house and out of my life! Good riddance!”
She silently picked up the bag. It was almost weightless. Ten years of life fit into a single trash sack. She gave him one last look—a stranger, a spiteful man—and stepped over the threshold. The door slammed behind her with a deafening crash, cutting off the past.
For the first few days Sergey felt euphoric. Real, intoxicating freedom. No one buzzing in his ear about invoices and packing slips. No one meeting him with a tired look and the question, “So how are things?” The apartment seemed bigger. He cranked the music all the way up, opened a bottle of expensive whiskey that Alyona had “saved for a special occasion,” and drank straight from the neck, feeling like the master of life.
In just three days Kristina appeared at his place. A striking blonde with long legs and the appetites of a racing car. He’d met her at a bar a month earlier and had been messaging with her on the sly, feeding his ego. Kristina was the complete opposite of Alyona. She laughed loud and contagiously, knew nothing of debit and credit, and lived by the principle “live here and now.”
“Wow, what a business you’ve got!” she drawled when Sergey proudly took her to the shop. “You must be rich?”
“We try,” he tossed off carelessly, puffing up with pride. “Built it all myself, from scratch.”
Petrovich, the most experienced and solid mechanic, gave Kristina a sullen sidelong look as he wiped his hands with a rag. He wanted to ask about his wages, which were three days late, but Sergey pretended not to notice.
“Everyone, meet Kristina,” he announced loudly. “She’ll be helping me… with inspiration.”
The guys in the bays exchanged glances. They all knew Alyona. They knew she could find the right bearing in the city in five minutes, arrange a payment deferral, and pacify the grumpiest client. They respected her. The appearance of this dolled-up doll stirred only a dull resentment.
The problems began almost at once, but Sergey was too intoxicated with “freedom” to notice. The owner of a Mercedes they’d been fixing for the second week called.
“Sergey, your wife promised the part would arrive on Tuesday! It’s Thursday—where is it? I need my car!”
“We’ll sort it out,” Sergey waved him off. “Suppliers are backed up.”
He had no idea which suppliers or what exactly Alyona had ordered. He tried calling a couple of companies he found in her old notebook, but they answered with vague talk of SKUs and order numbers. He spat and decided it would sort itself out.
That evening Kristina dragged him to the most expensive restaurant in town.
“Babe, I want that necklace,” she pointed a finger at a jewelry shop window on the way. “It’ll go so well with my eyes!”
Without thinking, Sergey pulled out his credit card. He felt like a king. Finally he was spending on a real, beautiful woman, not on “consumables for the service station.” He deserved this. On the way home he saw three missed calls from the chief accountant of their corporate client, a large taxi company. “Must be some minor thing again,” he thought and didn’t call back. He was free of such trifles. He was happy.
Happiness built on self-deception turned out to be as fragile as thin ice. Within a week, that ice started to crack. First, a manager from AutoPartsTrade, their main supplier, called.
“Good afternoon, Sergey. You have an outstanding balance for the last shipment, almost three hundred thousand. Alyona Viktorovna always closed it by the twentieth. Today’s the twenty-fifth. We’re suspending shipments until full payment.”
“How three hundred thousand?” Sergey was taken aback. “Why so much?”
“Well, last month you took a big batch of oils and filters under a corporate contract. All the documents are with you. Alyona Viktorovna received them personally.”
Sergey scratched his head. The corporate contract… the taxi fleet! He frantically searched for their accountant’s number.
“Marina Igorevna? Hello, this is Sergey from Auto-Profi. About payment…”
“Ah, Sergey,” came the cold reply. “I’ve been calling you all week. Our maintenance contract expired. I asked Alyona Viktorovna to prepare a new one, taking into account the expansion of our fleet. She promised to handle it. I take it you’re not aware? We can’t work without a contract. We’ve already signed with your competitors. Good day.”
The dead beeps in the receiver sounded like a funeral march. That was their largest and most stable client. Money from them covered rent and salaries. Sergey sat down in the middle of the office that used to be Alyona’s. It still smelled of her perfume. Neat stacks of papers lay on the desk—he didn’t dare touch them.
Just then Petrovich walked into the shop. His face was darker than a storm cloud.
“Sergey, we need to talk. Last month you shorted my pay. Alyona always calculated overtime; I ended up with almost fifteen thousand more. You tossed me bare base pay. And for these three days of delay—you didn’t add a ruble. What’s going on?”
“Petrovich, not now!” Sergey exploded. “I’ve got problems!”
“You’ve got problems, and I’ve got a family to feed!” the mechanic shot back. “Alyona Viktorovna never did this. She was a woman of her word. If she said the advance was on the fifth, then it was on the card on the fifth. And you…”
He waved a hand and left, slamming the door.
At home that evening, a new surprise awaited him. Kristina greeted him in a new negligee.
“Baby,” she purred, “I’ve got a little issue. I need to pay off a loan urgently—one hundred and fifty thousand. Will you help your kitty?”
Sergey looked at her with a bleary gaze. One hundred and fifty thousand. He had less than two hundred left in the account, and that was before payroll and paying the supplier debt.
“Kris, now’s not the best time. The business has… temporary difficulties…”
The smile vanished from her face.
“What do you mean, ‘difficulties’?” Her voice turned hard. “You said you were a successful businessman! I didn’t sign up for ‘temporary difficulties.’ I need a man who solves problems, not creates them.
“Seems I misjudged you. I’d better call a taxi.”
The cracking grew into a roar. And Sergey realized with horror that he didn’t know how to plug the hole that was widening by the minute.
The collapse didn’t happen in a flash. It grew like a snowball, and then simply swept everything away. Losing the taxi company was the trigger. Without their regular payments Sergey couldn’t pay down the debt to AutoPartsTrade. As promised, they shut off shipments completely. The shop ground to a halt. Two cars hung on lifts waiting for parts that couldn’t be had. Clients called, swore, threatened lawsuits.
Petrovich, having gotten neither money nor apologies, simply didn’t show up for work. In the morning Sergey found a note on his desk, scrawled on a greasy scrap of paper: “I left for Sidorov’s ‘Garage.’ He pays on time. Invited the other guys too.”
By lunchtime only he and the young trainee Vasya remained in the shop—Vasya hindered more than he helped. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Furious clients. The landlord reminding him the rent was due. The bank calling about the delinquency on the loan Alyona had taken for diagnostic equipment. She always remembered due dates. He didn’t.
Sergey sat in the cold, grimy bay with his head in his hands. The smell of motor oil and despair hung in the air. He felt like the captain of a sinking ship that the entire crew had abandoned. Even the rats.
Kristina was the last to jump ship. He called her in some desperate, pathetic bid to hear a word of support.
“Kris, I’m really not doing well…” he began.
“Oh, Seryozh, I can’t talk now,” she trilled. “I’m in Dubai, it’s so sunny here! I told you I didn’t sign up for problems. Good luck with that!”
And she hung up.
He hurled the phone at the wall. It shattered to pieces. The silence that followed was deafening. He was alone. Completely alone. In an empty shop, with debts, no clients, no team, and no woman.
Suddenly it hit him with freezing clarity. Alyona hadn’t been the “burden.” He’d been a self-satisfied idiot. She hadn’t been “helping.” She had been the brains, the heart, and the backbone of that business. She had borne everything on her slender shoulders: finance, logistics, relationships. And he… he had been just a signboard. A pretty façade behind which she quietly solved all the problems while he bragged about “his success.”
He remembered her tired eyes, her requests to “stay home in the evening,” which he ignored, heading off to the sauna with friends. He remembered how happy she was about a new lift as if it were a diamond ring. He remembered her words: “We’re a team, Seryozha.”
And he had destroyed that team with his own hands. Out of pride, stupidity, and egoism.
The realization washed over him like an icy wave. He hadn’t just lost a business. He had lost the one person who truly believed in him and loved him. And he’d done it in the cruelest, most humiliating way. He sat on the cold concrete floor and cried for the first time in years. Not out of self-pity, but from belated, useless remorse.
For the first week Alyona lived in a fog. She slept at her old college friend Sveta’s place, on an air mattress in the kitchen, and stared at the ceiling for hours, replaying their last fight in her mind. Every word Sergey had thrown at her was a poisonous thorn in her heart. “Freeloader.” “Burden.” The pain was almost physical. It felt as if the world she had so carefully built over ten years had collapsed, burying her beneath the rubble.
“Lenka, stop moping,” Sveta shook her by the shoulders. “Look at yourself! You’re smart, you’re a hard worker. That… goat of yours is nothing without you. You think he’ll last long there? His business will start to split at the seams in a month!”
“I don’t care,” Alyona answered lifelessly. “I just don’t know how to live now. Everything I knew, everything I lived for, stayed there.”
“Nonsense!” Sveta wouldn’t relent. “What you know is in your head! You can calculate the profitability of any project in five minutes and win over the nastiest client. That’s your capital! Come on, wash your face; I’ll help you write a resume. Enough feeling sorry for yourself. Time to act.”
Her friend’s words worked. Alyona pulled herself together. She wrote a resume, laying out all her experience—from bookkeeping to procurement management and HR. Seeing it on paper, she surprised even herself. The list of her competencies was impressive.
She started going to interviews. It was scary. She felt like everyone could see her insecurity, her broken heart. But at the third interview, something unexpected happened. The director of a large dealership, a solid man of about fifty, looked over her resume and then raised his eyes.
“Alyona Viktorovna… your face looks familiar. Didn’t you work at Auto-Profi on Lesnaya? With Sergey?”
Alyona nodded, going cold.
“That’s right!” the man smiled. “I’m Igor Semyonovich. I had my Passat fixed with you a couple of times. I always wondered how a flake like Sergey could have such a competent manager. I remember you found me some rare injector in half an hour—the official dealer had me waiting three weeks. I always solved everything with you. So, you left there?”
“Yes, I left,” Alyona answered briefly, not going into details.
“And you did the right thing!” Igor Semyonovich said unexpectedly. “A specialist like you shouldn’t languish in a fly-by-night outfit. I happen to have an opening for a service area manager. The work is tough and responsible. But I can see you’ll handle it. Salary—here,” he wrote a figure on a slip of paper that made Alyona catch her breath. It was three times more than she had ever allowed herself to “take from the till” at her and Sergey’s business. “Deal?”
She walked out of his office on rubber legs. They hired her. Not out of pity, but because they valued her professional qualities—the very qualities Sergey had devalued and trampled on.
A month later Alyona was unrecognizable. She rented a cozy apartment. Bought an elegant business suit and a good coat. Work absorbed her. She put processes in order, optimized logistics, built a motivation system for the mechanics. Her subordinates respected her and management appreciated her. Every evening, coming home, she felt a pleasant fatigue and pride. For the first time in her life she was earning her own real money. For the first time she felt not someone’s shadow, but an independent, strong person. The pain gradually subsided, leaving only a cold scar and a new, steel rod inside.
Almost two months passed. It was a raw, chilly November evening. Alyona was leaving the dealership’s glass-sparkling building. She tucked her chin into the collar of her new cashmere coat and mentally ran through tomorrow’s plan. The day had been hard but productive. She felt in her element.
“Alyona…”
The voice made her flinch and freeze. She slowly turned.
Sergey was standing in front of her.
If she hadn’t known him, she would have walked past. He had grown gaunt, lost weight, dark circles under his eyes. The fancy jacket he’d been so proud of was stained; a two-day stubble shadowed his face. He looked lost and pitiful. He stared at her with hungry, hunted eyes. He took in her well-groomed face, the expensive clothes, her confident posture.
“Seryozha?” She barely recognized her own calm, even voice.
“Alyona, I… I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he mumbled, taking a step toward her. “I know everything. That you work here. That you’re doing well…”
He fell silent, not knowing how to continue.
“What did you want, Sergey?” she asked just as calmly, with no trace of the old hurt.
“Forgive me,” he breathed, his voice breaking. “Alyonka, forgive me. I was such an idiot. Such a blind, self-absorbed jerk. I ruined everything. Everything. The business is gone. Debts, lawsuits… I’ve lost it all.”
He took another step and tried to take her hand. She instinctively pulled it away.
“I get it,” he rushed on, seeing her reaction. “I understand that without you I’m nobody. A zero. You were everything. You were my strength, my brains, my luck. And I… I didn’t value it. I’m begging you, come back. We’ll start over! I’ll fix everything! I’ll worship you, carry you in my arms! Just come back, Alyonka! Help me… I’ll go under without you.”
He looked at her with such desperate hope that anyone else in her place might have wavered. He looked like a beaten puppy begging to be let back into the warmth. But Alyona looked at him and felt nothing. No pity, no gloating. Only a cold, detached emptiness. The person standing before her was a complete stranger.
Alyona silently regarded Sergey’s face, contorted with pleading. For an instant, everything flashed before her eyes: that night when he threw her out with a trash bag; his sharp, prickly words; her tears on a cheap kitchen air mattress at her friend’s; the feeling of total, hopeless despair. Then she saw herself as she was today—well-groomed, in an elegant coat, respected by colleagues, with plans for a future in which there was no place for him.
“Start over?” she repeated quietly. Her voice was even and firm, like tempered steel. “You think you can just press a button and roll everything back?”
“We can do it! I’ll do anything—just say the word!” He leaned forward, eyes fever-bright. “I’ll sell the apartment, we’ll pay off the debts, we’ll start small! Like before!”
Alyona gave a bitter smile.
“There won’t be any ‘like before,’ Seryozha. Not ever. You don’t understand what you did. You didn’t just throw me out of the house. You tore faith out of me—faith in you, in us, in our family. You showed me that ten years of my life, my loyalty, my work meant nothing to you. You trampled me.”
He began to say something, but she raised her hand, stopping him.
“Do you know what’s the worst part? I believed your words. That night I truly believed I was a burden. A useless freeloader. It took me a month to realize it was a lie. It took other people to tell me I was worth something. And you, the closest person, did everything to make me doubt that.”
She paused, looking him straight in the eyes. There was no hatred in her gaze. Only a final, irrevocable verdict.
“You’re asking me to come back not because you love me. But because you’re hurting and it’s inconvenient. You don’t need me, Alyona. You need a free crisis manager, accountant, and therapist rolled into one. You need someone to raise your sinking ship again. But I’m not a rescuer anymore, Seryozha. I’m the captain of my own vessel. And it’s making full speed ahead.”
He stood with slumped shoulders, silent. He’d run out of arguments. He looked at her as at an unreachable star and, it seemed, only now began to grasp the depth of his loss.
“Goodbye,” she said softly.
“Alyona, wait! Don’t go!” he shouted after her as she turned.
She paused for a second but didn’t look back.
“You showed me the road yourself, Sergey. Remember? I’m just walking it. And there’s no place for you on my path. Good riddance.”
And she walked away without looking back, her steps crisp on the wet asphalt. She walked toward the lights of the big city, toward her new life, leaving behind the trembling figure of a man who had once been her world and had now become only a ghost from the past.
