“I’m pregnant,” I said, and a smile spread across my face all by itself.
Kirill, 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, joyful shouting—anything at all, but not that strange, rigid stillness.
“Me too,” Lena’s quiet voice sounded.
My sister stepped out of our bedroom. She was wearing Kirill’s T-shirt—the one I loved most, the one he slept in.
She pushed her hair back, and the gesture was so ordinary, so at-home, that for a second my head swam.
Flashes of memories I’d never paid much attention to flickered through my mind.
Kirill “at a meeting” late at night, and Lena dropping by “just to chat,” nervously checking her phone.
The two of them laughing at a joke only they understood, while I stood beside them feeling like an extra in my own celebration of life.
“You’ve got the key, right, Lena?” he’d asked when we went on vacation. “Please water the plants. There’s no one else I can trust.”
And I’d been happy, thinking what a close-knit family we were.
“What?” I asked again, though I’d heard everything perfectly. My voice sounded foreign—wooden.
“Anya, I’ll explain everything,” Kirill finally turned. His face was white as a hospital wall. “It’s not what you think. It’s… a mistake.”
Lena stared straight at me. There was no remorse in her eyes. Only exhaustion and some kind of angry, stubborn determination.
“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 I’d spent five years building a future with, and the woman I’d shared childhood secrets with.
They were two meters away, but it felt like a chasm separated us.
And in that chasm all my “we” drowned—our plans, our tenderness, our future nursery.
“A mistake, huh,” I repeated, my lips twisting into a smirk. “So the two of you are having a mistake? Or does each of you get your own?”
Kirill stepped toward me, hands outstretched.
“Anyutka, sweetheart, let’s talk. Just not now. Lena, leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” my sister answered calmly, folding her arms. “We’re having a baby. And I won’t let you pretend I don’t exist again.”
I backed away from Kirill until my spine hit the cold hallway wall.
“Out,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Out. Both of you.”
They didn’t leave. My word—so heavy just five minutes ago—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 understanding.”
“You’re a smart woman. We’re both adults. Yes, I’m guilty. But right now we need to think not about emotions, but about the children. About our children.”
He stressed the last word, trying to tie us together again, to create the illusion of a shared future.
“What ‘our’ children are you talking about?” I asked venomously. “The one who’ll grow up with a single mother, or the one your mistress will give birth to?”
Lena flinched and let out a quiet sob.
“Don’t call me that. You don’t know anything.”
“Really?” I turned to her. Cold fury pushed the shock aside. “Then enlighten me. What am I supposed to 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. It’s not just an affair.”
Kirill grabbed his head.
“Lena, I asked you!”
“And I’m tired of staying silent!” she shouted. “Tired of being a secret, a mistake that needs fixing!”
“Anya, you always got everything. The perfect husband, the perfect home. And me? I was always in second place. Just ‘Anya’s sister.’”
Her monologue was soaked in old resentment so deeply that I was stunned. She wasn’t defending herself. She was accusing me.
I remembered how, in childhood, Mom always said: “Anyutka is the smart one, Lenochka is the pretty one. To each her own.” It seemed Lena had never made peace with that “own.”
“So you decided to take what’s mine?” I asked quietly.
“I took what belonged to no one!” she snapped. “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 understood Lena was telling the truth—not about love, no. But about the fact that he’d allowed her to believe it. He’d complained to her about me, building a corrupt bond fed by his weakness and her envy.
“Fine,” I said, and my calm made them both tense. “Let’s say so. What are you proposing? The three of us living together? Or will you make a schedule?”
Kirill lifted his head.
“Stop it. That’s not constructive. I’m suggesting… we live separately for now. I’ll rent Lena an apartment. I’ll help both of you. We need time to think things through.”
He spoke as if he were discussing a business project—splitting assets, managing risk.
“So you want me to sit here, pregnant, and wait while you ‘think’ about which of your pregnant women you’re coming back to?” I laughed. It came out ugly, grating.
“Anya, you’re making it complicated.”
“No, Kirill. You simplified it to the limit. Down to something animal. Leave. And take her with you. You’ll pick up your things later—when I’m not home.”
I took out my phone and dialed.
“Hello, security? There are strangers in my apartment. Yes, they refuse to leave.”
Lena looked at me with hatred. Kirill stared in disbelief. He hadn’t expected this from me. He was used to “good girl Anya,” who would always understand and forgive. But that girl had just died.
Of course my call was a bluff. Our complex didn’t have any security service—just a sleepy concierge. But they didn’t know that. The word “security” sobered Kirill immediately.
“You’ll regret this, Anya,” he hissed, grabbing Lena by the hand. “You’re throwing a pregnant woman out of the house. Your own sister.”
“I’m throwing my husband’s mistress out of the house,” I corrected, looking him straight in the eyes. “And you are simply a traitor.”
When the door slammed behind them, I slid down the wall onto the floor. But there were no tears. Only scorched emptiness and adrenaline ringing in my ears.
The next day, hell began.
First my boss called.
“Anya, hi. Listen, your husband called… Kirill. He’s very worried about your condition. Says that with the pregnancy you… well… have unstable behavior.”
I went cold.
“What else did he say?”
“Well, he asked us to give you leave. To take care of you. Said you might not be entirely… competent when making decisions.”
I understood everything. He hadn’t just left. He’d started systematically destroying me, painting me as insane. He hit the sorest spot—my job, my reputation, my independence.
An hour later a courier delivered a letter from his lawyer. A thick envelope full of legal terms boiled down to one thing: he was filing for division of property. And he wasn’t demanding half.
He wanted the entire apartment, claiming it had been bought with his personal funds before the marriage, and my contribution to the renovations was “insignificant.”
But the last page was the most terrifying. He petitioned for a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation for me.
To determine whether I could be an “adequate mother” for our unborn child.
There it was—the bottom. He was going to take not just my apartment. He was going to take my child. My child. Use my pregnancy, my vulnerability, as a weapon against me.
Something inside snapped. The very thread that connected me to the old Anya—understanding, forgiving, “good.”
He thought I’d break. That I’d cry, beg, accept his terms. He forgot. He forgot everything.
He forgot who sat with him at night when he was just starting his business, proofreading contracts. He forgot who kept his “gray” accounting in a notebook because there was no money for a real accountant.
He forgot that I knew all his schemes, all his offshore accounts, all his “tax optimizations.”
I had been his shadow, his faithful squire. And he decided the squire was unarmed.
I walked to the safe we’d bought together “for important documents.” My hands didn’t shake. I entered the code only he and I knew.
Inside, under a stack of our marriage certificates and the apartment papers, lay a thin folder. A folder he’d asked me to “just keep” a couple of years earlier.
“It’s insurance, Anyutka,” he’d said then. “Just in case. Let it stay with you—you’re the most reliable one I have.”
He was so sure of my blind loyalty, of my ignorance, that he made that fatal mistake. He put the weapon in my hands himself.
I took out my phone. But I didn’t call a lawyer. I dialed an old university friend who now worked in economic investigations.
“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 grounds to start a check. The process would be long. But the machine started turning.
The first few months were torture. Kirill pressed from every side. His lawyers buried me in lawsuits.
He called our mutual friends, telling them I’d gone crazy from hormones. But I held on. I knew I had a trump card—and I simply waited.
He took the first hit six months later: a tax audit. Official and ruthless.
They froze his main accounts “pending clarification.” He called me. I didn’t answer.
Lena tried to reach me too. She sent pathetic messages: “He left me. I have no money. Help me, you’re my sister.” I read them and deleted them.
The collapse wasn’t fast—it was excruciating. Like slow poison. One by one, partners began turning away from him.
The reputation he valued so much started to crack. He tried to sell the business, but no one wanted a “toxic” asset.
He called me the day 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 lights. The cockroaches scattered on their own.”
He threatened and screamed that he would ruin me. But his voice no longer had that former certainty. Only fear. He understood I wasn’t playing by his rules anymore.
He lost the property division case. My lawyer proved the apartment had been bought with marital funds, and his “personal money” had actually been siphoned from his own company.
His bid for custody was dismissed after details of the tax investigation surfaced. He became unreliable in the court’s eyes.
In the end he lost everything—his business, his money, his status. He received a massive fine and a three-year suspended sentence with a ban on holding managerial positions.
For a man like him, it was worse than prison.
Two years passed.
I sat in a cozy café, watching my son Misha concentrate as he tried to build a tower of blocks.
Beside me sat Andrey—the man I met at a class for new parents.
Calm, dependable, with kind eyes. He didn’t try to replace Misha’s father; he simply loved both of us.
Suddenly my phone vibrated. An unknown number. I answered.
“Anya? It’s Lena.”
I stayed 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 that 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 hospital to pick us up. He didn’t have time for us. He tried to borrow my last money and disappeared.”
I looked at my son, who finally placed the last block and clapped happily. Andrey smiled and gently touched my hand.
“Len,” I said. “If you need help… for Nadya… you can count on me.”
She sobbed into the phone.
“You really… could?”
“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 fireworks that freed you from the past.
It was a quiet decision—a decision not to drag a heavy burden of resentment into my new, happy life.
The memory of betrayal became part of me, like a scar that no longer hurts, but reminds you that you survived.
I was no longer a “good girl.” I was a woman who had learned to protect herself. And I liked that version of me much more
