“You’ve really lost all fear, haven’t you?” Olga’s voice wasn’t loud, but in the stillness of the morning bedroom it sliced through the air more painfully than breaking glass.
She stood over the sofa, crushing her smartphone in her fist until her knuckles turned white. On the screen, a bank notification glowed with a corpse-pale light—one message that turned her Saturday morning into the beginning of the end. Vitalik, sprawled across the wrinkled sheets like a starfish, only grimaced and tried to pull the blanket over his head. A dense, heavy stench rolled off him—booze fumes mixed with stale tobacco and a sugary, nauseating perfume note that definitely didn’t belong to Olga.
“Olya… let me sleep, will you?” he croaked from under the blanket, not even opening his eyes. His voice was raspy, smoky, and shameless in its lazy ease. “My head’s pounding like someone went at it with a sledgehammer. Bring me some water—be a human being.”
“Water?” she repeated, feeling a dark, scalding anger start to bubble somewhere under her ribs. “I’m not bringing you water. I’m going to cram a printout of the statement down your throat.”
With one sharp motion, Olga tore the blanket away. Vitalik lay there in nothing but his underwear, showing a pale, soft body and a hairy chest rising and falling evenly. A pillow crease was stamped into his left cheek, and swollen dark circles sat under his eyes. He managed to pry one eye open—cloudy, bloodshot—then forced his gaze to focus on his wife.
“Why are you screaming?” he complained sluggishly, trying to cover himself with an arm. “It’s Saturday. I have the right to sleep in. Why are you starting this so early?”
“Starting what?” Olga shoved the phone right under his nose, almost touching his face with the screen. “Read it. Read it out loud, you pig.”
Vitalik squinted, trying to make out the numbers.
“Debit… twenty-five thousand four hundred rubles…” he mumbled, licking his dry lips. “Bar ‘Wild Orchid.’ So what? Guess the card didn’t get blocked. Great.”
He attempted a smile, but it turned into a crooked, pathetic twitch. Vitalik either didn’t understand—or pretended not to—why his wife was towering over him like a fury. To him, it was simply a successful Friday night.
“‘So what’?” Olga flinched back as if he’d slapped her. “Vitalik, that was all our money for the month. All of it. Every last ruble. I got my advance yesterday—today it’s zero. Do you understand that with your alcohol-soaked brain? Zero!”
“Oh, don’t make a tragedy out of it,” he groaned, sitting up and dangling his legs off the sofa, scratching his belly. “We’ll borrow from someone. I’ll ask Sergey, or your mother. Money’s just paper. Besides, last night was amazing… you should’ve seen it! The guys were thrilled—I treated them like a man. It’s not like we meet up every day.”
His calmness was grotesque. He talked about their household budget as if he’d misplaced a lighter. Olga looked at him and didn’t see a husband—she saw a parasite clamped to her wallet, convinced it was his rightful place.
“You took my card out of my bag while I was sleeping,” she said slowly, biting off each word. “You knew the PIN because I—an idiot—trusted you. And you drove across the city to a strip club to flush away what I earned in two weeks, standing on my feet twelve hours a day.”
“We’re a family, Oly,” Vitalik yawned wide, unbothered. “And in a family everything’s shared. What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine. Why are you being greedy? A man went out, blew off some steam. I came home, didn’t I? Not to some other woman.”
“Steam?” Olga echoed, her hands starting to shake in tiny tremors. “What exactly are you stressed from, Vitalik? From lying on the couch? From playing Tanks? You haven’t been able to find a job for three months because everywhere ‘pays too little’ and ‘the bosses are idiots.’ But stealing your wife’s money for booze and girls—that’s normal to you?”
“Don’t call the guys’ girls whores, and don’t call the bar booze,” he snapped, getting up and lurching toward the kitchen. His steps were unsteady; he swayed. “And I didn’t steal anything. I borrowed it. I’ll pay it back from my first paycheck.”
“From what paycheck?!” she shouted, grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around. “You haven’t even sent a résumé anywhere!”
Vitalik shook her hand off with disgust, like she was an annoying insect.
“Stop with the hysterics. My head hurts. I don’t have the strength for your screeching. You’d be better off making breakfast. A man wakes up hungry and she’s running around with her phone. You’re boring, Olya. Suffocating. That’s why I went to relax—living with you makes a man want to hang himself. All I hear is money, work, loans…”
That was the final drop. The sickly stink of his breath hit her in the face. Olga felt something snap inside—some tight spring that had been holding her together for the last six months. She stepped right up to him, staring into his cloudy, brazen eyes where there wasn’t a flicker of remorse.
“If you ever take my card again while I’m asleep and run off to a bar with your buddies, I swear to you—I’ll have you put away for theft on a grand scale, husband or not! I’m sick of paying for your night adventures!”
Vitalik froze for a second, processing—then burst out laughing. Loud, hoarse, head thrown back.
“Oh, terrifying!” he smacked his thighs. “Put me away, huh! You’re going to file a report? Against me? The cops will laugh at you. They’ll say: family nonsense, deal with it yourselves. You’re my wife, idiot. You’re not going anywhere. Who else would put up with you, wound up like that?”
He turned and shuffled toward the kitchen, dragging his feet, tossing over his shoulder:
“And go throw something together to eat. Fried eggs with bacon. And coffee—strong. Oh, look at her, guarding her precious card… You can’t spare anything for your beloved husband.”
Olga remained standing in the middle of the room. His laughter rang in her ears. She stared at the empty sofa, the socks scattered on the floor, the crumpled blanket holding the sour smell of his sweaty body. The words—“you’re not going anywhere”—kept bouncing around her skull. He was sure he was untouchable. Sure she’d go to the kitchen, sigh, cry quietly so she wouldn’t anger “the man of the house,” and start frying eggs.
Her eyes drifted to the desk by the window. There, catching the morning sun on its matte casing, sat his gaming laptop—black, powerful, trimmed with red. The one they’d bought on installments four months earlier because Vitalik “needed to grow in esports.” Installments Olga was paying.
“Fried eggs, then…” she whispered. “With bacon…”
She moved toward the desk slowly, as if in a trance. The rage that had made her scream only a minute ago turned suddenly cold and calculating.
Olga lowered her gaze to her hands. They were still trembling, but no longer from fear or pain—this was adrenaline, too much of it, boiling through her blood and demanding an outlet. In her head, the image of the empty refrigerator spun like a stuck record. On the glass shelf lay a lonely half-dried lemon and a carton of milk—barely enough for one glass. The freezer was empty. Her wallet was a dead silence. And in two days another notification would arrive—the next loan payment. The payment for that very laptop her husband was walking toward now.
Vitalik came back from the kitchen faster than she expected. Apparently, the lack of breakfast and his wife’s silence irritated him, but he was too lazy to keep arguing. The hangover wanted peace and familiar distractions. He passed Olga without even looking at her, as if she were a badly placed piece of furniture. He cared only about the black, predatory curve of his “machine” waiting on the desk.
“Why are you just standing there?” he grunted, dropping into his computer chair. The fake leather squealed under his weight. “You’re blocking the light. Move. I’ve got a clan raid in half an hour—I need to knock out my dailies.”
He reached for the power button. The screen flashed, greeting its owner with a game logo. The keyboard lights rippled through a rainbow, blinking at Olga like a taunt. The thing cost one hundred and twenty thousand rubles—one hundred and twenty thousand Olga took out on credit because he whined for weeks. He’d convinced her it was an investment, that he would stream, that he’d find remote work editing videos. In six months he hadn’t edited a single clip. But in “Tanks,” he did have a premium account.
“Vitalik,” Olga said quietly. Her voice was unnervingly steady. “We have no money for food. No money for me to get to work. And the day after tomorrow we have to pay for this laptop. Do you understand what you’ve done?”
Vitalik clicked his tongue irritably and began typing his password. His fingers danced across the keys with the ease of a pianist—the only place he ever showed dedication.
“Here you go again,” he muttered without turning, watching his virtual world load. “I told you—we’ll figure it out. Borrow from Sveta; she always owes you. Or cover it with another credit card. Why are you drilling my brain over some pieces of paper? Don’t distract me—I said it’s an important fight. If I don’t log in now, they’ll kick me from the clan—and I’m deputy commander.”
“Deputy commander,” Olga repeated, tasting the word. It tasted like bitterness and dead-end hopelessness. “So your virtual little tank matters more than the fact we have nothing to eat? More than the fact you robbed me?”
Vitalik whipped around in his chair. His face twisted with rage. Red veins flared in the whites of his eyes.
“Will you shut up already?!” he roared, spitting. “Robbed you, robbed you—like a broken record! I’m your husband, not a thief! I took what I’m entitled to! I’m a man, I need to blow off steam! And you, instead of supporting me, stand here whining into my ear! And anyway, that laptop is mine. Don’t you dare tell me when to play and when not to. You gave it to me—that’s it, case closed. Go cook borscht—maybe you’ll get nicer.”
He turned back to the screen and put on his headset, cutting her off from him, from his problems, from reality. He chose the game. Again. Pixels over conscience.
Olga stared at his hunched back under a stale T-shirt. She watched him adjust his microphone, preparing to greet his “brothers-in-arms.” For him, nothing had changed. He was safe in his little bunker. And she was left outside, standing on the wreckage of their budget, with debts and an empty fridge.
Her eyes slid across the desk. The expensive laptop hummed, fans pushing hot air into the room. It wasn’t just a computer—it was a symbol of her stupidity. A monument to her blind hope that this man would change. A chunk of plastic and circuitry draining her life the same way its owner did.
She took a step toward the desk.
Noticing movement in his peripheral vision, Vitalik jerked his shoulder.
“What now?” he snapped, lifting one ear cup. “Let me play in peace, I told you!”
Olga didn’t answer. Without a word, she reached out and wrapped her hands around the edges of the laptop. The plastic was warm.
“Hey—what the hell are you doing?” anxiety flickered in Vitalik’s voice, but he still didn’t truly believe it. He assumed she just wanted to slam the lid shut, like she’d done before when she tried to get his attention. “Hands off! I’m queueing into a match! Are you out of your mind?”
But Olga wasn’t closing the lid. She gripped the chassis with both hands, so hard her fingers went white. Inside her, a cold, deliberate wave of determination rose. This was it—the point of no return.
“Loan payment, you say?” she whispered, staring straight into his eyes—eyes that widened with horror as the meaning of her movements finally reached him. “Deputy commander, you say?”
“Olya, don’t you dare!” Vitalik squealed, trying to jump up, but the chair rolled back under him. “It’s worth a hundred grand! Are you insane?! Put it down!”
With one violent yank, Olga lifted the heavy laptop off the desk. The cords—mouse, power, headset—snapped tight like strings and then tore free from the ports with a crack. The screen flickered but stayed on, still showing the lobby player list.
She raised it high above her head. The weight pulled pleasantly at her arms. It felt like the weight of shackles she was about to shatter.
“Stop! You psycho!” Vitalik screamed, throwing his hands up as if trying to protect himself from a falling sky. “I’ll kill you if you touch it!”
“I don’t care anymore, Vitalik,” Olga breathed out. “The tanks are over. The war is starting.”
There was no fear in her eyes. No hesitation. Only a clean, concentrated urge to destroy what stood between her and freedom. She saw her husband’s face twist and drain of color as he realized his favorite toy was about to become garbage. But she felt no pity. Pity died this morning, along with that bank message.
For a split second the room fell into a cottony silence—only Vitalik’s heavy breathing remained. Then Olga swung with all her strength, pouring into the movement every ounce of pain, humiliation, and hatred she’d stockpiled over the years, and slammed the laptop down onto the sharp oak corner of the desk.
The sound was unmistakable—wet, sickening, the crunch of expensive technology breaking. It was the sound of money dying. The laptop’s body snapped in the middle like the spine of a plastic beast. The screen flared in one last white spasm and exploded into hundreds of tiny shards that sprayed in every direction. Black keys popped loose and clattered across the floor like knocked-out teeth. Olga didn’t stop. She struck again—then again—until the sleek device became a shapeless mess of metal, wires, and shattered display.
“You… what did you do?!” Vitalik’s voice cracked into a shriek, raw with animal terror.
He froze, staring at the remains of his “precious,” at a sparking cable sticking out of the mangled shell. Then his face twisted into such fury he barely looked human. He looked like a beast whose meat had been ripped away.
“You bitch! I’ll smash you!” he roared—and, forgetting the hangover, lunged at his wife.
Vitalik vaulted over the chair, knocking it over, and swung a fist at Olga’s head. But the alcohol still sloshing in his blood betrayed him. His movements were clumsy and slow. Fueled by adrenaline, Olga dodged. His fist only grazed her shoulder—but that was enough to awaken a survival instinct multiplied by rage.
She didn’t run. She didn’t shield her face. She stepped into him. Her fingers, like talons, seized the collar of his stretched-out T-shirt. The fabric tore with a ripping sound.
“You’re going to smash me? You?!” she screamed into his face, feeling his spit hit her cheeks. “Try it, you worthless nothing!”
Olga yanked him forward using his own momentum and then shoved him toward the doorway. Vitalik—never expecting this force from the wife who had always folded—lost his balance. He caught his foot on the overturned chair leg and would’ve gone down if Olga hadn’t kept her iron grip on his shirt.
“Let go, you idiot! You’re hurting me!” he howled, clawing at her fingers. His nails dug into her wrists, leaving red lines, but Olga didn’t even register the pain. In that moment, she was steel.
She dragged him down the hall like a garbage bag. Vitalik dug his heels into the laminate, skidding and swearing, trying to hit her with his free hand—but punching mostly air or her back.
“This is my home! Mine!” Olga snarled as she shoved him into the narrow corridor. “And you’re flying out of it like a cork!”
The hallway tightened around them. Vitalik finally found his footing and tried to turn the tables. He grabbed Olga by the hair and yanked her head back. Pain flared at her scalp; tears sprang to her eyes—but it only fed the fire. Olga howled, not from pain but from rage, twisted, and raked her nails across his face without even looking.
Vitalik screamed, clutching his cheek, where four crimson welts rose instantly. His grip on her hair loosened.
“You freak! You almost took my eye out!” he wailed, backing up, his shoulders bumping the walls.
“I’ll do more than take your eye out—I’ll wipe you into the plaster!” Olga advanced, not letting him breathe. She kicked his shins with bare feet, shoved his chest, driving him backward toward the front door.
The hallway became a battlefield. Keys, a shoehorn, bottles of polish and cream flew off the shelf. Vitalik stepped on the shoehorn, slipped, and slammed his shoulder into the sliding wardrobe. The mirrored door rattled but held.
“Olya, calm down! You’re sick! Let’s talk!” he suddenly whined, realizing he was physically losing to this fury. His aggression collapsed into fear. He saw something in her eyes he’d never seen in five years of marriage—absolute, cold determination to end him.
“Talk?” Olga grabbed his neck with both hands and shoved the back of his head hard into the padded front door. The impact landed dull and heavy. “We already talked, Vitalik. We talked when you took my card. We talked when you laughed in my face. That’s it. Conversation’s over.”
With one hand she pinned him to the door. With the other she fumbled at the locks. Her fingers slipped; her breath broke; her heart hammered up in her throat. But she knew one thing: he had to be on the other side. Now.
“Don’t you dare! I’m barefoot! I’m in my underwear!” Vitalik tried to push her off, but Olga drove her knee into his thigh. He doubled over with a gasp.
The lock clicked like a gunshot. Olga yanked the heavy metal door open. Cold stairwell air flooded the stifling apartment, cutting through the smell of alcohol and sweat.
“Out!” she shouted, gathering every last ounce of strength for the final shove.
Vitalik tried to grab the frame, the handle—anything. Olga planted both hands in his back and pushed. He flew onto the landing, nearly face-planting into the grimy concrete.
Olga stood in the doorway, disheveled, scratched, breathing hard. Her chest heaved, hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. She looked at her husband writhing on the cold stairwell floor, drawing his bare feet under him, and felt emptiness expand inside her. But it wasn’t the emptiness of loss. It was the clean, ringing emptiness of freedom. Like trash swept out.
But she wasn’t finished.
She spun and ran back into the room. Vitalik—shocked and humiliated—was only just getting up when he heard her quick steps returning to the door. He assumed she was bringing his clothes.
She wasn’t bringing clothes.
Olga burst into the room like a storm coming back for the last pieces of wreckage. Her eyes darted over the floor, finding fragments of what—ten minutes ago—had been her husband’s pride and the chain around her own neck. She wasn’t looking for his jeans or his jacket. She wasn’t giving him a chance to dress and keep even a shred of dignity. One thought pounded in her skull: he would take everything that was his. Everything he “loved.”
She dropped to her knees by the desk and began scooping up the wreckage with frantic hands. Sharp cracked plastic cut into her palms, scraping her skin, but Olga felt nothing. She grabbed loose keys, torn-out chunks of motherboard, tangled wires, the heavy power brick. The laptop shell—snapped in half with the screen hanging from one hinge—wouldn’t fit in her arms, so she pressed it to her chest like a shield, smearing her shirt with dusty grime from the cooling vents.
“Open up, bitch!” came a muffled, furious snarl from the hallway, followed by a fist slamming the metal door. “I’m naked! People walk here! Have you lost it?!”
Vitalik hadn’t left. He stood on the filthy doormat, certain it was just a woman’s tantrum that would end in tears and pleading apologies. He expected the door to open and clothes, keys, maybe even cash for a taxi to be handed out.
Olga straightened, feeling the weight of twisted metal in her arms. The weight gave her strength. She marched back to the door, stepping over scattered shoes.
“Sure, Vitalik,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I’ll give you everything.”
She reached the door. The pounding stopped—he heard her footsteps and fell quiet, preparing to step back in like a victor. Olga snapped the lock and kicked the door open.
Vitalik stood right on the threshold, hunched against the draft, covering himself with his hands. His pale skin was goosebumped; his face held a mix of spite and pathetic expectation. Seeing the door open, he stepped forward, mouth opening for another insult.
“Finally—” he started.
He didn’t get to finish.
Olga hurled the contents of her arms straight at him.
It was like shrapnel. The heavy power brick slammed into his chest, forcing a grunt as he stumbled back. Half the laptop, jagged-edged, scraped his shoulder and crashed onto the stairwell floor. Keys, plastic, and circuitry rained onto his bare feet, tapping against the tile like hail.
“Here!” Olga screamed, her voice echoing up and down the stairwell. “Here’s your tank! Here’s your stream! Here’s your career! Eat it!”
Vitalik jumped back and stepped heel-first onto a sharp piece of shattered screen. He shrieked, hopping on one foot, nearly falling as he grabbed the dirty railing.
“You’re insane! You cut my foot!” he squealed, staring at her in genuine horror. “I’m filing a report! Destruction of property!”
“Property?!” Olga stepped onto the threshold, towering over him like punishment made flesh. “That was my property! I’m the one paying for it! And you—you’re nothing! You’re just a mistake on my credit history! Take your trash and go to your ‘boys’! Let them pay your loans and buy your underwear!”
A door upstairs opened with a thud. Someone’s curious face peeked out, saw a raging woman and a half-naked man surrounded by computer wreckage—and disappeared instantly. A lock clicked on the right—some neighbor pressed to the peephole, drinking in every detail. Olga didn’t care. Shame had burned up in the same fire as her patience.
“Olya… at least give me pants…” Vitalik’s voice trembled. It finally sank in. He stood in the stairwell in a torn shirt and underwear, barefoot on broken glass, no phone, no money, no keys—and worst of all, no power over her.
“Pants are something you earn, not something you drink away,” she said flatly. “You’ve got exactly one minute to disappear before I call the police and tell them a drunk homeless man is trying to break into my apartment.”
“You won’t do that… we’re family…” he whispered, trying to squeeze out pity, but his eyes already held defeat.
“Our family died yesterday in that bar—‘Wild Orchid,’” Olga said coldly. “And remember this, Vitalik: if you come back, you’ll end up in an ambulance. I’m not joking. I’ll send you down the stairs if I see your face at my door again.”
She looked at him, and for the first time in years she saw him clearly—not a promising guy who’d just had bad luck, not a beloved husband who was tired, but a pathetic, infantile leech who—even now, standing half-naked in the cold—was still trying to wriggle out on her dime.
“Screw you…” Vitalik spat, but there was no strength in it. He glanced down the staircase, realizing he really would have to go like this—barefoot, exposed, across the city or begging someone for help.
“And you have a nice day,” Olga tossed back.
She grabbed the handle and slammed the door shut with a deep, satisfying clang. Metal on metal—like a final chord.
Immediately she turned the key twice. Then she locked the top latch. Then she slid the night bolt. Every click sounded like music.
Outside, it went quiet. No banging. No shouting. Only muffled curses—him, apparently, trying to gather whatever larger pieces of his “computer” he could—and the slap of his bare feet retreating down the stairs.
Olga leaned against the cold door and slowly slid down to the floor. Her legs trembled; her hands stung from tiny cuts; bruises began to bloom on her wrists where he’d grabbed her. Inside the apartment, silence settled—not heavy, not crushing, but clean and empty, like a blank sheet of paper.
She stared down the hallway at the scattered shoes and the scuffs on the laminate where his heels had scraped as she dragged him out. Her eyes landed on the little table where her phone lay. Soon another payment notification would come. There was no money. There was no laptop. There was no husband.
Olga lifted her hand and looked at her shaking fingers. On her ring finger a thin gold band still gleamed. Slowly she slid it off, feeling her skin free itself from the pressure of the metal. The ring chimed softly against the floor and rolled into the corner—toward Vitalik’s dirty boots he hadn’t even managed to put on.
She took a deep breath. The apartment still smelled like a fight and stale alcohol, but beneath it something fresher was already breaking through.
“Well,” she said into the empty space, “that’s that. At least now I’ll sleep in peace.”
Olga stood, brushed off her knees, and walked to the kitchen. She needed a glass of water and to wash her hands—of grime, of blood, and of her old life.
