“Sign the apartment over to your brother. I can see straight through your husband,” Svetlana’s mother whispered in her ear, digging her manicured nails painfully into her elbow. “He’s clung to you like a leech. You call it love? At twenty, boys are driven by hormones and calculation, nothing more. We’ll transfer the place to your brother before that little brat swindles you.”
“Mom, stop,” Svetlana said, trying to pull her arm free. “Lyosha isn’t like that. We love each other. And this apartment was Grandpa’s. He wanted me to live here.”
“Your grandfather had lost his mind by the end, God rest his soul,” Irina Vitalyevna scoffed, adjusting the brooch on her chest. “I’m the one looking out for you, idiot. That husband of yours is a nobody. Where did he even come from? A geology student? He collects rocks? Please. He’s collecting square footage. Stop living in a fantasy. Tomorrow we’re going to the notary. Aunt Galya already arranged everything.”
Svetlana stepped back until her lower back touched the tall windowsill. Behind her, separated only by glass, a huge old chestnut tree rustled outside. Its branches, like knotted fingers, were calm for the moment, but Svetlana knew that as soon as the wind rose, they would start tapping insistently, demanding attention.
“No,” she said firmly, though everything inside her trembled. “There will be no notary. This is my home. And my husband’s home too.”
Her mother narrowed her eyes. In that instant, she looked less like a loving mother and more like a bird of prey circling overhead, searching for the tenderest spot to strike.
“Suit yourself, daughter. Later you’ll regret it so badly you’ll wish you could bite your own elbows. I warned you. Vadik will be upset. And whenever Vadik gets upset, my blood pressure shoots up. Do you want me dead?”
Svetlana said nothing. For the past ten years, her mother’s health had been her favorite weapon.
Their honeymoon had ended not on a beach, but in the hard grind of daily life. Svetlana was twenty-three, finishing her conservatory degree in harp while also working as a restorer of antique musical instruments—a rare, dusty trade that demanded infernal patience. Alexey was three years younger. Tall, lean, with perpetually tousled hair and attentive gray eyes. He was studying glaciology, the science of ice. It was hardly a profitable path at the start, but Lyosha loved it with all his heart.
Svetlana’s relatives took the marriage as a personal insult. How could it be otherwise? Sveta had a three-room Stalin-era apartment in a quiet central district, with high ceilings and history in its walls, and she had brought into it… a student. Not a businessman. Not an official. Just a guy who showed up to dates with a backpack full of rock samples.
“A parasite,” Aunt Galina, her mother’s sister, declared at a family council the newlyweds weren’t even invited to. “A complete freeloader. He wormed his way in.”
From that day on, Svetlana’s life became a siege.
Alexey came home after dark. He worked part-time at the geological museum, cataloging rare minerals, and at night he wrote term papers for money. He slipped in quietly, trying not to make noise. The hallway smelled of varnish and old wood—Sveta had been working on the soundboard of an antique cello.
“Hey,” he said, wrapping his arms around his wife from behind. “Why are you so tense? Did a string snap?”
“Mom came by,” Svetlana breathed, leaning against him. Lyosha smelled of the cold outdoors and something quietly dependable, like ozone before rain. “Again. About the apartment. About Vadim.”
Alexey tensed. He knew all about Vadim. Svetlana’s older brother, a thirty-year-old overgrown child, was always “searching for himself” and finding only trouble. At the moment he called himself an “urban conceptualist,” but in reality he lived off his mother and dreamed of a glamorous life.
“What is it this time?” Alexey asked calmly. Sometimes that calm unsettled Svetlana, but more often it steadied her.
“They want me to sign it over. They say you’ll deceive me, take the apartment, and throw me out on the street. Mom said…” Svetlana faltered. “She said she can see right through you.”
Alexey gave a short snort as he took off his jacket and hung it up.
“Your mother’s X-ray vision is very selective. She only sees what she invents herself. Sveta, you know I don’t need your property. I have you, I have science, I have my own hands. We’ll get through this.”
“I know, Lyosha. But they keep pressuring me. Aunt Galya called. Grandma cried on the phone, saying I was betraying the family. As if I hadn’t gotten married, but surrendered to the enemy.”
Alexey went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water.
“Let them talk. The important thing is, don’t sign anything without reading it. Better yet, don’t sign anything at all. If they push too hard, I’ll talk to them myself.”
“No!” Sveta cried. “Don’t. It’ll turn into a scandal. That’s exactly what they want, so they can paint you as a demon. I’ll handle it.”
But she was wrong. There was no handling it.
The pressure grew slowly, like a snowball rolling downhill. First came the “concerned” phone calls. Then the unannounced visits.
On Saturday morning, the doorbell rang. On the doorstep stood what Sveta privately called the Great Trio: her mother, Aunt Galya, and Grandma Zoya Petrovna. Behind them shuffled Vadim, head down, staring into his phone. He looked like a man dragged away from urgent business, though Sveta suspected he had simply slept until noon.
“We came for tea,” Irina Vitalyevna announced, brushing past her son-in-law as if he were a coat rack. “And for a serious conversation.”
The kitchen instantly felt cramped. Alexey silently put the kettle on and went into the room where he had a little work corner set up with a microscope.
“He’s so… unsociable,” Aunt Galya hissed, biting into a cookie. “His eyes dart around. He’s definitely up to something. Sveta, just look at your brother. He’s thirty. He needs to build a life, maybe start a family. But with his living situation… well, you know yourself, you can’t exactly thrive in a two-room apartment with your mother.”
“Vadim can work,” Sveta said quietly. “And rent a place. Or get a mortgage.”
“A mortgage?!” Grandma Zoya threw up her hands. “In times like these? That’s slavery! Why feed the banks when your own granddaughter has all this space just sitting here? You, Svetochka, are selfish. We raised you, cherished you, and this is how you repay us?”
“I live here, Grandma. This is my home.”
“And it’ll become your husband’s home once he wraps you around his finger!” Vadim suddenly barked, looking up from his screen. “Sveta, are you seriously this blind? By law, in a couple of years he’ll be able to claim part of the place if, say, he does renovations or pulls some other trick. Mom’s right. Transfer it to your sister—I mean, to me—it doesn’t matter. Property needs to stay in the family.”
Svetlana was shaking. She tried to explain that Alexey was a good man, that she was happy, but her words bounced off her relatives’ armor. It felt to her as if the apartment were crawling with spiders, stinging her again and again until she signed her name in ink.
Two weeks later, the migraines began. The headaches were drilling, pulsing, relentless. One evening she fainted in the hallway, dropping her violin. Alexey abandoned everything and rushed to her. For the first time through all of it, he raised his voice—but not at her.
“I’m calling an ambulance right now. And I’m asking your mother not to come here for a week,” he said, lifting Sveta into his arms. She didn’t argue. She no longer cared.
Svetlana lay in a hospital bed under an IV, in a room Alexey had arranged through friends. Stress. Exhaustion. Nervous collapse. Family visits were forbidden, but somehow her mother still managed to get into the room, supposedly bringing broth.
Irina Vitalyevna started before she had even fully crossed the threshold.
“You see? You see what your husband has done to you? You used to be rosy as an apple, and now you’re a shadow. Vadik has enrolled in sommelier courses, by the way. He’s worried sick, can’t rest. You have to help your brother, otherwise…”
Alexey entered at that moment. He was pale.
“Please leave,” he said. Not loudly. More dryly, as if he were listing the properties of basalt.
“What?” his mother-in-law spluttered.
“Irina Vitalyevna,” Alexey said, stepping closer. “Enough. I asked you to leave Svetlana in peace. You didn’t listen. Starting tomorrow, you do not come near my wife.”
Aunt Galya, who had been standing outside the door—as always—stormed in.
“You little wretch! Who do you think you are, ordering us around? Sveta is the mistress here, and you’re just a parasite! Get out of this room now!”
Alexey did not move.
“I am Svetlana’s husband. And I care about her health. You seem to have forgotten that there are laws against entering hospital rooms without permission and disturbing patients. I’ll call security.”
Aunt Galya nearly choked on the audacity.
“So now you’re threatening us?” she hissed. “Sveta, if you don’t tell him to shut up right now, I’ll curse you! You’re betraying your family for this… this…”
Svetlana closed her eyes. She wanted to become invisible.
“Leave,” she whispered.
“What?” her mother gasped.
“Get out,” Alexey repeated.
The relatives left. But that was only the beginning of the real war.
A week after being discharged, Sveta came home. A confrontation with her relatives was inevitable. Vadim called first.
“Listen, sis,” he began in a lazy tone. “Here’s the thing. I found an investor for my startup. We just need to put the apartment up as collateral. Not for long, just six months. I’ll pay it back with interest, I swear on my life. Mom already approved it. Time to sign.”
“No, Vadim,” Sveta said. “I already told you. No.”
There was silence on the line.
“Are you out of your mind?” his voice lost all of its laziness. “Mom agrees, so you owe it to us. This is for the family. If you don’t sign, we’re done with you. Total silence. And don’t expect any inheritance either. As for your husband, he can crawl back to his dorm.”
Svetlana hung up. Her hands were trembling. Alexey sat beside her and took her palms into his own.
“They’re not bluffing,” she said. “They’re really ready to cut me off. Over an apartment.”
“Then they already cut you off,” Alexey answered. “The moment they decided square meters mattered more than you.”
“It’s over,” Sveta whispered.
At that very moment, someone began pounding on the door. It was not a polite knock. It was an assault. Her family held their “conversation” in raised voices right there on the landing. Their neighbor, Uncle Misha, an old painter, peeked out and immediately retreated.
Irina Vitalyevna, Aunt Galya, and Vadim burst into the hallway. Vadim had a folder of papers in his hands.
“Sign it! Right now!” her mother screamed. “Or you are no daughter of ours!”
Svetlana shrank back against the wall. Alexey stepped between her and her relatives.
“Sveta is not signing anything,” he said calmly.
“And who are you?” Vadim shouted, trying to shove past him. “You’re nobody here! This place belongs to Sveta, which means it belongs to us!”
“This apartment is mine,” Alexey said.
Silence fell over the hallway.
“W-what?” Grandma Zoya stammered, peering out from behind her daughter’s shoulder.
Alexey took a sheet of paper from the cupboard and held up a registry extract.
“The apartment belongs to me, Alexey Viktorovich Gordeev. According to the purchase agreement from last month.”
Svetlana looked at her husband in astonishment. She remembered going with him to the notary, but she had been so unwell then that her mind had been foggy. Alexey had simply said, “We need to file some documents to protect you from fraud.” She had signed, trusting him completely.
“You… you stole it from her!” Aunt Galya shrieked. “Con artist! I knew it! Police!”
“No one stole anything,” Alexey cut in. “I bought this apartment from Svetlana at full market value. The money was transferred to her personal account, which none of you, dear relatives, can access. And never will.”
Her mother clutched at her heart. This time, apparently, for real.
“How?” Vadim croaked. “You’re just a student! A pauper!”
“My father led a geological expedition in the north,” Alexey said. “He died when I was little, but he left me an inheritance. I didn’t waste it on nonsense. And when I saw what you were doing to Sveta, I understood that the only way to protect her was to take the object of dispute out of her hands. Legally. Now it’s my apartment. And I decide who is allowed to be here.”
Svetlana looked at her husband with entirely new eyes. He was not a boy. He was a man.
“The money is in Svetlana’s account,” Alexey repeated. “That is her safety net. And you—GET OUT. And do not come back.”
“We’ll… we’ll see you in court!” Vadim shouted, but his voice wavered. He knew he had lost.
The relatives left, cursing everything in sight. Silence returned to the apartment. Outside, the chestnut tree finally stopped swaying, as if it too had let out a long breath.
Three months passed. Svetlana recovered. She returned to restoration work, and in the evenings she and Alexey walked together in the park. Her relatives vanished from her life like a bad dream. Alexey really had blocked all their numbers, and apparently he had also installed some clever system on the intercom so they could no longer ring the apartment.
But the most unexpected news came from her mother’s friend, Aunt Vera, whom Sveta ran into by chance.
It turned out that Vadim and Irina Vitalyevna had fallen into their own trap. Convinced that Svetlana’s apartment would soon become his, Vadim had gone deep into debt. He took out a large loan against… his mother’s two-room apartment. Blinded by greed and convinced she would eventually force her daughter to give in, Irina Vitalyevna signed as guarantor.
Vadim invested the money in some shady “future investment” scheme his friends had recommended. The scheme collapsed. The creditors came.
His mother’s apartment had to be sold to repay the debts. The money left over was enough only for a tiny studio in a neighborhood Vadim had once sneeringly called “a ghetto for losers.”
Now the two of them lived there together: Irina Vitalyevna, once accustomed to comfort and space, and her beloved son, who spent his days sprawled on the sofa, drinking beer and blaming his mother for “not pushing Sveta hard enough.”
When Aunt Galya heard what had happened, she disowned her sister, declaring that she wanted nothing to do with failures. Grandma Zoya moved in with distant relatives in the countryside, just so she would not have to witness the disgrace.
Svetlana stood on the balcony of her enormous, sunlit apartment. The chestnut tree whispered in the leaves. Alexey came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her, and rested his chin on her shoulder.
“Do I feel sorry for them?” she asked, almost to herself.
“Pity is a dangerous thing,” Alexey said. “They spent all their time talking about deceit, convinced that I was the problem. But the truth is, they were just greedy. Your grandfather left the apartment to you alone, passing over your mother and your brother, and they could never accept that.”
Svetlana smiled. For the first time in a long time, she felt free.
