“Anya, don’t panic,” said Baba Toma from apartment forty-four, her voice muffled as though she had pressed the phone right against her lips. “Your mother-in-law is here with her daughter and some man, and they’re breaking down your door. I asked them what on earth they were doing, and Nina Pavlovna said she’d lost her keys and needed to grab furniture for Maksim while you were still at work. That man’s already standing there with a crowbar!”
Anna’s fingers tightened around the plastic body of her phone. The two-room apartment was hers alone, inherited from her grandmother. Maksim had moved into it three years earlier with nothing but a single suitcase. Since then, Nina Pavlovna had never missed a chance to refer to the place as “our Maksim’s little nest.” Anna had swallowed those remarks in silence, preserving the illusion of a normal marriage. She had smiled through family dinners while her mother-in-law rearranged dishes in her kitchen like she owned the place or criticized the curtains as if her opinion were law.
But breaking in?
Stealing furniture?
“Aunt Toma, don’t go anywhere. Keep watching through the peephole. Pay attention to what they carry out,” Anna said, her voice cold and precise.
She ended the call. Most women in her place would probably have burst into tears, started screaming, begging, fighting for every single thing in the apartment. Anna did none of that. She opened her keypad and calmly dialed the police.
“Duty station. Go ahead.”
“Hello. At 15 Stroiteley Street, apartment 42, there is an unlawful entry happening right now. A group of people is forcing the lock. I am the owner, but I’m at work. My neighbor is witnessing everything. Please send a patrol car.”
The dispatcher quickly confirmed the details and told Anna to head home immediately, but not to confront the intruders herself.
Anna threw on her coat, gave her department head a short explanation about a family emergency, and called a car through an app. As the driver crawled through the daytime traffic, her thoughts spun wildly. Who were they taking the furniture for? Oksanka? She had recently bought an apartment with bare walls and had been whining that she had nothing to sleep on. And Maksim? Did he know? Had he allowed his mother to rob his own wife? If he had, then everything was over.
When the car turned into the courtyard, Anna saw a police vehicle by the building entrance, its lights flashing, and an old cargo van parked beside it. Oksanka’s husband, Oleg, stood by the door, smoking nervously. The moment he saw Anna, he choked on the smoke and took a step back.
Anna walked past him without a word and went inside. Her apartment door stood wide open. The top lock hung half-ripped from the frame, still clinging to a splintered chunk of wood. The hallway smelled of чужого sweat and her mother-in-law’s cheap perfume.
Inside, the scene looked like some ridiculous nightmare brought to life. In the middle of the living room, a huge beige sofa was jammed awkwardly at an angle. Anna had bought it herself with money saved from skipping a vacation. Nina Pavlovna was clutching the upholstery with both hands, trying to drag the thing farther. Beside her stood the local officer, a tired-looking man in middle age, entering notes into a tablet. A young sergeant blocked the doorway, preventing Oksana from leaving while she clutched someone else’s coffee machine to her chest.
“Take your hands off me!” the mother-in-law screamed, refusing to let go of the sofa. “This is my son’s apartment! I have every right to take his things! Oksanochka needs them more, and that little mouse can buy herself new ones! I’ll file a complaint against all of you!”
“Good afternoon,” Anna said loudly, stepping over the splintered remains of the door frame. “I’m the one who called the police. This is my apartment.”
Nina Pavlovna spun around so fast her face twisted with rage.
“So you showed up! First you bled my son dry, and now you’re setting the police on his own mother? Maksim paid for everything! Take the box, Oksana. We’re taking what’s ours!”
“Do you have proof of ownership for the apartment?” the officer asked Anna, ignoring the shouting.
Anna opened an app on her phone and pulled up the official property extract, then showed her passport. The officer checked the details carefully and nodded.
“Citizen, this apartment belongs solely to Anna Nikolaevna Smirnova,” he said in a dry, formal tone. “You have unlawfully entered someone else’s residence. You will come with us.”
And that was the moment Nina Pavlovna completely snapped. Letting go of the sofa, she lunged at Anna with raised fists, trying to strike her in the face and knock the phone from her hand.
“You filthy bitch!” she roared.
The sergeant reacted instantly. He caught the attacker’s arm, twisted it behind her back in one smooth motion, and a sharp metallic click cut through the room. Handcuffs locked around her wrists.
“Assault on an officer and disorderly conduct,” the officer said matter-of-factly, slipping the tablet away. “Put the coffee machine down, miss. And head outside. Oleg Vladimirovich, that includes you. You’re an accomplice.”
After that, Anna watched events as though she were outside her own body. Oksana cried quietly, smearing mascara down her cheeks. Nina Pavlovna first tried appealing to pity, begging for her pills, then broke into curses all over again. In the end, all three of them were taken out and placed in the patrol car. Anna had to follow them to the station to give a formal statement.
The duty office smelled of old paper and bleach. Anna sat in the investigator’s office, listing the damaged items in a flat, even voice. The door to the corridor stood slightly open. Nina Pavlovna sat on a hard wooden bench, one hand cuffed to the metal armrest. She looked completely crushed.
About half an hour later, the front door slammed open and Maksim rushed in, breathless. The moment he saw his mother on the bench, he ran toward her.
“Mom! What happened? Oksana called me, babbling something insane about prison!”
“My boy! Your snake of a wife wants to throw us in jail! Over some pathetic sofa she’s trying to bring criminal charges against us! Save us, Maksimka!”
Maksim whipped his head around. The second he spotted Anna stepping out of the investigator’s office, he crossed the distance between them in three long strides.
“Anya, have you completely lost your mind? Why the police? We wanted to surprise you, rearrange the place a little… Mom just misunderstood things! Withdraw the complaint right now!”
Anna looked into her husband’s eyes and suddenly saw how pitiful he truly was. He had known. He had let his family come into her home and take whatever they wanted, and now he was trying to wriggle free with some absurd lie about a surprise.
She stepped back in disgust.
“A surprise? With a crowbar and a ripped-out door frame? I’m not withdrawing anything. You’ll cover the damage from the break-in in court.”
“Anya, don’t be ridiculous! They’re just things! Mom meant well. We’re one family! I’ll buy you a new sofa! Stop humiliating us!”
“There is no ‘us’ anymore,” Anna said simply, her voice calm and steady. “I’m calling someone to install a temporary steel door. You have exactly two hours to come get your shirts. If you’re late, I’ll dump everything on the landing.”
She turned and walked out. Behind her came her mother-in-law’s curses and the confused muttering of the man who was, technically, still her husband. But Anna no longer cared.
An hour later, she returned home. Emergency repair workers were already finishing the installation of a heavy temporary door. The living room was a mess. Maksim was frantically throwing his things into suitcases—shirts, shaving supplies, tangled cords, random bits of his life. He muttered under his breath about cruelty and the lack of feminine wisdom, but Anna paid him no attention. She stood by the window with her arms crossed, simply waiting for him to disappear from her life for good.
At that moment, a young blonde woman appeared in the open doorway. One hand pushed a baby stroller ahead of her, while the other held a bulging travel bag.
“Maksim?” she said, confused, glancing at the torn-up door frame, the grim welders in the hallway, and the unfamiliar woman standing by the window. “Nina Pavlovna said we were moving into your empty apartment today. And where’s the beige sofa? It’ll be hard for me to feed the baby without it…”
Maksim froze with a pair of socks in his hands. All the color drained from his face at once, leaving behind only a gray, frightened pallor.
Anna slowly shifted her gaze from her husband to the stroller, then to the girl—and suddenly burst into genuine, wholehearted laughter. So that was who the loving mother had been so determined to furnish a nest for. Oksanka had only been a cover story.
“Come in, sweetheart,” Anna said with a faint smile, gesturing toward the stunned traitor. “Take your treasure in full, suitcases and all. But the sofa stays. The sofa is now officially part of an active case file as evidence.”
