“Artyom, we’ve been on four dates,” I said quietly, staring at the papers he had placed on the table in front of me. “Four. And you already want to take my apartment?”
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t even look away. He simply leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together like a lawyer settling in for negotiations.
“Lena, that’s not what this is.”
“Then what is it?” I slid the document back toward him. “Go on. Explain it to me.”
Outside, a thin April rain kept falling. Petty, persistent, irritating—the same way everything had felt for the last two weeks. I looked at Artyom Volkov and tried to figure out when exactly I had stopped seeing a man and started seeing a scheme. Because that was what sat across from me now: a scheme. Nicely packaged, smelling good, with dimples in his cheeks that, foolishly, I had mistaken for sincerity.
I’m forty-seven years old. Not some naive girl. I had lived through a divorce, my mother’s death, and my ex-husband’s bankruptcy, which had nearly dragged me down with him. I had clawed this apartment back with my own hands, fought for it in court for three years, spent sleepless nights reading legal forums, and in the end I won. This apartment is my fortress. My one hundred and fourteen square meters of silence and safety.
And now Artyom Volkov was placing documents in front of me for a joint business venture secured by my real estate.
After four dates.
We met in February, at Svetlana Korshunova’s birthday party. Sveta had been my friend since school. Twice divorced, she considered it her mission in life to fix everyone else’s love life. Artyom showed up as “a friend of a friend”—the kind of guest nobody really knows, yet everyone pretends they do.
He was charming. Not pushy, not syrupy—exactly the kind of charm women our age fall for. Calm, witty, able to listen. He was fifty-two, looked forty-five, and spoke about business without bragging, as if he were simply talking about everyday life.
“I work in construction materials,” he told me when we ended up beside each other near the appetizers. “Sounds dull, but it’s actually interesting. Logistics, people, constant problem-solving.”
“And what makes it interesting?” I asked, because I’ve always had a habit of asking one more question.
He looked at me with mild surprise. Apparently most people just nodded.
“Because every building project is someone’s dream,” he said. “Someone is building a house, someone a shop, someone a kindergarten. I get to be part of that.”
It was a beautiful line. I remember thinking exactly that: beautiful. I didn’t suspect anything then. I simply noted that he knew how to talk.
Sveta called me that evening.
“So? What do you think of Artyom? Handsome, right? He asked about you.”
“He seems fine,” I said cautiously.
“Lena, ‘fine’ is your highest rating and you know it. He asked for your number.”
I gave it to him. First time in three years I had given my number to a man I didn’t know.
Our first date was at a little coffee shop on Maroseyka Street. Two hours of conversation, cardamom coffee, his stories about growing up in Voronezh, my stories about starting out as an accountant and hating every second of it. He laughed the right way—not at the jokes, but with me at the absurdity of the situations.
“What do you do now?” he asked.
“I manage rental properties. I own three small commercial spaces. Nothing huge, but they’re steady.”
“You built that yourself?”
“Myself,” I said.
He nodded in a way that made it seem like that mattered to him. As though that was exactly what he respected.
Then came the second date—dinner at an Italian restaurant. He paid without turning it into a performance. The third date was a walk through Neskuchny Garden. April had suddenly turned warm, and we talked about our children as we wandered along the paths. He had a twenty-five-year-old son living on his own. I had a twenty-two-year-old daughter, married and living in Saint Petersburg.
“Don’t you get lonely?” he asked.
“I’ve lived alone for eight years,” I said. “I’ve already figured out it’s not a punishment.”
He took my hand. Just took it and held it for the rest of the walk. And I let him.
The fourth date was at his place. He cooked dinner himself—duck with oranges, a bottle of Burgundy. I remember thinking: either he does this regularly for every woman, or I actually mean something. I chose to believe the second. That was my mistake.
After dinner, he showed me a photo album. Construction sites, completed projects, business partners. Then he started talking about a new development—warehouse space outside Podolsk, good land, an anchor tenant already lined up, all he needed was short-term operating capital for three months.
“Banks are impossible right now,” he said. “The rates are insane. I’m looking for a private partner, someone I trust.”
I listened and nodded. I felt good. Relaxed. I was on my second glass of wine. I didn’t hear the alarm bell. Or rather, I heard it and decided it was just my own paranoia.
“How much?” I asked.
“Four million. For three months. Twenty percent annualized.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Of course,” he said gently. “No pressure.”
Three days later, a courier delivered the paperwork.
With my apartment listed as collateral.
“Lena, this is standard practice,” he was saying now, his voice still even, still soothing. “Collateral protects you too. It means the deal is serious. It means I’m not planning to disappear.”
“Collateral means that if anything goes wrong, you take my apartment,” I said. “Let’s call things by their names.”
“Nothing is going to go wrong.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
I stood and walked to the window. The rain had not let up. On the street below, a woman was tugging a child in a red raincoat along the sidewalk, while the child strained backward, staring at a puddle with that stubborn fascination children reserve for exactly what they are forbidden to touch.
“Artyom,” I said without turning around, “can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
A pause. Barely a second. But I heard it.
“Doing what, exactly?”
I turned back to face him.
“Meeting women at parties. Gaining their trust. Then offering them a business arrangement with real estate as collateral.”
He looked at me. Something changed in his face—not dramatically, almost invisibly, but I was paying attention.
“Are you accusing me of something?”
“No,” I said. “I’m asking a question.”
That same night I called Sveta.
“Where did you get Volkov?” I asked without preamble.
“What?” She sounded half asleep. “Lena, it’s one-thirty in the morning.”
“Where did Artyom Volkov come from at your party? Who brought him?”
I heard rustling, a pause, the click of a lamp being switched on.
“Gena Samoylov brought him, I think. They play tennis together or something. Why? What happened?”
“Nothing. Who’s Gena?”
“Ira Samoylova’s husband. You know her. They moved to Podolsk last year, bought something there.” Her voice sharpened with concern. “Lena, what is going on?”
“Go back to sleep,” I said. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
Podolsk. Warehouses outside Podolsk.
I opened my laptop.
I’m not an investigator. Not a detective. I’m an accountant by training and a property owner by profession. But eight years of living alone and three years of legal battles with my ex-husband taught me one skill that matters: how to follow a trail.
Artyom Volkov. His tax ID was easy enough to find—he had handed me a business card, and the company details were on it. LLC StroyGarant, registered in 2019. Charter capital: ten thousand rubles. Sole founder and director: Artyom Sergeyevich Volkov.
Then I went into the commercial court database.
Twenty minutes later, I had found three cases. In 2021, a lawsuit from one Dmitry Petrovich Ryabov for three million two hundred thousand. In 2022, a lawsuit from LLC Mercury for two million. In 2023, a claim from a private individual, Natalia Andreevna Semyonova, for four and a half million.
Volkov lost all three.
In every case, the court ordered repayment. In the first two, enforcement proceedings were later closed due to impossibility of collection. Which, in plain terms, meant there was nothing there to seize.
In the third case, the judgment had been issued seven months ago. The enforcement proceeding was still active.
Natalia Andreevna Semyonova.
I found her through the case file—her address was listed in the documents. At one in the morning, I sent an email to a random old address I had managed to dig up on some forgotten forum. I didn’t expect an answer.
The answer came at seven in the morning.
“Hello. Yes, it’s me. Did you meet him at someone’s party too?”
Natalia came to see me that very day. A small woman of about fifty, with a neat haircut and the calm eyes of someone who has already finished grieving.
“I lost my dacha,” she said, wrapping both hands around a cup of tea. “Twenty sotkas of land, a house my husband and I spent twelve years building. He had died three years earlier, and I was alone, and I…” She stopped for a moment. “I was alone, and I felt good with Artyom. Do you understand? Just good. He knows how to do that—how to be beside you in a way that makes you feel good.”
“How long were you seeing him before he proposed the deal?”
“Six dates. He worked on me longer.” There was no bitterness in her voice, only tired precision. “Later, a lawyer explained it to me. The scheme is designed for women who live alone, own property, and don’t have legal experience. He chooses very carefully.”
“Why isn’t he in prison?”
“Because technically this is civil law. I signed the papers. Voluntarily. In sound mind. No one threatened me. From his side, it was just a deal.” She looked at me. “Ryabov and Mercury were men. Men fall for him too, just differently. With us, he uses relationships.”
I sat there thinking about what he had said that first night. Every building project is someone’s dream. Beautiful. I had noticed how beautiful it sounded. And I had believed it was real.
“What are you going to do?” Natalia asked.
“I don’t know yet,” I said honestly. “But he is not getting my apartment.”
I agreed to meet Artyom one more time.
He suggested the same café on Maroseyka where we had our first date. A clever move. Return to a good memory. I said yes.
He arrived smiling, ordered cardamom coffee just like before, asked how I was feeling. Every detail was calculated.
“I’ve thought about your proposal,” I said.
“And?” he asked, calm and pleasant.
“I met Natalia Semyonova.”
A pause.
“Who?”
“The woman who met you at a party in 2022. Six dates. Warehouses outside Serpukhov. Her dacha used as collateral. The property ended up transferred to an LLC you dissolved three months after the deal.”
He lowered his cup slowly.
“Lena…”
“I also found Ryabov and Mercury,” I continued evenly. “Three lost lawsuits, two dead-end enforcement cases. You work cleanly, Artyom. Legally speaking, almost flawlessly. You do understand I didn’t come here to make a scene?”
“Then why did you come?”
“To warn you.”
He looked at me. Something had shifted in him—not enough for the mask to fall completely, but enough for me to see beneath it. There was no movie villain there, no monster. Just a tired middle-aged man who had found a method that worked and had long ago stopped thinking about the people it worked on.
“To warn me about what?” he asked quietly.
“I sent everything I found—the court cases, the documents, the pattern—to a lawyer. Not mine. Natalia’s lawyer. She’s filing again on new grounds, because now there’s a pattern. Three episodes make a pattern, Artyom. At that point, the conversation stops being just about civil law.”
He said nothing.
“You told me you have a twenty-five-year-old son,” I said. “I don’t know whether that’s true or not. But if it is, think about him.”
I stood, left cash for my coffee on the table, and walked toward the door.
“Lena,” he said behind me.
I stopped, but I didn’t turn around.
“I wouldn’t have taken your apartment.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But you would have taken my confidence that I know how to choose people. And that’s worth more than an apartment.”
Then I walked out.
Outside, the rain had stopped. I walked down Maroseyka thinking that I wasn’t angry. Not at all. Only tired. And something else—not hurt, not exactly. Something almost like pity, though not for myself.
Sveta called that evening.
“So how did things go with Artyom?” she asked lightly.
“It didn’t work out,” I said.
“Oh, that’s a shame. He was so handsome.”
“Yes,” I said. “He was.”
A week later Natalia texted me: the lawyer had taken the case, and there was hope.
Gena Samoylov, the man who had brought Artyom to that birthday party, turned out not to be a close friend at all—just a casual acquaintance from some club. Artyom had pushed his way in on his own. That too was part of the pattern: find an event where the right kind of people will be, then find a way to be there.
I thought about all of it for days. About how accurately he had read me: alone, with property, with a history of fighting to protect that property—which meant I understood its value and would be attached to it. And at the same time: three years without closeness, without someone taking my hand and holding it until the end of a walk.
His analysis of me had been correct.
What he hadn’t calculated was something else.
A woman who spends three years fighting for her apartment also learns how to read documents.
In May, I did meet another man after all. Not at a party—in a tax office line, which probably says something very precise about both of us. He was a retired tax inspector, divorced, fond of gardening and historical novels. Sounds dull.
We had coffee once. Then a second time.
On the third date, he said:
“You’re very cautious.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“It’s not a bad thing,” he replied. “Just interesting.”
I looked at him. An ordinary man. No dimples. No poetic speeches about other people’s dreams. Just a man in glasses looking at me—and not calculating, just looking.
“I have an apartment,” I said for some reason.
“So do I,” he answered, a little puzzled. “Is that important?”
“No,” I said. “Just warning you.”
He laughed—not because it was especially funny, but because he didn’t understand and he felt good sitting there with me. At least, that’s how it seemed.
And I taught myself a long time ago not to trust what only seems to be true.
But sometimes—very rarely—I allow myself to try.
