“You built your success on our bones, Olechka,” Zinaida Karpovna announced with feeling, carefully pushing away the cup of my best jasmine oolong. “If my Vasenka hadn’t nobly stepped aside back then, we would be sitting in this beautiful apartment now as its rightful owners.”
I looked silently at my uninvited guests.
Working as the chief accountant at the circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, I had long ago learned one golden rule: if someone enters the ring in ridiculous shoes and a red nose, don’t expect a lecture on quantum physics. Expect them to trip.
On my computer screen, the depreciation report for the Ussuri tiger enclosure was still open, and in my kitchen, ten years after his spectacular escape from our wedding, my ex-fiancé Vasya had suddenly materialized with his mother.
Vasya sat opposite me, lounging with his arms spread across the back of my expensive kitchen chair. He looked like a typical graduate of some free online marathon called How to Become a Millionaire in Three Days: a worn-out jacket pretending to be “casual style,” eyes shiny with strain, and a persistent cloud of cheap cologne clearly meant to imitate the smell of success.
“Mom is right, Olya,” Vasily added gravely, folding his fingers into a little steeple. “I didn’t come here for no reason. I’ve gone through a long journey of spiritual transformation, and I realized I need to close this chapter. You married Mishka too quickly. Literally six months after I left. That raises certain questions. Admit it — you two planned everything behind my back, didn’t you?”
I calmly took a sip of coffee.
Inside, nothing stirred. No pain, no old bitterness. Just a mild, almost athletic curiosity about how far human audacity could stretch before snapping.
“What questions, Vasya?” I asked politely. “Let me remind you of the timeline. You disappeared one week before the wedding. You left me with an unpaid banquet hall bill, a sobbing mother, and a wedding dress I later had to sell online. And Misha — who, by the way, was your best friend at the time — simply came over to help me move my things out of that rented dump you proudly called ‘our little nest.’”
“There!” Zinaida Karpovna raised one finger triumphantly, flashing a gold crown on her tooth. “He took advantage of your vulnerability! And my Vasya suffered! He left for another city so he wouldn’t interfere with your… your treacherous happiness! He sacrificed himself!”
“We men of the new generation think in terms of resources!” Vasily declared pompously, adjusting the lapel of his jacket as if it had been tailored on Savile Row and not bought on clearance at a chain store. “Back then, I delegated responsibility for your emotional state to Mikhail, because my inner investor demanded personal scaling, not immersion in domestic routine!”
“Your inner investor, Vasya,” I replied evenly, resting my elbows on the table, “was demanding that you urgently pay off two payday loans and a credit debt for a gaming console. And the only thing you delegated was your dirty cups, which Mikhail quietly washed the day he helped me pack my boxes.”
Vasily choked on his prepared speech. His Adam’s apple jerked nervously, and then he stretched his lips into a smile far too quickly — a smile so pathetic that even his mother looked at him with disgusted confusion.
He began fidgeting in his chair, turning red and puffing like a carp thrown onto a riverbank and suddenly asked to deliver a lecture on macroeconomics.
“Don’t twist his words!” Zinaida Karpovna shrieked, rushing to defend her son. “The fact remains: Mikhail stole Vasya’s destiny! And now Misha owns a construction company, while my boy has to rent a room in Mytishchi! It’s unfair! Mikhail owes Vasya compensation for stealing the idea of marrying you!”
I raised an eyebrow.
The circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard could take the day off. The clowns were probably smoking nervously backstage.
“Compensation? For the idea of marriage?” I laughed sincerely. “Zinaida Karpovna, are you aware that under the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, ideas, concepts, and intentions are not objects of copyright and are not legally protected? Article 1259, by the way. So you won’t be able to sue Misha for stealing the idea of marrying me.”
“What does court have to do with it?” Vasya finally slapped his palm on the table. “Olya, open your eyes! Your Misha is a cynical manipulator! Do you really think he comforted you out of the goodness of his heart? He bought me!”
Silence fell over the kitchen.
Zinaida Karpovna froze with her mouth open.
I stopped smiling.
“Bought you?” I asked quietly.
“Yes!” Vasya, sensing that he finally had my attention, grew encouraged, convinced he had cracked my armor at last. “A week before the wedding, he and I were sitting in a bar. I was complaining that I wasn’t ready, that marriage was a trap. And he offered me a deal. He said, ‘If you don’t value Olya, give her up to me.’ And he gave me two million rubles! In cash! Can you imagine what kind of scoundrel he is? He took advantage of my weakness!”
I looked at Vasily and felt a ten-year-old puzzle click neatly into place in my mind.
Misha had never told me the details of their last conversation. He had only said, “Vasya decided to move on, and I decided to stay.”
Two million.
Back then, that was enough to buy a decent one-bedroom apartment.
“Wait, Vasenka…” Zinaida Karpovna’s voice suddenly trembled. She slowly turned toward her son. “What two million? You told me you left with nothing but a sports bag, out of nobility! You’ve been borrowing my pension for ten years ‘to develop your business’! Where is the money, Judas?”
Vasya turned pale.
It seemed that in the heat of his accusations, he had forgotten that his mother was unaware of certain financial details of his “spiritual transformation.”
“Mom, those were investments!” he muttered, shifting away from her on the chair. “I invested in a crypto farm! Our partner turned out to be a fraud… I wanted the best for the family!”
I watched the scene and felt a deep, almost luxurious satisfaction.
“By the way,” I said, interrupting their emerging family drama, “you know, Vasya, there’s a simple rule in finance called the Rule of 72. If you divide 72 by the average annual interest rate, you can estimate how many years it takes for your capital to double. If you had simply placed those two million from Misha into a basic bank deposit at modest interest, instead of getting involved with crypto, you would have had more than five million by now. Instead, you have a rented room in Mytishchi and debt.”
Vasya stared at me with open hatred.
Zinaida Karpovna looked at Vasya as if calculating which part of his body would be most convenient for pouring the rest of her hot coffee onto.
“You came here demanding justice?” I stood up, making it clear that the audience was over. “Justice has already been served. You, Vasya, valued me at two million and flushed the money down the toilet. Misha paid that money because he believed I was worth more than any investment. And he wasn’t wrong. We built a home, had two children, and opened a business. He wasn’t a manipulator. He was a brilliant strategist who bought out the problem asset — you — at the perfect time and cleared toxic waste from my life.”
“Go to hell!” Vasya barked, jumping to his feet.
The “successful man” jacket wrinkled pitifully across his back.
“Let’s go, Mom! We’re not welcome here!”
“Oh, I’ll show you ‘let’s go,’ you parasite,” Zinaida Karpovna hissed, snatching up her fake-leather handbag. “You’ll be running all the way to Mytishchi on foot! Two million! Because of you, I covered the roof at the dacha with roofing felt, while you were throwing millions around!”
They argued all the way down the hallway.
The front door slammed, cutting off their absurd, чужая life from my perfect apartment.
I returned to the kitchen, loaded the cups into the dishwasher, and wiped the dirty table clean. Then I picked up my phone and called my husband.
“Yes, sweetheart?” Misha answered through the noise of drills and hammering from the construction site.
“Mish, tell me honestly,” I smiled, looking out the window at the sunlit courtyard. “If Vasya had asked for five million ten years ago, would you have negotiated?”
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, and then my husband’s low, velvety laugh filled the phone.
“I would’ve taken out a loan, Olya. With inflation, you’re priceless now. What happened — did Vasya show up?”
“He did,” I said, leaning against the windowsill. “And he left. Deeply in the red. Come home early tonight. I’ll make your favorite roast. Investors should be well fed.”
