“Anya, I need money! Urgently!” Igor, her younger brother, kept circling around her.
“Everyone needs money. What do you want from me? If you need it, go earn it.”
Igor rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue, showing his irritation. He often asked his sister for financial help, but lately she herself had been struggling with money. Her salary had not been raised in years, rent had gone up, utility bills had become more expensive, and food prices were no better. Anya had stopped buying new clothes long ago. She no longer treated herself to little pleasures. She was surviving however she could, and now her brother had shown up again.
“I need it now! Do you understand?”
“Igor, I need things too. But I don’t run to you for help. This conversation is over. I don’t have any extra money right now. I can’t help you.”
Igor nodded. Something flashed in his eyes, something Anya could not quite name. Contempt? Hatred? No, not exactly. It was something else, something strange and unpleasant. She suddenly felt that her brother would bring her trouble, but she could not carry him on her shoulders for the rest of her life. After all, he was already a grown man.
Their family had never been stable, so their parents certainly would not help Igor. They could barely make ends meet themselves, spending everything they earned on destructive habits. Anya had tried so many times to bring them to their senses, but nothing had worked. Eventually, she decided that from now on she had to live for herself and take care of herself first. Who else would ever care about her?
Thinking that she should have sold the suburban house she had inherited from her grandmother a long time ago, so she could buy at least a small studio apartment in the city and stop paying rent, Anya decided to go there on the weekend.
Her brother came again the next day. He said he had lost his temper, apologized, and asked his sister not to be angry with him. He explained that it was hard to find steady work and that was why he could not get a proper permanent job. Igor’s behavior seemed odd, but Anya decided not to pay too much attention to it. He had acted strangely before. Then he asked if he could stay with her for a couple of days, saying he did not want to return to their parents’ house. Understanding why he felt that way, Anya agreed. He would not bother her anyway.
That weekend, the company where Anya worked had planned an off-site event. She could not go and check the house. Still, the question of selling it needed to be resolved as soon as possible.
Another week passed. Anya’s days were all the same: work, home, and attempts to save at least a little money. Igor, meanwhile, lived quietly in her rented apartment. He barely went outside, spent most of his time on his phone, and smiled strangely at his own thoughts. At first, Anya wanted to ask what was going on with him, but then she waved it off. The main thing was that he was no longer asking for money or causing trouble.
On Saturday morning, she finally got ready to visit her grandmother’s house. Igor lazily asked where she was going, but Anya answered briefly, “Business,” and her brother did not ask anything else. She spent a long time shaking in a bus along a broken road, then walked another twenty minutes to the familiar gate from her childhood.
The house looked the same as always, but something about it seemed strange to Anya. The windows were shining, as if someone had washed them. The place did not look abandoned. She took out her key and turned it in the lock, but it moved too easily, as if someone had recently oiled it.
Inside, it did not smell of dampness or dust. It smelled of… freshly ground coffee?
Anya froze in the hallway, listening carefully. Everything was quiet, but the silence felt deceptive.
She walked into the kitchen and stopped dead.
There was a cup of half-finished coffee on the table. Next to it lay an open newspaper and a pair of glasses that had never been there before. On the stove stood a clean frying pan. Someone had not simply spent the night here. Someone was living here.
A cold shiver ran through Anya, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She looked around in panic, grabbed a heavy rolling pin from the counter — the same one her grandmother had always kept close for making dough — and froze.
From upstairs came the long creak of a floorboard.
Footsteps.
Someone was slowly coming down the stairs, not hiding, not sneaking.
Anya gripped the rolling pin so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
A middle-aged man appeared, wearing a sweater and house pants. He looked at Anya without the slightest fear. If anything, he seemed confused. He stopped on the bottom step.
“Who are you?” he asked calmly, tilting his head slightly.
“Who am I?” Anya’s voice trembled with fear and outrage. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”
The man raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Your house?” he repeated. “Actually, I bought it a few days ago.”
“That’s impossible,” she whispered, unable to believe what she was hearing. “I didn’t sell it. No one could have sold it. The house belongs to me. Only me.”
The man looked at her carefully, as if trying to understand whether he was being deceived.
“Listen,” he said slowly. “Please lower the rolling pin. Let’s talk like normal people. I really did buy this house. If you are saying that you are the owner and that you never intended to sell it, then we need to figure this out together. I paid money for it. Quite a lot of money, actually. And I have the right to know what is going on too.”
The man came down the stairs, walked over to the kitchen table, and sat on a stool. He picked up the mug of now-cold coffee, took a few sips, and grimaced at the bitterness.
Anna tried to think, but all her thoughts were tangled.
He. Had. Bought. The house.
How? How could the transaction have gone through? What kind of new fraud was this? Or maybe he had not bought anything at all and was simply lying? The young woman narrowed her eyes, watching the stranger with suspicion.
“My name is Anatoly. I see that you don’t believe me. Wait here. I’ll bring the purchase agreement.”
The man left, and when he returned, he was holding a folder of documents. He opened it, read something, and then looked up at Anna.
“What is your name?”
“Anna,” she answered.
“Then you really are the owner. How could you forget that you gave another person power of attorney? The contract states that he acted on the basis of a general power of attorney issued by you.”
Anna snatched the documents, unable to believe her own eyes or ears. Everything that was happening felt like a ridiculous prank. She read the sale agreement carefully and slowly sank onto a chair.
She had not issued any power of attorney. She had done nothing of the kind.
But her brother…
The realization began to hit her little by little. Now she understood why Igor had been acting so strangely lately. He had not moved in with her for no reason. He had wanted access to her documents. Had he taken them secretly and then put them back? Pain squeezed her temples. Anna looked at Anatoly and let out a heavy sigh.
“This is fraud. A fraudulent transaction. I never issued any power of attorney, and I am ready to prove it in court.”
“In court? You want to sue me?” Anatoly asked in surprise. “If this is fraud, then I’m a victim too. It would be better for us to cooperate, Anna. I checked everything. The power of attorney looked completely legitimate.”
Anna nodded. She knew the power of attorney was legitimate. And she knew who could have arranged it.
That did not make it any easier.
A righteous anger began to boil inside her. Anna had not wanted things to end this way, but her brother had left her no other choice.
“Anatoly, give me your number. I’ll try to figure this out. I’ll call you as soon as I find out anything.”
“Of course. Keep me informed. We need to sort this out together,” the shocked man nodded. He clearly had never imagined that buying a house could lead to such consequences.
Anna returned home furious with her brother, ready to tear everything apart. But Igor was not in the apartment. His things were gone too.
Anna began calling him, but Igor’s phone was silent. Had he decided to run away with her money? It would run out sooner or later. Did he really think he would never have to come back?
Clenching her fists, Anna tried to control her emotions. There was no other way. Since Igor refused to contact her, she had to go to the police. Only then could she change anything. Only there could she seek justice.
Anna went to a local police officer she knew and told him what had happened.
“You couldn’t expect anything else from your brother. He has always thought only about himself and tried to get things through deception. But don’t worry. We’ll find him and make him answer according to the law… and his little girlfriend too.”
Olya.
The girl Igor dated from time to time. She worked as an assistant to a notary. If anyone could have made that cursed fake power of attorney, it was her.
They managed to intercept Olya and Igor at the airport, after they had already passed passport control and were preparing to board a flight heading south. When Igor saw the familiar face of the local officer and several uniformed policemen, he turned white as a sheet. Olya began trembling beside him and immediately started talking quickly, trying to justify herself and shift all the blame onto her boyfriend.
“It was all his idea!” she shouted, pointing at Igor. “I only prepared the documents at his request! I thought his sister had agreed! He told me she knew everything!”
Igor only gave a crooked smirk, realizing there was no point denying it. He was led away in handcuffs, and Olya followed.
Anya watched her brother, and there was nothing left in her chest except emptiness and pain. Not pity. Not love. Only the bitter understanding that someone of her own blood had turned out to be so rotten.
At the police station, Igor first tried to lie. He played the offended victim, shouted that he had only wanted what was best, but in the end he confessed. He had forged the power of attorney through Olya, using her access to forms and stamps.
The money from the sale of the house had gone to him. It was more than three million rubles. Part of it had gone toward paying off credit card debts he had accumulated because of his gambling addiction. The rest he had planned to spend on a new life with Olya, far away from his sister and all his problems.
Anatoly, whom Anya had invited to the station as another victim, sat silently, listening and occasionally shaking his head. He genuinely felt sorry for the young woman with the extinguished look in her eyes, betrayed by her own brother.
The investigation did not take long. Igor and Olya’s guilt was fully proven. Igor received a real prison sentence for large-scale fraud: four years in a general-regime penal colony. Olya, as his accomplice and as an employee of a notary office who had abused her position, also received a real sentence and was banned from working in the legal field in the future. The notary who supervised Olya received a strict reprimand and a large fine for failing to properly control his employees. The inspection showed that disorder had long reigned in the office.
Anna filed a civil lawsuit to recover the money. Since Igor had already spent part of the amount, the court ordered him to return the remaining money and also compensate Anna for moral damages.
Anatoly was worried that the real owner would want the house back, cancel the purchase agreement, and force him out. But Anna had planned to sell the house anyway. The money she managed to recover would be enough to buy a studio apartment, even if it was less than she had originally expected.
“Let the house remain yours, Anatoly,” Anna said quietly. “You bought it honestly, even though you didn’t know who you were dealing with. And I… I don’t want to go back there anymore.”
Anatoly nodded, thanked her, and added:
“If you ever need help, call me. We now have a strange, but shared story.”
Anya decided to start a new life. She quit the job where her salary had not been raised for years, packed her belongings, and moved to another city. Far away, where no one knew her or her troubled family.
The first weeks in the new place were not easy. Even in the cozy studio apartment in a new building, which she had found in a quiet neighborhood near a park, Anya caught herself thinking anxious thoughts. At night, she had nightmares: Igor knocking at the door, Olya handing her some papers with a fake smile, or herself standing in front of an empty house while the keys crumbled in her hands.
One morning, while drinking coffee on her small balcony, Anna suddenly realized that several days had passed without her thinking about what had happened with bitterness. The pain had not disappeared completely, but it was no longer sharp. In its place came something new — a strange, unfamiliar feeling of freedom.
She enrolled in landscape design courses. She had long dreamed of learning how to create beautiful gardens. At the first lesson, she met Vera, an energetic woman of about forty, who immediately suggested they have coffee together after class.
“You seem very tense,” Vera noticed when they sat down at a café table. “As if you expect everyone to betray you.”
Anna smiled involuntarily.
“Maybe I do. It’s just… I had a difficult year.”
“I understand,” Vera nodded. “I won’t pry. But if you ever want to talk, I’m here. And next Saturday my husband and I are having a barbecue at our dacha. Come. You’ll meet our friends.”
The invitation sounded so simple and sincere that Anya unexpectedly agreed.
On Saturday, she arrived with a box of pastries she had baked the day before. The group turned out to be loud, cheerful, and genuine. Someone played the guitar, children ran around the grill, and Vera winked at Anya.
“See? The world isn’t made only of scammers. There are decent people too.”
That evening, on her way home, Anna caught herself thinking that she had laughed sincerely for the first time in a very long while. She had not forgotten her brother’s betrayal. She had not forgiven him. But she no longer allowed that event to control her life.
One day, while unpacking boxes, Anya found an old photograph. In it, she was seven years old, standing between her parents, while Igor pulled her by the hand, showing her some little bug. For a moment, her heart tightened, but then the pain was replaced by calm acceptance.
“That happened. But it is over now. Everything has changed.”
She put the photo away in a far drawer and left only new pictures in sight: photos from her courses, from Vera’s picnic, and selfies from the café across the street.
In the new city, in her own studio apartment, Anya finally breathed freely. Her brother’s betrayal remained in the past, and she firmly decided that no one would ever again be allowed to use her kindness. She would no longer be a naive fool, ready to help her loved ones endlessly while forgetting about herself. And she no longer had anything in common with the family that had only used her.
Let them all go their own way.
Anya had a better life waiting for her.
And now, no one would drag her back down.
