The passport was lying on the manager’s glass desk.
A blue cover.
The corner of a medical insurance card was sticking out from underneath it, and Oksana never kept her insurance card inside her passport cover.
Denis, the car dealership manager, clicked his mouse.
“So, we’re registering it under your wife’s name?” he asked, looking at the monitor.
Kostya smiled.
Broadly. Confidently.
“Yes,” he said. “Go ahead.”
Oksana reached for the passport and pulled it toward her.
She opened it.
From the photo, a blonde woman with pumped-up lips stared back at her.
Svetlana Nikolaevna.
Kostya’s sister.
Something inside Oksana clicked and locked shut.
She raised her eyes to her husband.
Konstantin was sitting calmly, one leg crossed over the other. He smelled of the expensive cologne she herself had once given him.
“Kostya,” Oksana said quietly. “This is your sister’s passport.”
“Ksyusha, let’s talk about this at home,” Konstantin leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “I’ll explain everything. Denis, continue.”
The manager froze.
His fingers hovered above the keyboard.
Oksana looked at her husband as if she were seeing a stranger.
They had been saving for this car for three years.
Or rather, she had been saving.
One million eight hundred and fifty thousand rubles.
Of that, one million two hundred thousand came from the sale of her late father’s country house.
The rest was from her bonuses and strict saving.
“Ksyu, don’t start,” Kostya hissed through his teeth. “People are watching.”
Oksana silently fastened her handbag.
Then she stood up.
“There will be no deal,” she told Denis.
“Miss, we’re already preparing the vehicle documents!” the manager protested.
“Prepare whatever you want. I’m not paying.”
She turned and walked toward the exit.
Her husband’s stare burned into her back.
Outside, damp November air met her face. A sharp wind was blowing, and the year 2025 promised no warm winter.
Kostya caught up with her in the parking lot.
He grabbed her by the elbow.
“What the hell was that?” he hissed.
Oksana yanked her arm away.
His grip loosened.
“That was me?” she asked, looking straight into his eyes. “You brought Svetka’s passport to buy my car.”
“Our car!” Konstantin raised his voice. “We’re married.”
Oksana gave a bitter little laugh.
“Really? Ours? My country house. My maternity savings. And somehow Svetlana’s passport. Explain yourself.”
Kostya glanced around.
A security guard on the steps was watching them.
“Let’s get in the car. I mean, in a taxi.”
They sat in the back seat of a yellow crossover.
Kostya gave the driver the address.
The taxi driver turned away toward the navigation screen.
“Listen, Oksanka,” her husband began in a conciliatory tone. “Svetka has problems.”
“Again?” she asked coldly.
“She has microloan debts. Four hundred and thirty thousand. The bailiffs blocked her cards.”
Oksana looked out the window.
Gray apartment blocks blurred into one endless wall.
“And what does that have to do with my car?”
“She’s going to start baking cakes to order,” Kostya said confidently. “She’ll deliver them to clients. She needs a respectable car for deliveries. A crossover is perfect.”
“My crossover. For almost two million.”
“Just understand!” Kostya threw up his hands. “If we register it under my name, it becomes marital property. They’ll take her old car, but they won’t touch the new one if she only drives it. But to be safe, it’s better to register it under her name right away. And with a power of attorney, I’ll be able to drive it too!”
“Kostya, are you sick?” Oksana turned to face him. “You were planning to secretly give my car to your sister.”
“I’m not giving it away! She’ll just use it. We’re family, Ksyusha.”
Family.
That word always appeared whenever Konstantin needed her money.
They rode the rest of the way in silence.
Oksana paid the taxi driver with her own card.
Her husband did not even reach for his wallet.
The entrance hall of the building smelled of bleach.
The key turned stiffly in the lock.
Oksana pushed open the door to her apartment.
The apartment had been bought by her before the marriage.
A three-room place in a residential district.
Kostya had moved in with one tracksuit and a gaming console.
In the hallway stood someone else’s boots.
Women’s suede boots, stained with de-icing chemicals.
Beside them were worn-out winter boots.
From the kitchen came the smell of fried chicken and cheap vanilla air freshener.
Oksana took off her coat and walked down the corridor.
At her kitchen table sat Zinaida Petrovna.
Her mother-in-law.
She was cutting a loaf of bread directly on the countertop, without a cutting board.
Across from her sat Svetlana in a pink tracksuit, phone in hand.
On the table stood a bottle of cheap champagne.
“Oh, you’re finally here!” Zinaida barked. “Well? Are we celebrating?”
Svetlana put down her phone.
“Where are the keys?” she asked.
No hello.
Straight to business.
Oksana leaned against the doorframe.
Her lower stomach went cold with rage.
“What keys, Svetik?”
Kostya squeezed past Oksana.
“Mom, Sveta… There’s been a little complication.”
Svetlana jumped to her feet.
The chair scraped across the tile.
“What complication, Kostyan? I have two orders to deliver out of town tomorrow! You promised me the car.”
Oksana shifted her gaze from her husband to her sister-in-law.
“He promised you my car?”
“Our car,” Zinaida Petrovna corrected her. “Everything is shared in a family. If you’re too stingy to help your husband’s sister, just say so. You work from home anyway. Sit at your computer all day. What do you need wheels for?”
Oksana walked over to the table.
She picked up the loaf of bread, placed it on a cutting board, swept the crumbs from the countertop into her palm, and threw them into the sink.
Her movements were precise.
Mechanical.
“Zinaida Petrovna. This is my kitchen. And in this kitchen, bread is cut on a cutting board.”
Her mother-in-law pursed her lips.
“Look at her, such a city lady. We came with open hearts, ready to celebrate.”
Oksana turned to her husband.
“You brought them here while we were at the dealership? You gave them keys?”
Konstantin scratched the back of his head.
“Well, they came to celebrate the purchase…”
“My purchase.”
“There she goes again: mine, mine!” Svetka snapped. “My brother paid half! He has the right to decide.”
Oksana laughed softly.
“Half? Svetlana, your brother earns seventy thousand. Forty of that goes toward the loan on the last car he crashed. We eat on my money. I pay the utilities. Where exactly is his half?”
“Oh, listen to her counting pennies!” Zinaida Petrovna waved her hand dismissively. “A man in the house is support. And you’re throwing coins in his face. Kostya told me himself: ‘Mom, Oksanka will make a fuss, but she’ll sign. She loves me.’”
That sentence hit harder than a slap.
Oksana looked at Kostya.
He looked away.
“You said that?”
“Ksyu, Mom is exaggerating.”
“I’m exaggerating?!” the mother-in-law shrieked. “You said it yourself yesterday! You said she has no one. Her father is dead, her mother is gone. Where would she go? She’ll put up with it just to have a pair of trousers in the house!”
Silence fell.
The hum of the refrigerator became audible.
Inside Oksana, nothing hurt anymore.
There was only absolute, ringing emptiness.
She looked at her husband without her former pain.
Simply like trash someone had forgotten to take out.
“I see,” Oksana said.
“What do you see?” Svetlana bristled. “Are you picking up the car from the dealership tomorrow or not? Should I call my clients?”
“Cancel your orders, Sveta.”
“What?!”
“You can walk. Or take the train.”
Kostya stepped forward, shielding his sister with his body.
“Oksana, you’re going too far. This is my family.”
“Yours. Not mine.”
She left the kitchen and went into the bedroom.
She opened the closet and took out the large sports bag Konstantin used for the gym.
The zipper tore open with a loud rasp.
Oksana began throwing his clothes from the shelves.
Sweaters, jeans, T-shirts.
She shoved them into the bag without folding them.
In crumpled heaps.
Her husband appeared in the doorway behind her.
“What are you doing?”
“Packing you up for your family.”
“Ksyusha, stop this hysterics!” Kostya tried to grab her hands.
She spun around sharply.
In her hand was his heavy belt with an iron buckle.
“Step back.”
He recoiled.
There were no tears in her eyes.
Only icy determination.
She zipped the bag shut and dragged it into the hallway.
Her mother-in-law and sister-in-law rushed out of the kitchen.
“Where are you taking my son’s things?!” Zinaida shouted.
“To the exit.”
Oksana pushed the bag toward the front door.
She unlocked it and flung it open onto the stairwell.
“The exit is there. All three of you.”
“Have you lost your mind?!” Svetka planted her hands on her hips. “This is his apartment too! He’s registered here!”
“Temporarily. For one year,” Oksana said through clenched teeth. “The registration ended in September. I didn’t renew it.”
Kostya went pale.
“What do you mean, you didn’t renew it?”
“Quietly. Through the government services portal. You are nobody here, Kostyan. Just a guest. And your time is up.”
She walked back into the living room.
Kostya rushed after her.
“Ksyusha, wait! Let’s sit down. Forget the car. To hell with the car! We’ll register it under your name.”
“This isn’t about the car, Kostik. This is about you stealing my money for your sister. And then your mother saying I cling to your trousers.”
Oksana walked over to the television.
Beside it lay her husband’s gaming console.
A PlayStation 5.
He had bought it for himself for New Year’s using her credit card, which he had promised to pay off.
He never had.
She grabbed the console and two controllers.
The cables clattered onto the laminate floor.
“Put that back!” Konstantin shouted. “That’s expensive!”
She swung her arm and threw the console straight through the open front door.
The plastic cracked loudly against the concrete floor of the stairwell.
The controllers flew in different directions.
“My credit card. My console. I have the right to break it.”
Svetka squealed.
“She’s insane! Kostya, call the police!”
“Call them,” Oksana nodded. “At the same time, I’ll tell the bailiffs where you’re hiding, Svetlana. You owe almost half a million. They’ll be happy to seize your property. Your phone, for example. Latest iPhone, right? Whose money paid for that?”
Her sister-in-law instinctively hid the phone behind her back.
Zinaida Petrovna clutched her chest.
“She’s killing us… Son, she’s torturing us!”
“Out,” Oksana said without raising her voice.
Konstantin stood in the middle of the hallway.
Red-faced and sweaty.
His perfect hairstyle had fallen apart.
“You’ll regret this,” he said through his teeth. “I’ll sue you for half your savings. They were acquired during the marriage. You saved for three years. I’ll prove it!”
“Go ahead. The accounts are in my mother’s sister’s name. Officially, on my card, I only have my salary.”
He blinked.
“What do you mean, in your aunt’s name?”
“Exactly that, Kostya. I’ve lived with you for three years. I saw how Svetka takes out loans. I knew that one day you people would come for my money.”
She took a step toward him.
He backed toward the door.
“Gather your rags,” Oksana said.
She picked up the unfamiliar suede boots and simply threw them out onto the landing, right onto the broken pieces of the console.
Svetka rushed after her shoes.
Zinaida Petrovna, groaning, reached for her coat.
Kostya stepped over the threshold.
“You’ll end up alone,” he spat. “A lonely old maid no one needs.”
Oksana picked up his sneakers from the floor.
Expensive ones.
Branded.
She threw them as if they burned her fingers.
They hit her husband in the chest.
“Better alone than with a thief,” she answered.
And slammed the door.
The lock clicked twice.
Then she slid the night latch into place.
From behind the door came muffled banging.
“Open up, you idiot! I forgot my passport!” Kostya shouted.
Oksana went into the bedroom.
She opened the nightstand and took out his burgundy passport cover.
Then she returned to the hallway.
She opened the door only as far as the safety chain allowed and pushed the document through the gap.
The passport slapped onto the dirty tile floor.
She closed the door again.
This time, for good.
The apartment was silent.
It smelled of fried chicken and vanilla.
Oksana walked to the window.
Down below, near the entrance, three people were standing together.
Konstantin was waving his arms, trying to prove something to his mother.
Svetka was digging through her phone.
Oksana poured herself a glass of water and drank it in one gulp.
Her hands were not even shaking.
She had saved one million eight hundred thousand.
She had gotten rid of a leech of a husband and his entire family.
That night, Kostya sent her a message:
“I hired a lawyer. You’ll answer for the broken console and for moral damages. Give me the car, or I’ll leave you with nothing.”
Oksana blocked his number.
Tomorrow, she would go back to the dealership and buy that very car.
She would register it under her aunt’s name and drive it with a general power of attorney.
And what would you have done in her place: paid her husband back for the broken console, or sent him a bill for three years of free housing?
