“Mom was right. You’re dragging me down! You’re just an ordinary salesgirl, and I have prospects! Mom found me the daughter of her boss. That is my level. Pack your things. I’m filing for divorce. I need a high-status wife, not a gray little mouse!” Sergey declared, contemptuously throwing his wedding ring onto the kitchen table.
The golden band struck the glass tabletop with a sharp metallic sound, rolled a few inches, and stopped beside a cup of cold black tea. Anna slowly put her fork down on the plate with her unfinished dinner. She sat across from her husband in a light gray knitted lounge set, her hair neatly gathered into a tight bun, and looked at him with cold, almost analytical interest. There was no panic on her face. No surprise. No pain.
“A high-status wife, then,” Anna repeated in an even, emotionless voice, dabbing her lips with a paper napkin. “And what exactly will her status be? The fact that she knows how to spend her daddy’s money beautifully and thoughtlessly while you obediently carry shopping bags for her from designer boutiques?”
“The fact that she’s from my world!” Sergey yanked loose the knot of his expensive silk tie, the one he had bought last week with Anna’s credit card. “Alisa has two university degrees. She speaks fluent French. She moves in elite circles. And you? What can you offer me, Anya? Stories about scanning discounted pasta at the checkout today? Or exciting tales about missing stock in the warehouse? I’ve outgrown you. I’m the deputy head of a department at a major investment company. My position doesn’t allow me to show up at corporate events with a woman who spends all day standing behind a counter.”
“Remind me, Deputy Head,” Anna said, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning calmly back in her chair, “who paid for your MBA while you were ‘finding yourself’ for three long years? Whose ordinary salesgirl salary covered the mortgage payments for this very apartment, where you’re now standing like an offended aristocrat? Back then, you wouldn’t even go to job interviews because you claimed ordinary manager positions insulted your extraordinary human dignity.”
“That was a temporary phase!” Sergey snapped, waving her words away as if swatting an annoying fly. He paced around the kitchen, shoving his hands into the pockets of his perfectly pressed trousers. “Every successful man goes through a difficult stage of career development. You just happened to be nearby at the right moment, that’s all. But now I’m firmly on my feet. Senior management has noticed my potential. Mom arranged a dinner for Alisa and me at a good restaurant, and we understood each other immediately. We have the same ambitious goals. She sees me as a promising partner, and her father is ready to bring me onto the board of directors of his construction holding right after the wedding. This is a completely different scale of life, Anya. You wouldn’t understand.”
“So Tamara Pavlovna, while working as a simple senior accountant for Alisa’s father, suddenly decided to match the only heiress of an empire with her own son?” Anna gave a small smile, and in that brief smile there was open, icy contempt. “And a multimillionaire just agreed to give his golden, elite daughter to a man who only earned the title of deputy a month ago? What a breathtaking fairy tale. And you, with your outstanding analytical mind, believed in this incredible act of charity from a business shark?”
“My mind allows me to see opportunities your narrow thinking simply can’t reach!” Sergey barked, placing both hands on the tabletop and leaning aggressively over his wife. “You’re angry because you understand perfectly well how insignificant you are compared to her. You’re simply jealous. Mom warned me right away that you would start making sarcastic remarks, belittling my achievements, and clinging to me with both hands. But I’ve made my final decision. I’m moving into Alisa’s apartment in the city center. And you can stay here with your borscht and your two-days-on, two-days-off shifts. Tomorrow I’ll send a courier for the rest of my things.”
“Oh, don’t trouble the courier service,” Anna said without moving even a millimeter, calmly meeting her husband’s heavy, drilling stare. “You can go to the storage room right now, take your leather travel suitcase, and pack your ambitions, your Italian suits, and your genius into it. Just don’t forget to leave the keys to my car on the cabinet before you go. As far as I remember, it’s hardly appropriate for a high-status groom to drive a car officially registered to a gray mouse from a grocery store.”
Sergey audibly ground his teeth. The mention of the car, which he loved showing off in front of his new colleagues, clearly knocked him off balance. He had expected pleading, begging, perhaps Anna throwing herself around his neck and humiliating herself by asking him not to destroy their marriage. His inflated male ego demanded a grand, dramatic farewell. Instead, he received a dry, practical inventory of property.
“We bought the car during the marriage,” he hissed through clenched teeth, straightening sharply. “It’s joint marital property.”
“You’re mistaken, dear,” Anna said lightly, rising from her chair. She walked to the sink and began calmly, methodically washing her plate with a sponge. For a moment, the sound of running water filled the kitchen. “My father gave me that car under a gift agreement a year before you were gracious enough to propose. The documents are in the blue folder in the office. You can refresh your memory if your brilliant brain can’t hold such basic legal information. So tonight you’ll go to your Alisa by taxi. I hope you have enough personal money for business class. Or will Mommy have to urgently transfer you a few thousand to maintain your respectable image?”
Sergey turned crimson. His well-groomed face, which he always considered the very standard of masculine attractiveness, now looked almost ridiculous under the weight of helpless rage. He jerked his smartphone out of his trouser pocket and began typing rapidly, making a show of his extreme disdain for his wife.
“Reporting to your mother about the successful liberation operation?” Anna asked, drying her hands with a clean waffle towel.
“I’m writing to Alisa,” Sergey snapped, though Anna could clearly see the contact name “Mommy” reflected in the dark window on the bright screen of his phone. “She’s waiting for me. And Mom, for your information, will be here soon to help me with the boxes. She doesn’t want you ruining my documents or expensive designer clothes out of spite.”
“Wonderful,” Anna said, hanging the towel on the hook and heading toward the kitchen exit. “I actually have something to discuss with Tamara Pavlovna. Since today we’ve decided to talk about prospects and status.”
“Seryozhenka, my boy, did you pack your Italian shirts carefully? Don’t you dare trust her with expensive fabrics. Her hands are used only to rough work and cheap synthetics!”
The sound of a key turning in the lock and the clicking of heels across the parquet announced Tamara Pavlovna’s arrival. Sergey’s mother entered the living room with the confident, sweeping stride of a woman who considered herself the rightful mistress of the situation. A thick, suffocating trail of heavy evening perfume followed her, completely inappropriate both for the time of day and for the reason for her visit. She wore a strict burgundy suit, and around her neck hung a massive gold necklace, an obvious attempt to demonstrate her connection to high society.
Anna sat in a deep leather armchair with her legs crossed, watching with an unreadable expression as Sergey hurriedly stuffed his designer items into the compartments of a huge suitcase. Her mother-in-law’s arrival did not even make her change position.
“Good evening, Tamara Pavlovna,” Anna greeted her evenly. “You’re just in time. Your son is having serious logistical difficulties. He can’t seem to fit into one suitcase all the things I bought him over the past five years.”
Tamara Pavlovna wrinkled her powdered nose with disgust, looking Anna up and down with an arrogant, assessing gaze.
“Save your poisonous sarcasm for your fellow cashiers behind the counter, Anna,” her mother-in-law said haughtily, walking into the center of the room and standing beside her son. “My boy is moving into a completely different reality. No one there will appreciate your cheap humor. Dear Alisa is a girl from a wonderful family, with a brilliant education and the manners of an aristocrat. She doesn’t count pennies until payday and doesn’t reproach a man for every piece of bread. She inspires him. You spent your entire life dragging my son down to your primitive level.”
“She inspires him, does she?” Anna slowly ran her index finger along the armrest of the chair. “And what exactly does she inspire him to do? Use my credit card to buy a bouquet of three hundred roses for their first date? Or take secret trips to a countryside spa resort at my expense? Sergey, did you forget to tell your mother that the bank notifications still come to my phone number?”
Sergey, who had been shoving a pair of polished shoes into the suitcase, suddenly straightened. Ugly red blotches spread across his face, and his neck tightened.
“Those were representative expenses!” he snapped, avoiding looking directly into his wife’s eyes. “In the circles where Alisa and her father move, people don’t save on small things. You always said yourself that I needed to build useful connections. So I built them. My investments paid off. Tomorrow I’ll close that ridiculous credit card debt with one advance from my new position.”
“Your investments, Seryozha, have consisted of one asset your entire life: my limitless patience,” Anna said, shifting her gaze to her mother-in-law, who was smiling victoriously, clearly proud of her son’s resourcefulness. “And you, Tamara Pavlovna, speak so skillfully about primitive levels. But that very level was where you came running three years ago when you urgently needed money for expensive dental work. You sat in this very kitchen and swore you would repay every last kopeck. I never saw the money returned. I never even saw basic gratitude. But now I do see the sparkling implants with which you so confidently chew through my marriage.”
Tamara Pavlovna gasped indignantly, clutching her massive necklace. Her respectable face twisted into something predatory.
“How dare you count those pennies?” she shrieked, her voice rising into a piercing screech. “We let you into our family! My son, a man of outstanding intellect, wasted his youth on you! He could have found someone equal to him from the very beginning, but he took pity on you. You should have worshipped the ground he walked on for bringing you into decent society! You’re ordinary service staff, Anya! A salesgirl! And he is the deputy head of an investment department!”
“Mom is absolutely right,” Sergey said, zipping the suitcase shut with force and crossing his arms triumphantly. “You stopped developing. Every day you serve demanding customers, put other people’s things into bags, and smile because the rules tell you to. I manage financial flows. Alisa owns her own modern art gallery. She and I discuss exhibitions in London and stock prices on Asian markets. What am I supposed to talk about with you? New arrivals of mid-season jackets in your pathetic warehouse?”
Anna laughed softly. There was no joy in that laugh. It was dry, brief, and deeply humiliating for the two people standing in front of her. She rose gracefully from the chair, adjusted the perfect fold in her trousers, and took a few slow steps toward her husband and mother-in-law.
“You both live in a remarkable imaginary world,” Anna said, her voice lower now, edged with steel and something quietly frightening. “You, Tamara Pavlovna, are an ordinary accountant at the construction firm owned by Alisa’s father. Just an employee who sees big money only as numbers on a monitor. And you, Seryozha, received your laughable deputy position on the very day your mother served you up to her boss’s daughter.”
“Shut your mouth!” Sergey spat, taking an aggressive step forward. “My position is the result of my competence and my brilliant résumé! Alisa’s father interviewed me personally and noted my high level of preparation!”
“Your level of preparation, Seryozha, ends with your ability to tie a necktie nicely,” Anna said, stopping a meter away from them and looking at her husband with open disgust. “And the funniest part of this whole situation is that both of you genuinely believe the fairy tale about an elite bride. You really think I simply stand behind the register in some nameless shop. You’re so obsessed with your imaginary greatness that in five years, you never even bothered to understand what your gray mouse actually does.”
Tamara Pavlovna snorted contemptuously, straightening the lapels of her burgundy jacket.
“We are completely uninterested in the details of your miserable career in retail,” her mother-in-law said sharply. “We are interested in only one thing: that you step aside right now and stop preventing my son from beginning a new, luxurious life with a woman of his own circle.”
“Oh, I have no intention of preventing you,” Anna smiled, and that smile sent an unpleasant chill down Sergey’s spine. “On the contrary, I want to help you. I want to tell you a few very interesting facts about that luxurious life you’re packing your suitcases for so quickly. Because the premium boutique I manage serves exactly the circle of people you are so desperately trying to crawl into. And Alisa, your refined gallery owner, is a regular client of mine. Or rather, she was, until her credit line was closed because of enormous debts.”
“Another pathetic lie from a loser trying to save face before her inevitable collapse!” Tamara Pavlovna spat with disgust, nervously adjusting the gold clasp of her massive necklace. “What credit line? Alisa owns a successful art business. She dresses in Milan and Paris, not in your questionable little neighborhood store. You are inventing this filth on the spot to humiliate my son and devalue his brilliant match!”
“Your son devalued himself the moment he decided his genius was worth more than common sense,” Anna said, slowly walking over to the kitchen island and leaning against the countertop, still watching them with unconcealed cold superiority. “Your refined aristocrat’s gallery is a deeply unprofitable basement space that her father has been threatening to close for half a year because there are no visitors. And as for Milan… A month ago, your Alisa caused an ugly scandal in our premium boutique when the terminal declined her platinum card three times in a row. Her father blocked absolutely all her accounts after she lost a sum in an underground casino equal to the market value of your three-room apartment, Tamara Pavlovna.”
Sergey froze. His hand, which had been reaching toward the handle of the open suitcase, fell limply to his side. He slowly moved his gaze from his mother’s flushed face to his wife’s completely calm one. On his carefully groomed features, which only a minute earlier had radiated superiority, there now appeared a mask of open confusion.
“That’s complete nonsense,” Sergey said through his teeth, but the iron confidence had already left his tone. His words sounded blurred and unconvincing. “She and I have plans for our life together. Her father personally shook my hand after dinner. He said himself that he saw enormous potential in me for managing the key assets of his construction company.”
“He sees in you the perfect spineless fool, Seryozha,” Anna said sharply, pronouncing every word with hard precision. “Multimillionaires don’t hand over their only daughters to middle-management employees because of pretty eyes and the ability to wear someone else’s ties. Alisa’s reputation is so ruined that no one in their narrow circle wants anything serious to do with her. Her daddy urgently needed an obedient puppet who would officially be listed as her husband, accompany that spoiled disaster to social events, and quietly close his eyes to her addictions. And most importantly, it would be very easy to hang a couple of shell construction firms with million-sized debts on that ambitious idiot. Your deputy position is nothing more than bait for your vanity. They’re preparing you to become the scapegoat who takes the fall instead of the real owners.”
Tamara Pavlovna stepped forward sharply, blocking her son as if she were a predatory bird protecting its prey. Her respectable face was covered with uneven red patches of fury, and her breathing became loud and broken.
“Don’t listen to this jealous woman, my boy!” his mother commanded imperiously, digging her fingers with burgundy manicured nails into the sleeve of Sergey’s expensive jacket. “She is pouring poison into your ears on purpose so you’ll stay here and rot! My boss is a deeply decent and influential man. He personally studied your résumé. He came to me himself and said that he needed exactly such a reliable son-in-law in the family!”
“A reliable son-in-law, or a reliable criminal charge to cover large-scale financial fraud?” Anna asked with a dry smile, carefully watching her mother-in-law’s reaction. “And how much exactly did your son cost, Tamara Pavlovna? What price did your respectable boss name for you to voluntarily lead your own child to the slaughter?”
“Shut your filthy mouth this instant!” Tamara Pavlovna squealed, but her eyes betrayed her, darting from side to side and avoiding her son’s direct stare. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to lift him upward, into worthy society!”
“And I think you care only about your own personal profit and your new bonus,” Anna continued mercilessly dissecting her mother-in-law’s lie, savoring how quickly their miserable, badly staged performance was falling apart. “Last week, you loudly boasted to Sergey over the phone that you were being promoted to chief accountant of the entire holding. What an incredible coincidence, isn’t it? First, you arrange an accidental meeting between your son and the boss’s problem daughter. Then Sergey suddenly receives a promotion he couldn’t even dream of. And right after that, you jump into the chief accountant’s chair with a salary three times higher than before. You simply sold him well, Tamara Pavlovna. You exchanged his future life for a new line in your employment record and an office with panoramic windows.”
Sergey slowly turned his head toward his mother, as though under hypnosis. The perfectly built picture of his personal success began to crumble before his eyes, exposing the rusty, rotten framework of someone else’s corporate intrigue.
“Mom,” Sergey said, his voice low and abrupt. “Is that true? Have they already appointed you chief accountant of the holding? You told me you had only submitted your résumé for consideration.”
“Seryozhenka, those are completely parallel processes that have nothing to do with each other!” Tamara Pavlovna tried to arrange a condescending maternal smile on her face, but her lips twisted into a nervous grimace. “My promotion is the logical result of many years of flawless work for the good of the company. What does Alisa have to do with it? Your manager simply appreciated our professional qualities as they deserved!”
“As they deserved,” Sergey repeated, taking half a step away from his mother and looking with unconcealed suspicion at her hand, which was still gripping the fabric of his jacket. “So the owner of a huge construction business approached an ordinary accountant himself and said he was looking for a son-in-law. Then he generously promoted both of us. In the same month. And exactly after his daughter, according to Anya, was left without a penny.”
“That market-stall saleswoman invented everything from beginning to end!” Tamara Pavlovna shouted desperately, her voice turning shrill as she tried to force control back over the situation slipping from her grasp. “She is just a lying failure! Don’t you dare doubt your own mother even for a second! I handed you a golden ticket into the elite society you dreamed about!”
“Elite society, where I’ll serve as a convenient cover for a useless spoiled wreck and as a front man for laundering your boss’s dirty money?” Sergey jerked his mother’s hand off his shoulder sharply.
An uncontrolled, dark anger began to blaze in his narrowed eyes. The illusion of his own genius had just been crushed—not by his abandoned wife, but by facts that fit together too perfectly and logically into one foul, cynical picture. Anna stood aside, completely calm, a faint half-smile on her lips. She no longer needed to say a word. She had simply lit a match and tossed it into the pool of gasoline these two had spent the last few weeks pouring around themselves. The flame of conflict flared instantly, spreading to those who only five minutes earlier had considered themselves untouchable masters of other people’s destinies.
“You really sold me to your boss as a free attachment to his defective daughter,” Sergey said slowly, disgust rising in his voice as he moved toward his mother. “You decided to curry favor with management by any means available? Used me like a piece of meat at a market so you could get your coveted chief accountant position and an office with panoramic windows? You bargained for your place in the sun at the cost of my own life?”
Tamara Pavlovna recoiled, instinctively pressing her expensive counterfeit handbag to her chest. Her face, which only a minute earlier had radiated iron certainty in her own righteousness and superiority, now twisted with uncontrollable, poisonous rage. The mask of a refined high-society lady fell away in an instant, revealing the true face of a greedy, ordinary careerist caught red-handed.
“And you honestly believed your promotion was the result of your phenomenal abilities?” his mother hissed, launching into an open and merciless attack. Her features sharpened into a predatory grimace, and her neck became covered in crimson patches of fury. “Who even needs you in a serious corporate structure with your empty ambitions, you nothing? Your ceiling is moving folders around in a stuffy office for pennies! For years, I begged for prestigious positions for you. I humiliated myself before the right people so that, at least outwardly, you could match the image of a successful man. You couldn’t string two words together in a proper meeting!”
Sergey stopped dead, as if he had run full force into an invisible wall. His perfectly styled hair was disheveled, and his silk tie had slipped to one side, making him look pitiful, ridiculous, and lost.
“You are calling me a nothing? Your only son?” he said through his teeth, clenching his fists until his knuckles turned white. “I worked like a dog in those training sessions. I built strategies. I prepared for a serious management position. And you just flushed my whole career down the toilet by serving me up to some girl with huge gambling debts. You broke my future for your rotten bonuses!”
“This market-stall cashier paid for your luxurious life the entire time!” Tamara Pavlovna jabbed a crooked finger with burgundy nail polish toward Anna. “By yourself, you are an absolute zero! An empty shell in an Italian suit bought with someone else’s money! Alisa’s father was looking for an obedient idiot to dump corporate trash onto. And you fit that role perfectly. You are so hopelessly stupid and self-absorbed that you didn’t even bother to check the most basic information about that girl. You fell for a pretty picture and fake smiles like some cheap fool on the roadside!”
Anna stood by the kitchen island, her arms loosely crossed over her chest, watching this disgusting scene with a completely impassive face. The relatives were tearing each other apart with such primitive cruelty that the spectacle awakened only a cold, detached disgust in her. No regret. No attempt to interfere in the verbal brawl. Only cold calculation and the absolute understanding that both participants in the scandal had received exactly what they deserved for their arrogance.
“So I’m cheap, am I?” Sergey gave a nervous laugh that carried genuine despair. “Then what are you in this brilliant scheme? A greedy schemer ready to sell her own son wholesale and retail? You were the one crawling before me in hysterics, describing all of Alisa’s charms! You spent days persuading me to leave the wife who dragged both of us out of the financial swamp! You vile, corrupt creature. You’ll choke on your new executive position at the very first audit!”
“Shut your rotten mouth, puppy!” Tamara Pavlovna screamed shrilly, spitting with hatred. “If it weren’t for my natural cleverness, you would spend the rest of your worthless days riding buses and begging for change for cheap lunches! You are nobody without my direct protection. I’ll call the boss immediately and tell him you turned out to be professionally useless trash. You’ll be thrown out of the holding with a ruined reputation tomorrow morning!”
“I’ll leave myself! And I’ll leak the entire client database to our main competitors!” Sergey roared, finally losing every trace of human restraint. “I’ll destroy your reputation on the market! You and your precious management will go straight down the financial drain! You’ll be digging through garbage bins in your burgundy suits!”
Anna slowly pushed herself away from the countertop and took a step forward. Her voice sounded even, hard, and deafeningly clear, cutting through the hysterical screams of mother and son with the flawless precision of a scalpel.
“What grand, breathtaking prospects have opened up for your family in a single evening,” she said, sweeping both rage-flushed figures with a contemptuous look. “An ambitious deputy head ready to leak databases to competitors, and a newly appointed chief accountant who trades her son for a comfortable chair. Your elite level turned out to be nothing more than an ordinary cesspit. Sergey, your suitcase is standing in the middle of the room. You wanted to leave for a high-status woman tonight—so leave. Only Alisa is currently in a closed rehabilitation center, where her loving father rushed her yesterday after another overdose. So the luxurious city-center apartment is temporarily empty. Tamara Pavlovna, it’s long past time for you to leave too. You still need to come up with a convincing story for your boss about why your manageable little boy suddenly slipped off the hook.”
Sergey and Tamara Pavlovna froze, breathing heavily like trapped animals. They stood in the middle of someone else’s apartment—an apartment that had become so familiar to them—surrounded by scattered designer clothes, trampled ambitions, and concentrated mutual hatred. Neither of them moved toward the front door. Neither tried to portray wounded pride or make a beautiful exit. They simply remained standing in the center of that poisonous swamp, realizing that their invented luxurious life had ended forever. It had given way to an ugly reality in which both of them had turned out to be complete bankrupts with no future. Anna turned away from them and walked calmly toward the bedroom, leaving them to tear each other apart in that foul-smelling pit until the bitter end.
