Olya stepped across the threshold and carefully placed her handbag on the small cabinet by the door. The divorce papers were still tucked inside the side pocket, warm from the touch of her hand. She was exhausted, but it was the quiet exhaustion of someone who had made her decision a long time ago.
Viktor stood in the middle of the hallway with his feet planted wide apart, as though he were defending a fortress he already owned.
“You took your time,” he said instead of greeting her. “I was starting to think you planned to spend the night there.”
“Nice to see you too, Vitya,” she replied evenly. “Would you like some tea? I think we still have some of that blend you used to call rabbit food.”
“Forget the tea.”
He stepped closer and held out his open palm.
“Give me the apartment keys. The place belongs to me now.”
Olya slowly removed her light jacket and hung it on the coat rack. She did not hurry. Her deliberate calm seemed to serve as a kind of armor. Inside, she felt collected and strangely peaceful, like someone who already knew how the final scene of a play would end.
“Vitya, let’s behave like adults,” she said gently. “We’ve only just left the courtroom. At least give me a moment to breathe.”
“I’ve been giving you everything like an adult for three years,” he scoffed. “Air, food, a roof over your head. That’s over now. We’re divorced, aren’t we? So we go our separate ways. Hand over the keys and stop dragging this out.”
“You’ve suddenly become very efficient,” she said with a faint smile. “There was a time when getting you out of bed in the morning required a full military operation.”
Viktor grimaced and moved another step closer. His face was tense and impatient, with that familiar greedy spark in his eyes that Olya had learned to recognize years ago. He was not listening to her. He was counting the minutes until he could remain there alone.
“Didn’t you understand what I said?” he snapped, raising his voice. “You strike while the iron is hot. Ever heard that? Before you change your mind and start demanding your rights, we’re going to settle this quietly. Put the keys on the table.”
“I’ll wait until you calm down.”
“I’ll show you calm!”
He lunged toward the cabinet, grabbed her handbag, and shoved his hand inside without permission. The move was so brazen that Olya barely had time to react. He pulled out the key ring, shook it triumphantly in the air, and closed his fist around it like a child who had snatched away someone else’s toy.
“There,” he breathed, pleased with himself. “That’s it. See how simple that was?”
“Vitya, you just searched someone else’s handbag,” Olya said quietly. “Even for you, that’s a new low.”
“Someone else’s?” he laughed. “Everything here is mine. Soon that bag will be outside the door along with you.”
At that moment, Olya’s phone began to ring. The name on the screen read: “Viktor’s Grandmother.”
She lifted her eyebrows in surprise and answered, turning toward the window as though trying to put at least a little distance between herself and the noise behind her.
“Hello… Yes, good afternoon,” she said, her voice immediately warming. “You’re in the city? Right now?”
Viktor twisted his face and waved impatiently at her.
“Hang up,” he hissed. “What grandmother? We’re divorced. Forget about my relatives. None of them have anything to do with you anymore.”
“Wait,” Olya said, covering the microphone with her palm. “It’s your grandmother. She’s just arrived. Maybe you should go and meet her.”
“I have better things to do,” he muttered, turning away. “You can fuss over her if you enjoy that sort of thing. I don’t have time for old women.”
Olya looked at him for a long moment, her gaze perfectly calm. Then she returned the phone to her ear, spoke softly and affectionately, and walked toward the door.
She did not argue. She did not start packing. She simply picked up her jacket and stepped outside.
“Where are you going?” Viktor called after her, suddenly confused. “Hey! Olya!”
The door closed softly.
He remained alone, clutching the key ring in his fist, with the strange feeling that he had won something without actually receiving anything at all.
Viktor turned the keys over in his hand, tossed them onto the cabinet, and took out his phone. He called his mother while pacing nervously around the narrow hallway. Each ring seemed to last forever, and his frustration grew with every second.
“Well?” his mother answered instead of saying hello.
“I’ve got the keys,” he blurted out. “I took them. Pulled them straight out of her bag.”
“Good,” she replied dryly. “Where is she?”
“That’s the problem,” he said, lowering his voice. “She left. She didn’t pack, didn’t take anything. She just walked out. I asked where she was going, but she didn’t answer.”
“I see.”
His mother’s voice became sharp.
“And you let her leave? Viktor, are you a child? If she didn’t take her belongings, that means she intends to come back. Then she’ll start making claims. You need to finish what you started instead of sitting there feeling sorry for yourself.”
“I thought…”
“You can think later,” she cut him off. “I’m sending Yulia over. The two of you will pack all her things into bags so that by the time she returns, there won’t be a single feminine item left in that apartment. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Viktor muttered, lowering the phone.
For a while, he stood staring at his reflection in the dark mirrored door of the wardrobe. Somewhere at the edge of his mind, an unpleasant thought began to stir.
Everything was happening too easily. Too quickly.
But greed had always been good at drowning out thoughts like that.
An hour later, the doorbell rang. Viktor opened the door, expecting to see his aggressive sister. Instead, his younger brother Stepan stood on the landing, frowning, with both hands in his pockets.
“Hi,” Stepan said, walking inside without waiting for an invitation. “I was nearby. I heard what happened.”
“What exactly did you hear?” Viktor asked warily. “Who invited you?”
“No one.”
Stepan glanced around the hallway and noticed the key ring on the cabinet.
“Are those Olya’s?”
“They used to be,” Viktor said with a smirk. “Now they’re mine.”
Stepan slowly turned toward his brother.
“What are you doing?” he asked quietly. “Are you really throwing Olya out? On the very day of the divorce?”
“What’s so strange about that?” Viktor shrugged. “We’re divorced. Everyone goes to their own place.”
“Their own place,” Stepan repeated. “And what place does she have?”
He took a step closer.
“Do you remember when Nastya was in the hospital? Who stayed with our son for two weeks? Who sat awake at night and brought his fever down? Olya did. Not you. Not Yulia. Olya.”
“Oh, don’t start,” Viktor said, grimacing. “She helped because she wanted to. Am I supposed to build a monument in her honor?”
“No monument is necessary,” Stepan replied. “But basic human decency is. She treated my wife like a sister. They speak every day. You know that perfectly well, Vitya.”
“I know,” Viktor said, lifting his chin sharply. “And that’s exactly why I’m telling you not to interfere. This is my business. Your family can decide who they want to speak to, but you don’t get to stick your nose into my apartment.”
“Your apartment,” Stepan repeated with a bitter smile.
“Go home. I don’t need advice. Look at you, suddenly playing the hero.”
Stepan stood still for another second, studying his brother as though he were looking at a stranger he found deeply unpleasant.
Then he shook his head and headed for the door.
“I’m ashamed of you,” he said before leaving. “You’re doing something you won’t be able to undo.”
“Go on, get out of here, preacher,” Viktor muttered as he closed the door behind him.
He leaned against the doorframe and exhaled. He felt uneasy, but he quickly convinced himself that Stepan was simply weak and understood nothing about real life.
The elevator had barely carried Stepan away when the bell rang again.
This time, Yulia stood on the landing. She rushed inside, pulling off her scarf as she walked, and immediately surveyed the apartment with the critical eye of someone who considered herself in charge.
“Why do you look so miserable?” she said instead of greeting him. “I can see it on your face. Stop sulking. We need to move fast before your precious ex-wife comes to her senses.”
“I’m not sulking,” Viktor grumbled. “Stepan was here. He gave me a lecture.”
“Our dear little brother enjoys being generous at other people’s expense,” Yulia said dismissively as she pulled out her phone. “He can lecture Nastya. We have work to do.”
She raised the phone to her ear and spoke briskly.
“Hello, storage facility? I need a unit. Today. Yes, immediately. Maybe for a week, possibly two. Write down the pickup address.”
Viktor stared at her with almost admiring astonishment. She was like a whirlwind, sweeping everything aside while always knowing exactly where she intended to go.
“You’re already renting a storage unit?” he asked.
“What did you think I was going to do?” she replied, ending the call. “Where else are we supposed to put her junk? Dump it in the stairwell so the neighbors can gossip? No, dear brother. We do this properly. I’ve already ordered boxes. They’ll be here in half an hour.”
“What boxes?”
“Cardboard ones,” she said with a snort. “Are you completely helpless?”
Sure enough, less than thirty minutes later, a courier arrived. He carried in twenty flat cardboard boxes and a tightly wrapped roll of heavy-duty construction bags, left them beside the wall, and disappeared.
Yulia immediately ripped open the packaging and began assembling the boxes one after another.
“All right,” she ordered. “The bedroom wardrobe is your responsibility. Everything that belongs to her goes into the bags. Blouses, skirts, all those endless pieces of clothing. Don’t sort them. Don’t stand there admiring them. Just throw everything in.”
“Yulia, maybe…”
“No maybes.”
She pointed a finger at him.
“Are you a man or not? You got divorced, so finish the job. Or do you want her to come back and start acting like the lady of the house again?”
Viktor clenched his jaw and went to the wardrobe.
There was no retreat now. His sister was moving with such force that stopping her would have been like trying to halt a stone rolling down a steep hill.
He started pulling Olya’s clothes from the hangers and stuffing them into an open bag.
“There you go,” Yulia called from the next room. “Now we’re getting somewhere. You were afraid for nothing. What is there to fear? We’re taking back what belongs to us.”
“What belongs to us,” Viktor echoed.
For some reason, his mouth had gone dry.
The wardrobes emptied quickly. A growing pile of sealed boxes and tightly packed bags appeared in the hallway.
Viktor became increasingly uncomfortable. He had imagined everything happening quietly and peacefully, not with mountains of someone else’s belongings piled around his feet.
“Yulia, don’t you think we’re going too far?” he finally asked.
“I think you’re becoming soft again,” she snapped. “Going too far? She spent three years sitting on your neck, and now you’re worried that we’re going too far?”
At that moment, his phone rang.
It was Olya.
“Yes?” Viktor answered cautiously.
“Vitya, I met your grandmother,” Olya said calmly. “I went to meet her because you were too busy. I fed her and saw her off. She sends you her regards.”
Shame flooded through him, hot and unpleasant, all the way to the tips of his ears.
But Yulia was rushing around beside him, pointing at boxes and giving orders, and the shame quickly drowned in the noise.
“Right. Thanks,” he muttered. “Listen, I’m busy. We’ll talk later.”
He ended the call and shoved the phone into his pocket.
“Who was that?” Yulia asked suspiciously.
“Olya. Apparently, she met Grandma somewhere. She’s running around looking after her.”
“Let her,” Yulia said with a smirk. “Maybe the old woman will let her stay somewhere. Anyway, I’ve called a van. It’ll be here in twenty minutes. Let’s start carrying everything downstairs.”
They had barely begun moving the boxes toward the elevator when their mother arrived.
She looked over the mountain of belongings in the hallway with calm satisfaction, like a supervisor inspecting a job well done.
“Well done,” she said with a nod. “You need to get rid of dead weight quickly before it takes root in the house again. Yulia, you’ve always been efficient.”
“Of course,” Yulia replied proudly.
“By the way,” their mother said, turning to Viktor, “what is this story about your grandmother? Did you say she came to the city?”
“Yes,” he replied with a shrug. “For some reason. Olya went to meet her instead of me. Can you imagine?”
His mother’s expression tightened slightly. She pulled out her phone and called the old woman, walking toward the window.
“Hello,” she said in a restrained voice. “You’re in the city and you didn’t tell anyone? What kind of business brought you here?”
The voice on the other end answered softly for quite a while.
Viktor’s mother listened with pursed lips, and a shadow of concern appeared in her eyes.
“You missed your great-granddaughter,” she repeated. “You spent some time with her and now you’re going home. Fine. Travel safely, then.”
She ended the call and muttered quietly to herself.
“She missed her great-granddaughter. Comes all this way and tells no one.”
“Is something wrong?” Viktor asked.
“Everything is fine,” she replied, waving him away. “The old woman is acting strangely. Keep loading. The van is downstairs.”
It was already getting dark when the workers carried out the final bags.
The apartment had become unnaturally hollow. Every footstep echoed in a way it never had before.
Yulia stood by the door holding the small key to the storage unit, looking around at the result with satisfaction.
“There,” she said, handing the key to Viktor. “All her junk is in the unit. If she wants it, she can collect it. If she doesn’t, that’s your problem. I’ve done my part.”
“Thanks, Yulia.”
He took the key and closed his fingers around it.
“Honestly, without you, I don’t know what I would have done.”
“I know exactly what you would’ve done,” she said with a grin. “You would have fallen apart and let her come back. Anyway, I’m leaving. I’m more exhausted by your divorce than you are.”
She wrapped her scarf around her neck and left, her heels clicking along the floor.
Their mother had already gone, remarking before her departure that they had done everything correctly.
Viktor was left alone in the empty apartment, with the storage key in one pocket and Olya’s apartment keys in the other.
“She’ll come back,” he said aloud. “Where else would she go?”
He tried calling her, but her phone was switched off. Once, twice, three times—the same indifferent recorded voice told him that the subscriber was unavailable.
Annoyed, Viktor shoved the phone into his pocket and decided she must be staying with her mother, where their daughter was currently spending time.
“Stay there, then,” he muttered into the empty room. “When she calls, I’ll give her the storage address. I’ll hand over the key. Everything will be fair.”
He slept badly that night, tossing and turning on the bare sofa, which somehow seemed foreign to him now.
In the morning, he got up exhausted, dressed quickly, and went out to deal with his errands, repeatedly assuring himself that everything was under control.
His greatest advantage—the apartment keys—rested in his pocket, and that thought comforted him.
Throughout the day, he kept checking his phone.
Olya did not call.
It bothered him slightly, but it did not frighten him. He was still convinced that he held all the power.
That evening, he returned to the building, went upstairs, unlocked the door, and froze.
The apartment was empty.
Not empty in the way it had been that morning after Olya’s belongings were removed.
Truly empty.
The sofa was gone. The wardrobes were gone. Even Viktor’s own possessions had disappeared.
“What is this?” he whispered, stepping onto the bare floor. “What… what is going on?”
He rushed from room to room, unable to believe what he was seeing.
The walls stared back at him with pale rectangular marks where shelves had once hung. His heart began pounding hard and fast with fear.
Then he heard the lock click behind him.
Viktor turned.
Olya stood in the doorway, composed and calm, with the faintest smile on her lips. She held a key in one hand.
“Good evening,” she said. “What do you think of all the extra space? Easier to breathe, isn’t it?”
“You!”
He lunged toward her.
“Where are my things? What is happening? How did you get inside?”
“A duplicate.”
She lightly lifted the key.
“Being prepared isn’t a crime, you know. Now, Vitya, give me the keys.”
“What keys?”
He hurriedly reached into his pocket and pulled out the small storage-unit key.
“Here. Take the storage key. The address is this, the unit number is— Take your junk and don’t come back!”
“The storage key is useful,” she interrupted softly. “But I need the apartment keys. The entire ring. A renovation crew is coming tomorrow.”
“What renovation?” he demanded, stunned. “What are you talking about? This is my apartment!”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
Olya took a step closer, still perfectly calm.
“As of yesterday, I am the legal owner of this apartment.”
Viktor froze.
The words of his sister, his mother, and his own frantic actions from the previous day spun through his mind and suddenly formed a terrifying picture.
“What do you mean, you’re the owner?” he said slowly. “You’re talking nonsense.”
“No.”
Olya leaned one shoulder against the doorframe.
“Do you remember that your grandmother came to the city yesterday? You told me to forget your relatives because they were no longer mine. She came here for a specific reason. Do you know what it was?”
“What?” he asked hoarsely.
“To transfer the apartment to me,” Olya said calmly. “I’m the mother of her great-granddaughter. That was her decision. The documents have been signed. Everything is legal and properly registered. You can verify it if you don’t believe me. But first, hand over the keys.”
“That’s impossible.”
He shook his head violently.
“It can’t be true. Yes, the apartment belonged to Grandma, but she always said she would leave it to her grandchildren. To me or Yulia. Not to you. Why would she give it to you?”
“You’ll have to ask her,” Olya said with a shrug. “I’m giving you a fact, not repeating rumors.”
“You’re lying!” he shouted. “You arranged all this behind my back while I was here… I took those keys from you myself! I took them!”
“Yes, you did,” Olya agreed. “And then you removed everything from the apartment. Very efficient. I didn’t even need to buy boxes. You packed everything yourselves.”
The full meaning of her words finally began to reach him, and it terrified him.
He grabbed his phone and called his grandmother with trembling fingers.
“Grandma!” he shouted when she answered. “Is it true? Did you transfer the apartment to Olya? Is it true or not?”
Her calm voice came through the phone.
“Yes, Vitenka,” she replied. “It’s true. I transferred it to her. That was my decision.”
“But why?” he cried, struggling to breathe. “Why her and not me? I’m your grandson!”
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” the old woman said gently but firmly. “I made my choice. I’m busy, Vitya. Take care.”
The call ended.
Viktor stood with the phone pressed to his ear, listening to the short beeps, unable to move.
“You see?” Olya said quietly. “Everything is fair. You like that word, don’t you?”
“This isn’t fair,” he whispered. “This is cruel.”
“Going through someone else’s handbag is cruel,” she replied without anger. “Throwing the mother of your child out on the day of the divorce is cruel. A property owner giving an apartment to someone she trusts is simply her legal right. The keys, Vitya.”
Slowly, he opened his fist and placed the key ring on her palm.
The metal made a quiet clinking sound.
Viktor stared at his empty hand.
“Greed is always hungry,” Olya said as she put the keys away. “No matter how much you feed it, it always wants more. You were in such a hurry to grab everything that you failed to notice you were leaving yourself with nothing.”
He did not answer.
He turned, walked into the hallway, and sat down on the floor because there was no furniture left to sit on. Then he began pulling on his shoes. His hands barely obeyed him.
“I’ll pick up our daughter tomorrow,” Olya added, speaking to his back. “She’s with my mother and she’s fine. I’ll tell you when you can see her. I’m not going to prevent that. You’re still her father.”
Viktor nodded without looking at her.
He stood, pushed open the door, and stepped onto the landing. His thoughts were as hollow and echoing as the apartment that no longer belonged to him.
He began walking downstairs slowly, holding onto the railing.
At the next turn, Olya passed him with ease. She moved quickly, light and free, and disappeared through the front entrance long before he reached the ground floor.
Only when he stepped outside did Viktor suddenly stop.
A thought struck him too late, and cold spread through his body.
“My things,” he murmured. “Where are my things?”
He reached into his pocket.
It was empty.
“Olya!” he shouted, looking around. “Olya, wait!”
But she was already gone.
He pulled out his phone and called her number, only to hear the same emotionless recorded message telling him that the subscriber was unavailable.
Viktor slowly lowered his hand.
He stood alone in the courtyard without an apartment, without his belongings, without keys, without a wife, and without the slightest idea what to do next.
Never in his life had he felt so unnecessary, helpless, and empty.
It seemed as though everything had just been taken from him.
Only now did he understand that he had taken it all from himself.
