My parents have already bought us everything we need to live! An apartment, a car—and they helped you with your business! And now you want them to do the same for your sister? Who is she to them?!”

“Listen, I’ve been thinking…” Denis’s voice sounded too chipper in the quiet living room, yanking Katya out of her half-doze. She lazily turned a page of the glossy magazine without lifting her eyes from the bright picture. Beyond the panoramic window on the twentieth floor, the evening city was lighting up—familiar, beautiful, and distant, a […]

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I don’t need your kids here even for free, son! I came to your place to rest, not to look after your brood! I won’t even stay in the same room with them!

— Mom, please, just for an hour, — Andrey was saying it for the third time, and with each repetition his voice grew thinner and more pleading. He stood in the middle of their small living room, feeling like an awkward teenager caught off guard. Galina Borisovna didn’t even turn her head. She sat in […]

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I don’t need your kids here even for free, son! I came to your place to rest, not to look after your brood! I won’t even stay in the same room with them

— Mom, please, just for an hour, — Andrey was saying it for the third time, and with each repetition his voice grew thinner and more pleading. He stood in the middle of their small living room, feeling like an awkward teenager caught off guard. Galina Borisovna didn’t even turn her head. She sat in […]

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— I know this child isn’t my son’s! So either you tell him yourself, or I’ll tell him everything! And he’ll throw you out of the house for sure!

“Drinking plain tea, Ksyusha? Nervous?” Tamara Pavlovna’s voice was sweet like an overripe fruit whose skin already hides rot. She sat at the table in her daughter-in-law’s impeccably clean kitchen and methodically stirred the spoon in her porcelain cup, though the sugar had long since dissolved. That monotonous, scraping sound—scritch, scritch, scritch across the bottom—frayed […]

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“Where are the keys to your country house? My mother will live there,” the live-in boyfriend declared.

Olga Sergeyevna straightened the tablecloth and looked over the table. A milestone. A round number—fifty-five. A vase of carnations, warm salad, “herring under a fur coat,” her signature eggplant rolls. Borscht was simmering on the stove; Timur would always grimace—said anything without meat “isn’t food,” though there was meat in it. Like a schoolgirl, she […]

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You wanted to take my apartment and my savings? A pity I turned out to be more farsighted, isn’t it, Maxim?” I smirked, looking him straight in the eye.

Elena woke first, as always. Maxim was asleep beside her, his arms stretched out over the blanket. Sunlight filtered through the heavy curtains, illuminating the familiar contours of the room. Three years ago she had brought her husband into her home. Now, she sometimes felt like she was the guest. Getting up, Elena went to […]

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A woman on the commuter train left me with two children and vanished, and sixteen years later she sent a letter—with keys to a luxurious mansion and a fortune that took my breath away…

On a commuter train, on a gray, rainy day, a stranger handed me two babies—and vanished. Sixteen years would pass before I learned the truth. In the letter were keys to a manor… and a fortune that took my breath away. “Out in this weather—and by train?” the conductor raised her brows in surprise as […]

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