Irina checked the grocery list one last time before closing the trunk. Cans of stew, pasta, grains, vegetables for salad—enough for a week of peaceful rest. Their son, Artyom, was already in the back seat with his tablet, and her husband, Nikolai, was starting the car. “Finally we’ll make it to the dacha,” Irina said, […]
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— Yulya, Anya just called. She wants to talk. Yulia didn’t immediately tear herself away from what she was doing. She sat at her work desk, which looked more like a spaceship control panel—crowded with lamps, sterilizing devices, and dozens of tiny bottles of bright nail polishes. Methodically, she wiped each drill bit with a […]
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Vika picked up the grocery bag and unhurriedly climbed to the fifth floor. September rain tapped against the stairwell windows, and her heart felt calm. In the six months since the divorce, life had finally fallen into place. No one demanded explanations about where she’d spent money, no one criticized her cooking or fumed about […]
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Elena opened her eyes at the sound of the alarm and reached for the nightstand, where a white envelope with a bank card lay. Every morning she checked that it was there—a habit she’d formed over two years of painstaking saving. Five hundred thousand rubles in a separate account were earmarked for the down payment […]
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Again with this sour stuff? Lena, are you pouring vinegar into the borscht or what? I’ve told you a hundred times—my mother’s was sweet and rich. And this? Beet water. And sour on top of it.” Pavel pushed the plate away with disgust, and the scrape of faience on the tablecloth cut Lena more sharply […]
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Nina was folding the freshly washed laundry into the wardrobe when the doorbell rang. The October evening was raw and damp, and after a workday she only wanted quiet at home. But as soon as Nina opened the door, Valentina Sergeyevna barged into the hallway without so much as a greeting. “Nina, good thing I […]
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Those were the last words Emily Whitaker heard from her husband, Daniel, before he ordered her out of their Texas house. Eight months pregnant, one hand bracing her belly, she stood stunned while the man she’d once trusted with everything shoved her life into cardboard boxes. The reason had a name—Vanessa—his young assistant who’d quickly […]
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The morning began like so many others for Adrian Cole—magnate of glass towers and velvet-lobbied residences—yet a faint, unfamiliar stir unsettled his routine. His calendar was jammed until nightfall, a gauntlet of negotiations and signatures. Still, a quiet insistence tugged at him, a whisper beneath the rational hum of his day: go home. Adrian wasn’t […]
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Maxim clenched the ticket in his hand and looked at the familiar station. Three years away from home, three years of hard work at the logging camps—all for this moment. In his backpack were gifts for his mother and his sister Tatyana, and in his pocket—the cherished ring for Irina. “Maxim? Is that really you?” […]
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“Give me the keys to your car, I need to get to the resort,” Maxim tossed out without looking up from what he was doing. Hot steam hissed from under the iron, smoothing the last stubborn crease on the snow-white shirt collar. He did it with showy nonchalance, as if the mere fact that he […]
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