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I stared at my phone for a long time. Alexey was calling for the third time that evening, but I didn’t pick up. The time on the screen read half past ten. Before, at that hour, I’d already be washing the dinner dishes, wiping down the table, hanging up the laundry. Now I was sitting […]

“Are you kidding me?” Oleg shook his phone in front of his wife’s face as if it were irrefutable evidence. “I’m trying to pay for a cab and it says ‘insufficient funds.’ What, did you withdraw all the money?” Anna slowly lifted her eyes from her book. Her face was calm, almost detached, and that […]

The words stabbed into Dasha like shards of glass. She stood by the living-room window, holding the younger one—little Kira wasn’t even a year old yet—while four-year-old Misha clung to her leg, sensing that something terrible was happening. “Stay on your own with your litter!” her mother-in-law, Zinaida Petrovna, said as if she were spitting […]

“Give us your vacation package—family needs it more!” the mother-in-law shrieked. Marina was ironing her sundress. The iron hissed, spitting steam, and she didn’t even notice she’d burned her finger. Only one thought spun in her head: “In twelve hours I’ll be sipping something cold, looking out at the Mediterranean. No reports. No drivers with […]

The spotlight glare hit me straight in the face. The hall held about three hundred people. I stood on the stage, wrapping up a case presentation—how, in six months, we took a regional chain into the top tier. In the third row, someone suddenly sat up straight. Kira. She stared at me as if I’d […]

This apartment is mine! I registered here twenty-five years ago, back when I wasn’t even married yet!” Valentina Petrovna stood in the middle of the living room with her hands planted on her hips, her voice ringing with iron certainty. She was full of righteous indignation, her face twisted into a grimace of offended dignity. […]

“Three thousand for utilities. Two and a half for groceries. A thousand for your medicines. Fifteen thousand for repairs, because you ‘accidentally’ flooded the neighbors downstairs…” Svetlana Petrovna’s voice was even, almost emotionless, but each figure landed on the kitchen table like a cold coin. She sat opposite her daughter-in-law, holding a battered checkered notebook […]

“Why do you need a separate account? We’re a family!” Lyudmila Ivanovna said it softly, almost tenderly, but Polina—standing at the sink with a plate in her hands—felt a chill run down her spine. She froze without turning around. The water from the tap drummed against the porcelain, and that sound suddenly felt like the […]

Part 1. Someone Else’s Bill and a Forgotten Grudge The office smelled of expensive leather and the air purifier that hummed steadily in the corner. Timur leaned back in his chair, savoring the pleasant weight of his new status. Regional Director of Logistics at a major construction holding company. It sounded solid. He ran his […]

I was standing on the threshold of the apartment where my entire childhood had passed, and I couldn’t believe the key in my hand was the last one. My husband kept insisting that selling my inheritance was the only way to save his life. I believed him, handed over every last penny, and a week […]