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May sunshine flooded the Volkonsky family’s living room with a golden glow. Around a large table covered with a snow-white tablecloth sat relatives and close friends. The occasion was special—Alevtina Sergeyevna, Taras’s mother, was turning sixty. Irina smoothed a fold in her emerald dress and glanced at her husband. Taras sat beside his mother, periodically […]

— An hour of nannying costs six hundred rubles. That’s twelve hundred from you, Lenochka. Transfer to my phone number—you know it.” Larisa Pavlovna wasn’t joking. She stood in the doorway of my entryway, adjusting her flawless blowout, holding a small leather-bound notebook in her hands. In it, she had just—right in front of me—made […]

The doorbell rang sharply, slicing through the quiet of Saturday morning. Alina flinched, nearly spilling her coffee on the table. Who could it be at nine in the morning? Her friends always warned her before dropping by, and couriers usually called first. She opened the door and froze for a moment, not understanding who stood […]

Marina slowly set down the calculator she had just used to total up the family budget. A ringing silence hung in their living room. Outside the March sun lit up the roofs of Moscow, but inside the room was half-dark—Igor had deliberately drawn the curtains before the talk. “So you mean your mother is going […]

Svetlana stood in front of the mirror, trying on her third dress in a row. The blue one seemed too bright, the black one too strict. She stopped on a beige dress with a neat little collar. Tonight her fiancé was taking her to meet his parents, and the girl was as nervous as if […]

Alyona woke up early, as always. Outside the window it was only just beginning to get light, but inside her the familiar bustle was already rising—she had to make breakfast, get her husband ready for work, and then deal with her own tasks. The three-room apartment in the center of Moscow demanded attention: dust settled […]

Marina was wiping down the mirror in the manicure room when the last client of the day came into the salon. The woman had booked a haircut with Oksana. Marina stepped out, showed her where she could wait, and went back to cleaning. Friday—the end of the workweek. Tomorrow was a day off; she’d finally […]

Olga received a one-room apartment from her grandmother three years ago. It was small—thirty-two square meters—but in a good neighborhood, with windows facing the courtyard. Her grandmother left it to her granddaughter as the most valuable thing she had. Olga remembered the old woman saying, “This is yours, my dear. So you’ll always have your […]

Anastasia was in her third year at the Faculty of Economics when she met Igor. The guy worked as a courier for a transport company, earning thirty-five thousand, but he dreamed of more. He said he would soon find something serious, decently paid. Nastya believed him because she loved him. They had a modest wedding, […]

A black car came to a silent stop in front of massive wrought-iron gates. Beyond them began a short dead-end street with eight identical, solidly built houses, cut off from the rest of the world by a high brick wall. A small, self-contained kingdom. A security guard in a uniform jacket, bored in his glass […]