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Andrés Del Valle was not a man easily moved. As the head of one of Mexico’s most powerful construction empires, he lived surrounded by excess, by silence, and by people who never dared contradict him. Yet that afternoon, strolling through the manicured gardens of his Las Lomas mansion, his carefully ordered world cracked apart. Among […]

“Your sister stole from me.” For a few seconds the line filled with a dense, heavy silence in which only the background noise of someone else’s office could be heard. Then Maxim’s uncertain voice, distorted by the phone speaker, came through. “Olya, maybe you’re mistaken? What are you even talking about?” Olga stood in the […]

“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 […]

— 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 […]

— 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 […]

“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 […]

— And what is this? Igor carelessly tossed a pitiful, crumpled scrap of paper onto the kitchen table in front of Sveta. A receipt from a cosmetics store. He held it between two fingers, as if he were disgusted to touch the evidence of a monstrous crime. His voice was calm, even tired, which infuriated […]

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 […]

— Oh, it’s so nice here! So spacious! — Tamara Pavlovna’s voice rolled through the hallway like thunder out of a clear sky. — Not like my little den. Lord, her again. Marina froze with a rag in her hand. The kitchen cabinet already shone, but she kept scrubbing—maybe if she didn’t react, her mother-in-law […]

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 […]