The smell of another woman’s perfume on the collar of my husband’s shirt was sweet, cloying, with a note of vanilla and some kind of cheap musk. Mine doesn’t smell like that. I haven’t worn sweet fragrances since I was thirty.
I stood in the bathroom with that shirt in my hands and didn’t cry. I counted. Out of professional habit. A chief accountant with twenty years of experience knows how to count silently and quickly.
Igor is forty-five. I am forty-two. Our marriage is eighteen years old. Our daughter Sonya is sixteen. Our joint business, StroyMontazh-Plus LLC, is twelve years old. My share as a founder is 50%. His is 50%. The general director is him. The chief accountant is me.
And now he had vanilla.
I put the shirt into the washing machine, added detergent, pressed the button, and went to the kitchen to drink tea. To think.
For the first three weeks, I simply watched. Igor started staying late. “Construction sites in the Moscow region” appeared. A new men’s perfume—expensive, the kind he had never accepted before. A gym membership. He bought a blue shirt—the color I hate, and he knew it.
I said nothing. I cooked borscht. Checked Sonya’s homework. Prepared the quarterly report.
And in the evenings, I went into 1C and quietly checked the movement of funds through our company accounts.
And here is what was interesting. Over the past six months, Igor had signed three contracts with some consulting company called Astra-Consult. Payment for “marketing services”—regularly, once a month. In total: three million two hundred thousand. The founder of Astra-Consult was Kristina Andreevna Vorontsova, born in 1997.
I looked her up on social media. Found her immediately. Blonde hair, lips, eyelashes, the Maldives, Dubai. Six posts in the last month with geotags from restaurants where my husband had been “delayed at construction sites.”
I saved screenshots. Printed the contracts. Collected bank statements. Put everything into a gray folder. And continued cooking borscht.
The point of no return came on Tuesday evening. Sonya had gone to Kazan for an academic competition. Igor “was at a construction site.” And then the doorbell rang.
She was standing on the doorstep. Kristina. In a white faux-fur coat, with a perfect manicure and a plastic folder in her hands.
“Are you Marina?” she asked. No “hello.” “May I come in? We need to talk.”
I silently stepped aside. Everything inside me froze, but my hand reached automatically for the phone in the pocket of my robe and pressed record. I had turned on the voice recorder before opening the door—I recognized her through the peephole.
She walked into the kitchen as if she owned the place. Sat down. Put the plastic folder on the marble countertop. Inside the folder was a printed ultrasound scan.
“Twelve weeks,” she said, looking me straight in the eyes. “A boy. Igor knows. He’s wanted a son for a long time, and you only gave him a girl.”
I poured myself coffee. Slowly. My hands weren’t shaking, which surprised even me.
“And what do you want, Kristina Andreevna?”
“Oh, you know me?” she smiled, pleased. “Well, that means you’ve done half my work for me. Listen carefully. Igor is leaving you. But peacefully. You file for divorce, split the property in half, and from his share in the company, he will transfer a gift to me. Because of the child. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” I nodded. “And if I don’t agree?”
She leaned forward. Her perfume hit my nose—the same vanilla.
“Then things will get ugly. First, I’ll file to establish paternity and demand child support—from his official salary of one hundred and fifty thousand. Second, I know you keep double books in the company. Igor told me everything. One report from me to the tax authorities—and both of you, you and your company, will go down. So, Marina, it’s better to do this peacefully.”
I took a sip of coffee. Hot. It burned my tongue. Good—it cleared my head.
“Kristina, does Igor know you came here?”
“No,” she snorted. “He’s a weakling. Always whining, ‘I feel sorry for Sonya, I feel sorry for Marina.’ But I’m decisive. I’ll tear anyone apart for my child.”
“I see,” I stood up. “Give me three days to think. I’ll call you.”
She left, clicking her heels across my parquet floor.
I sat back down on the stool. Turned off the voice recorder. On the recording: forty-seven minutes of Kristina Andreevna Vorontsova’s clear, crystal voice. With threats about the tax authorities. With a plan to squeeze out a share in the company. With an admission of an affair with a married man and a pregnancy by him.
Now—the work.
The next morning, I didn’t go to the office. I went to see Tatyana Borisovna—my lawyer, whom I used to run into once a year at corporate events and who had handled my friend’s divorce ten years earlier. I laid everything out for her. The folder. The voice recording. The bank statements.
Tatyana Borisovna listened for an hour and a half. Then she took off her glasses and said:
“Marina, your position is brilliant. Ideal. But let’s make it even better.”
We made it better.
First, I filed a notice of withdrawal from the members of StroyMontazh-Plus LLC and sale of my share. But not to my husband—attention—to my own brother Sergey, with whom I had agreed everything in advance. At nominal value. A completely legal transaction, provided for by the company charter, with respect for the preemptive right. I notified Igor in writing thirty days in advance—he simply didn’t respond, he was busy with Kristina. When the transaction closed a month later, Igor had a new partner in the company: my brother, a lawyer, with a 50% share.
Second, I collected all the documents related to those very “consulting services” from Astra-Consult. Three million two hundred thousand rubles, siphoned out of our joint family company into the mistress’s company. That is withdrawal of assets from jointly acquired marital property. That is grounds for recalculating the division of property in my favor during the divorce.
Third, I filed for divorce. With a demand for compensation for half of the withdrawn funds. I attached everything: contracts, bank statements, photos of Kristina in the Maldives three days before Igor’s “business trip to a construction site” on those same dates.
Fourth, I did not take the recording to the tax authorities. That would have been too crude, and it could have ricocheted back at me. I did it more subtly.
I called Kristina three days later, as promised.
“Kristina, let’s meet. We’ll discuss the terms.”
We met in a café. She arrived pleased with herself, in a new fur coat.
“Well, have you made up your mind?” she smirked, sprawling in her chair.
“I have,” I took out my phone. Pressed play.
Her voice filled the café. “One report from me to the tax authorities—and you’ll go to prison.” “I’ll tear anyone apart for my child.” “Igor is a weakling.”
Kristina turned white. Then red. Then white again.
“You… you recorded me?”
“I did,” I put the phone away. “Listen carefully, little girl. I’ve already left the company. My share was bought by my brother—a lawyer, by the way. Igor now works with him. Guess whether my brother will like finding out about Astra-Consult and the three million transferred from the company to your little firm? I think he’ll file a lawsuit to recover damages from the general director. From Igor. Personally. Plus, I’ve filed for divorce—with a demand for compensation for half of those same three million. So by the time you give birth to your boy, Igor will have no company, no apartment, no car. He’ll have child-support debt and a writ of execution.”
“You… you’re bluffing…”
“Check,” I stood up. “And yes. I’m not giving that recording to anyone. I need it only as insurance. In case you or Igor suddenly decide that I’ve forgotten something.”
I left without paying for her latte.
Two weeks later, Igor came to me. Gaunt, gray-faced.
“Marina. I understand everything now. Let’s go back to the way things were. I broke it off with her. It was a mistake.”
I looked at him. At the man I had lived with for eighteen years. And I realized I no longer felt sorry for him, nor did it hurt. Nothing.
“Igor,” I said calmly. “Did you receive the court summons for the divorce yesterday? Take all your questions there. We’ll talk there. With lawyers present.”
The divorce took two hearings. The court took the asset withdrawal into account and awarded me 70% of the jointly acquired property. The apartment was left to me and Sonya; there was no mortgage. The car went to Igor, along with the loan.
Kristina gave birth. She filed for child support. Igor pays a quarter of his official income—the same one hundred and fifty thousand he had set for himself as general director. My brother, the new partner in the company, approved reducing that salary to eighty thousand “due to the crisis in the construction industry.” I hear Kristina is furious.
And this summer, Sonya and I are going to Italy. For the first time in eighteen years—without Igor, without “construction sites,” without the smell of someone else’s vanilla.
At the airport, Sonya asked:
“Mom, did you really not forgive him at all?”
I looked out the window at the runway.
“Sweetheart, I neither forgave nor refused to forgive. I simply calculated.”
A chief accountant always counts.
