A Wife Returned From a Business Trip and Learned a Lot of New Things About Her Husband
Lina turned the key in the lock and opened the apartment door, already looking forward to finally resting. After two weeks away on a business trip, she dreamed of silence, a hot bath, and seeing her beloved husband again. But something immediately felt… wrong.
She noticed a faint, barely perceptible scent — strange, sickly sweet, and unfamiliar.
Lina opened the window, letting fresh air into the room, and then turned her attention to herself.
She put her things in the laundry and climbed with pleasure into a bathtub filled with hot, but not scalding, water. What bliss it was to lie there like that, thinking about nothing!
About twenty minutes later, Lina reached for the shampoo and was surprised to see that her husband had once again bought some nonsense.
He really couldn’t do anything without her! He had probably been eating nothing but ready-made meals the whole time.
“For blonde hair. Removes yellow tones,” Lina read and laughed. She imagined Pasha lathering his black hair with that purple goo for blondes and shook her head. The shampoo went straight into the trash.
Lina had always used products for brunettes, so the shampoo could not possibly have been useful to her.
The refrigerator greeted Lina with emptiness.
“Sweetie, I want to order fast grocery delivery,” Lina commanded, turning on the smart speaker.
“Would you like to repeat your order?” it politely offered.
“What order?”
“Eel rolls, oysters, and salmon tartare.”
For a second, Lina was stunned, but then she decided the speaker was acting up. Sometimes it picked up completely absurd requests — for example, role-play items that neither Lina nor her husband had ever shown the slightest interest in.
“Just groceries. Open the March 1 order from ‘Groceries for You.’”
After ordering food, Lina grabbed a cloth. During the two weeks his wife had been away, her husband had let the apartment go. The cabinet where the trash bin stood was especially dirty. There were bits of paper, bags, and… an empty sauce container.
So maybe Pasha really had ordered rolls? And oysters?! No… He couldn’t stand them.
Lina frowned, but decided not to wind herself up. Exhaustion, a long flight… Surely it would turn out that the sauce came with some ready-made cutlet her husband had bought on the way home.
“Sweetie! Put on some background music…” Lina addressed the smart speaker again, hoping the cleaning would go more cheerfully.
But she could not shake off the anxious thoughts. When Lina approached the smart speaker and once again asked it to play her favorite playlist, it cheerfully replied:
“Turning on the last selected playlist… Lyuba, here are your favorite tracks!”
Lina froze.
Lyuba?!
What Lyuba?!
She repeated the command several times, and the speaker responded with the same name again. What was more, in the request history Lina saw that during the past week, the speaker had played music that was not hers several times. Instead of Lina’s favorite tracks, there was some Korean pop music in the history.
Had her husband been bringing guests home? Had another woman been here, using the technology as if she owned the place?!
In Lina’s home!
A wave of anger rose in her chest, but Lina pulled herself together. A scandal was not her style. Perhaps Pavel had simply invited friends over. Perhaps Lyuba was the new girlfriend of one of Pasha’s friends. Lina decided to find out the truth and prepare an effective response.
“Darling? You’re already back?” Pavel’s voice caught her off guard.
“Yes… I changed my tickets. Are you happy?” Lina looked at her husband, but there was no joy in her eyes. Only anxiety.
“I’m happy. I just didn’t have time to, uh… prepare.”
“For what?”
“For your arrival. To clean the apartment, order food.”
“And I thought you ordered rolls and oysters for me,” the words slipped from Lina’s lips on their own.
“Oysters?!” Pavel raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t say you wanted any.”
“I saw the delivery bag,” Lina lied. “Among the trash.”
“Oh… That… That was just a bag. I brought it from work. My colleagues ordered food.”
“I see. Oysters at work. Nice.”
“How was your trip? Successful?” Pavel changed the subject.
“Quite.”
“Maybe we should eat at a restaurant, since you’re back?” It was clear that her husband was a little nervous.
“All right. Let’s go.”
When the spouses returned home, Lina again noticed the strange smell.
“What does it smell like here?”
“I don’t know…”
“Vanilla. Yes. The smell of cheap perfume, the kind schoolgirls buy. Did you bring someone here while I was away?”
“No! Maybe the neighbor is baking something at night, and that’s why it smells like vanilla. Let’s go to bed.”
Lina shrugged. She really was exhausted after such a long day.
In the morning, when her husband went to the bathroom, she got into his phone.
She found nothing obvious in his messages, but she noticed that he had deleted a conversation with someone.
None of this was like Pasha. And an unpleasant feeling kept growing inside her — the feeling that her husband was hiding something.
Fortunately, Lina had time to think everything over. After her business trip, she was entitled to a short vacation.
Dressing warmly, Lina decided to walk to her favorite market and treat herself to fresh cottage cheese and sour cream for breakfast. In line, she saw her neighbor, Maria Petrovna, and struck up a conversation.
“Linochka, hello! How are you?”
“Hello. I’m fine. I came back from Moscow yesterday. I was away for two weeks on work.”
“How can that be? I saw you just the other day! I only thought you had dyed your hair!” the neighbor said in surprise.
“Dyed my hair?” Lina repeated, feeling an unpleasant chill in her chest.
“Well, yes, you became blonde! You walked right past me and didn’t even say hello. I thought maybe you were in a bad mood, so I didn’t call out to you…” Maria Petrovna shrugged.
“And why did you think it was me?”
“Well, you got into Pavlik’s car.”
From Lina’s face, the neighbor realized she had said too much.
“Well, I could have been mistaken. There are many black cars…”
“Yes. You probably were mistaken,” Lina nodded. Her turn for cottage cheese had just come. “Have a good day.”
Lina forced a smile, said goodbye to the neighbor, and went home. Now there was no doubt left. Her husband had started an affair. His mistress was named Lyuba, she liked Korean pop music, and she was blonde. She ate oysters and made herself at home in Lina’s apartment while Lina had been working double shifts on a business trip.
Anger boiled inside Lina. She should have caused a scandal, but she decided to act differently.
Lina did not make a loud scene. Instead, she made a clever move.
The next day, she went to her husband’s father, Viktor Sergeevich. He was a strict but fair man who had always respected Lina.
“Viktor Sergeevich, I want to speak with you honestly,” she began, showing him the search history from the smart speaker and telling him about the conversation with the neighbor. “Your son betrayed me. He brought another woman home while I was on a business trip. Perhaps he would have confessed soon himself, but I don’t like ending up as the abandoned woman. So I’m acting ahead of time.”
Viktor Sergeevich looked carefully at the screen, then raised his eyes to his daughter-in-law. Disappointment flickered in them.
“Well, well…” he muttered quietly. “I always thought you were an excellent wife! What more did he need?”
“I don’t know. Listen, Viktor Sergeevich… I would not have come to you, but my period is late. I believe the test will show two lines. In my situation, I cannot be nervous. Besides, no matter how Pasha behaves, I am already at an age when I need to have a child.”
Her father-in-law froze. He had not expected that his daughter-in-law might be pregnant. Although, after six years of marriage, it was a completely natural outcome.
Lina sighed and continued:
“Viktor Sergeevich, I know the apartment is registered in your name. I would like it to remain for our child. Of course, I will divorce your cheating son, but I would not want my child to be left with nothing.”
Her husband’s father remained silent for a long time, then sighed heavily and said:
“Of course, Lina. In any case, my son must understand that people have to answer for their actions. He behaved vilely. So he will be left with nothing.”
“Do not worry about the future. I will repay you for your kindness,” Lina said.
“I am not worried. I have a savings account, and in old age I count on no one but myself,” her father-in-law said calmly.
A few days later, the documents were signed: Viktor Sergeevich transferred the apartment to his daughter-in-law, excluding his son from the will. He did not even ask Lina to bring proof of pregnancy. Her father-in-law understood that Lina deserved to keep the housing, even though it had originally been meant to pass from father to son as an inheritance.
When Pavel found out, he was stunned. He simply came home and could not open the door. In the door handle there was an envelope with a court summons and a printout of his correspondence with his mistress — Lina had found it on social media.
“Lina! Open up! Let’s talk!”
“We have nothing to talk about. Go to her.”
“But this is my home!” he shouted, pounding on the door.
“Not anymore,” Lina replied calmly. “Go to Lyuba. Maybe she’ll take you in?”
Pasha had no choice but to go to the young girl. But when Lyuba found out that Pavel no longer had an apartment, she disappeared just as quickly as she had appeared.
Realizing he had been betrayed, Pavel went to his father. But Viktor Sergeevich was unshakable.
“She played you like a child! There is no pregnancy!” Pasha shouted.
“Did you check?”
“I’m sure!”
“In any case, it doesn’t matter. Consider this my way of raising you,” Viktor Sergeevich said and pointed to the door.
He had never cherished any hope that his son would be changing his diapers in old age, and he was prepared for the fact that Pasha might stop communicating with him. But Viktor was a man of honor and principle.
No matter how Pavel tried to challenge the transaction, nothing worked. His father was legally competent and had acted according to his own convictions. The apartment went to his daughter-in-law, and how Lina’s later life turned out remained unknown to Pavel.
All he knew was that the apartment was rented out, and its owner had moved to the capital to start a new life. And judging by the fact that his ex-wife never filed for child support, the pregnancy had only been an invention — which made Pavel even angrier.
When he had been seeing Lyuba, he could never have imagined that this foolish little fling would cost him not only his family, but also his inheritance.
And all he had wanted was to have a little fun with his girlfriend while his wife was away on a business trip…
