When He Saw His Ex-Wife in an Expensive SUV, He Couldn’t Believe His Eyes
Anton drummed his fingers irritably against the steering wheel as he watched the endless stream of pedestrians crossing the road.
“When is this ever going to end?” he muttered through clenched teeth. “The whole city is full of poor losers who can’t afford cars.”
Bored while sitting in traffic, he began looking around. A luxurious SUV pulled up at the traffic light on his left. It gleamed as though it had just driven straight out of a commercial, its paintwork and chrome polished to perfection.
A woman was behind the wheel.
“Well, look at that. A female driver,” Anton scoffed contemptuously. “I wonder how she managed to scrape together enough money for a car like that.”
Meanwhile, the woman removed her sunglasses, adjusted her hair, and glanced into the rearview mirror. At that moment, Anton’s heart stopped.
He recognized her.
It was Lera, his ex-wife.
“That can’t be…” he whispered, his mouth falling open in astonishment. “But how? Why?”
His memory instantly carried him back into the past. He had personally made sure that she received nothing in the divorce. She had not even possessed a driver’s license!
And now she was driving a brand-new luxury SUV, while he was sitting in his aging car, which could barely be described as still roadworthy.
“Maybe she was hiding her income?” he thought frantically, trying to find some explanation.
Their story had begun almost romantically. Back then, Lera had been painting graffiti on the wall of his farm—bright, covered in paint, and wearing her hair in a rebellious style. Anton had pretended to be interested, although privately he considered the entire thing pointless nonsense.
“It’s just vandalism,” he had thought. “Who needs all these colorful scribbles?”
But aloud, he said something completely different. He found Lera attractive, and little else mattered to him.
Their brief romance unexpectedly developed into a serious relationship. She was intelligent and interesting to talk to. She had her own opinions, yet at the same time she seemed gentle and trusting.
For more than a year, Anton deceived both himself and her by pretending to be interested in her art. Eventually, he decided that she was suitable for family life.
He proposed properly: on the roof of an office building, surrounded by flowers and strings of lights, kneeling with a diamond ring in his hand.
They celebrated their wedding at an expensive hotel, and only a few hours later, Anton began regretting his decision.
Lera’s friends were loud, uninhibited, and dressed in all kinds of unusual clothes. They stood out sharply among the other wedding guests. Just looking at them made Anton want to hide them from the respectable people he had invited.
“The first thing I’ll do is forbid her from seeing them,” he decided. “She’s my wife now. I won’t allow just anyone into my home.”
To his surprise, Lera quietly accepted his conditions, asking only that she be allowed to meet her friends outside the house.
“Anton, I can’t simply stop speaking to people because you don’t like them,” she objected timidly. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t like everyone in your circle either, but you don’t hear me asking you to abandon them.”
“Lera, don’t compare them,” he snapped. “My friends are respectable people. They’re the real elite.”
Lera knew very well what the real elite looked like, and she understood that Anton’s friends were nowhere near it. Still, she remained silent. If it made him happy to believe that, she decided to let him.
However, his restrictions did not end with her choice of friends.
Her appearance began to irritate him, as did the smell of paint and her constantly untidy hair. He had once found her free-spirited nature amusing, but now he wanted order.
Through pressure and threats, Anton eventually forced Lera to give up painting.
“If you like art, go to museums like normal people,” he told her. “Why do you need to crawl around alleyways? My colleagues are already tired of explaining your strange behavior to their wives.”
“But this isn’t just a hobby. It’s how I earn money,” Lera tried to argue. “You work in an office yourself, and you don’t even have a proper education!”
“Lera, you’re not an artist,” he replied coldly. “You’re just a scribbler.”
Those words clearly wounded her. For several days, she did not speak to her husband at all.
Then Anton noticed that her sketchbooks, brushes, and jars of paint had disappeared. She no longer stayed out late and had begun using scented lotion instead of coming home smelling of oil paint.
“Thank you, darling,” he said, pleased with the changes.
To make peace, he invited her to a restaurant.
She looked magnificent in a burgundy dress and with a new haircut.
“Look at what a beautiful couple we make!” he said, wrapping an arm around her and turning her toward a large mirror. “This is exactly what I was talking about. Now you look like a proper wife. Much better! You can take up something more suitable now—needlework or cooking, for example.”
Lera said nothing.
The woman she saw in the mirror felt like a stranger. But she understood one thing with absolute certainty: it was time to find herself again.
She tried many different activities before finally discovering photography.
Her artist’s eye instinctively captured the right lighting, angle, and mood. Her photographs looked alive and full of energy. People began hiring her and inviting her to photograph events.
In her spare time, she loved walking through the streets, photographing passersby, animals, trees, buildings—anything that stirred emotion within her.
Anton became increasingly irritated as he watched his wife’s success.
In his opinion, Lera was wasting her time, jumping from one interest to another. She had even become boring. All she ever did was talk about her work and ask for his advice, as though he cared.
What infuriated him most was that even his own acquaintances praised her.
“What is there to praise?” he complained. “A photograph? These days, any idiot can pull out a phone and take a picture. Where’s the talent in that?”
Gradually, his feelings for her faded completely, and he began having an affair.
His mistress was exactly the kind of woman he had always dreamed of: well-groomed, confident, and always perfectly dressed and made up.
There were no foolish hobbies and no strange friends—she was simply stylish, expensive, and “proper.”
Lera learned about the divorce unexpectedly, when she received a summons to appear in court.
Anton watched her confusion with satisfaction. He personally made sure that she received nothing. His lawyer had earned every penny of his fee.
“You have three days to pack your things,” Anton informed her coldly.
Lera did not even argue.
She simply nodded and walked away.
Anton had little time to think about her. His new partner demanded all his attention. She took him to galleries, exhibitions, and fashionable parties. She was constantly asking for new things—shoes, dresses, or yet another jar of expensive cosmetics.
“We need to maintain a certain standard,” she would say.
Still, there were moments when Anton longed for the old days—when Lera would sit silently by the window and paint, while he could remove his tie, relax on the sofa in his suit, and drink a can of dark beer.
And now, seeing her again, he barely recognized her.
How had she changed so much in such a short time?
Without fully realizing what he was doing, Anton followed her SUV.
He assumed she was heading toward the old one-room apartment where she had lived after the divorce. But she drove straight past it and turned into an area Anton had only ever heard about—a district filled with luxurious private mansions.
The gates opened automatically as she approached, and she drove into the courtyard.
Anton stopped a short distance away.
Lera stepped out of the vehicle and handed the keys to a man in a formal suit. He drove the SUV into the garage while she walked toward the house.
Anton climbed out of his own car and followed her with determination.
Strangely, no one stopped him from entering.
Inside the spacious entrance hall, Lera was talking to two young people. When they noticed Anton, they exchanged glances and disappeared.
“Thank you, guys. I’ll come by later,” she called after them.
Then she slowly approached her former husband.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said. “What brought you? Curiosity? You recovered quickly after everything. Go on, admit it—did you come to ask whether I had been hiding money from you?”
Lera smiled and shrugged.
“So that’s what brought you here—envy? In that case, come with me. I’ll tell you everything myself.”
She led him into another room, where drinks were immediately brought to them.
“Sit down. Do you think I work here? In a way, I do. I own the place.”
Anton stared at her.
“You see, darling, when someone offered to buy my photographs, I didn’t let the opportunity pass. You probably have no idea that some photographs sell for unbelievable amounts of money. Believe me, even wealthy people can’t always afford them. I was one of the fortunate ones.”
She gestured around the room.
“It turned out that I not only have talent as an artist and photographer, but I also have good business instincts. I decided to try working for myself.”
“Everything here belongs to me—the house, the studio, and the team. The best people work and study here. We organize photo sessions, advertising projects, exhibitions, and master classes.”
“So, in a way, you contributed to my success. You helped me understand exactly what I never wanted to become.”
Anton remained silent.
He was almost bursting with envy.
“You wanted to break me,” Lera continued. “You wanted to remake me in your image and take away my individuality. But I chose my own path, even though I wasted quite a lot of time on you.”
Lera stood up.
“Well, for the sake of our old friendship, I won’t charge you for the visit. You can find the way out yourself.”
She left, abandoning him alone in the room.
Anton rose and began pacing. Her photographs hung on the walls around him, each one signed in her neat handwriting.
The sight irritated him even more.
“How dare she speak to me like that?” he raged silently.
His hand was already reaching toward one of the photographs when a strong-looking man in a business suit entered the room.
“It seems you’ve lost your way,” the man said. “Allow me to escort you to the exit.”
Another disappointment was waiting for Anton at home.
“Anton, I’m leaving,” his girlfriend announced.
She was standing by the door with a suitcase.
“Why?”
“Look at yourself. You’re a good man, sweet even, but you’re not on my level. Goodbye, darling.”
She kissed him lightly on the cheek and walked away, leaving only the scent of her perfume in the air.
“Go to hell!” Anton shouted, slamming his fist into the wall. “I don’t need either of you!”
Never before had he experienced such humiliation.
