Her Mother-in-Law Was Used to Meddling Without Asking. This Time, She Meddled in Vain
Sveta loved good coffee and her husband, Roma.
More or less in that order in the mornings, and in the exact opposite order in the evenings.
Roma was a cozy kind of man, like an expensive cashmere blanket: agreeable, gentle, and a little naïve.
The only manufacturing defect that came included in his basic package was his mother.
Zhanna Romanovna had the grace of a cast-iron iron and the tact of a starving wolverine. A former prominent trade-union activist, she was used to looking at the world through the prism of universal sinfulness and her own personal infallibility.
She knew exactly how one should live, whom one should sleep with, and what one should dress Olivier salad with in order not to destroy the moral foundations of society.
She disliked Sveta from the very first second. For her independent gaze, for her salary, which indecently exceeded Roma’s, and for the fact that Sveta could smile in such a way that her opponent immediately felt the urge to check whether his fly was zipped.
Sveta worked remotely. Officially, as far as her husband’s relatives were concerned, she simply “sat at the computer and pressed little buttons.”
Unofficially, Sveta was a highly sought-after ghostwriter and screenwriter.
She wrote texts for blogs, scripts for TV series, and, what was both her main financial cushion and secret passion, trashy romance novels under the pseudonym Isabella de Crow.
Roma knew about the pseudonym and passionately supported his wife. Especially after the fee for her previous hit, The Jade Staff of Passion, covered half of their mortgage in one go.
The cold conflict moved into its hot phase in early spring.
Zhanna Romanovna had spare keys to their apartment — given strictly in case of fire or the sudden fall of a meteorite.
After accidentally learning from her naïve son that Sveta had urgently rushed off to the dentist with severe pain, her mother-in-law decided to seize the moment and carry out a surprise inspection.
Sveta really had run out that day in a state of distress, forgetting to press the life-saving key combination to lock her laptop screen.
When she returned home with a numb jaw, she found that the ficus on the windowsill had been watered to the state of a rice paddy, and her work computer on the desk had been slightly moved.
Sveta, being not only smart but also observant, immediately noticed something was wrong. She checked the recent document history.
Zhanna Romanovna, unable to control the itch of curiosity, had moved the mouse. And on the screen was the open final layout of a new book — the very one whose fresh print run was expected from the printing house any day now.
Sveta scanned the paragraph where her mother-in-law had left the cursor and quietly giggled.
It was a scene in which the main heroine was negotiating with the owner of an elite escort agency.
“— My rate is one hundred thousand per night, Armando,” the text on the screen read. “No kissing on the lips, and full payment in advance. I’ll be waiting for you this Friday.” Any sane woman, seeing the dialogue and formatting, would have understood that it was fiction. But Zhanna Romanovna thought in different categories.
She was a woman of Soviet upbringing who watched crime reports instead of comedies.
Sveta vividly imagined how, in her mother-in-law’s head, the puzzle had snapped together with a ringing click: remote work, new shoes, frequent absences “for meetings with clients”…
“Well then,” Sveta muttered, rubbing her cheek as the anesthesia wore off. “People judge others strictly according to the measure of their own depravity. You want a first-class cabaret, Mother? You’ll have tickets to the center box.”
From that day on, Sveta began scattering breadcrumbs with virtuoso skill.
She knew that Zhanna Romanovna would now be watching her with triple intensity, like an intelligence agent tracking a defector.
Sveta “quite accidentally” left an open planner on the table in the hallway.
In it, circled in red marker, was written: “FRIDAY, 7:00 P.M. Loft on Baumanskaya. VIP session. Director.”
In reality, it was the date and location of a closed presentation of her new novel for distributors.
During phone conversations, whenever her mother-in-law dropped by under the pretext of checking the meters, Sveta began languidly saying phrases such as, “Yes, Viktor, I can come to the hotel, but it will cost twice as much. You know my appetites.”
Viktor was her layout designer, with whom she argued herself hoarse about the cost of urgent corrections to the layout.
“Modern young women have completely lost their shame!” Zhanna Romanovna finally snapped one day, her eyes flashing angrily over a cup of tea.
“No moral foundations whatsoever! Anything to sell themselves for a higher price to just anyone!”
“You are absolutely right, Mother,” Sveta meekly agreed, adjusting her perfect manicure.
“The competition these days is terrible. You have to constantly improve your qualifications to stay at the top. The laws of the market are harsh.”
Her mother-in-law nervously swallowed and stared at her daughter-in-law with an expression as though the nightstand in front of her had suddenly started talking. Soon Zhanna Romanovna secretly convened a family tribunal.
It consisted of Olya, Roma’s sister, who herself had been listed as the mistress of a married deputy for the third year in a row but stubbornly acted like an irreproachable schoolgirl, and, of course, poor Roma.
“Your wife is a woman with critically low social responsibility!” Zhanna Romanovna proclaimed in a tragic whisper in her kitchen, brandishing handwritten “evidence.”
“She is selling herself, Roma! I saw her price list! ‘Madam Isabella’ — that’s what she calls herself! This Friday she has some kind of gathering at a loft on Baumanskaya with some director!”
Roma, who knew his wife’s schedule perfectly well, suddenly coughed into his fist, trying to hide a hysterical laugh.
He was about to explain everything immediately, but in time he remembered Sveta’s strict instructions from the day before:
“Romochka, your mother is preparing a crusade. I beg you, don’t ruin the show for me. No defending me. Just nod, make a sorrowful face, and go with her. Bring popcorn.”
“Mom, this sounds like some kind of nonsense,” Roma weakly protested for appearances’ sake, hiding his laughing eyes.
“Nonsense?! We are going there! I will expose that filth! And Olya is coming with us to document her moral bottom!”
The long-awaited Friday arrived.
Sveta stood in the center of a stylishly decorated hall, wearing an expensive emerald pantsuit.
Waiters glided silently around with trays. Neat stacks of books smelling of fresh ink towered on the tables. A saxophone played softly. Editors, marketers, and a couple of literary critics chatted pleasantly near the buffet line.
At exactly 7:15 p.m., the massive oak doors flew open with such force that it seemed as if they were being stormed by a special forces unit.
On the threshold stood Zhanna Romanovna, breathing heavily and angrily, wearing her best formal burgundy coat.
Behind her broad back, Olya huddled with a smartphone at the ready, clearly intending to film compromising evidence. And behind them, Roma shifted from one foot to the other, biting the inside of his cheek with all his might so as not to burst out laughing.
“Nobody move!” the mother-in-law barked, storming menacingly into the room.
She had clearly expected to catch pole acrobatics, leather whips, and Sveta in leopard-print lingerie.
Instead, before her eyes stood perfectly respectable people in formal suits, frozen in surprise with glasses of sparkling wine in their hands.
On the large glossy banner behind Sveta, golden letters shone: “Isabella de Crow. Presentation of the New Bestseller The Rate of Passion.”
Zhanna Romanovna froze like an ancient statue whose arms had been forgotten. Her rounded eyes slowly slid from the banner to Sveta, then jumped to the books.
Sveta, leisurely taking a sip from a crystal glass, stepped toward her relatives with a dazzling social smile.
“Oh, Zhanna Romanovna! Olya! Romochka! And I thought you were going to ignore my invitation. How endlessly sweet of you to come and support me at the closed presentation of my new novel.”
“Novel?..” her mother-in-law managed to rasp. “What novel? But what about… clients? Directors? Hotels?”
“Oh, you mean the temperamental Armando and his business partners?” Sveta laughed brightly, attracting the friendly attention of the guests.
“Mother, you read the draft yourself on my computer when you secretly came to water my poor ficus, now tragically deceased before its time. That was the beginning of chapter seven!”
Sveta paused elegantly, enjoying the effect she had produced.
“By the way, that very director and my chief editor is that distinguished gentleman in glasses over there, Eduard Mikhailovich,” she said, lightly waving toward an embarrassed intellectual.
Olya convulsively shoved her phone deep into the depths of her handbag.
Zhanna Romanovna’s face rapidly turned the shade of an overripe beetroot.
Her grand plan of exposure had turned into a public surrender: she had just admitted in front of witnesses that she had secretly spied on her daughter-in-law, rummaged through her computer, and made herself look like the standard model of a fool in front of her own son.
But Sveta was not in the habit of abandoning a game halfway through. She always brought things to checkmate.
“You know, Mother,” Sveta’s voice suddenly lost all its social lightness and became deceptively velvety.
“I have always admired how skillfully people try on their own dirty laundry on those around them. I write texts. Just letters on a screen. And you saw a brothel in them.”
She took a slow step closer, looking straight into her mother-in-law’s shifting eyes.
“Remember one golden rule, Zhanna Romanovna. If a person sees dirt and vice everywhere, it means that is exactly what they themselves are filled with to the brim. And do you know what the funniest thing about this situation is?”
Sveta walked over to the nearest table, picked up one of the glossy books, and gracefully opened the endpaper.
“I have known for a very long time who my most devoted reader is. Access to the ‘hot’ bonus chapters on my website is available only through an email subscription. I can see my subscriber database myself.”
Sveta tilted her head slightly to one side.
“And I would never confuse your personal address, zhanna.romanovna1958, with anyone else’s. You send me Easter cards from it.”
Her mother-in-law turned pale so quickly that her burgundy coat began to look black against her skin.
“I want to personally, in front of everyone, give this first copy to the user with the nickname ‘Zhanna_Hot_65,’” Sveta said loudly, with deadly articulation, handing the weighty volume to her mother-in-law.
“To that very fan who left a detailed comment under my previous book: ‘My God, the scene in the night pool — I read all night long and forgot about my blood pressure.’”
Every sound in the room instantly evaporated. A vacuum formed.
Roma turned toward the nearest column, his shoulders shaking with silent hysteria. Olya looked at her mother with such genuine horror as if the number of the beast had appeared right on her forehead.
“Thank you for your sincere devotion to my modest work, Mother,” Sveta said, elegantly placing the book into her stunned relative’s hands like a grand duchess.
“You were reading me avidly even before I became your legal daughter-in-law. Your secret attraction to my… spicy fantasies is incredibly touching.”
Zhanna Romanovna stood like a wooden idol, clutching the bestseller to her ample chest. Her thin lips trembled slightly.
The moral pedestal from which she had preached for years and struck people over the head shattered with a crash into tiny fragments right beneath her feet.
She realized that her daughter-in-law had not merely outplayed her at chess. Sveta had taken the heavy armor of her mother-in-law’s righteousness and wrapped Zhanna Romanovna herself in it, tying the knots tightly.
Turning around on completely wooden legs, the former trade-union leader silently, without making a single sound, wandered toward the saving exit. Olya, mincing and stumbling over nothing, rushed after her.
Sveta watched them go with an unruffled gaze, exhaled with satisfaction, and smoothly turned to her husband.
“Roma, darling, arrange some more sparkling wine for me. Today we are celebrating not only the release of my new book, but also a general cleaning in our personal life.”
She took a tiny, elegant sip, watching with a warm smile as all the absurd nonsense that others had tried to drag by force into her cozy world dissolved forever in the melodious ringing of crystal and the sounds of good jazz.
