“I found someone else, someone younger. We’ll split the apartment fifty-fifty, and I don’t give a damn where you go,” her husband said in a matter-of-fact tone.
The veal medallions were almost done when the lock clicked in the hallway. Anna reached for a sprig of rosemary, automatically brushing invisible crumbs from the dark granite countertop.
During twenty-two years of marriage, she had learned to guess her husband’s mood by the way he took off his shoes. Today Igor didn’t toss his shoes by the door. Instead, he carefully placed them on the mat.
That meant he was calm.
That meant dinner would pass without an irritated discussion about falling stock prices and logistics problems.
She wiped her hands on a linen towel and went into the hallway to take his heavy leather briefcase. But Igor was in no hurry to take off his coat.
He stood in front of the mirror, loosening the knot of his expensive silk tie, looking not at his wife but at his own reflection. There was a strange, almost indifferent expression on his face, the kind people usually wore when announcing that a business meeting had been rescheduled.
“Anya, let’s skip the introductions,” he said dryly, without his usual rasp. “I found someone else, someone younger. We’ll split the apartment fifty-fifty, and I don’t give a damn where you go.”
He said it as casually as he had probably ordered an Americano at the coffee shop on the ground floor of his office an hour earlier.
Not a trace of regret.
Not the slightest embarrassment.
Just a statement of fact.
The estimate had been signed. The project was closed.
Anna froze, feeling as though somewhere beneath her ribs her heart was slowly grinding to a halt. The air in the hallway suddenly became thick and icy, like water in a winter swimming hole.
She blinked once, then again, trying to understand what she had just heard.
The words seemed like a collection of meaningless sounds.
What other woman?
What half of the apartment?
“What did you say?” was all she managed to squeeze out as her lips went numb.
Igor sighed irritably, as though he were being forced to explain something obvious to an incompetent intern. He finally removed his jacket and carelessly tossed it onto the ottoman.
“You heard me. Her name is Milana, she’s twenty-six, and she’s expecting my child. I need this apartment, Anya. Or rather, the money from my half of it. We’re not going to live here. Milana doesn’t like old buildings. She wants a new apartment on Mosfilmovskaya Street. So I’m giving you a month. We sell it, split the money in half, and after that you’re on your own.”
He moved her aside with one hand, walked into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of filtered water, drank it in one gulp, and glanced at the frying pan where the meat was sizzling.
“I’m not having dinner. I came for my things. I’ll take the essentials now, and I’ll send a driver for the rest on Thursday.”
Anna remained standing in the hallway, her back pressed against the cool silk-screened wallpaper.
This apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment was not simply a place to live.
It was her creation.
Her hard-won project, into which she had poured her entire soul, all her savings, and several years of her life.
They had bought the Stalin-era apartment ten years earlier in terrible condition.
It had practically been a communal apartment: peeling parquet flooring, rotten pipes, and original decorative molding buried under layer after layer of Soviet whitewash.
At the time, Igor had only just begun taking his business to a serious level and declared that he had no time to deal with renovations.
“Do whatever you want, just don’t bother me,” he had said.
And Anna had.
As a professional restorer of antique furniture, she approached the space with almost obsessive devotion.
She personally stripped paint from the oak window frames, spent entire days at construction markets, and searched for craftsmen capable of restoring the original ceiling cornices.
She had sold the two-room apartment she inherited from her grandmother in a residential district in order to pay for that insane, enormous renovation when Igor’s money suddenly became “tied up in the business.”
And now he was telling her that Milana didn’t like the place.
And that he didn’t care where Anna went at forty-five years old.
Forty minutes later, three Samsonite suitcases stood lined up in the hallway.
Igor came out of the bedroom, fastening his watch around his wrist. He tossed his apartment keys onto the table.
“The realtor will come Tuesday evening. He’ll assess everything. Try to make sure the place is clean. And no hysterics, Anya. We’re adults. You understand perfectly well that I’ve outgrown this relationship. I need excitement, energy, and you…”
He looked her over with open boredom.
“You’re too obsessed with your pieces of wood and your cooking pots.”
The front door slammed.
The lock clicked.
Anna slowly sank to the floor right where she was standing.
Only then did the tears burst from her eyes, hot and burning against her cheeks.
She howled, biting down on her knuckles to keep herself from screaming aloud.
The pain was almost physical, as though her skin were being torn from her body while she was still alive.
Twenty-two years.
They had started out in a dormitory on Vernadsky Avenue, eating cheap dumplings from the same plate.
She had spent nights working through his first accounting reports, correcting mistakes and covering for him with the tax authorities while he traveled from region to region.
She had postponed her career and her dreams of opening her own restoration workshop in order to give him “a reliable home front.”
And now she had become nothing more than the old foundation on which a building had been constructed—a foundation no longer needed once the shiny new facade was complete.
Saturday and Sunday merged into one endless gray corridor for Anna.
She couldn’t eat.
She couldn’t sleep.
She wandered through the enormous empty apartment, running her fingertips over the restored parquet and tracing her hand along the curves of an antique sideboard she had spent three months restoring.
Every millimeter of that home screamed betrayal.
By Monday morning, the tears were gone.
Despair had been replaced by a ringing, icy emptiness.
And something else.
A thin, barely perceptible spark of anger.
“I don’t give a damn where you go.”
Igor’s words kept repeating in her head.
She brewed strong coffee, sat down at the oak kitchen table, and opened her laptop.
She needed a plan.
She was not going to surrender half her life simply because Igor was going through a midlife crisis and suddenly wanted “excitement.”
In her phone contacts, Anna found the number of Marina, an old friend and, conveniently, one of the best family-law specialists in Moscow.
They arranged to meet two hours later.
Marina’s office near Patriarch’s Ponds smelled of expensive leather and fine perfume.
Her friend, always composed and sharp, silently listened to Anna’s fragmented account.
She didn’t gasp.
She didn’t lament.
She didn’t pity her.
She simply drew something methodically in her notebook.
“All right, Anya,” Marina said, putting down her pen and looking at her over her glasses. “First, stop panicking. The property was acquired during the marriage and, as I understand it, registered as jointly owned?”
“Yes,” Anna replied quietly. “We bought it together. But the renovation… I invested the money from my grandmother’s apartment.”
Marina grimaced.
“Proving that money from the sale of premarital property was invested in renovations is difficult. You need all the receipts, bank statements, and proof of the money moving from one account to another. It’s tedious and takes a long time. Igor will certainly hire good lawyers. He’s a businessman. He knows how to litigate.”
Anna lowered her eyes.
The hope that had barely begun to appear started fading.
Would she really have to sell everything?
Move into some tiny studio apartment on the outskirts?
Watch everything she had created collapse?
“Wait.”
Marina suddenly frowned, staring at her computer screen, where she had already opened several databases.
“Anya. Think back to 2018. Autumn.”
Anna looked at her friend in confusion.
“2018? Nothing particularly special. Igor had huge problems with customs that year. A shipment of equipment was seized, inspections started. He was facing secondary liability, maybe even a criminal case… He barely slept. He was taking sedatives by the handful. He was afraid they would take everything from us, freeze the accounts, auction off the property.”
“Exactly, Anya. Exactly!” Marina’s eyes flashed. “And what did the two of you do to save the apartment? Think!”
Her memory slowly began unraveling the tight knot of the past.
Autumn.
Rain beating against the panoramic windows.
Igor, pale, his hands trembling, pacing the living room.
“They’ll take everything, Anya. Everything. We need to move the assets immediately.”
And then they had gone to a notary…
Anna exhaled sharply and pressed her palms to her cheeks.
“The deed of gift…”
“Bingo!” Marina triumphantly slapped her palm against the table. “He transferred his share to you under a gift agreement! That way, if he went personally bankrupt, the apartment wouldn’t become part of the bankruptcy estate, because it would be your only home and you had nothing to do with his company’s debts.”
“But then… the problems were resolved,” Anna whispered, feeling goosebumps run down her back. “He found an investor and covered the shortfall. The criminal case went away.”
“It did. But a gift agreement doesn’t magically reverse itself, my dear,” Marina said, leaning back in her chair with a satisfied smile. “Igor was so happy to crawl out of that hole that he simply forgot to transfer the documents back. To him, it was just technical paperwork. But according to the official property registry, the sole and complete owner of the apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment is you, Anna Nikolaevna.”
Silence filled the office, broken only by the ticking of the wall clock.
Anna tried to comprehend the magnitude of what she had just heard.
There was no half.
The apartment belonged entirely to her.
Igor, so confident in his infallibility and his power over her, had not even bothered to check the documents before trying to throw her out.
“And what do I do now?” Anna asked, feeling her voice tremble—but now not with fear, rather with anticipation.
“Order a fresh extract from the property register,” Marina said firmly. “Buy a good bottle of champagne. And wait for Tuesday.”
Tuesday was overcast.
That evening, Moscow was buried in traffic, but Igor arrived exactly on time.
He did not come alone.
With him was a tall, fidgety man in a cheap suit who was clutching a folder and a laser measuring device.
“Anya, meet Eduard, the real estate agent,” Igor said without even saying hello.
He walked into the living room like the owner of the place, without removing his shoes.
“Edik, take a look. One hundred twenty square meters. Ceilings are three-point-two meters.”
Eduard clicked his tongue approvingly as he examined the molding and parquet.
“Gorgeous, Igor Borisovich. Absolutely gorgeous. The location is prime. It’ll be gone within a month if we don’t push the price too high.”
Anna stood in the living-room doorway with her arms folded across her chest.
She was wearing her favorite cashmere dress and had put on light makeup.
For the first time in days, she felt completely calm.
“Anya,” Igor said, turning toward her with a grimace. “Have you started packing your things? I asked you not to make a scene. We need good-quality photos, so remove your little jars from the windowsills.”
Meanwhile Eduard switched on the laser measure.
A red dot slid across the wallpaper.
“This partition could be demolished,” the realtor muttered. “You could create a fantastic kitchen-living room, about fifty square meters…”
“The partition cannot be demolished,” Anna said calmly, stepping into the room. “It’s load-bearing. And besides, it belongs to me.”
Igor gave her a condescending smirk.
“It belonged to you yesterday, Anya. Today we’re selling the apartment. I explained everything. Milana found an excellent penthouse. The developer is offering a discount if we pay in full by the end of the month. I need the money.”
Anna walked over to the antique secretary desk, opened a drawer, and took out a neat plastic folder.
Slowly, she removed a thick white sheet of paper bearing a blue stamp.
“I’m afraid Milana will have to curb her expectations, Igor. Or you’ll have to take out a mortgage.”
Anna walked to the table and placed the paper directly in front of her husband.
“You can’t sell this apartment. Not half of it. Not a quarter of it. Not a single square meter.”
Igor frowned, his face twisting with disdain.
He glanced at the document.
“What kind of circus is this, Anya? A registry extract? So what?”
“Read the line marked ‘Owner,’” she suggested gently.
Igor bent over the table.
Eduard, sensing trouble, froze with the laser measure in his hands, trying to blend into the Italian wallpaper.
Igor’s eyes raced over the lines.
At first quickly.
Then more slowly.
His eyebrows rose, and a vein appeared on his forehead.
He grabbed the document and brought it closer to his eyes, as though hoping the letters would change.
“Ownership… one hundred percent…” he muttered, his voice suddenly hoarse. “What the hell? This is a registry error! We bought this apartment during the marriage!”
“We did buy it during the marriage,” Anna nodded, feeling a pleasant, cold sense of triumph spreading through her. “But in 2018, when you were trying to protect yourself from secondary liability and hide your assets, you personally signed over your share to me as a gift in front of a notary. Remember, Igor? You were so afraid of losing your money that you transferred everything to me. And then you simply forgot. You’ve always been too confident in yourself.”
Red blotches spread across Igor’s face.
He dropped the document onto the table as though it had burned his hands.
“You… you planned this! You deliberately didn’t remind me!”
“Remind you of what? That you gave me the apartment?”
Anna laughed, genuinely and brightly.
“You’re a grown man. A businessman. You said it yourself: no hysterics. We’re dividing the property. Except there’s nothing to divide. The apartment is mine. All of it.”
Eduard made an indistinct squeaking sound and hurriedly began winding up his measuring tape.
“Igor Borisovich… I think I’ll leave. You two can… sort this out yourselves.”
The realtor slipped sideways past Anna and practically ran into the hallway.
The front door slammed.
They were alone.
Igor was breathing heavily.
His confidence, his casual tone, his condescension—all of it had crumbled to dust in the space of a single minute.
Standing before Anna was a confused, aging man who had suddenly realized that he had outplayed himself.
“I’ll take you to court,” he hissed, clenching his fists. “I’ll prove the transaction was fictitious! I’ll hire the best lawyers! You’re not leaving me with nothing!”
“Go ahead.”
Anna shrugged and walked over to the window, looking out at the evening lights along the embankment.
“Except you needed to challenge the sham nature of the transaction within a year. Six years have passed. Any judge will laugh at you. And do you know what else? If you start digging into that story, your tax schemes from that period may come to light. Do you really need that kind of scandal now, when you have a new young family and a baby on the way?”
She turned and looked directly into his eyes.
For the first time in many years, she felt no intimidation in his presence.
Only weary disgust.
“You said you didn’t give a damn where I went. Well, I don’t give a damn where you go either. Tomorrow I’m changing the locks. The belongings you wanted to send your driver for will be waiting on the landing. And now get the hell out of my house.”
Igor stood silently, swallowing convulsively.
He looked at the walls that only half an hour earlier he had considered his capital, at the parquet flooring he had mentally valued in the millions.
Then he turned without saying a word and slowly walked toward the door.
His shoulders sagged, and his steps had become heavy and dragging.
Six months passed.
Anna was sitting on the living-room floor, carefully removing old varnish from the graceful leg of an early-twentieth-century Viennese chair.
The open window let in a fresh spring breeze and the sound of the waking city.
She had heard from mutual acquaintances that Igor’s affairs were not going well.
When Milana learned that there would be no millions from the sale of the apartment, she threw a spectacular tantrum and moved back in with her mother.
Igor rented a two-room apartment in a residential district and tried to plug the financial holes in his business, which had begun to falter without Anna’s invisible but constant support.
Anna, meanwhile, opened her own restoration workshop.
At first, she took small jobs.
Then word of mouth brought her serious clients with valuable antiques.
It turned out that furniture was not the only thing that could be restored.
A life could be restored too—carefully, piece by piece, removing layer after layer of old pain and betrayal.
And the result could exceed every expectation.
Friends, how often have you encountered people who were so convinced of their own impunity and superiority that they ultimately trapped themselves through their own greed or carelessness?
Do you think Anna acted fairly, or should she have given Igor part of the money out of generosity?
