“My parents have already bought us everything we need for life! An apartment, a car, even helped you with the business! And now you want them to do the same for your sister? And who is she to them?!”
“Listen, I was just thinking…”
Denis’s voice rang out in the silence of the living room far too cheerfully, pulling Katya out of her half-doze. She lazily turned the page of a glossy magazine without lifting her gaze from the bright picture.
Beyond the panoramic window on the twentieth floor, the evening city was lighting up — a familiar, beautiful, and distant landscape that had long since become the backdrop of their orderly, comfortable life. The air smelled faintly of expensive perfume and freshly brewed coffee.
“Mmm? About what?” she responded without much interest.
Denis came over to the sofa where she was sprawled and perched on the armrest. He was brimming with some kind of restless, almost childlike energy that always took over him whenever another “brilliant” idea popped into his head. Usually, it was about his small business, which — like everything else in their life — had been a generous gift from her father.
“About our Alina. She’s getting her degree in a year, flying out into adult life. Your parents should do something. Help the girl.”
Katya lifted her eyes from the magazine and looked at her husband in confusion. The word “do something,” when applied by Denis to her father, a man who owned a major construction company, sounded odd — even a little comical.
“Help? In what sense? Find her an internship? I’m sure Dad won’t refuse if she asks him herself.”
Denis gave a condescending chuckle, as if she were a naïve child who didn’t grasp the basics.
“Katya, what internship? I’m talking about real help. Literally. Buy her an apartment to start with. Even a small one-bedroom, just as a launch pad. Somewhere she can move out to from her parents’ nest. And of course, sort out a job. Your father has connections everywhere; he can set her up in a cushy spot in no time. They can do it.”
For a few seconds, silence hung in the living room. Katya let out a quiet laugh at first, thinking it was some kind of clumsy joke. But when she looked at her husband’s utterly serious face, full of righteous expectation, she slowly lowered the magazine onto her lap. The smile slipped from her lips, leaving behind a mask of cold astonishment. The expensive interior, the soft glow of the lamp, the city lights outside — all suddenly seemed like a set for some absurd play.
“Wait,” her voice grew quieter and firmer. “Did I hear you right? Are you seriously suggesting that my parents buy your adult sister an apartment and find her a job?”
He didn’t even realize that her question already carried a verdict. He took it as an invitation to discuss the details.
“What’s so strange about that?” he asked, genuinely puzzled by her reaction. “We’re family. One big family. Your parents helped us, and that was right. Now it’s Alina’s turn. It’s only logical. It’s humane. You don’t want her left on the street after university, do you?”
Logic. There it was, his favorite word. In his world, everything was painfully simple and “logical.” If they gave to him, then they must give to his sister too. Simply because they were “one family.” Katya slowly rose from the sofa, placed the magazine on the glass coffee table, and walked to the window, turning her back to him. She stared at the distant lights but saw only her husband’s face, twisted with this brazen, cow-like “logic.”
“Denis,” she said evenly, choosing her words carefully to keep from shouting. “When we got married, my parents gave us this apartment. They bought you a car so you could move around in comfort. My father gave you the money to start your business and still covers your failures with his connections. That’s help for us. For our family. What does your sister Alina have to do with any of that?”
He stood up too, his voice now tinged with injured righteousness.
“What does she have to do with it? Everything! She’s my sister! Part of my family, which means part of ours! Katya, don’t be like that. For your parents this is nothing, a drop in the ocean. But for Alina, it’s a real start in life. Don’t you want good things for her?”
He stepped toward her, but she raised her hand, stopping him.
“Denis, this conversation is over. This will not happen. Ever.”
The word “ever” hit Denis like a slap. He froze, and the benevolent expression of universal goodwill that usually sat so firmly on his face slid away, replaced by surprise, which quickly hardened into stubborn anger. He stopped being a kindly petitioner for his sister; he was turning into an accuser.
“So I didn’t mishear? You’re refusing to help my own sister?” He stepped closer, invading her space by the window. His voice had lost its softness; it rang with steel. “I just didn’t expect this from you. Such selfishness.”
Katya slowly turned to face him. The city lights glittered in her pupils, making them cold and impenetrable.
“It’s not selfishness, Denis. It’s common sense. Why should my parents, who aren’t even related to you by blood, solve the problems of your family? Alina has her own parents. She has you, her older brother. You’re the ones who should help her.”
He snorted disdainfully, brushing off her words as though they were an annoying fly. His face twisted into a mask of righteous indignation.
“My parents? What can they give her? They’ve spent their whole lives slaving away at the factory, their pensions are a pittance! And me? You know my business is only just getting on its feet! But your parents—it’s nothing to them! A trifle! For them, buying an apartment is like you going to buy bread! They could share a little and wouldn’t even feel it!”
Something inside Katya snapped at that moment. The thin thread of patience she had been weaving for years, listening to his endless musings about “fairness,” watching him accept her family’s expensive gifts as if they were his due, finally broke.
All the gratitude he had never shown, his entire parasitic nature she had tried so hard to ignore, suddenly condensed into that one phrase—“they could share.” As if it wasn’t about her parents, but about some faceless fund obliged to bankroll all his whims.
“My parents have already bought us everything we need for life! An apartment, a car, they even helped you with your business! And now you expect them to do the same for your sister? And who is she to them?!”
The headline of their quarrel had been spoken. And it became the point of no return. Denis looked at her as though she had suddenly begun speaking a foreign language he found disgusting.
“Oh, so that’s how it is!” he hissed. “So that’s your true face! Just like your parents! The same bloated bourgeois, sitting on your bags of money, choking on your own greed! Do you think I don’t see it? To people like you, everyone else is trash! Family, relatives—empty words, unless there’s profit in it for you!”
He paced around the room, gesturing like an actor on stage, his insults growing more venomous with each line. He forgot that he stood in the middle of an apartment bought by those “bourgeois,” that his fingers clutched the key to a car they had also bought, that his whole life now—his status as a “businessman”—was their direct doing.
In his fevered imagination, he was Robin Hood demanding justice, while she and her family were greedy rich folk refusing to share even crumbs from their table.
“You live off them and don’t even realize it! Sitting here like a princess in a tower, preaching about common sense! But I know what a real family is! Where people stand for each other no matter what!”
Katya silently watched him. The anger inside her had burned out, replaced by a cold, detached calm. She no longer saw her husband in front of her. She saw a stranger, someone repulsive, who was smearing her closest family with filth while standing on the very floor they had given him.
“That’s it. Enough,” his monologue sputtered out. He stopped abruptly in the middle of the room. “I can’t stay here. Not in this atmosphere of greed and hypocrisy. I’m going to my own. To normal people, who understand duty and support.”
He turned, strode purposefully into the hallway, and yanked his jacket from the coat rack with a violent jerk. Katya didn’t move. She didn’t say a word as he stomped about, shoving on his shoes, jangling the keys. Then came the sharp, dry snap of the lock in the front door. The sound was final, like a full stop at the end of a long, ugly sentence.
When the echo of the lock faded, the apartment did not grow quieter. On the contrary, it filled with sounds Katya had never really noticed before: the hum of the wine fridge in the kitchen, the faint rustle of the ventilation system, the distant, almost inaudible wail of a siren from the street.
Those sounds had always been there, but Denis’s voice, his presence—his very existence in that space—had drowned them out. Now they emerged, like the outlines of objects revealed when a harsh, blinding light is suddenly extinguished.
Katya stayed where she was, standing by the window, staring at her reflection in the dark glass. She expected to feel hurt, pain, maybe even despair. But none of that came. His last words, especially that poisonous “bloated bourgeois,” worked like a surgeon’s scalpel, slicing away everything unnecessary in one clean stroke. All the fog of memories, habits, and compromises she had mistaken for love was gone.
What remained was cold, crystal-clear clarity. The realization that for years she hadn’t been living with a husband, but with a brazen, ungrateful freeloader who had treated her family like his personal ATM.
She slowly walked into her study—a small area partitioned off from the living room by a bookshelf. Sitting in her desk chair, she picked up her phone. Her fingers were steady. She scrolled to her contacts and tapped the number she most often dialed to sort out Denis’s business problems—her father’s. She pressed “Call.”
“Dad, hi. Do you have a minute?” Her voice was flat, almost lifeless, like a newsreader reciting a weather report.
“Katya, of course. Has something happened?” Her father’s voice, as always, was calm and attentive.
“Denis left. For good,” she said bluntly, without any prelude. “He decided that you and Mom should buy his sister an apartment to start her life. And find her a good job.”
On the line there was a long—
Katya’s voice on the other end of the line was unnaturally calm. There was no anger, no resentment, not even the faintest trace of emotion. It was the voice of a secretary reading out a business protocol.
“This is not a joke, Denis.”
For a moment, he was stunned by that icy tone. He had expected shouting, reproaches—anything but this detached serenity.
“What do you mean ‘not a joke’? Did you change the locks? Are you out of your mind?”
“Perfectly in my mind,” she replied evenly. “You can tell your sister that a position has just opened up at my father’s company. Yours.”
Denis fell silent, struggling to digest what he had just heard. The words reached him slowly, seeping through the armor of his self-satisfaction. Fired? How could he be fired? It was his company, he had built it… with her father’s money. The thought flickered and then was snuffed out by a fresh surge of rage.
“You… You can’t do this! That’s my job!”
“It’s already done,” her voice didn’t waver. “Oh, and one more thing. The car will be collected tomorrow morning. The driver will stop by your parents’ building—leave the keys with the concierge. Don’t make this harder.”
He stood in the luxurious, silent lobby, pressing the phone to his ear, which had suddenly become a portal to hell. The apartment, the job, the car… The entire structure of his well-being, which he had thought of as his unshakable fortress, was collapsing before his eyes, crumbling to dust under a few cold, steady phrases. He looked at the polished plaque with the apartment number, which only yesterday could have borne his name. Now it was just a number on someone else’s door.
“Katya…” He barely recognized his own voice. All the anger, all the confidence was gone, leaving only a bewildered, pitiful plea.
But she was no longer listening. She spoke the final sentence, each word honed and sharpened like the edge of a blade. It wasn’t just the end of a conversation. It was the epilogue to their entire life together.
“Help your own family yourself, gigolo.”
The line clicked with short, final beeps. Denis slowly lowered the phone from his ear. He stood frozen before the locked door, in his pocket a useless piece of metal that had once been the key to his life. The silence of the lobby pressed against his ears. He was alone. And for the first time in many years, he realized with terrifying clarity that he had nothing of his own…
