“I finished talking to my husband, but didn’t hang up. That accident saved me.”
Another contract for the supply of medical equipment blurred before her eyes. The numbers and clauses had long merged into a monotonous mush. Elena rubbed the bridge of her nose and leaned back in her chair.
A phone call from her husband came just in time.
— Lena, hi. Listen, I’ll be late today. The meeting is dragging on.
— Again? — the woman turned the page automatically. — That’s the third time this week.
— What can I do, it’s work. Don’t cook dinner for me, I’ll grab something somewhere.
— Alright, — Elena had long grown used to her husband’s constant delays at work. In the past six months, they had become noticeably more frequent. — See you at home.
— Yeah, of course. Okay, bye.
The woman was about to press “end call,” when she suddenly heard a familiar woman’s laugh in the background. Her hand froze above the screen. That laugh… Where had she heard it before?
— Igor, you promised! — the same voice sounded again, now clearer.
Elena’s heart skipped a beat. Angela. Her former friend, whom she hadn’t spoken to for two years after an unpleasant story involving money.
What is she doing next to Igor?
— Just hold on a little longer, she heard her husband’s voice. — We have to be careful.
— I’m tired of hiding! When will you finally make up your mind?!
— Anzhel, we agreed. Just a little more and everything will work out. The main thing is that Lena doesn’t suspect anything ahead of time.
Elena felt her fingers go numb. The phone almost slipped from her hands. What does he mean “make up his mind”? What are they talking about?
— I’m tired of waiting, Angela continued. — We’ve been dragging this out for two years. She’ll find out anyway.
— She will, but not now. I have a plan. Trust me.
A plan? Elena pressed the phone tighter to her ear, afraid to miss a single word. Her throat went dry.
— Your Lena is so naive, Angela laughed. — She still hasn’t noticed a thing. And we pulled it all off practically right under her nose.
— Quiet, Igor scolded her. — Don’t get too relaxed. She’s smarter than she seems.
— Igor, I’m serious. Enough stalling. File the paperwork and get this over with. I can’t play this comedy any longer.
Paperwork? What paperwork? Elena felt a cold chill spreading down her spine. Could it be…
— Alright, alright. Next week I’ll meet with the lawyer. But you have to promise you’ll be more careful. If she suspects something too soon, everything could fall apart.
— Fine. But I won’t wait forever!
She heard movement, then a car door slam.
— Get in, let’s go. I’m in a hurry.
The line went dead.
Elena sat motionless, staring at the black screen of the phone. Her thoughts tangled, refusing to form any logical chain.
Igor and Angela. Two years. Paperwork. Plan.
She tried to reconstruct the timeline. Angela had disappeared from their lives after the scandal over the loan. It had turned out she spent the money Elena had lent her not on her mother’s treatment, as she claimed.
But if the overheard conversation was true, she and Igor had been meeting for two years. All this time.
— Lena, can you sign the contract with Medtech? — Marina, the head of the procurement department, quietly walked into the office and handed her a folder. — There are two copies — signature on both.
Elena mechanically took the folder, but the letters blurred again. Her hand trembled.
— Lena, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Did something happen?
— No, I’m fine. Just… a bit of a headache.
— Maybe you should go home? There’s only an hour left till the end of the day. You can sign it tomorrow.
— No, I’d rather do it now, Elena forced herself to focus on the text.
Naive fool — she had even been happy about his “attentiveness”!
Elena opened her laptop and logged into online banking. Their joint account showed the usual expenses: utilities, groceries, fuel.
But his personal card…
Cash withdrawals had become much more frequent. Restaurants she didn’t recognize. Flower shops… and he hadn’t given her flowers in six months.
She wanted to scream from helplessness and humiliation. How could she have been so blind? All the signs of betrayal were right there, yet she kept making plans for their future and dreaming of children.
She closed the laptop and began pacing nervously around the room again. She had to do something — but what? Stage a jealous scene? Or confront him directly?
“If she suspects something too early, everything could fall apart.”
What exactly could fall apart? And what documents was Igor planning to file?
A disturbing thought suddenly surfaced in her mind. The apartment was registered in her name — her parents’ wedding gift. But once they got married, Igor became co-owner of the property by law. Could he be trying to…?
Elena rushed to the safe where they kept all important papers. Marriage certificate, apartment ownership documents, her passport — everything was in place. But that meant nothing. Copies could have been made in advance.
She remembered Angela. She had always been cunning and calculating.
Back at university, she could wriggle out of any situation and shift the blame onto others. And the story with the “loan for her mother’s treatment” had shown what she was truly capable of. It had turned out Angela’s mother was perfectly healthy — the money had gone to pay off her own debts.
And now they were planning something together. Against her!
Her phone buzzed again.
“Lena, I’m leaving on a business trip tomorrow morning. For three days. Forgot to warn you.”
A business trip. Convenient! He would spend three days with Angela in some hotel.
Elena quickly typed back: “Okay. Which city are you going to?”
The reply didn’t come right away: “Voronezh. Meeting with suppliers.”
She opened her husband’s work email. Luckily, she knew the password — Igor had never bothered hiding it.
There were no emails about any business trip to Voronezh. But she did find correspondence with a travel agency about booking a room in a countryside hotel near Moscow. For two people. For tomorrow.
Elena lay awake all night, listening to every sound.
Igor came home around midnight, quietly went to take a shower, then lay down beside her and began snoring almost immediately. Normally, she would have been happy to have him back home — but now his presence felt like a fake performance.
In the morning, her husband was getting ready for his “business trip” with unusual meticulousness. Elena pretended to be asleep but watched him through half-closed eyes.
— Lena, I’m off, — he leaned down to kiss her forehead.
— Have a good trip, — she mumbled sleepily.
After he left, Elena quickly got dressed and went to work. But she couldn’t focus on anything. She shuffled papers mechanically, answered calls, nodded during meetings — but all she could think about was what to do next.
By lunchtime, a plan had formed.
If Igor and Angela were at a countryside hotel, then she had time to search his belongings at home. Maybe she would find something that would clarify the situation.
She asked for leave from work, citing feeling unwell (which wasn’t far from the truth), and went home.
She started with his desk. The drawers contained regular things: pens, notebooks, chargers. But in the very back corner, her fingers touched a folded sheet of paper. It was a printed appraisal of their apartment. Dated last week.
Her hands trembled. So her husband really was planning to sell the property. Their home, gifted by her parents!…
Elena went into the bedroom and opened her husband’s side of the wardrobe. Between his shirts, she found a bag from a jewelry store. Inside lay expensive gold earrings with diamonds. The receipt showed an amount equal to what they usually spent for the entire month.
The earrings were clearly not meant for her. Elena was allergic to gold — her husband knew that perfectly well.
In the pocket of his jacket she found a lawyer’s business card and a note with a date.
“Divorce. Division of property.” Written in Igor’s handwriting.
So in three days, her husband was filing for divorce!
Elena sat down on the bed, feeling her legs give way. So all this time, her husband had been preparing to leave her. And not just leave — but strip her of everything.
A white-hot rage rose inside her. Pure, cold fury at their audacity — that they thought she was a fool they could outsmart.
She quickly grabbed her laptop and got to work.
First, she logged into online banking and transferred all the money from their joint account to her personal one.
Then she found the number of the travel agency her husband had contacted.
— Good afternoon. I’m Mr. Kravtsov’s wife. He asked me to let you know that the hotel check-in is postponed. We have a family issue.
— Understood. When do you plan to arrive instead?
— Not sure yet. Most likely we’ll have to cancel the booking altogether.
— Alright, we’ll make the changes. Thank you for letting us know!
Elena smiled with satisfaction. Let the lovebirds arrive at closed hotel doors. Their romantic weekend — ruined!
But that wasn’t enough. She needed something more. Something that would make them understand that she was not to be played with.
She picked up the phone again and dialed the number of her acquaintance, lawyer Oleg Mikhailovich, who had helped with her grandmother’s inheritance.
— Good afternoon, Oleg Mikhailovich. This is Elena Kravtsova. I have an urgent question about family law. Please tell me — how do I protect my property if my husband files for divorce?
— Elena, what happened? You two looked so happy not long ago.
— It turned out things were not what they seemed. My husband is going to a lawyer in three days to file for divorce. I found out by accident.
— I see. Was the apartment gifted to you by your parents before or after marriage?
— Before. But we signed the marriage papers afterward.
— That doesn’t matter. If the deed is in your name, the apartment is your personal property. It is not subject to division in divorce. The only nuance is if joint funds were invested into major renovations or remodeling.
Elena exhaled in relief. They hadn’t done any major renovations — only cosmetic repairs.
— And what about joint savings?
— If the money is in shared accounts, it’s divided 50/50. But if one spouse tries to conceal funds or transfer them elsewhere, the court can take that into account during division.
— So I have the right to transfer our joint funds to my own account?
— Technically, yes. But it’s better to document all financial transactions. Are you absolutely sure he’s filing for divorce? Maybe it’s worth talking first?
— Oleg Mikhailovich, he’s been seeing another woman for two years. He plans to sell our apartment — he even ordered a valuation.
— In that case, act fast. I can see you today at six.
After speaking with the lawyer, Elena felt calmer. But it still wasn’t enough.
Igor and Angela thought she was helpless and naive — she was going to prove otherwise.
She remembered that Angela worked at an advertising agency that serviced several large shopping malls. A serious position — image mattered. And management surely wouldn’t appreciate an employee involved in stealing someone else’s husband and plotting property fraud.
It wasn’t hard to find the contact information of Angela’s supervisor.
Elena drafted a short but precise letter stating that their employee had been seeing a married man for two years and was planning real estate schemes with him.
She didn’t send the email yet. She kept it as her final weapon.
By six in the evening, she was at Oleg Mikhailovich’s office. The experienced lawyer grasped the situation immediately.
— Elena, you’re absolutely right not to sit idly by. Men often assume their wives don’t understand legal matters.
— What do you suggest?
— Tomorrow morning, before he goes to his lawyer, file for divorce yourself. That will give you the upper hand — you’ll be the plaintiff, not the defendant. You’ll set the terms.
— And the apartment will definitely remain mine?
— Absolutely. Moreover, if we can prove that he concealed expenses or spent family money on a mistress, the court may rule against him during the property division.
Oleg Mikhailovich prepared all the necessary documents. Elena signed a power of attorney for legal representation.
— And one more thing, the lawyer added. — If you have recordings of their conversations, messages, photos — all of that may be useful. Russian courts take infidelity seriously.
That evening at home, Elena wrote out her plan for tomorrow.
In the morning — she would go to court and file for divorce. Then — head to work as if nothing had happened. And then, while Igor would be sitting with his lawyer, he would receive a summons informing him that the divorce had already been initiated.
By her.
Around eleven in the evening, another message came from Igor:
“Lena, are you okay? I’m tired, going to bed early. Won’t call tomorrow — meetings all day.”
“Of course you won’t,” Elena thought. “You have other plans.”
She quickly typed a reply:
“Alright, darling. Good luck with the negotiations. Love you.”
The last words came with difficulty, but she had to keep up appearances until the end.
Elena sent the message and turned off her phone. She planned to get a good night’s rest — the coming days would be intense.
In the morning, she woke up with a strange feeling of lightness.
For the first time in months, she knew exactly what she was doing — and why. By nine a.m., she had filed for divorce at the court, and by eleven, she was already at work.
Igor remained silent for two days — apparently enjoying his final days of the “business trip” with Angela.
At last, the much-awaited call came from her husband.
— Lena, this… this must be some sort of misunderstanding! — the man stammered in confusion. — I was just handed a summons. It says you’re filing for divorce.
— Not a misunderstanding, — his wife replied calmly. — Reality. Because I know everything, Igor.
Her husband tried to sound outraged:
— What are you talking about? I’m on a business trip — in Voronezh!
— At the “Podmoskovnye Dali” hotel. In a room for two. With Angela — my ex-friend. Was that what you wanted to say?
— Lena, listen…
— No — you listen. The apartment stays with me. Don’t even think about it! I already transferred the money from our joint account to my own. And I grabbed the gold earrings too. They were yours — now they’re ours!
— Have you been spying on me?
— Hardly! You were so careless, I didn’t even have to. When we talked three days ago, you forgot to hang up. I heard everything. A pleasant accident!
A woman’s voice could be heard in the background — Angela, angrily saying something.
— Yes, Igor, tell your girlfriend I sent a letter to her agency. With details of your relationship. Let’s see how her management reacts to an employee who destroys families.
— You had no right!
— And you had the right to lie to me for two years? To plan a divorce behind my back and sell my apartment?
Igor’s voice turned whiny:
— Lena, we can talk it over. I’ll explain…
— You’ll explain in court. Oleg Mikhailovich will represent my interests. Because I don’t want to see you again!
She hung up and switched off her phone.
That evening, as usual, her colleague Marina from the neighboring department stopped by:
— Lena, you look… happy today. What happened?
— I’m getting divorced!
— Good God! And you’re saying it so calmly?
— You know, when you finally make the right decision — it suddenly becomes easier to breathe.
A week later, a response came from the advertising agency. Angela was issued a strict reprimand and stripped of her quarterly bonus. And a month later, she resigned. Apparently, the office atmosphere had become unbearable once everyone learned the truth.
Igor tried to reach out through mutual acquaintances, saying he was willing to settle peacefully. But Elena was unyielding.
The divorce went quickly. There was nothing to argue over. The apartment — officially registered as her sole property — remained with her. Their shared savings were split in half, but since Igor couldn’t account for his large recent expenses, his share ended up being symbolic.
And for the first time in years, Elena felt that her life belonged to her again. That justice does sometimes prevail.
Especially if you give it a little push.
