— “Your mother called—she’s worried! She’s asking when you’re finally going to wear me down about selling the dacha! Tell her the springboard for your takeoff is broken! And that she should take her little acrobat son back home with her!”

— “Just imagine it for a second, Nika,” Slava’s voice was coaxing, velvety—warm as honey. He was sprawled on their wide bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling as if he saw not white plaster there, but blueprints for their brilliant future. “We sell that wreck. Just a piece of land with a shed. That’s it! We’ll have real cash in hand. I invest it in the business, and in a year—at most a year and a half—we take off. Really take off.”

Veronika didn’t lift her eyes from the book. She could feel the conversation in her skin, the way you feel a storm coming in the sticky, heavy air. It had started like this for the fifth or sixth time in the last two months. First the dreamy tone, then the word “we,” said with special emphasis, and finally the cherry on top—the verb “take off.”

— “Slav, that dacha belongs to my parents,” she replied evenly, turning the page though she couldn’t make out a single letter. “They go there every weekend from May to September. Mom’s roses are there. Dad built the banya with his own hands. What do you mean, ‘a piece of land’?”

— “I’m not saying we throw them out on the street!” He sat up, his enthusiasm turning more insistent, more physical. He scooted closer and set his warm hand on her shoulder. “We’ll buy them another one. A better one! With a proper toilet, not a hole in the floor. Farther from the city, where the air is cleaner. They’re pensioners—they need peace and quiet. And this… Nik, come on, you have to understand—this is our springboard. A once-in-a-lifetime chance. I’ve calculated everything.”

Without a word, she lifted his hand off her shoulder and placed it beside her on the blanket. Calculated everything. She knew what that meant. It meant he had already spent money they didn’t have—from selling something that wasn’t theirs. This “springboard” loomed in their conversations constantly, like an annoying ad for a cheap loan. He needed it for his next brilliant business plan, which—like all the previous ones—was supposed to make their family rich.

— “I’m not going to talk to them about it,” she cut him off, closing the book. The discussion was over, at least for today. “That’s it. Topic closed.”

— “All right, all right,” he said, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture. A flash of poorly hidden irritation crossed his face. “As you say, boss. Just think about it. Not about me—about us. I’m going to take a shower.”

The bathroom door shut, and a moment later the sound of running water filled the room. Veronika sank back into the pillows. Weariness hit her all at once—heavy and dull. She wasn’t angry, no. She was just tired of this endless game of “master schemer,” in which her role was both sponsor and grand prize at the same time. She picked up her phone to mindlessly scroll when Slava’s phone on the nightstand began to vibrate. The screen lit up the half-dark bedroom.

“Mom.”

Her heart gave an unpleasant jolt. Her mother-in-law usually called during the day. An evening call could mean something urgent. Without thinking, Veronika took the phone and swiped to answer.

— “Hello,” she said.

But no one was listening to her. From the speaker poured a fast, impatient whisper that didn’t expect a reply.

— “Slavik, well? Did you talk to her? Why are you dragging your feet, son? Did she refuse again? Push her, push harder! Tell her it’s for the family, for your future baby—make something up! Otherwise they’ll snatch your springboard right out from under you; her parents will sign their little shack over to someone else. We need the money—you know that! Urgently!”

The words struck Veronika in the face like hard, icy jets of water. Springboard. Her springboard. Money. We. Her mind went ringing-empty, washing away both fatigue and irritation. She didn’t say a word. She simply pressed the red end-call button.

The water in the bathroom stopped.

Veronika stayed sitting on the bed, rigid as a wire. She didn’t put the phone down. She held it in her hand, and the cold plastic seemed to burn her fingers. It felt like evidence. Irrefutable proof of a crime she had suspected but didn’t want to believe in.

The bathroom door opened. Slava stepped out through the steam, a towel around his waist and another on his head. He looked relaxed, pleased; a lazy smile played on his face. He looked at his wife—and checked himself. Her expression was unfamiliar. There wasn’t a trace of warmth in it, only the cold, calm gleam of polished stone.

— “Did something happen?” he asked, and his smile slowly began to melt.

She stared at him in silence—at his wet hair, at the drops of water running down his chest. Then she slowly lifted her hand, showing him his phone.

Slava froze halfway to the wardrobe. The towel on his head slipped sideways, exposing his wet, tousled hair. He let out a nervous laugh, but it came out dry and rattling, as if he’d choked.

— “Nik, what are you doing? Mom blurts things out without thinking… She has her own logic—you know that. And anyway, since when do you answer my calls?”

He tried to lace his voice with hurt, to shift the blame, to make her the guilty one for violating his private space. It was an old, proven trick of his. But it didn’t work. Veronika didn’t even lift an eyebrow. She looked straight through him, as if he were made of glass.

— “‘Springboard,’ Slava. What a precise word. Not ‘our chance,’ not ‘our family nest’—exactly ‘springboard.’ A bouncy board for one jumper. I kept thinking what it reminded me of—and I remembered. Do you remember that ‘promising coffee shop’ that needed a ‘small start-up capital’? My father gave you money then. And when your brilliant idea collapsed six months later, he was the one who paid off your debts so some angry people wouldn’t come knocking on our door. Was that the first test jump?”

Slava flinched as if struck. He yanked the towel off his head and threw it onto the floor. His face lost its relaxed look; his features sharpened, and a hunted, angry glint appeared in his eyes.

— “That was business! In business there are always risks! I wanted what was best for us!”

— “For us?” She slowly shook her head, and a faint, poisonous smirk touched her lips. “And the car? Remember how you convinced me we needed a bigger car—‘executive class’—because it was ‘status’ and an ‘investment in image’? My parents gave me money for my birthday, and we bought ‘our’ car.

“Only for some reason you were always the one behind the wheel. You drove your buddies around in it, you went to ‘business meetings’ that never led to anything. In three years I drove it to the supermarket maybe ten times. That was the second attempt to take off, was it? On someone else’s dime.”

Every word she said was measured and cold, like a surgeon’s scalpel. She wasn’t accusing him, she wasn’t yelling. She was dissecting their life together layer by layer and laying the ugly truth out for him.

— “That wasn’t help, Slava. That was sponsorship. And that means I’m not your wife—I’m your principal investor, who was supposed to supply resources for your grand plans without interruption. Only you turned out to be a lousy start-up founder. Not a single one of your projects ever took off. And now you’ve decided to put the last thing I have on the line—my parents’ home. How enterprising.”

— “Enough!” he barked, and his voice cracked. “Stop humiliating me! You never believed in me—not for a second! You always looked down on me from your bell tower where everything is served on a silver platter! Do you have any idea what it’s like to live with someone who constantly reminds you that you owe them everything? Yes, your parents helped us! So what? You threw it in my face every day—with your silence, with your look! You think I didn’t see the way you looked at me? Like I was nothing. Like some kept man with ambitions—”

— “A kept man with ambitions?” Veronika tilted her head slightly, as if trying the phrase on. “Maybe, yes. You’re right. That’s exactly how I’ve been looking at you lately. I just didn’t want to say it out loud. Thank you for sparing me the need to.”

This calm, almost lazy agreement hit Slava harder than any scream ever could. He had been waiting for protests, tears, counter-accusations—anything that would let him blow it into a scandal and reclaim his favorite role: the wounded victim. But she simply agreed. She disarmed him, stealing his only weapon—his make-believe hurt feelings. And then the mask finally cracked and crumbled into dust.

“Ah, so that’s how it is,” he hissed, his face twisting with contempt—pure, unclouded contempt. He stepped forward; his half-naked body tensed. “All right, then. Fine. Let’s be honest. Yes, I wanted to sell that dacha! And you know what? I had every right! Because I spent the best years of my life on you! I invested my time, my youth, my energy in this marriage!”

He spoke loudly, viciously, spitting the words as if purging poison that had been building in him for years.

“Your parents sit on those few acres like a dog in the manger! They don’t need it. It’s dead capital. And I need it—so I can build something real instead of rotting away in your cozy little petty-bourgeois burrow! You think I enjoyed living by your schedule?

Putting up with your bland friends and their talks about kids and discounts? Sitting through your dreary family dinners where your father looks at me like I’m nothing? I put up with all of it! For you! For our future—which you sabotaged so carefully with your fear and your laziness!”

He paced the room like a caged animal, from the bed to the window and back, leaving wet footprints on the parquet. This was no loving husband now, not even a sulking boy. This was an angry, hungry predator deprived—so he believed—of its rightful prey.

Veronika watched the outburst in silence. She didn’t interrupt. She let him talk himself out, drain it all to the last drop. She looked at him the way a doctor looks at a patient in a seizure—waiting for the acute phase to pass so she could deliver the final diagnosis. When he fell silent, breathing hard, she spoke. Just as quietly and evenly as before.

“So you ‘put up with’ my friends?” she clarified. “The very friends you tried to borrow money from for your ‘projects’ behind my back? And whose debts I later repaid to preserve what was left of your reputation? You ‘put up with’ my father? The same man who got you a job after your first failure—and you quit three months later because you ‘didn’t want to break your back for someone else’?”

She stood up from the bed. She didn’t come closer—she simply rose, and that simple movement made him take a step back.

“You say you invested the best years of your life in this marriage. Let’s take inventory of your investments, Slava. Five years. Your coffee shop, opened with my father’s money, lasted six months and left forty thousand dollars in debt. ‘Our’ car, bought with my money, you wrecked while drunk—and the repairs cost half the price of a new one.

Your ‘consulting business,’ for which you demanded a separate office and a new laptop, consisted of you sitting at home for two years playing online games. Are those your assets? Is that your energy? You didn’t invest anything, Slava. You only consumed. You’re a parasite. And you’re not angry at me—you’re angry that the host body finally woke up and decided to cut off your access to resources.”

He looked at her, and the anger was gone from his eyes. There was only cold, animal fear. He understood that she could see straight through him. She didn’t see an ambitious man, an unrecognized genius—she saw exactly what he really was: a pathetic, lazy, utterly empty person.

He opened his mouth to object, but he couldn’t find a single word. All his swagger, all his rehearsed accusations, turned to ash in the face of that calm, merciless analysis.

Slava stood in the middle of the room, and suddenly he felt cold. Not from a draft or wet skin, but from the dead emptiness that opened inside him after her last words.

“Parasite.”

The word stuck, became a second skin. All his prepared counterarguments, all his righteous fury—so carefully saved up and so richly poured out—proved useless. She wasn’t arguing with him. She had simply issued a diagnosis: brief, final, beyond appeal. He stared at her, waiting for more, but there was no more.

Veronika walked around him in silence the way you walk around a piece of furniture that’s in the way. Her movements were smooth and economical, without fuss or anger. She went to the large built-in wardrobe and, with a soft click, opened the door.

From deep inside, from the top shelf, she took out his travel bag—a large one made of dark, heavy fabric, the one he used for “business trips” when they needed a break from each other. She didn’t fling it. She didn’t throw it at his feet. Calmly, she placed it in the middle of their bed, on the rumpled blanket. The bag lay there, black and empty, like the open grave of their marriage.

Then Veronika went to the dresser where her handbag lay. She picked it up, took out her wallet. Slava watched these everyday motions with growing confusion. What was she doing—giving him cab fare? The thought was so humiliating that his fists clenched on their own.

She opened the wallet and pulled out a stack of bills. A thick, weighty bundle wrapped with a bank band. All their shared cash, withdrawn a few days earlier for a big purchase.

She walked to the bed. For a moment she paused, looking at the money in her hand, and then—lightly, almost carelessly—she tossed it onto the travel bag. The bundle thudded dully against the fabric and stayed on top, brazen and out of place.

“Here,” she said. Her voice was as level and colorless as before. “This is yours. Consider it severance.”

Slava stared at the money, then at her. He didn’t understand—or rather, his mind refused to accept what was happening. This wasn’t a quarrel, not a scandal. It was a dismissal. The shutdown of an unprofitable enterprise in which he had been the main—and only—asset that failed to justify the investment.

“I’m closing our project, Slava,” she continued, as if reading his thoughts. “It turned out to be a failure. Too many expenses, no profit, and zero prospects. I’m writing off the losses and leaving the business. And this”—she nodded at the money—“is your share. Payment for services rendered. Compensation for your time. So you can find yourself a new ‘springboard’ and a new investor.”

She spoke about their life the way you’d read a business report. No pain, no regret, no anger. Only cold, sober calculation. And that was more frightening than any curses. He wasn’t a husband who’d been fallen out of love with, not a close person who’d betrayed her. He was a bad investment. An error in financial planning.

“Your acrobatic act is over.” She looked him straight in the eyes, and in her gaze he saw nothing but tired disgust. “The circus is leaving. No need to rush. Pack up whatever you consider yours.”

With that final line, she turned and left the bedroom. No door slam. She simply walked out and pulled it shut behind her. A few seconds later, the click of a kettle being switched on came from the kitchen. Life went on. Only now—without him.

Slava was left alone in the middle of the room. He stood there, still wrapped in a towel, staring at the empty travel bag and the money lying on it. It was real. He could reach out and take it—the very money he had wanted so badly.

There it was, right in front of him. But he couldn’t move. He felt naked, exposed to ridicule, crushed. He hadn’t been destroyed by shouting—he’d been destroyed by an accounting report. He hadn’t been thrown out—he’d been written off. He stared at his severance pay and understood: this wasn’t a springboard.

It was a gravestone—the one under which he had just buried himself.