“I’ve thought everything through! We’ll rent your mother a great room in a family-style dormitory. It’s cheap, there’s a shared kitchen, and there will be women her age there, so she’ll have someone to chat with in the evenings. We’ll give her some money for groceries too. We’ll let my parents use her share of this apartment, so to speak, rent-free. And everyone will be happy!”
The red ink in Angelina’s ballpoint pen was steadily running out, leaving pale, scratchy marks across the paper. The young woman sighed, set the pen aside, and reached toward the cup of stationery on her desk for a new one.
Checking her seventh-grade students’ English notebooks always required enormous patience. Mistakes involving the Present Perfect and Past Simple seemed endless, and Angelina had to methodically correct the same errors again and again, write rules in the margins, and leave encouraging comments.
At twenty-five, she genuinely loved her profession. Working as an English teacher did not make her rich, but it gave her something far more valuable—a sense that she was contributing to the future, and the joy of seeing understanding light up in her students’ eyes as they began to grasp a foreign, difficult, yet beautiful language.
Angelina lived in a spacious three-room apartment with her mother, Anna Vladimirovna. The apartment was filled with memories. Angelina had spent her childhood there, and her father had once worked in the study, whose walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books. He had died several years earlier, and the loss had brought mother and daughter even closer together.
Anna Vladimirovna was an educated, refined woman who had spent her entire working life teaching at a music college. She endured her husband’s death with quiet dignity. She did not become a widow who cried endlessly. Instead, she found comfort in caring for her daughter, reading classical literature, and sharing long evening teas with Angelina at the round kitchen table.
The apartment was kept spotlessly clean. Every object held a memory of happier times, and to Angelina, the place seemed like an inviolable sanctuary.
That was how things had been until Andrey appeared in her life a year earlier.
They had met completely by chance in a bookstore when they both reached for the same business English textbook. Andrey turned out to be charming, smooth-talking, and confident. He courted Angelina beautifully, brought her flowers, took her to cozy cafés, and knew how to listen as though every word spoken by the modest schoolteacher were the greatest revelation he had ever heard.
Angelina, who had little experience with relationships, fell hopelessly in love.
She believed she had finally met the one—the love of her life, a strong and dependable man behind whom she could shelter from any hardship.
Andrey worked as a sales manager for some trading company. He talked constantly about his grand career ambitions and assured her that he would soon become an important executive.
After ten months of romance, the question of living together arose.
Angelina waited with a pounding heart for Andrey to suggest that she move in with him or, at the very least, that they rent a cozy apartment for just the two of them.
But Andrey had entirely different plans.
One evening, while they were sitting in a café, he took her hands in his and looked devotedly into her eyes.
“Darling, I’ve done the calculations. Why should we hand over a huge amount of money to some stranger just to rent an apartment? That’s financial suicide! We’re planning a future together. We need to save for the wedding and for a car. You and Anna Vladimirovna have that enormous three-room apartment. The two of you practically get lost in there. Why don’t I move in with you? We’ll stay in your room, and instead of spending money on rent, we’ll put it into our joint savings account. It’s the most sensible and mature decision.”
Angelina was confused.
On the one hand, Andrey’s arguments sounded logical and practical. On the other, she had never imagined beginning her family life under the same roof as her mother.
But Andrey was so convincing, kissing her fingers so tenderly, that she agreed to speak to Anna Vladimirovna.
Her mother’s reaction was predictable.
Sitting in her favorite armchair, Anna Vladimirovna listened carefully to her daughter’s hesitant explanation, adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose, and sighed heavily.
“Gelya, my dear girl,” she said gently, though there was hidden anxiety in her voice. “I’m not against your happiness. You know that. But are you sure this is the right step? A grown, established man who is almost thirty can’t arrange a place for himself and the woman he loves to live, so he moves into his future mother-in-law’s apartment? To put it mildly, that doesn’t make him look particularly good. A real man tries to bring his wife into his own home instead of settling into somebody else’s.”
“Mom, you’re thinking in outdated stereotypes!” Angelina protested heatedly, defending the man she loved. “He’s just economical! He’s thinking about our future. Why waste money? We’ll live quietly. He’ll be at work all day anyway—you’ll barely even notice him. Please, Mom!”
Anna Vladimirovna looked into her daughter’s pleading eyes, remembered herself at that age, and did not resist.
She loved Angelina too much to stand in the way of what her daughter believed was happiness.
“All right,” her mother said with a nod. “Let him move in. But remember, sweetheart, living together under one roof has a way of making people’s masks fall off very quickly.”
How right the wise Anna Vladimirovna was.
The masks began slipping before the end of their very first week together.
Andrey moved in with his belongings—a couple of suitcases full of clothes and a powerful gaming computer that immediately took up half of Angelina’s desk, forcing aside the neat boxes containing materials for the miniature room models she enjoyed making.
At first, he tried to behave politely.
But before long, his true nature began revealing itself in small ways.
He could walk past Anna Vladimirovna in the hallway without even saying hello.
He would leave dirty dishes on the table and simply expect the women to clean them up.
He spoke loudly on the phone while Anna Vladimirovna was resting and complained whenever dinner was not exactly what he wanted.
“Gelya, why are we having chicken again?” he would whine, poking at the food on his plate with his fork. “I told you I wanted French-style meat. Your mother sits at home all day. She could at least cook something decent for the breadwinner.”
Angelina would blush, try to laugh it off, and excuse his behavior by saying he was tired from work.
But deep inside her, an unpleasant chill of doubt had begun to grow.
She saw the way Anna Vladimirovna silently pressed her lips together while clearing the table and how she tried not to leave her room unless necessary so that she would not cross paths with her supposed “son-in-law.”
The apartment, once an oasis of peace, had filled with a thick, suffocating tension.
Angelina found herself torn between trying to please the perpetually dissatisfied Andrey and wanting to protect her mother from his small but painful insults.
Yet all of that turned out to be merely a prelude to the real disaster.
The scheme Andrey had conceived was astonishing in its arrogance and shamelessness.
It happened exactly one month after he moved in.
Angelina returned home from school earlier than usual. Classes had been canceled because of a teachers’ meeting, so she decided to surprise her mother by baking her favorite pie and spending a quiet evening together as a family.
She unlocked the front door and heard a muffled voice coming from the kitchen.
Andrey was talking on the phone.
Angelina removed her shoes and was about to enter the kitchen when the words coming from Andrey’s mouth stopped her in her tracks.
“Yes, Mom, everything’s still going according to plan,” he said confidently and cheerfully into the phone. “I’ve got everything ready. You can start packing your suitcases and buy tickets for next weekend. Don’t worry! The apartment is fantastic—three rooms. I’m practically the man of the house here already. There’s plenty of space for everyone. Yes, we’ll clear out that old room. I’ll take care of everything. Just don’t bother bringing your potatoes with you. We can buy everything here. All right, love you. Call me when you know exactly what time you’re arriving!”
Angelina felt as though the floor had disappeared beneath her feet.
Who was coming?
What suitcases?
What “old room” was he planning to clear out?
Her heart jumped into her throat and her palms instantly became damp.
She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, deliberately stamped her foot loudly enough to announce her arrival, and walked into the kitchen.
Andrey was sitting at the table, his feet resting on the chair beside him as he drank coffee.
When he saw Angelina, he did not seem particularly embarrassed. His expression changed only slightly as he quickly lowered his feet and placed his phone facedown on the table.
“Oh, darling, you’re home early!” He put on his trademark charming smile—the one that had driven her crazy only a short time ago but now looked like a fake mask glued to his face. “Actually, I was just about to have a serious conversation with you. Sit down.”
Angelina sat opposite him.
Hundreds of questions swarmed through her mind, but she forced herself to remain silent and waited for him to speak.
Andrey cleared his throat, adopted the expression of a wise strategist, and began.
“You see, baby, we’ve been living together for a month now. I can see how good we are together. But I’m constantly thinking about the future. About our family. And about my parents. They’ve worked themselves to the bone in the countryside their entire lives. Their health isn’t what it used to be, and there’s no decent medical care where they live. They need to move to the city. And as a loving son, I have to help them.”
“And how exactly are you planning to help them?” Angelina asked.
Her voice sounded unnaturally calm.
She already suspected where this conversation was going, but her mind refused to believe anyone could be so outrageously shameless.
“Look, it’s all perfectly logical!” Andrey said enthusiastically, mistaking her calmness for agreement. “We have a huge three-room apartment. Three rooms, Gelya! That’s an enormous amount of space being used inefficiently. You and I live in one room. Your mother has the biggest one, the former living room. And the third room—your father’s study—is practically empty. There are only your little wooden houses and some books in there.”
He leaned toward her, staring into her eyes as though trying to hypnotize her.
“I have the perfect plan. My parents move in here. We give them the biggest room—they need the space because they’re older. You and I move into your father’s study and turn it into a great bedroom. And we keep the living room as a common area so everyone has somewhere to watch television and entertain guests.”
Angelina stared at him without blinking.
Inside her, an invisible string seemed to be stretching tighter and tighter, ready to snap.
“Wait,” she said slowly. “Where does my mother fit into this perfect plan? This is her apartment, Andrey. She is the owner here.”
Andrey smiled condescendingly and waved his hand as though swatting away an annoying fly.
“Oh, Anna Vladimirovna doesn’t need such a huge apartment anymore. It’s difficult for her to clean, and it’s difficult for her to walk through all these corridors. I’ve thought everything through! We’ll rent her a great room in a family-style dormitory. There’s one nearby, in the next district. It’s cheap, there’s a shared kitchen, and there are women her age there, so she’ll have someone to chat with in the evenings. She’ll have much more fun there than sitting here alone watching us young people! And we’ll give her money for groceries. We’ll let my parents use her share of the apartment, so to speak, rent-free. Everyone wins! My folks live comfortably, your mother gets company, and you and I become the proper masters of the apartment!”
Every word Andrey spoke fell into Angelina’s mind like a heavy, filthy stone, smashing to pieces the illusion of love she had so carefully constructed over the past year.
The man sitting in front of her was not a loving partner or a dependable source of support.
He was a cynical, greedy, shameless invader who had decided he could control other people’s lives and property simply because he considered himself the center of the universe.
Angelina slowly rose from the chair.
She leaned against the countertop, feeling an icy fury ignite in her chest—a feeling completely foreign to her, yet one that now gave her mind extraordinary clarity.
She looked Andrey directly in the eyes and uttered the sentence that marked the point of no return.
“So your mother is going to live with us, while mine gets sent to a dormitory?”
Failing to notice the deadly warning in her voice, Andrey nodded happily, assuming she was merely clarifying the details of his brilliant plan.
“Well, yes! I’ve already explained it. It’ll be better for everyone. Your mother has already had her share of comfortable living. It’s time for her to step aside and make way for the younger generation and for my parents, who’ve never had a decent life. You’re going to be my wife. You’re supposed to understand me and support me in everything. I’m the head of our family. I make the decisions.”
“You are not the head of this family,” Angelina said quietly, pronouncing every word so sharply that Andrey flinched. “You’re an arrogant, greedy parasite who decided he could ride into paradise on someone else’s back.”
The smile vanished instantly from Andrey’s face.
He frowned, and his features hardened, exposing the aggression beneath his charming façade.
“Is that any way to talk to your husband?!” he shouted, slamming his palm against the table. “I’m proposing something practical, and you’re throwing a tantrum over some old woman? What does she even need this enormous apartment for? My parents are already packing! Their tickets are booked for Saturday! I promised them they’d be coming somewhere decent!”
“Oh, so the tickets have already been bought?” Angelina gave a bitter laugh.
The pain of betrayal was sharp, but her anger was stronger.
“So you never intended to ask for my permission. You decided everything behind my back. You decided to throw my mother out of the home she’s lived in for thirty years, where every single thing was bought by her and my father! You want to send her to a dormitory so your relatives from the countryside can settle comfortably into somebody else’s apartment?!”
“Because you’re weak!” Andrey roared, jumping to his feet. “You’re constantly clinging to your mother’s skirt! I was trying to turn us into a normal family where the man solves the problems! My parents are moving here, and that’s final! And if your mother won’t leave willingly, we’ll make things so uncomfortable that she’ll run to that dormitory herself! I’ll make sure her life here is miserable!”
The kitchen door creaked quietly.
Anna Vladimirovna was standing in the doorway.
Her face was white as a sheet and her hands were trembling slightly, but her posture remained perfectly straight.
Clearly, she had heard the entire horrifying conversation.
“There’s no need to make anything uncomfortable, young man,” Anna Vladimirovna said quietly, but there was such strength in her voice that Andrey fell silent for a moment. “I am not leaving my apartment. You, however, will have to leave it. Immediately.”
Andrey curled his lips contemptuously and stepped toward the older woman, his entire posture radiating superiority.
“And what exactly are you going to do to me?” he sneered. “Gelya loves me! She’s nobody without me—just an ordinary schoolteacher! I live here now. This is my home!”
He turned toward Angelina, expecting her, as usual, to smooth things over and beg her mother to calm down.
But he had miscalculated badly.
The Angelina who had hung on his every word and looked at him with adoration had disappeared without a trace.
In her place stood a woman prepared to fight anyone who threatened her family.
Without saying a word, Angelina turned, walked out of the kitchen, and headed quickly toward her bedroom.
Andrey gave a triumphant snort, assuming she had gone away to cry.
He turned back toward Anna Vladimirovna, preparing to tell her exactly what he thought of her.
He never got the chance.
A crash came from the bedroom.
Angelina had pulled Andrey’s two enormous suitcases out of the wardrobe, thrown them open on the floor, and begun sweeping his belongings into them.
She moved with cold fury.
Shirts, jeans, underwear, chargers—everything flew into the suitcases in a chaotic heap.
“Hey! What the hell are you doing?!” Andrey roared as he burst into the room.
He tried to grab her arms, but Angelina jerked herself free.
“Packing your things,” she said through clenched teeth. “So that in five minutes there won’t be a trace of you left in this apartment.”
“You’re insane! Where am I supposed to go this late at night?!” He suddenly switched tactics, his voice becoming pitiful. “Gelya, come on. I lost my temper, okay? Let’s talk about it! Don’t make some rash decision! I love you!”
“You love free living space,” Angelina snapped as she zipped up the first suitcase.
She walked to the desk, swept up the cables belonging to his expensive computer in one motion, and threw them on top of the clothes in the second suitcase.
“You can prove your love to your parents when you meet them at the train station and explain that they have nowhere to live.”
With strength that seemed impossible for someone of her delicate build, Angelina dragged the suitcases into the hallway.
Andrey rushed around her, making threats and shouting that she would regret this, that she would never find another man like him, and that she would end up an old maid with her silly wooden houses.
Anna Vladimirovna silently opened the front door.
Angelina pushed the suitcases out onto the landing.
Realizing that his brilliant plan had finally collapsed, Andrey stormed out after them in a rage.
“You’ll both come crawling back to me!” he shouted through flying spittle, loud enough for the entire building to hear. “Both of you! You’ll regret this!”
“The keys,” Angelina demanded in an icy voice, holding out her hand.
Andrey hurled the keyring onto the floor with all his strength.
Angelina calmly picked it up, looked into the rage-distorted face of the man she had considered the love of her life only that morning, and quietly said:
“Have a pleasant trip to the dormitory, Andrey.”
She slammed the heavy metal door shut and turned the lock twice.
Silence settled over the hallway.
Angelina leaned her back against the door and slowly slid down to the floor.
Her entire body shook violently.
Only now did she fully realize what kind of monster she had allowed into her home—and into her heart.
Anna Vladimirovna walked over to her daughter, sat down beside her, and wrapped her tightly in her arms.
“It’s over, my dear girl,” her mother whispered, gently stroking Angelina’s hair. “Everything is all right. We’re home. We’re together.”
Two weeks passed.
For a couple of days, the neighbors continued discussing the scandal Andrey had caused on the landing, but eventually everything quieted down.
As Angelina later discovered, Andrey had never canceled his parents’ visit. Right up until the last moment, he had hoped he could somehow make Angelina feel sorry for him.
On Saturday, he really did arrive outside their building with his mother and father, both of whom were carrying enormous plaid bags filled with jars of home-canned food.
They rang the intercom and knocked on the apartment door.
Andrey shouted beneath the windows, demanding that Angelina allow her supposed “relatives” inside for at least one night.
Angelina refused to open the door.
Instead, she called the police and reported that several people were causing a disturbance outside her apartment.
The arriving officers quickly cooled the would-be “master of the house” down. They checked everyone’s documents and confirmed that not a single member of the noisy group was registered as living at that address.
Andrey had no choice but to lead his disappointed and exhausted parents away, retreating in humiliation beneath the watchful stares of neighbors who had come out onto the landing to see what was happening.
That same evening, he blocked Angelina’s number.
She was only relieved.
Peace returned to the apartment.
Angelina gave the entire place a thorough cleaning and threw away every little object that might remind her of the man who had betrayed her.
That evening after work, she brewed herself a strong cup of tea with thyme, poured it into a beautiful porcelain cup, and placed it on her desk.
Now she could finally enjoy her own time again.
And breathe freely.
