I stood on the threshold of the apartment where my entire childhood had passed, unable to believe that the key in my hand was the last one. My husband kept insisting that selling my inheritance was the only way to save his life. I believed him. I gave up every last penny. And a week later, the truth caught up with me in the most unexpected place, forcing me to look at my life through completely different eyes.
I looked at my husband, and my heart clenched with pity. Gleb was sitting on the sofa, his head in his hands, his shoulders trembling slightly. I had never seen him so lost before.
“Marinka, you understand, don’t you? This is… the end,” he whispered without lifting his eyes.
“Gleb, stop it! The doctors said there’s still a chance. The surgery… Yes, it’s expensive, but we’ll think of something!”
“What are we going to think of?” He suddenly raised his reddened eyes to me. “What? No one will give us a loan that big! We already have a mortgage on our one-room apartment! Ask our parents? Mine have pennies, and your mother can barely make ends meet herself.”
He was right. The amount quoted by the German clinic for the heart surgery was astronomical for us. A rare defect that had appeared suddenly and aggressively.
“But there has to be a way out!” I sat beside him and took his hand. His hand was ice-cold.
Gleb stayed silent for a moment, then looked at me in a way that made everything inside me turn cold.
“There is a way out, Marisha. Only one.”
I already knew what he was going to say. The thought had been hanging in the air ever since my grandmother passed away. Three months earlier, I had inherited her three-room apartment in a Stalin-era building in the city center. “The family nest,” as Grandma used to call it.
“No, Gleb. Not that,” I shook my head, feeling a lump rise in my throat. “You know I promised Grandma…”
“Promised!” he jumped up, pulling his hand away. “And what did you promise me? In sorrow and in joy, in sickness and in health! Or were those just words? So my life isn’t worth your promises to a dead woman?”
“Don’t say that! That’s unfair!” Tears sprang from my eyes. “It’s her memory!”
“Memory! And soon I’ll become a memory myself! Is that what you want? You’ll sit in that apartment and remember how you could have saved me but didn’t!”
His words struck me like blows. I looked at his gaunt face, at the panic in his eyes, and felt like a traitor. He was right. What were walls compared to the life of the person I loved?
“Forgive me,” I whispered. “Forgive me, I wasn’t thinking. Of course we’ll sell it.”
He immediately softened, came over, and hugged me tightly.
“Marinochka, my sunshine, I knew you loved me. We’ll sell it, I’ll get better, and then we’ll earn enough for a new one, even better! Just imagine how we’ll live!”
He was already smiling, already making plans, while I stood in his arms and felt as if a piece of my soul was being torn away from me. I did not yet know that this was only the beginning of my nightmare.
Finding a realtor turned out to be easy. Gleb immediately sprang into action and said a friend of his had a “trusted person.” But for some reason, I did not want to entrust something so important to a stranger. And then I remembered. Andrey.
Andrey Kovalyov. My first love from university. A quiet, intelligent guy with incredibly serious eyes. We had been together for almost a year, and then I met Gleb — bright, loud, like fireworks. And I, a fool, left Andrey for Gleb, breaking his heart.
I had heard from mutual acquaintances that he had become a successful lawyer and opened his own firm, specializing in real estate transactions. Finding his number was not difficult.
“Hello,” came a familiar voice through the phone, though now deeper and more confident.
“Andrey? Hi. It’s Marina. Marina Androsova. Do you remember me?” I nervously twisted the edge of my T-shirt.
There was silence on the line for several seconds. It felt like an eternity.
“I remember,” he finally answered. His voice was even, emotionless. “Did something happen?”
Stumbling over my words, confused and breathless, I told him about Gleb, about the illness, about the urgent need to sell the apartment.
“I need the best. I need someone I can trust. I thought of you.”
“I see,” another short pause. “All right. Come to my office tomorrow. We’ll look over the documents. I’ll send you the address in a message.”
He spoke so coldly and distantly, as if we had never known each other. I felt uneasy. Maybe I should not have called him.
The next day, I sat in his luxurious office with panoramic windows. Andrey had hardly changed, except he had become more mature. There were barely noticeable lines at the corners of his eyes, and his expensive suit fit him perfectly.
“So,” he said, looking through the documents I had brought. “The apartment is clean. You are the sole owner. That simplifies things. An urgent sale means you’ll have to lower the price a little. Are you ready for that?”
“Yes, I’m ready for anything,” I nodded. “Time is running out.”
“I understand.” He raised his serious eyes to me, and for a second something like sympathy flickered in them. “I’ll do everything possible to find a buyer as quickly as possible and on the most favorable terms for you.”
“Thank you, Andrey. I owe you.”
“No,” he shook his head almost imperceptibly. “It’s just my job.”
When I left his office, Gleb called immediately.
“Well? How did it go? Did he agree?”
“Yes, everything is fine. He said he’ll handle it.”
“Excellent!” There was so much joy in his voice. “You’ll see, Marinka, everything will work out soon! Everything will be fine soon!”
But my heart felt heavy. I was betraying my grandmother’s memory, and I felt terrible, but I drove those thoughts away. The main thing was to save Gleb. Nothing else mattered.
“We need to take high-quality photos,” Andrey said over the phone. “I’ll come with a photographer tomorrow. Be there.”
The next day, we met at the entrance to Grandma’s building. Andrey was not alone. Next to him stood a young man with a huge backpack full of equipment.
“This is Stas, our photographer. He’ll make everything look its best.”
I opened the door with my key. The apartment smelled like Grandma — a mixture of lavender, old books, and something indescribably familiar. I swallowed the lump rising in my throat.
While Stas set up tripods and lights, Andrey slowly walked through the rooms. He stopped by the bookcase and ran his hand over the spines.
“I remember this bookcase. You and I once argued about some book from here.”
“The Master and Margarita,” I smiled. “You said it was a novel about cowardice, and I said it was about love.”
“I think we were both right in our own way,” he said quietly, without looking at me.
We went into the kitchen. Sunlight flooded it, playing across the old but perfectly clean tiles.
“And here your grandmother used to give me tea with cherry jam,” Andrey smiled at the memory. “And she kept asking whether my intentions were serious.”
“She adored you,” I admitted. “She always said, ‘Andryusha is reliable. With him, you’ll be protected as if behind a stone wall.’”
As soon as I said it, I bit my tongue. Andrey turned toward me. We were standing very close. His gaze softened and became the way it used to be — deep, piercing.
“And you chose not a wall, but fireworks,” he said without reproach, only with quiet sadness.
“I was young and foolish,” I breathed, unable to look away.
He stepped even closer, raised his hand, and touched a strand of hair that had escaped my hairstyle. My heart skipped a beat, then began pounding wildly. It felt as if he was about to kiss me. I froze, not knowing what I wanted more — for him to do it or for him to step away.
“All right, I’m ready to shoot the living room!” the photographer called from the other room.
The moment shattered. Andrey stepped back, his face once again unreadable.
“Let’s go. We won’t get in his way.”
For the rest of the hour, while the shoot continued, we barely spoke. But I constantly felt his gaze on me. After they left, I sat for a long time on the old sofa, hugging my knees. His cologne lingered in the air, mixed with the scent of my childhood. And I felt bitter enough to cry, and ashamed. Ashamed before Gleb, before my grandmother’s memory, and before myself.
Andrey kept his word. A buyer was found in three days. An elderly couple liked the quiet center and the solidity of the Stalin-era building. They hardly negotiated.
“They’re ready to pay a deposit as early as tomorrow,” Andrey told me. “The transaction will take about a week.”
Gleb was over the moon. He immediately contacted the clinic and arranged the hospitalization date.
“I found a specialist who will accompany me and arrange everything on-site,” he told me excitedly. “Professor Solovyov. He’s a luminary! He’s flying to Germany for a conference anyway and will take me under his wing.”
On the day of the transaction, I felt as if I were in a fog. I signed the papers Andrey gave me almost without reading them. When an enormous sum landed in my account, I did not even feel joy. Only emptiness.
That evening, we were supposed to meet this Professor Solovyov to give him the first part of the money for the treatment. He arranged the meeting in an unremarkable café.
The professor turned out to be a fussy man of about fifty, with shifty little eyes and a rather unpleasant smile. There was a faint smell of alcohol on him.
“Yes, yes, your husband’s case is not simple, but we’ll manage,” he said, quickly reviewing the medical documents Gleb had brought. “The main thing is not to lose time.”
They drew up some kind of contract, and Gleb signed it. I transferred a substantial amount to the specified account — half the cost of the operation.
“Well then, I’ll take the patient,” the professor said, placing a hand on Gleb’s shoulder like he owned him. “We still need to discuss the details of preparing for the flight. And you, Marinochka, go home and rest.”
“Gleb, I’ll wait for you,” I pleaded.
“Darling, no. It’ll take a long time, and you’ll be bored. Go home. I’ll be back soon.”
He kissed me, and in his eyes I saw relief. I rode home with a heavy heart. I did not like that professor at all. There was something repulsive and false about him. But I blamed it on my frayed nerves.
Two days later, Gleb was flying out. I saw him off at the airport, swallowing my tears.
“The main thing is, don’t worry,” he said, hugging me. “You’ll transfer the second part of the money to the same card as soon as I call from the clinic. I love you.”
“I love you too. Come back soon. Healthy.”
He went through security, waving goodbye to me. I watched him until his figure disappeared into the crowd. And at that moment, such an icy feeling of loneliness and dread seized me that I could barely stay on my feet.
A week passed. Gleb called once, said he had arrived safely and was settling in. His voice sounded strange. When I asked about his health and the doctors, he answered in monosyllables, blaming a bad connection.
I sat in our mortgaged one-room apartment, which now seemed empty and echoing. Grandma’s apartment had already been occupied by the new owners. I felt as if I had lost everything — both my past and my future.
To distract myself somehow, I decided to go for a walk. I wandered aimlessly through the streets until my feet brought me to the district where we had met the “professor.” I went into the first coffee shop I saw, but it was noisy inside, so I left. Nearby was a door with an inconspicuous sign: “Anchor Bar.” During the day it was almost empty. I sat at a table by the window and ordered coffee.
At the next table sat an unkempt man, loudly telling something to his drinking companion with drunken pride.
“…and I say to him, all serious-looking, ‘Your case is complicated, but we’ll manage!’ Ha! And that chicken of a wife just looks at me, blinking, believing every word!” He burst out laughing.
My heart lurched. The voice sounded familiar. I carefully turned my head. And froze in shock.
It was him. Professor Solovyov. Only now he was without his suit, wearing a greasy T-shirt, his face swollen and red.
“Can you imagine, Fedya? They handed me one and a half million!” the “professor” continued boasting. “Glebka, of course, is a miser. Promised me two hundred thousand, but only gave me one hundred. Still, not bad for a couple hours of ‘work’!”
He took out his phone and began showing something to his friend.
“Look, here we are with him already in Turkey! The bastard is relaxing with his mistress, and he shortchanged me! Says he’ll give the rest later. I know those ‘laters’!”
I saw the screen of his phone. In the photo, a smiling, perfectly healthy Gleb was hugging some blonde woman on a beach. A hotel could be seen in the background.
The ground disappeared beneath my feet. I could not breathe. The coffee, the bar, the drunken voices — everything blended into one buzzing swarm. My ears rang. A lie. Everything had been a lie. The illness, the surgery, the professor… And Gleb.
I do not remember how I ran out into the street. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely get my phone out. One number in my contacts. Andrey.
“Andrey…” I rasped into the phone, choking on tears. “Andrey, come… Please…”
Andrey arrived fifteen minutes later. I was sitting on a bench outside the bar, trembling violently. He jumped out of the car, ran up to me, and threw his jacket over my shoulders.
“Marina, what happened? You look awful!”
Through sobs, I told him everything. About the drunk “professor” in the bar, about the photograph, about Gleb with his mistress in Turkey.
Andrey listened in silence. His face grew harder and harder, and an icy gleam appeared in his eyes.
“All right. Stay calm,” he said, taking my face in his hands and forcing me to look at him. “Do you hear me? Right now the most important thing is to calm down and act. Are you ready?”
I nodded, wiping away my tears. His confidence flowed into me.
“Is that man still in the bar?”
“Yes, I think so…”
“Good. Sit here. Don’t go anywhere.”
He turned and walked decisively into the bar. Through the glass, I saw him approach that table and say something short and commanding to the “professor.” At first the man started protesting, but Andrey showed him something on his phone, and the actor immediately deflated, nodded, and obediently followed him.
They came out into the street. When the “professor” saw me, he shrank back.
“I had nothing to do with it… He came up with everything… He forced me…” he muttered.
“Quiet,” Andrey cut him off. “You’re coming with us. And you’ll tell everything exactly as it happened. At the police station.”
We got into the car. On the way to the station, Andrey called someone and briefly explained the situation. His voice was steel. I understood then that Grandma had been right. He was not just a wall. He was a rock.
At the police station, the “professor,” who turned out to be an unemployed actor named Myshkin, quickly broke down. He laid out the entire scheme Gleb had invented: staging the illness, finding a “doctor” through mutual acquaintances, withdrawing the money. He even handed over the money he still had and wrote a full confession in exchange for cooperation with the investigation.
“Now Gleb,” Andrey said when we came out of the station. “He committed fraud on an especially large scale. As soon as he flies back, they’ll meet him. We’ll get the money back. At least part of it.”
“And the apartment?” I asked hopefully.
“That’s more complicated,” Andrey frowned. “The transaction was legal. You signed everything yourself. But I’ll think of something. I am a lawyer, after all.”
He drove me home and made me drink hot tea.
“You need to rest. I’ll keep you informed. And Marina… don’t blame yourself. You simply loved him.”
After he left, for the first time in many days, I felt not despair, but a quiet, angry determination. I was no longer a victim. They had awakened something in me that I myself had forgotten existed.
The next two weeks passed as if in a fever dream. A divorce petition. Meetings with the investigator. Calls from mutual friends of Gleb’s and mine, people who could not believe what had happened. Andrey was constantly in touch, handling legal matters and supporting me.
He found a way to challenge the transaction. It turned out that at the time of the sale, I had been in a state of emotional shock caused by deliberate deception regarding my husband’s fatal illness. It was a complicated legal argument, but Andrey seized on it with a death grip. He found witnesses who confirmed my depressed state and attached actor Myshkin’s testimony.
Gleb and his mistress were detained right at the airport, tanned and happy. When he saw me during questioning, he did not even repent.
“Marinka, what are you doing? I was trying for us! I wanted to build a better life! Well, I slipped up. Who doesn’t? You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
I looked at this strange, pathetic man and felt nothing but disgust.
“No, Gleb. I won’t forgive you. Never.”
The court hearing to annul the apartment sale took place a month later. The new owners, an elderly couple, turned out to be decent people. When they learned the whole story, they did not resist and agreed to cancel the contract on the condition that their money be fully returned. Fortunately, the money had been frozen in the accounts of Gleb and his mistress.
On the day I received the court decision and the new documents for the apartment, I cried from happiness. I stood by the window in Grandma’s apartment, which was mine again, and looked out at the city.
That evening, Andrey came over. He brought a bottle of champagne.
“To victory,” he said, handing me a glass.
“To our victory,” I corrected him. “Without you, I wouldn’t have managed.”
We sat in the kitchen for a long time, talking about everything and nothing. At some point, he took my hand.
“Marina, I know this probably isn’t the right time… But I can’t stay silent any longer. All these years, I thought about you. When you called, I was angry at first. And then I realized it was a chance. A chance to set everything right.”
He looked at me with his serious, honest eyes.
“Grandma said that with you I’d be protected as if behind a stone wall,” I smiled through my tears. “She was right.”
“Then maybe we should try building something behind that wall?” he asked quietly.
I said nothing. I simply leaned forward and kissed him. It was the kiss I had been waiting for ten years.
Several months passed. Gleb received a real prison sentence. I was free. Andrey and I were renovating Grandma’s apartment, turning it into our little nest.
This morning, the test showed two lines. Andrey does not know yet. I want to tell him tonight, right here, within these walls where my grandmother’s love once lived, and where ours is now being born.
Would you be able to forgive such a deception for the sake of keeping a family together?
