Bright morning light flooded the cramped kitchen of my two-room apartment, the one my husband and I had shared for the last four years. On the table lay a brand-new tablet, bought a couple of months earlier for general family use. I ran my finger across the smooth screen and opened the banking app. It had become my daily ritual, a kind of meditation before the start of the workday.
For three long years, I had lived in a regime of strict economy. Every bonus, every side job, every thousand rubles saved during sales went into that target account. We were saving for a spacious apartment in a new residential complex with a gated courtyard. For the sake of that goal, I had learned to walk past shop windows filled with beautiful clothes. I had forgotten what the menus of decent restaurants looked like, and I had gotten used to wearing, even in winter, a jacket I had bought back in my student days.
But the main foundation of our savings was the money from the sale of a room I had inherited from my grandfather. One and a half million rubles — my personal financial cushion — which I had added to our shared savings without hesitation. I trusted my husband, Vadim. I trusted him when he said we were building our shared, bright future.
The tablet screen blinked, asking for a fingerprint. I pressed my fingertip to the sensor. The green interface loaded, and my gaze automatically slid to the upper-right corner, where the figure of two million eight hundred and forty thousand should have been proudly displayed.
My breath caught. My throat suddenly went dry, as if I had swallowed a handful of sand.
Different numbers glowed on the screen.
Twelve rubles.
Forty kopecks.
I blinked, deciding it must be a system glitch. I closed the app. Opened it again.
Twelve rubles.
A prickly, burning feeling of confusion began to spread through my chest. I hurriedly tapped the “Transaction History” tab.
Last night.
Transfer by bank details.
Amount: 2,839,987 rubles.
Recipient: Margarita Lvovna V.
Margarita Lvovna.
My mother-in-law.
I slowly lowered the tablet onto the table. The sound of the plastic hitting the wooden surface seemed unnaturally loud.
“Vadim!” My voice came out hoarse, but firm enough to wake my husband. “Come here. Right now.”
A minute later, Vadim appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was rubbing his sleepy eyes, dressed in his favorite house pants. His face showed the mild irritation of a man whose day off had been rudely interrupted.
“Lida, what’s the rush so early in the morning?” he drawled unhappily, heading toward the fridge. “I was planning to sleep in.”
“Explain this to me,” I said, turning the tablet toward him.
Vadim cast a quick glance at the screen. His hand, reaching for a carton of juice, froze in midair. He swallowed convulsively, looked away toward the window, and nervously scratched his neck.
At that moment, I understood everything.
He knew.
“Just don’t start a scandal, Lida,” he said, his voice turning oily and coaxing, the kind of voice people use to calm unreasonable children. “I can explain everything. Nobody stole anything.”
“Nobody stole anything?” I straightened my back and pressed my palms firmly against the countertop. “Almost three million disappeared from my personal account, the one linked to this tablet. The money was transferred to your mother. What do you call that, Vadim?”
“Mom just asked for access,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other. “She wanted to check current deposit interest rates. Her phone is old, it can’t handle the app. Last night I gave her our tablet for half an hour. I didn’t think she would…”
“That she would transfer all our savings to herself?!” I raised my voice in outrage, feeling an icy fury begin to boil inside me.
“Lida, the situation came up!” Vadim switched to offense. “Elya needed help. You know how hard things are for her right now!”
Elya. Elvira.
Vadim’s thirty-two-year-old sister, whose life was an endless sequence of complaints. Elvira never burdened herself with work, preferring to look for people to blame for her failures. Either her boss didn’t appreciate her, or her friends betrayed her, or her ex-husband left her without means of support. My sister-in-law’s misfortunes always, in some miraculous way, ended up being solved at the expense of other people’s wallets.
“What kind of help costs three million?” I enunciated every word, not allowing my emotions to overtake my reason. “Get dressed. We’re going to your mother’s.”
We did not exchange a single word in the car. I drove my old sedan through the city streets, looking at the gray facades of the buildings, while a clear puzzle assembled itself in my head.
Vadim had given the tablet to his mother. The device remembered my login password. To confirm large transfers, the system sent a push notification to a trusted device. The tablet was that device. Margarita Lvovna had simply pressed the “Confirm” button.
The door of my mother-in-law’s luxury apartment was not opened right away. When the lock finally clicked, Margarita Lvovna appeared on the threshold. She was wearing an impeccable silk robe, her hair perfectly styled, and a subtle scent of expensive perfume with notes of sandalwood floated in the air.
“Ah, you’ve arrived,” she said, measuring me with an arrogant look. “Come in, since you’re already here. But take your shoes off, Lidia. My floors are light oak.”
We walked into the spacious dining room. Elvira was sitting at the round glass table. She was leisurely stirring the foam in a cup of matcha with a spoon. And right in front of her, on the snow-white tablecloth, lay a glossy key fob with the keys to a brand-new car from a well-known Chinese brand.
I shifted my gaze from the keys to my mother-in-law, then to my sister-in-law.
“Return the money to my account, Margarita Lvovna,” I said calmly, stopping a couple of meters from the table.
My mother-in-law gracefully lowered herself into a chair, clasped her hands together, and looked at me with such superiority that it was as if a guilty servant were standing before her.
“What money, dear?” she asked, slightly raising an eyebrow. “The money that went to a good cause?”
“The two million eight hundred thousand you illegally transferred from my banking app last night.”
Elvira rolled her eyes and let out a loud, theatrical sigh.
“Mom, I told you she’d start her petty-bourgeois squabbles now. Lida, can you think about someone other than yourself for once in your life? I’m going through an extremely difficult period! I need to take my child to developmental classes. I need mobility to search for a decent job. I can’t ride public transport. It’s beneath my dignity!”
“Your dignity was paid for with my years of saving?” I turned to my sister-in-law. “I haven’t been on vacation in three years. I wear autumn boots until the first real frosts. And one and a half million of that amount is money from selling my grandfather’s room!”
“Oh, stop whining. The money is shared!” Margarita Lvovna barked, losing her polish. “In a normal family, finances should circulate! Today we helped dear Elya, tomorrow maybe she’ll help you. You’re young, you have your whole life ahead of you. You’ll save up again. You can live in your old two-room apartment for now. Your crown won’t fall off.”
I looked at my husband. Vadim was standing by the doorframe, diligently studying the pattern on the wallpaper.
“Vadim?” I called. “Do you agree that your mother can dispose of my inherited money?”
He reluctantly raised his eyes. There was not a drop of remorse in his gaze — only irritation.
“Lida, stop making a mountain out of a molehill. Mom didn’t steal anything, she just redistributed the budget. Elya needed the car more. We’re one family. Be wiser. Don’t make a scene.”
For several seconds, silence hung in the room, broken only by the humming of the expensive refrigerator.
At that moment, the illusions with which I had fed my marriage for the past years crumbled into dust. I was not looking at a family. I was looking at calculating, shameless consumers who sincerely believed they had every right to manage my life and my resources. Margarita Lvovna looked at me with a victorious smirk. She was certain of her absolute impunity. She considered me weak.
I did not scream. I did not cry or smash dishes.
I simply turned around and headed for the exit.
“Well, that’s better!” my mother-in-law’s satisfied voice called after me. “You should have done that from the start. Making such a drama over colored pieces of paper. Vadik, sit down. I made avocado toast.”
Silently, I put on my old boots, walked out into the stairwell, and called the elevator.
My next destination was not home.
I went to the central branch of my bank. Sitting in the senior manager’s office, I requested a full account statement and details of the IP addresses from which the transfer had been made. The documents with blue stamps confirmed it: the transaction had been initiated from my home IP address, but the recipient was Margarita Lvovna, who, an hour later, had transferred the entire amount to a car dealership’s account.
Then I took from my bag the purchase-and-sale agreement for my grandfather’s room, an extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate, and bank receipts proving that one and a half million had been contributed by me personally and constituted my premarital property, not subject to division.
The next stop was the district police department.
The investigator’s office greeted me with the smell of old paper and cheap instant coffee. The captain, a young man with a sharp gaze, listened carefully to my story. I laid out all the evidence on the table.
“So you did not provide access to your personal account to any third parties?” he clarified, studying the bank statements.
“I did not. The tablet was at home. My husband, Vadim, handed the device over to his mother without my permission. She used the saved password and made a transfer to her own account without my consent. The amount of damage is two million eight hundred and forty thousand rubles, of which one and a half million is my personal inherited property.”
The captain nodded and pulled an application form toward himself.
“Theft on an especially large scale from a bank account. That is a serious article. Shall we file the statement?”
“We shall,” I replied firmly and took the pen.
By evening, I returned to my apartment. The very same two-room apartment my parents had let me have. I took three large plaid bags down from the mezzanine and began methodically packing Vadim’s belongings. His sweaters, trousers, sneaker collection, gaming consoles. I packed it all without the slightest regret.
Around eight o’clock in the evening, a key turned in the lock. Vadim entered the hallway, whistling some tune, but stopped short when he saw the bags lined up in a row.
“Lida, what circus is this?” he frowned, pointing at the things. “Have you decided to start renovating, or are you going somewhere?”
“I’m not going anywhere. This is my apartment, Vadim. But you are moving to your mother’s.”
His face stretched in disbelief. He took a step forward, trying to portray righteous anger.
“You’re kicking out your own husband because we helped my sister?! You’ve completely lost your mind over your pennies!”
My phone vibrated. I lifted the screen — Margarita Lvovna was calling. I declined the call, but a second later a message came through:
“Some kind of mistake! I got a call from the authorities! What have you done, you lunatic?!”
I smirked and raised my eyes to my husband.
“Your mother has already been informed of the happy news. Tomorrow morning, officials will come to her with formal questions about the theft of funds on an especially large scale. And the car dealership will receive a notice about the seizure of property purchased with stolen money.”
Vadim turned pale so sharply it was as if all the blood had been drained from him. His arrogance and confidence evaporated in an instant.
“Lida… you filed a statement? Against my mother?!” His voice broke into a hoarse whisper. “Withdraw it right now! This is a criminal case! Elya is supposed to register the car tomorrow. They’ll freeze the deal!”
“Family money should circulate, Vadim,” I repeated his mother’s words from that morning, looking him straight in the eye. “So now it will make a full circle. From the car dealership back to my account. And if the entire amount is not returned by tomorrow noon, I will let the case proceed in full. And next week, I’m filing for divorce.”
“Lidochka, we’re family!” He tried to grab my hand, but I stepped back in disgust. “Mom made a mistake! We’ll return everything, just withdraw the paper! Don’t ruin Elya’s life!”
“You ruined it yourselves when you decided you could parasitize off me,” I said, pointing to the door. “The bags are in the hallway. Leave the keys on the cabinet.”
After ten minutes of arguing, realizing that I would not back down, Vadim grabbed his bags and, showering me with curses, left the apartment.
I locked the door behind him with every lock. Then I went into the living room, sat down on the sofa, and opened my laptop.
No more saving money for ungrateful people.
No more strict economy.
I went to a marketplace website, added to my cart a luxurious set of natural silk bed linen I had dreamed of for several years, and without the slightest hesitation, clicked “Pay.”
My new, free life was beginning.
