Alisa sat in the dispatch office, staring blankly at her sneakers.
The right one had come slightly unglued where the sole met the shoe, and whenever the street turned into a slushy mess of melting snow and road chemicals, her foot instantly got soaked. Gluing her shoes back together with superglue on Sundays had already become her own small, miserable ritual.
Her work laptop lay on her knees, and her personal phone vibrated nonstop in the pocket of her jacket: notifications from the logistics chat kept pouring in.
It was already after nine in the evening…
For the last three years, the girl had been living in “make it to the pharmacy before it closes” mode.
During the day, she balanced debits and credits at an office near Savyolovskaya, and in the evenings and on weekends she took shifts as a delivery coordinator. Her entire salary, minus utilities and a pack of the cheapest pasta, went toward her mother’s medications.
After Covid, everything had gone wrong for Yadviga Pavlovna: her heart, blood vessels, joints. The doctors at the local clinic only shrugged and advised her to “be monitored,” so Alisa had to take her mother to a private clinic and pay for endless IV drips, ultrasounds, and rehabilitation specialists.
“Alisochka, just don’t tell Yegorushka how much all this costs,” her mother would say with a weak smile, lying on starched sheets. “He’s going through such a difficult period right now… he’s launching a startup, looking for investors. He mustn’t get nervous. He gets migraines right away.”
“Little boy” Yegorushka was twenty-six. The only startups in his life were debts, endless searches for himself, and the ability to spend hours talking about cryptocurrency while sitting in his mother’s kitchen.
During the entire time their mother had been ill, he visited the hospital twice. The first time, he forgot to buy water. The second time, he brought three bruised apples and complained to his sister for forty minutes about how impossible parking in Moscow had become.
Alisa said nothing then. She had no strength left for scandals, and besides, her mother would start gasping for breath if anyone said even one word against her beloved “Yegorushka.”
A month ago, Yadviga Pavlovna was finally discharged. The new expensive course of German medication, for which Alisa had taken out a loan at a monstrous interest rate, had worked.
Her mother returned home, bought a bunch of houseplants, started tinting her lips again before going to the store, and began speaking in the same old lecturing tone of a school vice principal.
For the first time in three years, Alisa breathed out. It even seemed to her that spring had arrived. For the first time in a long while, she stopped by VkusVill, bought herself an expensive lavender raf coffee and a pastry, just so she could sit on a park bench and not rush anywhere.
On Wednesday evening, she came to her mother’s place without warning. She wanted to bring her fresh cottage cheese and new blood pressure pills.
Opening the door with her own key, Alisa found her mother doing something strange. Yadviga Pavlovna was sitting at the table, surrounded by some blue folders, and as soon as the keys jingled in the hallway, she quickly hid them in a drawer like a thief.
“Oh, Alisochka! Why didn’t you call first?” Her mother even rose slightly, straightening her house robe. Her voice was fussy, like a schoolchild caught with cheat sheets.
“I was just passing by, Mom. Here’s some cottage cheese. How’s your blood pressure? Did you check it today?”
“I did, I did. Everything’s like an astronaut’s,” Yadviga Pavlovna said, putting her hands behind her back. “Come in, we’ll heat up some tea. We need to talk. Something has… come up.”
The girl sat down on a chair, feeling from her mother’s tone how something unpleasant began to ache inside her.
“What is it? Are the tests bad again?” Alisa immediately thought of money. There were only three thousand rubles left on her card, and her credit card limit was maxed out.
“No, thank God, it’s not my health,” her mother said, sitting across from her and smoothing the tablecloth with her palms. A ray of sunlight fell on her hand, highlighting the fine wrinkles. “I wanted to talk about our dacha in Romashkovo.”
“What about it? Is the roof leaking? Mom, let’s wait until summer. I’ll sort out the loan, and…”
“I sold it, Alisa,” Yadviga Pavlovna interrupted her daughter. She said it quickly, in one breath. Then she stared at Alisa, pressing her lips together.
The kitchen became very quiet.
The dacha in Romashkovo was the only thing left from her father: six hundred square meters of land, an old apple tree, a wooden little house where Alisa, as a child, used to hide from the rain on the veranda.
“What do you mean… sold it?” For a second, the girl thought she had misheard. “How did you sell it? Why?”
“Because!” her mother said in a tone that tolerated no objection. “Yegor needed money. Urgently. He had some trouble with his business partners. If he hadn’t paid his share by the end of the week, they would have kicked him out of the project. All his work from the last two years would have gone down the drain! Do you understand that? The boy needs to rise up, to get a chance. And the dacha… what about the dacha? It just stands there rotting, and you only pay taxes on it. I am a mother. I have to help my son.”
Alisa looked at her mother and could not believe what she was hearing. A wild, absurd carousel of numbers spun in her head.
Four hours of sleep a night. Bags of medicine. Soles worn down to holes. Giving up normal food. Three years of life thrown into nowhere so that her mother could live.
“How much?” Alisa asked calmly.
“It went for two million. I found a good realtor, he found buyers in a week,” Yadviga Pavlovna said. She apparently took her daughter’s silence for submission and visibly relaxed. “But now Yegorka’s business will take off. He promised that as soon as he gets his first profit, he’ll return every last kopeck to me. And he’ll give you some too. Don’t be offended, Alisa. You’re a determined girl, strong, standing on your own feet. But Yegorushka… well, he’s fragile. He needs support. Our support!”
The girl lowered her eyes.
Threads hung like fringe from the bottoms of her jeans: old jeans, bought before the pandemic. She felt so sick that a lump rose in her throat.
Strong. Determined…
So, if someone is strong, you can climb onto her neck and ride. But the fragile one should be fed everything, including the memory of their father.
The girl did not shout or curse. She did not remind her mother about her debts, about her night shifts, about the fact that Yegor had never once paid the utilities for their mother’s apartment. She simply stood up, took her bag, and went into the hallway.
“Alisa, where are you going? We haven’t even had tea yet! Alisa!” her mother shouted from the kitchen.
Alisa put on her shoes and, without tying the laces, walked out onto the landing. The door closed with a soft click.
Outside, the spring sun was shining brightly. It was warm, but Alisa felt as if she had been doused with cold, dirty water. Her phone rang in her pocket. The dispatch office.
She wiped a bitter tear from her cheek, took a deep breath, and pressed the green button.
“Yes, Alina, I’m listening. What’s going on with the truck on the highway? Give me the invoice number.”
For three weeks, Alisa lived on autopilot. Her feelings seemed frozen. Inside, there was emptiness, calm, and indifference.
The girl blocked her brother on every messenger after he sent her a video circle on Max from an expensive restaurant. In the video, a shining, pleased Yegor waved a glass at the camera and shouted:
“Sis, we’ll make it! Respect to Mom, I’ll return all the money threefold soon!”
Alisa looked at that greasy, smug face, at the plate with some kind of seafood creatures that cost half her salary, and simply pressed “Block.” The word “startup” made her violently nauseous.
She communicated with her mother briefly and dryly. Only about practical matters.
“Hi, Mom. Are you taking your medicine? Is your blood pressure normal? Great. I have to work.”
Yadviga Pavlovna sighed into the phone, tried to start conversations about the weather, about how “Yegorushka is so busy, so busy, he doesn’t even have time to call his mother,” but Alisa politely and correctly said goodbye.
Her heart no longer twitched.
She continued working hard, but now she spent money on herself: she finally bought decent leather boots that did not let water in, went for a facial cleansing, and even slowly began paying off that cursed loan she had taken out during her mother’s illness.
And near the end of the month, thunder struck. From exactly the direction where, deep down, Alisa had subconsciously expected it.
On Thursday, at eleven in the evening, when the girl had just closed her work laptop and was about to crawl to the shower, her phone exploded with a series of hysterical calls.
Her mother was calling. Alisa sighed and turned on the speaker.
“Alisa… Alisochka, please come!” Yadviga Pavlovna’s voice trembled. She was crying, sobbing hoarsely, the way she had during her worst attacks. “I feel awful, Alisa. My heart… and there’s no medicine. None at all!”
Out of habit, Alisa became alarmed, but she forced herself to stay calm.
“Mom, call an ambulance. If it’s really bad, call 112. I won’t get to you across all of Moscow in an hour. Where are your pills? I bought you three packs of that excellent German medication. That was enough for two months.”
“They’re gone, Alisa… gone!” her mother wailed into the phone. “Yegorka took it. He took everything…”
The girl felt as if she had been struck by electricity.
“What do you mean? He took your medicine? Is he completely insane? Why does he need your heart pills?”
“He didn’t take the pills!” Yadviga Pavlovna screamed, slipping into hysteria. “He took my bank card! Alya, he lost everything! All the money from the dacha! All two million! And he withdrew my May pension too! I have two hundred rubles left in my wallet, and there’s nothing to buy new pills with… Alisa, come, I can’t breathe!”
The girl sat on the sofa, staring at one spot. A clear puzzle began assembling itself in her head.
Startup. Investors. Fragile boy…
It turned out that Yegorushka was simply deep into betting or online casinos. Cunning, shameless, used to Mommy always blowing on his backside and solving any problem. Her brother had simply conned an elderly woman like the biggest fool in the world. And the woman had been happy to be deceived, as long as it meant saving her beloved prince.
“I called an ambulance for you,” Alisa said calmly. “Wait for the team and open the door. I’m coming.”
Forty minutes later, the girl was in the familiar panel apartment building in Tekstilshchiki.
The ambulance had already left. The doctors had given Yadviga Pavlovna an injection, brought down her blood pressure, and left after giving strict instructions: rest and scheduled medication.
Her mother was sitting on the bed. On the nightstand lay an empty wallet and a pile of printed ATM receipts.
When she saw Alisa, Yadviga Pavlovna tried to stretch out her hands to her.
“Alisochka… He cried. He got down on his knees. He said they would destroy him if he didn’t pay the debt. He said it was the last time, that he’d win it back and return everything… And today he turned off his phone. I went to the bank, and there was zero, Alisa! Completely zero! And there’s nothing to pay for the apartment with… Buy me the pills, daughter. I can’t be without them, you know that… The doctor said if I miss a week, I’ll end up in intensive care again. Buy them, Alisochka, you earn well, you have two jobs…”
Her mother looked at her with hope, from below. With that familiar certainty that the eldest, strong, dependable Alisa would now sigh, pull out her card, cover all the debts, run to a twenty-four-hour pharmacy in the middle of the night, and save the world again.
And Yegorushka… well, they would scold Yegorushka together somehow later.
The girl stood in the middle of the room.
She looked at the receipts, where large withdrawals at three in the morning were visible in black and white. She looked at her mother. She remembered her feet rubbed raw, her three years of hell, the sold parental dacha she had loved so much. And something inside her finally and irrevocably broke. Pity was replaced by icy, pure rage.
She slowly lowered her hands into the pockets of her jacket.
“No, Mom,” Alisa said quietly but very clearly. “I won’t buy you anything.”
Yadviga Pavlovna froze. Her eyes widened in horror, and her breath caught. She looked at her daughter as if a dangerous person stood before her.
“How… you won’t buy them? Alisa, I’ll die without them! What are you saying? I’m your mother!”
“Your medicine costs twelve thousand rubles a month,” Alisa continued calmly, without a trace of emotion in her voice. “Plus the apartment debt. Plus food. Your beloved son has always come first, the one you gave two million rubles to. One million of that was mine, Mom. But you decided Yegor needed it more, right? Excellent. Now let Yegor buy your pills. Call him, look for him, file a police report against him for stealing your card. Do whatever you want. My limit for charity in this family is exhausted.”
Alisa turned and walked toward the exit.
“Alisa! Come back! You monster! How can you do this?!” her mother shouted after her. In her voice was the wild fear of reality, a reality she had to face for the first time.
The girl went outside. The night air was cool. She took out her phone, unblocked Yegor, and wrote him one short sentence:
“I’m washing my hands of this. Mom has been left without a kopeck and without her pills. If something happens to her, it will be your fault. Clean up this situation yourself.”
She got into a taxi and left.
Alisa slept until eleven in the morning: without an alarm clock, without jumping up in panic at the thought that she was late somewhere.
Her phone, switched to airplane mode, glowed with missed calls: twelve from her mother, five from Yegor, and a long sheet of messages in the messenger.
The girl leisurely made herself coffee and only then opened the chat.
At first, Yegor threatened her:
“Have you completely lost your mind? You’ll drive Mom to a heart attack!”
Then he begged:
“Alisa, lend me money. The guys are on my tail, they’ll tear my head off. I’ll give it all back, I swear on my teeth!”
Toward morning, he sent a photo of his beaten face.
The last message was from her mother:
“Alisochka, come! Yegorushka is very unwell, some people are calling. My son is asking for forgiveness.”
Alisa smirked and sipped her coffee. She had absolutely nowhere to hurry. Pity had died the previous night. Only cold, sober calculation remained. An hour later, she got dressed and went to Tekstilshchiki. But not to play rescuer. She went to put an end to it.
The scene in her mother’s apartment was picturesque.
On the sofa, curled into a ball, lay Yegor. Under one eye bloomed a rich purple bruise, his lip was split, and his fashionable hoodie was stained. Nothing remained of the former arrogance of the “successful investor.”
Yadviga Pavlovna sat beside him, pressing a wet towel to his forehead. When she saw Alisa, the woman perked up.
“Alisa! Thank God!” Her mother’s voice was full of pleading hope. “Yegorushka was beaten, Alisa… They’re threatening him. The money he lost… that wasn’t all his debt. He urgently has to pay another million rubles by the end of the week, otherwise…”
“Otherwise what?” the girl stopped in the doorway. “Mom, have you still not understood? Your son is a gambling addict. A shameless, cunning liar. He devoured your dacha, devoured your pension, nearly killed you! And you’re still wiping his nose?”
“Alisa, how can you say that! He’s your brother!” her mother sobbed, but somewhat uncertainly.
Yegor stirred on the sofa, opened his good eye slightly, and rasped:
“Come on, Alis, stop acting superior! I really need money. Urgently! Borrow from your people at interest. I’m really finished. Have pity on Mom, if you don’t pity me!”
The girl looked at her brother, then at her mother. Her face remained completely calm, almost indifferent.
“A million, then,” Alisa said quietly. “I have that money. I’ll pull you out, Yegor. But not for free. I have a condition.”
Her mother and brother stared at her. A heavy silence hung in the air.
“What condition?” Yadviga Pavlovna asked quickly. “Alisochka, we’ll agree to anything, as long as they don’t touch my son!”
“Fine. Right now, we call a notary to the apartment. Mom, you sign a deed of gift transferring this apartment to me. The whole apartment. One hundred percent of the property becomes my sole ownership. Yegor has already received his share in the form of two million from the dacha and flushed it down the toilet. Now it’s my turn. That’s fair.”
“Are you crazy?!” Yegor flared up, abruptly sitting on the sofa. “You decided to grab the apartment while there’s chaos?! Mom, don’t you dare! This is my home too!”
“Your home is now in a bookmaker’s office, Yegor,” Alisa cut him off in an icy tone. “Mom, choose. Either the deed of gift goes to me right now, or I turn around and leave. And in a couple of hours, your fragile little boy will be carried out of here feet first by the people he owes a million to. I don’t care. My limit of pity has been exhausted.”
Yadviga Pavlovna looked in horror from her daughter’s icy face to her son, trembling from fear and from his injuries. She had no choice. With trembling lips, she quietly said:
“All right, Alisa. Call the notary. I’ll sign everything. Just save him.”
The paperwork took two hours. The notary, called at an urgent rate, certified the deed of gift. The apartment officially became Alisa’s.
As soon as the final stamp was placed, the girl opened her banking app and transferred exactly one million rubles to her brother’s card.
“You have the money,” Alisa said, putting her phone in her pocket. “Close your debts. And now get out of here. Both of you.”
Yegor, frantically forwarding the money, was stunned.
“What do you mean? You’re throwing your own mother out on the street?”
“I’m not throwing anyone onto the street,” Alisa replied calmly. “But you will not live in my apartment for another day. Yegor, you have two hours to gather your junk. Your problems no longer concern me. Twist however you want. And you, Mom, are going to live in the village, in your old family house. It’s sturdy, the stove works, the air is clean. I’ll buy you six months’ worth of medicine in advance. I’ll visit once a month. But you will not live here!”
Yadviga Pavlovna burst into tears, clutching her heart. Yegor shouted and hurled curses while packing his things into travel bags, but none of it touched Alisa anymore.
Inside her burned a firm feeling of justice fulfilled. The shameless parasite had been thrown out the door without a kopeck in his pocket, and the mother who had betrayed her eldest daughter for the whims of her youngest son was sent to a remote province to reap the fruits of her blind love.
By evening, the apartment was empty.
Alisa sat on the windowsill and looked at the lights of evening Moscow. For the first time in three years, there was no one else’s burden hanging from her shoulders. She had her own apartment, her own job, and her own free life, where from now on only she set the rules.
