Lyudmila had already chosen the fillings, decorations, and delivery time. There was only one small detail left to clarify: why exactly I was supposed to bake three expensive cakes for free.
During the day, I worked as a merchandise specialist in a kitchenware store, and in the evenings I took a few private cake orders. I worked officially as a self-employed baker and maintained a public portfolio online, but physically I simply couldn’t handle large volumes. Lyudmila, my sister-in-law, on the other hand, had a remarkable talent for turning someone else’s labor into her own project with the businesslike confidence of a person who had already calculated the profit.
“And when are you going to make the advance payment?” my husband asked calmly. Zhenya repaired elevators for a living, and he usually managed to stop his sister’s ideas before they had time to crush everyone around her.
Lyudmila threw up her hands indignantly, her bracelets clinking loudly.
“What advance payment, Zhenya?! Are you out of your mind? It’s for Mom! Marina spends every evening standing by the oven anyway. Is it really so hard for her to make an effort for the family? Taking money from relatives is just disgraceful!”
I looked at her with a faint smirk. They say initiative gets punished. That’s not true. What gets punished is someone else’s initiative when they try to carry it out at your expense.
“Lyuda,” I said, setting my phone aside. “The decorations involve complicated fondant work, fresh berries, and edible gold. The ingredients, decorations, and packaging alone will cost at least ten to twelve thousand rubles. That’s three evenings of preparation and almost all of Friday for assembly and decorating. And that doesn’t even include payment for my work. Family ties are sacred, of course, but for some reason supermarkets don’t accept DNA tests instead of bank cards at the checkout.”
“I don’t understand. Are you refusing to give Mom a proper celebration?!” my sister-in-law snapped, her face flushing with indignation.
“I’ll be happy to give Tamara Pavlovna a present from Zhenya and me,” I replied evenly. “One cake. Small, but made with the best ingredients. But if you desperately need two more free masterpieces for the guests, then you can spend three days as my assistant: buying ingredients, washing equipment, assembling boxes, and delivering orders. For free, in the name of family. Deal?”
“My work is worth money!” Lyudmila spat.
She grabbed her handbag and slammed the door so hard that the mirror in the hallway trembled.
That ended the conversation, but the real surprises were still ahead.
On the morning of the anniversary celebration, my husband’s cousin sent me a message with a screenshot.
“Marina, are these your cakes? I transferred Lyuda ten thousand rubles. She said you’re baking for her now.”
I opened a recently created page called “Sweet Lyuda” and froze.
My own photographs stared back at me, carefully downloaded from my public portfolio. Beside them were completely different prices, confident promises to accept wedding orders, an announcement of a grand tasting at her mother’s anniversary party, and a post about an upcoming partnership with a café.
Without saying a word, I took screenshots of the page, prepared the original photographs with their dates, and opened our message history where Lyudmila had demanded three free cakes supposedly only “as a gift for Mom.”
When Zhenya saw everything, he reached for his phone, ready to tell his sister exactly what he thought about her scheme.
I gently stopped his hand.
“No. Let her first tell everyone herself who’s baking the cakes for her pastry business.”
I arrived at the restaurant on time, carefully carrying a delicate honey cake decorated with fresh berries in a box—a personal gift for my mother-in-law.
The hall was decorated with balloons. Tamara Pavlovna, dressed elegantly and glowing with happiness, was accepting congratulations.
On a separate table draped in silk stood a cake display. In the center was an empty stand clearly waiting for my honey cake. On either side stood two cheap cakes.
Without their original packaging and decorated with identical ribbons, the store-bought cakes looked especially suspicious—as though someone had dressed them up for a celebration that wasn’t theirs.
Silently, I placed my gift in the center of the table.
Lyudmila, bustling around nearby in a sequined dress, immediately opened the box herself, transferred the honey cake onto the central stand, and covered it with a tall pastry dome.
“Too early. There’ll be a surprise later!” she hissed.
Lyudmila seated a newly arrived guest—a woman of about fifty-five with an observant, sharp gaze—in a place of honor. My sister-in-law fussed around her with such exaggerated attentiveness that you would have thought the woman was already holding a signed contract in her hands.
An hour later, when everyone had relaxed, Lyudmila tapped her fork against her glass.
“Dear guests! My beloved Mom! Today isn’t only your celebration. Today is also the birthday of my new business! I’m opening my own home pastry shop—‘Sweet Lyuda’!”
For a second, the conversations around the table fell silent. Then came polite applause.
Zhenya tensed beside me.
“And today,” Lyudmila continued, her voice trembling with excitement, “I want to introduce you to the owner of a café and my first major customer, Valentina Nikolaevna! And these three cakes are my showcase. A tasting selection!”
She removed the dome from my cake.
The guests gasped. The honey cake really did look luxurious.
“Lyuda,” my husband’s cousin called from the other end of the table, “so you bake these yourself? Because yesterday I transferred you ten thousand rubles as an advance for my wedding cake…”
Aunt Galya frowned, checked something on her phone, and looked up.
“Wait a minute. I sent you five thousand for the christening cake too. You told me you were passing the orders on to Marina to help her get more customers!”
Lyudmila went pale, making the cosmetic blush on her cheeks suddenly look like unnaturally bright streaks.
I allowed her to enjoy the long, awkward silence for a few moments before slowly rising from my chair.
“Lyudmila,” I said quietly and evenly, my voice cutting through the silence like a glass cutter. “What an interesting pastry business you have. I haven’t accepted any orders, and I certainly have no intention of working for you for free.”
I opened our message conversation and placed my phone in front of Valentina Nikolaevna. Then I took out printed copies of my original photographs with the dates clearly visible.
“Here, Lyudmila is demanding three free cakes from me exclusively as a gift for her mother. Here are the original dated photographs of my work that somehow magically appeared on her page. And here are messages from people who have already transferred advance payments for my work—work I knew absolutely nothing about.”
The atmosphere in the room became heavy.
Valentina Nikolaevna, clearly accustomed to checking suppliers before signing contracts, silently walked over to the dessert table. She lifted the edge of the cardboard base beneath one of the cheap cakes and found a label that had never been removed from underneath.
“Manufacturer: City Bread Factory,” she read coldly from the forgotten label. “Lyudmila, were you planning to present this as your own work?”
Valentina Nikolaevna pushed the store-bought cake aside, cut a small piece of my honey cake, and tasted it.
Her eyes lit up approvingly.
Then she turned toward me, completely ignoring my now-shrunken sister-in-law.
“Marina, leave me your contact information. On Monday, bring me two samples, your cost calculations, and your documents. If everything checks out, we’ll discuss a trial order for the next event at my café.”
Lyudmila tried to say something, but her voice disappeared beneath the angry murmur of relatives demanding their money back.
She refunded part of the advance payments by bank transfer right there at the table, frantically tapping at her phone screen.
“I don’t have any more…” she stammered, her arrogance finally gone. “I bought a new planetary mixer and ordered a neon sign…”
“You’ll return every last ruble to them,” Zhenya said sharply.
The finale of the scene could not have been more symbolic.
Tamara Pavlovna walked over to the table, personally cut my honey cake, and handed slices to the guests.
“Thank you for a real gift,” my mother-in-law said warmly, looking me directly in the eyes.
Then Tamara Pavlovna told Lyudmila to put the store-bought cakes back into their plastic boxes. She pushed them toward her daughter and said:
“Take them. They’re the only things here today that actually belong to your pastry business.”
A week after the trial tasting, Valentina Nikolaevna ordered the first two cakes from me at full price.
By then, the “Sweet Lyuda” page contained only one advertisement—a listing for a brand-new mixer.
In the photograph beside it lay the neon sign bearing the pastry shop’s name, still wrapped in protective film.
It never even had the chance to light up.
