“I Found Someone Else, Someone Younger. We’ll Split the Apartment in Half, and I Don’t Care Where You Go,” Her Husband Said Casually
The veal medallions were almost ready when Anna heard the lock click in the hallway. She reached for a sprig of rosemary, absentmindedly brushing invisible crumbs from the dark granite countertop.
After twenty-two years of marriage, she had learned to judge her husband’s mood by the way he took off his shoes. Today, Igor didn’t toss his shoes near the door. Instead, he carefully placed them on the mat.
That meant he was calm.
That meant dinner would probably pass without an irritated discussion about falling stock prices or logistics problems.
Anna wiped her hands on a linen towel and walked into the hallway to take his heavy leather briefcase.
But Igor was in no hurry to take off his coat.
He stood in front of the mirror, loosening the knot of his expensive silk tie, looking not at his wife but at his own reflection. There was a strange, almost indifferent expression on his face—the kind of expression someone might wear while announcing that a business meeting had been rescheduled.
“Anya, let’s skip the preliminaries,” he said dryly, without his usual rasp. “I found someone else. She’s younger. We’ll split the apartment in half, and I don’t care where you go.”
He said it as casually as he had probably ordered an Americano at the café on the first floor of his office an hour earlier.
Not a trace of regret.
Not the slightest embarrassment.
Just a statement of fact.
The estimate had been approved. The project was closed.
Anna froze.
Somewhere beneath her ribs, it felt as though her heart had slowly ground to a halt. The air in the hallway suddenly became thick and freezing, like water in an ice hole.
She blinked once, then again, trying to understand what she had just heard.
The words sounded like a collection of meaningless noises.
What other woman?
What half of the apartment?
“What did you say?” was all she managed to force out. Her lips were going numb.
Igor sighed irritably, as though he were explaining something obvious to a particularly slow intern. Finally, he removed his jacket and tossed it carelessly onto the ottoman.
“You heard me. Her name is Milana. She’s twenty-six, and she’s pregnant with my child. I need this apartment, Anya. Or rather, I need the money from my half. We’re not going to live here. Milana doesn’t like old buildings. She wants a new apartment on Mosfilmovskaya Street. So I’m giving you one month. We sell this place, split the money fifty-fifty, and after that, you’re on your own.”
He moved her aside with one hand, went into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of water straight from the filter, drank it in one gulp, and glanced at the frying pan where the meat was still sizzling.
“I’m not staying for dinner. I came for my things. I’ll take the essentials now, and I’ll send my driver for the rest on Thursday.”
Anna remained in the hallway, leaning her back against the cool silk-patterned wallpaper.
The apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment wasn’t merely a place to live.
It was her creation.
Her long-suffering project.
She had poured her soul, all her savings, and several years of her life into it.
They had bought the old Stalin-era apartment ten years earlier in terrible condition. It had practically been a communal apartment: peeling parquet floors, rotting pipes, original molding buried beneath layers of Soviet whitewash.
At the time, Igor had only just begun taking his business to a serious level. He had announced that he had no time to deal with renovations.
“Do whatever you want. Just don’t bother me with it,” he had told her.
And Anna had done exactly that.
As a professional restorer of antique furniture, she treated the apartment almost obsessively.
She had stripped paint from the oak window frames with her own hands. She had spent entire days wandering through construction markets, searching for craftsmen capable of restoring the original ceiling cornices.
She had even sold the two-bedroom apartment she had inherited from her grandmother in a residential district to finance the enormous renovation when Igor’s money had suddenly become “tied up in the business.”
And now he was telling her that Milana didn’t like the place.
And that he didn’t care where Anna went at forty-five years old.
Forty minutes later, three Samsonite suitcases were lined up in the hallway.
Igor emerged from the bedroom, fastening his watch around his wrist. He tossed his apartment keys onto the table.
“The realtor is coming Tuesday evening. He’ll evaluate the place. Try to make sure everything is clean. And no hysterics, Anya. We’re adults. You understand perfectly well that I’ve outgrown this relationship. I need excitement. I need energy. And you…”
He looked her up and down with open boredom.
“You’re too obsessed with your pieces of wood and your pots and pans.”
The front door slammed shut.
The lock clicked.
Anna slowly sank to the floor exactly where she had been standing.
Only then did the tears come.
Hot tears streamed down her cheeks. She bit down on her knuckles to keep herself from screaming.
The pain was almost physical, as though someone were peeling the skin from her body while she was still alive.
Twenty-two years.
They had started out together in a student dormitory on Vernadsky Avenue, eating cheap dumplings from the same plate.
She had stayed awake at night going through his first accounting reports, correcting mistakes, helping him deal with the tax authorities while he traveled across the regions on business.
She had postponed her own career, postponed her dream of opening a restoration workshop, because she wanted to give him a “stable home base.”
And now she was nothing more than an old foundation beneath a building—something no longer needed once the shiny new facade had been completed.
Saturday and Sunday blurred together into one endless gray corridor.
Anna couldn’t eat.
She couldn’t sleep.
She wandered through the enormous empty apartment, running her fingers over the restored parquet flooring, tracing the curves of the antique sideboard she had spent three months restoring.
Every inch of the home screamed of betrayal.
By Monday morning, there were no tears left.
In their place came a ringing, icy emptiness.
And something else.
A thin, almost imperceptible spark of anger.
“I don’t care where you go.”
Igor’s words kept repeating in her head.
Anna brewed strong coffee, sat down at the oak kitchen table, and opened her laptop.
She needed a plan.
She had no intention of surrendering half of her life simply because Igor was having a midlife crisis and suddenly wanted more “excitement.”
She searched through her phone contacts and found Marina’s number—an old friend who also happened to be one of the best family-law specialists in Moscow.
They arranged to meet two hours later.
Marina’s office near Patriarch’s Ponds smelled of expensive leather and fine perfume.
Her friend, always collected and sharp, listened silently as Anna stumbled through the story.
She didn’t gasp.
She didn’t lament.
She didn’t offer pity.
She simply drew methodical lines and notes in her notebook.
“All right, Anya,” Marina finally said, placing her pen down and looking at her over the top of her glasses. “First of all, stop panicking. The property was acquired during the marriage and, as I understand it, registered as jointly owned?”
“Yes,” Anna answered quietly. “We bought it together. But the renovation… I put the money from my grandmother’s apartment into it.”
Marina frowned.
“Proving that money from the sale of premarital property was invested in the renovation is difficult. We’d need receipts, bank statements, records showing the movement of money from one account to another. It’s complicated and time-consuming. And Igor will certainly hire good lawyers. He’s a businessman. He knows how to fight in court.”
Anna lowered her eyes.
The hope that had barely begun to appear started fading again.
Was she really going to have to sell everything?
Move into some tiny studio on the outskirts of the city and watch everything she had created disappear?
“Wait.”
Marina suddenly frowned at her computer screen, where she had already opened several databases.
“Anya. Think back to 2018. Autumn.”
Anna looked at her friend in confusion.
“2018? Nothing special happened. Igor had major problems with customs that year. A shipment of equipment was seized, inspections started. They were threatening him with subsidiary liability, maybe even criminal charges. He barely slept. He swallowed sedatives by the handful. He was terrified they would take everything—freeze the accounts, seize the property, auction everything off.”
“Exactly, Anya. Exactly!”
Marina’s eyes gleamed.
“And what did the two of you do to protect the apartment? Think!”
Slowly, Anna’s memory began unraveling a tightly wound ball of forgotten events.
Autumn.
Rain pounding against the panoramic windows.
Igor, pale and trembling, pacing back and forth across the living room.
“They’re going to take everything, Anya. Everything. We need to get the assets out of my name immediately.”
And then they had gone to the notary…
Anna suddenly exhaled sharply and pressed her palms against her cheeks.
“The deed of gift…”
“Bingo!”
Marina triumphantly slapped her palm against the table.
“He signed a deed transferring his share of the apartment to you as a gift! The idea was that if he personally went bankrupt, the apartment wouldn’t become part of the bankruptcy estate because it was your sole residence and you had nothing to do with his company’s debts.”
“But afterward… the problems went away,” Anna whispered as goosebumps ran down her back. “He found an investor and covered the losses. The criminal case disappeared.”
“Exactly. But a deed of gift doesn’t magically reverse itself when your problems go away, my dear.”
Marina leaned back in her chair, a satisfied smile appearing on her lips.
“Igor was so happy to crawl out of that hole that he simply forgot to transfer the documents back. To him, it was just a technical arrangement. But legally, according to the property register, the sole and complete owner of the apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment is you, Anna Nikolaevna.”
Silence filled the office.
Only the ticking of the wall clock could be heard.
Anna tried to comprehend the magnitude of what Marina had just said.
There was no half.
The entire apartment belonged to her.
Igor, so confident in his own superiority and power over her, hadn’t even bothered to check the documents before trying to throw her out.
“What do I do now?” Anna asked.
Her voice was trembling, but no longer from fear.
Now it was anticipation.
“Order a fresh extract from the property register,” Marina said firmly. “Buy a good bottle of champagne. And wait for Tuesday.”
Tuesday was cloudy.
By evening, Moscow was buried in enormous traffic jams, but Igor arrived exactly at the agreed time.
He wasn’t alone.
Beside him stood a tall, fidgety man in a cheap suit, clutching a folder and a laser measuring device.
“Anya, this is Eduard, the real estate agent,” Igor said without even greeting her.
He walked into the living room like an owner inspecting his property, without removing his shoes.
“Edik, take a look. One hundred and twenty square meters. Ceilings are three-point-two meters.”
Eduard clicked his tongue appreciatively as he examined the molding and parquet.
“Gorgeous, Igor Borisovich. Absolutely gorgeous. Fantastic location. This place will sell within a month as long as we don’t push the price too high.”
Anna stood in the doorway of the living room with her arms folded across her chest.
She was wearing her favorite cashmere dress and had applied light makeup.
For the first time in several days, she felt completely calm.
“Anya.”
Igor turned toward her with an irritated frown.
“Have you started packing your things? I told you I didn’t want any scenes. We need to take good photos. Get your little bottles and things off the windowsills.”
Meanwhile, Eduard switched on the laser measurer.
A red dot slid across the wallpaper.
“This partition could be removed,” the realtor muttered. “You could make an amazing open-plan kitchen and living room. About fifty square meters…”
“That wall can’t be removed,” Anna said calmly, taking a step into the room. “It’s load-bearing.”
She paused.
“And besides, it belongs to me.”
Igor gave her a patronizing smile.
“It belonged to you yesterday, Anya. Today, we’re selling the apartment. I already explained everything. Milana found an excellent penthouse. The developer is offering a discount if we pay in full before the end of the month. I need the money.”
Anna walked over to an antique writing desk, opened one of its drawers, and took out a neat plastic folder.
Slowly, she removed a thick white sheet bearing an official blue stamp.
“I’m afraid Milana is going to have to lower her expectations, Igor. Or you’ll have to take out a mortgage.”
Anna walked over to the table and placed the document directly in front of her husband.
“You can’t sell this apartment. Not half of it. Not a quarter of it. Not a single square meter.”
Igor frowned, his face twisting with contempt.
He glanced at the document.
“What kind of circus is this, Anya? A property extract? So what?”
“Read the line that says ‘Owner,’” she suggested gently.
Igor bent over the table.
Eduard, sensing trouble, froze with the laser device in his hand, apparently hoping to disappear into the Italian wallpaper.
Igor’s eyes moved across the lines.
At first quickly.
Then more slowly.
His eyebrows rose.
A vein appeared on his forehead.
He snatched the sheet of paper from the table and brought it closer to his face, as though hoping the letters would somehow rearrange themselves.
“Ownership… one hundred percent…”
His voice suddenly turned hoarse.
“What the hell? This is a registry mistake! We bought this place during the marriage!”
“We did buy it during the marriage,” Anna agreed.
A pleasant, icy sense of triumph spread through her.
“But in 2018, when you were desperately trying to protect yourself from liability and hide your property, you personally signed a deed before a notary transferring your share to me as a gift. Remember, Igor? You were so terrified of losing your money that you transferred everything to me.”
She smiled faintly.
“And afterward, you simply forgot about it. You were always far too confident in yourself.”
Igor’s face became covered in red blotches.
He threw the document onto the table as though it were burning his hands.
“You… you planned this! You deliberately didn’t remind me!”
“Remind you of what? That you gave me the apartment?”
Anna laughed.
It was genuine, bright laughter.
“You’re a grown man. A businessman. And you were the one who said there should be no hysterics. We’re dividing our property.”
She looked directly at him.
“Except there’s nothing to divide. The apartment is mine. All of it.”
Eduard made a strange sound resembling a squeak and immediately began winding up his measuring tape.
“Igor Borisovich… I think I should probably leave. You two can… sort this out yourselves.”
The realtor slipped sideways past Anna and practically ran into the hallway.
The front door slammed shut.
Anna and Igor were alone.
Igor breathed heavily.
His confidence.
His casual tone.
His condescension.
All of it had disintegrated within a single minute.
Standing before Anna was a confused, aging man who had suddenly realized he had outplayed himself.
“I’ll take this to court,” he hissed, clenching his fists. “I’ll prove the transaction was fraudulent! I’ll hire the best lawyers! You’re not going to leave me with nothing!”
“Go ahead.”
Anna shrugged and walked toward the window, looking out at the evening lights along the embankment.
“But proving that the transaction was fictitious had to be done years ago. Six years have passed. Any judge will laugh at you.”
She paused.
“And you know what else? If you start digging into that story, your tax schemes from that period might come to light too. Do you really need that kind of scandal now, with your new young family and a baby on the way?”
Anna turned around and looked directly into his eyes.
For the first time in many years, she felt no fear or hesitation around him.
Only exhausted disgust.
“You said you didn’t care where I went.”
Her voice remained calm.
“Well, I don’t care where you go either.”
She gestured toward the door.
“Tomorrow, I’m changing the locks. The belongings you planned to send your driver for will be waiting on the landing.”
She looked at him one last time.
“Now get out of my house.”
Igor stood silently, swallowing hard.
He looked around at the walls he had considered his financial asset only half an hour earlier, at the parquet flooring he had mentally valued in millions of rubles.
Then, without saying a word, he turned and slowly walked toward the door.
His shoulders were slumped.
His steps had become heavy and shuffling.
Six months passed.
Anna sat on the living room floor, carefully removing old varnish from the elegant leg of an early twentieth-century Viennese chair.
The open window let in the fresh spring breeze and the sounds of the waking city.
She had heard through mutual acquaintances that things weren’t going particularly well for Igor.
When Milana discovered that there would be no millions coming from the sale of the apartment, she caused an enormous scandal and moved back in with her mother.
Igor rented a two-bedroom apartment in an ordinary residential district and tried desperately to patch the financial holes in his business—a business that, without Anna’s invisible but constant support, had begun to malfunction.
Anna, meanwhile, opened her own restoration workshop.
At first, she accepted small jobs.
Then word of mouth brought serious clients with valuable antiques.
It turned out that furniture wasn’t the only thing that could be restored.
A life could be restored too.
Piece by piece.
Carefully.
Removing old pain and betrayal layer by layer.
And sometimes, the final result could exceed every expectation.
Friends, how often have you seen people who are convinced of their own superiority and immunity eventually trap themselves through their own greed or carelessness?
Do you think Anna acted fairly, or should she have given Igor some of the money out of generosity?