“I’m Not an Heir, and I’m Not Paying Off His Debt. Let Your Mother and Brother Deal With It,” Artyom Advised His Wife.
One apartment, one loan, and an entire family ready to do almost anything for money. When his mother-in-law and his wife’s brother come with a “request,” a husband finds himself facing a choice: save his relatives or protect his own home. Who is really helping and who is manipulating whom will become clear far too late.
“Marinochka, is Artyom far away? I’ve already called him three times. It rings, but he doesn’t pick up.”
Marina held the phone between her shoulder and ear as she continued shredding cabbage. Borscht simmered on the stove, and a children’s song drifted in from the bedroom—Ksyusha was putting together a puzzle while watching some cartoon about fairies. It was an ordinary evening, warm and predictable, like a perfectly prepared report.
“Mom, he’s at a client’s site. He’s finishing an audit. He promised he’d be free by eight.”
“Ah, yes, yes,” her mother replied distractedly, as though her thoughts were somewhere else entirely. “Actually, I wanted to talk to him… Well, maybe you could pass something along?”
Marina put down the knife. Something in Lyudmila Arkadyevna’s tone made her uneasy. Usually her mother called for a specific reason: to ask about Ksyusha, remind her about someone’s birthday, or ask how to freeze zucchini. But now she was hesitating, stretching out the pauses as if cautiously approaching the edge of freezing water.
“Did something happen?”
“Oh, nothing terrible, Marinochka, it’s just…” She fell silent, and Marina heard a heavy sigh through the phone. “The bank called today. About your father’s loan.”
Arkady Nikolayevich had died five months earlier from a massive heart attack. By the time the ambulance arrived, there was no one left to save. At the funeral, Lyudmila Arkadyevna had remained stone-faced, Valery had stood off to the side smoking every ten minutes, and Marina had naively thought the worst was already behind them.
It turned out it was only beginning.
“What loan?”
“Well, you know your father bought that house in Malakhovka so Valerik and Stas would have somewhere to live. He registered it in his own name, but he didn’t have enough money, so he took out a secured loan. Valerik has been living there with his son for three years.”
Marina leaned against the countertop. She knew the house: old, brick, with a crooked veranda and three cherry trees in the yard. They had gone there for barbecues a couple of times, and Artyom, after taking one look at the wiring, had quietly said, “There’s two salaries’ worth of work here.”
“So what happens now?”
“Well, now your father is gone, and the house passed by inheritance—to me, Marina… oh, to you… I mean Valerik,” her mother became confused. “To me and Valerik. And the debt came with it, you understand? The bank keeps calling and saying we have to pay or they’ll take the house and auction it off. There are still eight hundred thousand rubles left! Marinochka, my pension is only twenty-three thousand. Valerik barely earns anything, and he’s raising Stas alone… If they take the house, where are they supposed to go? Out onto the street?”
The music from Ksyusha’s room grew louder as she switched cartoons. Marina automatically lowered the heat under the borscht.
“Mom, what does Valera say?”
“I haven’t even gotten to him yet. I’m trying to reach Artyom! I wanted his advice. He understands numbers better than anyone—he’s an auditor, after all. Maybe he can suggest something…”
Marina understood perfectly what her mother was implying.
In her mother’s vocabulary, “suggest something” always meant “help,” and “help” meant “give us money.”
“Artyom isn’t an heir,” Marina said evenly. “Legally, debts pass to the people who accept the inheritance. That’s you and Valera.”
“Yes, yes, of course, I understand…” her mother hesitated again. “Your father always said family should stick together. And he helped you when you bought your apartment, remember?”
Marina remembered.
Five years earlier, when they were gathering money for the down payment, her parents had given them six hundred thousand rubles. Arkady Nikolayevich had contributed three hundred thousand, and Marina and Artyom had saved the rest themselves.
Naturally, no one had written receipts. Who did that between relatives?
And now those three hundred thousand rubles had become a convenient lever.
“I’ll talk to Artyom tonight,” Marina said. “But I can’t promise anything.”
“Of course, of course! Just don’t spring it on him too harshly. Be gentle. He’s so straightforward—he’ll immediately say no…”
After the call, Marina stood by the window for a long time.
The playground. Swings. Two cars in the courtyard.
Their two-room apartment on the fourth floor was finally theirs—not rented. They had paid off the mortgage the previous year, and Marina had felt as though she could finally breathe again.
And now, with one phone call, there suddenly seemed to be less air.
Artyom returned shortly after eight, tired but with his usual spark in his eyes. He took off his jacket, kissed Ksyusha, and sat down to dinner.
Marina settled their daughter in her room with coloring books and closed the kitchen door.
“Mom called,” she said, sitting opposite him. “She couldn’t reach you.”
“I saw the missed calls. I was going to call back, but the client’s accounting was such a disaster that I nearly cried over their paperwork. What does your mother want?”
Marina told him.
Artyom listened silently, stirring his borscht with a spoon, his expression becoming increasingly serious.
“Eight hundred thousand,” he repeated when she finished. “Nice number. Very round. You know, professionally, I don’t like round numbers. Someone usually ends up crying because of them.”
“Artyom, they want us to help.”
“‘Us’ meaning me, I assume?” He smiled slightly, without anger. “Marish, let’s break it down. That’s how I’m used to thinking. Your mother is retired. Your brother has been ‘just about to start earning properly’ approximately since Stas was born. Who is the only person in this arrangement with an official salary whom the bank would actually approve for a loan? One guess.”
Marina lowered her eyes.
“She’s my mother. He’s my brother. Dad helped us with the apartment.”
“Your father gave us three hundred thousand. My parents gave us six hundred. And somehow my parents aren’t calling us with a calculator.”
He pushed his bowl aside and gently took her hand.
“Marish, I’m not a monster. I feel sorry for the house, and for Stas too. He’s a good kid. But the arithmetic is simple. If we get involved in this, we’ll never get out. First there’ll be one payment, then ‘just add a little more,’ then ‘the roof is leaking.’ And in a year we’ll be in debt while Valera is still sitting around waiting for someone to rescue him.”
“He’s raising a child alone.”
“And where is Stas’s mother? She can pay child support. She can help. Why is it always the person with even a little money who is expected to solve everyone else’s problems?”
Artyom sighed, then added more quietly:
“Only lend an amount you’re prepared to give away and forget about. I learned that rule permanently. And I’m not prepared to give away eight hundred thousand. Not even two hundred.”
Marina remained silent.
She knew her husband was right.
And yet something hurt inside her, as though she were being forced to choose between logic and blood.
“I’m not asking you to stop loving them,” Artyom said, standing up. “I’m asking you not to let someone else’s debts into our home. We have Ksyusha. She starts school next year. We have plans for renovations. That isn’t greed, Marish. It’s responsibility. It just doesn’t sound very pleasant.”
He went to their daughter’s room to help her finish gluing together a paper fairy.
Marina stayed at the table, staring at the cooling borscht.
Her husband had said no.
But had she?
Valery arrived three days later.
He called in the morning.
“I’ll be nearby around two. I’ll stop in for a minute.”
Marina wanted to say she wouldn’t be home, but before she could answer, her brother had already hung up.
He burst into the entryway like an icebreaker, with Stas squeezing in behind him, phone in hand.
Valery was large and soft around the middle, with three days of stubble and expensive-looking sneakers—the sort of shoes that somehow always seemed to appear on people who claimed to have no money.
“Well, hello, relatives!” he boomed from the doorway so loudly that Ksyusha peeked out of her room and immediately disappeared again. “Living pretty well here, aren’t you? Renovations, fancy tiles… while we’re rotting away in a shack.”
“Hello to you too, Valera,” Artyom replied calmly, coming to meet him. “Come in, but take your sneakers off. This isn’t a ‘shack,’ and I’d rather not ruin the carpet.”
Valery snorted but removed his shoes.
They went into the kitchen.
Stas immediately buried himself in his phone without even looking at his cousin. Ksyusha lingered nearby for a moment, but the boy seemed not to notice her, so she left.
“All right,” Valery began, dropping heavily into a chair and placing his elbows on the table. “This is serious. No time for small talk. The bank’s got us by the throat. Eight hundred grand, you hear? Mom’s crying. I can’t sleep. They take the house—where do I go with the kid? Under a bridge?”
“What exactly are you suggesting, Valera?” Artyom asked while filling the kettle, as though they were discussing the weather.
“What am I suggesting?!” Valery raised his voice, spraying droplets of saliva onto the table. “You’re supposed to help! We’re family! Dad practically gave you your apartment, and now you’re hiding in the bushes? Don’t you have any conscience?”
“Your father gave us three hundred thousand,” Artyom said evenly. “I remember every kopek. It comes with the profession.”
“To hell with the kopeks!”
Valery slammed his fist on the table.
“You’re an auditor, right? Official salary? Yes. The bank will give you a loan? Yes. Then take out four hundred thousand. I’ll pay it back later, I swear on my teeth! I’m a barber from God himself. I used to have this many clients! Stas is older now. I’ll get back on my feet, and I’ll be raking in money with a shovel!”
“‘I swear on my teeth’ is certainly excellent collateral,” Artyom said dryly. “Unfortunately, I don’t think the bank accepts it.”
“What, you trying to be smart with me?!” Valery’s face turned crimson. “I come here like a normal human being, and you’re making jokes!”
“Valera,” Marina intervened quietly. “Can you really make the payments?”
“Marish, come on. Are you my own blood or some stranger?”
He turned toward his sister, and his voice immediately became syrupy and emotional.
“You’ve known me since childhood. Little by little, I’ll pay. Mom can throw in ten thousand from her pension, and once I get going, I’ll cover the rest. For Artyom it’s nothing—he only has to take out the loan. Dad would be proud if you didn’t abandon your brother…”
Stas had not lifted his eyes from his phone once.
Marina looked at him and thought that the boy had probably heard this song so many times it had become background noise.
“I’ll think about it,” Marina said.
“There!” Valery beamed. “I knew you were a decent person! Unlike your husband.”
He jerked his chin toward Artyom.
“Some dry office rat who only knows how to count numbers.”
“Thank you,” Artyom nodded calmly. “The dry office rat who counts numbers usually ends up keeping his money. Coincidence? I doubt it.”
Valery gathered up his son and left, satisfied as though he had already put the money in his pocket.
Artyom closed the door behind them and turned to his wife.
“Marish. Just don’t take out a loan in your own name. Please. For once in your life, trust me not as your husband, but as an auditor.”
“He’s my brother, Artyom.”
“And this is our family.”
He pointed toward their daughter’s room.
“Choose carefully.”
A week later, Marina took out the loan.
Four hundred thousand rubles.
Three years.
In her own name.
She did not tell her husband beforehand.
Artyom found out accidentally after seeing a bank notification on her phone.
He didn’t start an argument.
He simply looked at her for a long time, then said:
“Well. Let’s say you bought yourself a clear conscience. Expensive purchase.”
For the first two months, Lyudmila Arkadyevna faithfully transferred ten thousand rubles.
Then the excuses began.
Her pension had been delayed.
Her blood pressure was acting up.
Gas prices had increased.
Marina covered the difference.
Valery did not pay a single ruble.
Not once in an entire year.
In winter, Stas had tonsillitis.
In spring, Valery “hurt his back.”
In summer, it was supposedly “the dead season—who even gets haircuts now?”
Yet he called regularly.
Not with money.
With problems.
“Marish, something’s wrong with the pipes! The draft is terrible. We need a hundred thousand at least.”
“Marish, the foundation is cracking! The house could collapse any minute!”
“Marish, the fence has rotted away. Dogs are getting into the yard. Stas is scared!”
Artyom silently went there on weekends, repairing whatever he could with his own hands.
He returned home with scraped fingers and paint stains on his jeans.
He never reproached her.
He only kept track of everything in a notebook.
The amount grew like a snowball rolling downhill.
Then, in September, Valery called sounding cheerful—almost excited.
“Marish, I’ve been thinking… We should sell the house.”
“Sell it?!”
Marina froze with a spoon suspended over a saucepan.
“Well, what good is it? The roof, the foundation—there’s one hole after another. You’d need to put another million into it, and where am I supposed to get that? Stas has too far to travel to school. I found a buyer. It’ll be just enough for a one-bedroom apartment in the city. That’ll suit me and the kid.”
“Valera, I’ve been paying for you for a year. I took out a loan in my own name. Will you at least repay some of it?”
“Well… Marish, I’ll try. Whatever I can. You know what prices are like. I’ll repay you gradually, honestly. Once I’m in the city I’ll get established, build up my clientele, and we’ll be swimming in money!”
Word for word.
Exactly the same thing he had said a year earlier.
Except back then they had been talking about the house.
Now they were talking about an apartment purchased with money he had never even seen.
Marina slowly lowered herself onto a stool.
Two days later, Valery appeared without warning.
Marina was at work. Artyom was home with Ksyusha, who was feeling unwell.
The doorbell rattled like a fire alarm.
Artyom opened the door.
Valery stood outside—red-faced, sweaty, breathing heavily as though he had run up the stairs.
“You office rat!” he wheezed. “You’re the one who got into Marina’s head! Yesterday she told me she won’t give me any more money! That your doing?”
“Hello to you too, Valera,” Artyom replied calmly, holding the door. “Ksyusha is sleeping. Keep your voice down.”
“I don’t give a damn about your Ksyusha!” Valery shouted, saliva spraying across the threshold. “Hand over the money, accountant! I’m asking nicely!”
“Nicely is when people pay money back. You, my dear man, don’t even pay interest in the form of basic courtesy.”
Valery roared and lunged forward with his arms spread wide.
Heavy and bulky, he threw his full weight into the charge, fueled by all his resentment and greed.
He was certain he would knock the “office rat” down along with the door.
But at the last second, Artyom took half a step backward and slammed the door shut with a short, precise movement, like stamping a document.
Then he braced it with his shoulder.
Valery had no time to stop.
With his full weight already moving forward, he crashed face-first into the closed door.
There was a heavy thud.
His nose crunched, his lip split, and a dark streak of blood immediately ran down his chin.
The pain and shock sent him stumbling backward.
He flailed his arms, trying to regain balance, backed into a cardboard box someone had left in the hallway, dropped heavily onto it, and toppled sideways.
His trousers split loudly along the seam from the waistband toward the knee.
For a second, he lay there staring at the ceiling, breathing heavily and smearing blood across his cheek.
All his fighting fury disappeared instantly, leaving behind only confused, miserable sniffling.
He tried to stand up, slipped, and dropped back down again while trying to hold his torn trousers together.
Artyom opened the door slightly and looked out, still perfectly calm.
“Valera,” he said gently, almost fatherly. “The door is strong, obviously. But between us, the problem isn’t the door. The problem is that you shouldn’t charge into one headfirst if you still plan on using your head.”
He extended a paper towel from the entryway.
“Here. Put this on your nose. And maybe on your wounded pride too.”
Valery took the towel with a trembling hand, sniffed heavily, and suddenly seemed to deflate.
He sat on the hallway floor, clutching his torn trousers, and said nothing.
Eventually, he left, holding his clothes together and muttering something unintelligible.
He never came back.
Valery sold the house anyway.
He bought himself a one-bedroom apartment in the city and promised to “pay the money back little by little.”
Naturally, he never returned a single kopek.
Marina remained stuck with the loan.
Silently, gritting their teeth, she and Artyom paid it down from every paycheck.
Her relationship with her mother and brother gradually faded away.
Lyudmila Arkadyevna called a couple of times, but the conversations went nowhere.
It turned out that without money to discuss, they had very little left to talk about.
Valery never called at all.
Maybe he was ashamed.
Or maybe he had simply realized that the source had dried up.
One evening, as Marina was putting Ksyusha to bed, she heard her daughter ask quietly:
“Mom, why doesn’t Grandma Lyuda come to see us anymore?”
Marina paused, searching for the right words.
“Grandma lives far away, sweetheart. It’s difficult for her to get here.”
Ksyusha nodded and closed her eyes.
She believed her.
Children believe adults.
It is both their privilege and their misfortune.
In the kitchen, Artyom was washing the dishes.
Marina walked over and stood beside him.
Without saying anything, he handed her a towel so she could dry the plates.
And there they stood, shoulder to shoulder, each lost in their own thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” Marina finally said. “You saw everything from the very beginning. And I was as stubborn as… as my brother charging into your door.”
“Strong comparison,” Artyom smiled. “Fortunately, you don’t charge into doors headfirst.”
“You’re not angry?”
“With you? Never. With the loan? A little. But the loan has an end date. You don’t.”
He put an arm around her shoulders.
“We’ll pay off the debt. We’ll manage. You know, I’m even glad things happened this way. Now we know exactly who our family is.”
He nodded toward the room beyond the wall.
“That little girl in there. You. And me.”
Marina rested her head against his shoulder and suddenly realized that the crack that had been spreading through their home for an entire year had finally stopped growing.
And slowly, it had begun to heal.
Behind the wall, Ksyusha sighed sleepily.
The kettle cooled quietly on the stove.
An ordinary evening.
Ordinary sounds.
Only now, once again, there was enough air to breathe.