Nika stood in the hallway, looking sadly at her favorite Italian sneakers.
They had not merely been moved out of place. They had been shoved into the farthest, dustiest corner of the shoe rack, while in their rightful, “front-row” spot, right on the mat that said “Welcome,” stood a pair of patent leather stiletto ankle boots. Predatory-looking things, with a gold buckle.
Tamara Vitalyevna had arrived.
The official version was: “Mom needs to undergo an examination at a clinic in the capital; she has blood vessel issues, blood pressure problems, and, in general, age is catching up with her.”
The unofficial version, which Nika considered her inner truth, was this: her mother-in-law had grown bored in her provincial town, where she had already “whipped everyone into shape,” from the neighbors to the head of the housing office, and had decided to scale up her vigorous activity to her son’s family.
Nika sighed, adjusted the strap of her heavy backpack with the laptop inside, and stepped into the apartment.
Instead of the usual smell of cleanliness and the faint scent of the lemongrass diffuser, a dense, heavy cloud of expensive but old-fashioned perfume hit her nose. Poison, maybe. Or something from that same category, something one could use to exterminate cockroaches and disobedient daughters-in-law.
“Nika, is that you?” her mother-in-law’s voice came not from the kitchen, but from the study. Or rather, from the second room, which Nika had lovingly turned into a home office.
Nika looked inside.
Tamara Vitalyevna was sitting in Nika’s sixty-thousand-ruble ergonomic chair, her nylon-stockinged feet propped up on the ottoman. On the desk, where perfect order usually reigned — MacBook, planner, glass of water — there were now folders, receipts, and a calculator spread out everywhere.
“Good evening, Tamara Vitalyevna,” Nika greeted her restrainedly. “How was the trip? How are you feeling?”
“What feeling?” her mother-in-law waved a hand, not looking up from the papers. “My head feels like cast iron. But that is all nonsense compared with what I have seen here.”
Nika tensed.
“What did you see? Dust? I had cleaners come on Saturday.”
Tamara Vitalyevna removed her horn-rimmed glasses and looked at her daughter-in-law the way an experienced auditor looks at a thieving storekeeper.
“What does dust have to do with anything, dear? Dust is trivial. I am talking about the financial hole you are living in. Igor complained to me that you are always short of money, so I decided to see where it is all leaking away.”
Igor appeared in the doorway.
Her husband looked guilty, but at the same time strangely inspired. He was wearing a T-shirt with the words “Born to be wild,” which looked especially ridiculous at that moment.
“Hi, babe,” he kissed Nika on the cheek. “Mom just decided to help us with the budget. You know she worked as a chief accountant for thirty years.”
Nika silently went into the kitchen and poured herself some water. Her hands were trembling slightly.
She had bought this apartment three years earlier. Herself. Before she met Igor. She had clawed this one-bedroom-plus apartment in a good neighborhood away from the bank, paying off the mortgage at a Stakhanovite pace, denying herself vacations and a new car. It was her fortress.
And now, in her fortress, a stranger was sitting and balancing the debits and credits of her life.
Dinner passed in the atmosphere of a board of directors meeting on the eve of bankruptcy.
Tamara Vitalyevna ate the sushi rolls Nika had ordered, disdainfully poking the Philadelphia cheese with her chopstick.
“Here, for example,” her mother-in-law jabbed a chopstick at a roll. “One thousand two hundred rubles for rice and fish of questionable freshness. Nika, do you understand that a kilogram of trout costs nine hundred rubles? And rice costs one hundred? If you cook at home, the cost price of this dinner is three hundred rubles. Restaurant margins are three hundred percent. You are feeding someone else’s business.”
“Tamara Vitalyevna, I work until seven in the evening,” Nika replied calmly, dipping a roll into soy sauce. “An hour of my work costs more than the time spent rolling sushi. It is called delegation.”
“Delegation,” her mother-in-law mimicked. “Fashionable little words. In reality, it is laziness. Igor, pass the ginger. I looked at your utility bills. Why is water running without limit? Are you washing an elephant? And these subscriptions? Movies, music, cloud storage… I calculated it: twenty thousand rubles a year. For air!”
Igor sat with his face buried in his plate and nodded.
“Mom, well, Nika needs the cloud for work…”
“Then her employer should pay for it!” Tamara Vitalyevna cut him off. “You are living beyond your means. Igor has not paid off his credit card; interest is piling up, and you are eating sushi.”
Nika froze.
She did not know about the credit card.
“What credit card, Igor?” she turned to her husband.
Igor blushed, becoming the color of an overripe tomato.
“Well… I was short on money for a laptop… I am preparing a startup, you know that. I needed to upgrade the hardware.”
“Fifty thousand?” Nika clarified.
“Seventy,” Tamara Vitalyevna inserted. “Plus late-payment interest. Altogether it has already grown to nearly a hundred. See, Nika? Your husband is in debt, and you are squandering money. That is not family-like. A budget must be transparent and consolidated.”
Nika put down her chopsticks. Her appetite was gone.
“Fine. I will pay off his credit card from my bonus,” she said dryly. “But this is the last time, Igor.”
“There is no need to pay it off,” her mother-in-law suddenly said softly, almost affectionately. “Why waste money? There is a better idea. A global one. Strategic.”
Tamara Vitalyevna pushed her plate away and pulled a sheet of paper, folded in four, from the pocket of her house robe. She spread it out on the table and smoothed it with her palm.
“I sketched out a business plan. Look. What do you have right now? Nika’s apartment. A liquid asset, no argument there. Central location, renovated, metro nearby. Market value — about fifteen million. Correct?”
Nika nodded, feeling a chill run down her spine.
“But this is a dead asset,” her mother-in-law continued in the tone of a lecturer. “You simply live in it. It does not generate income. And the family is growing, needs are growing. Igor needs a start for his business, and you need more space. A one-bedroom is not serious if you are thinking about children.”
“We are not thinking about that yet,” Nika interjected.
“You are not thinking about it, but the clock is ticking,” Tamara Vitalyevna brushed her off. “Listen. We sell this apartment. Fifteen million in hand. We take out a mortgage — a family mortgage, the rates are favorable right now. We buy a three-room apartment in New Moscow, at the foundation-pit stage, but in a good residential complex. That will cost twelve. Three million remain. With that, we buy a studio apartment in the region, register it in my name so we do not lose the tax deduction and can optimize taxes. I am a pensioner; I have benefits. We rent out the studio — there is your passive income, which will cover the mortgage payments on the three-room apartment. And while the building is under construction, you can live with me.”
She looked triumphantly at Nika and Igor.
“Brilliant, right? In two years, you will have a huge apartment, plus the studio will be working, plus Igor gets one million to promote his business from the difference.”
Nika was silent.
She looked at the diagram drawn by her mother-in-law’s confident hand. Circles, arrows, numbers. “Nika’s apartment” had been crossed out with a thick line.
“Wait,” Nika said slowly. “You are suggesting that I sell my finished apartment in the center, get into debt for a concrete box beyond the Moscow Ring Road, and invest the remaining money in a studio apartment that will be registered in your name?”
“Well, of course!” Tamara Vitalyevna confirmed joyfully. “It is called risk diversification. And besides, Nika, why do you alone need a one-bedroom in the center? Dima… oh, Igor needs it more for his start. A man must feel solid ground beneath his feet. Otherwise, he is like a freeloader here with you. But this way — a shared mortgage, shared responsibility. It strengthens a marriage.”
Igor raised his eyes. Hope was shining in them.
“Nik, really. The plan works. Mom consulted a realtor. We will kill two birds with one stone. We will close the debts and get a bigger place. I will finally open my own business and stop working for someone else. You yourself wanted me to grow.”
Nika shifted her gaze from her husband to her mother-in-law.
Tamara Vitalyevna was smiling, but her eyes remained cold and tenacious, like those of a pike. She was not asking. She had already decided everything.
“Igor, can we step out for a minute?” Nika asked.
“Why step out? We have no secrets from Mom,” her husband frowned.
“Fine. Then I will say it here.” Nika stood up from the table. “No.”
The smile slid from Tamara Vitalyevna’s face.
“What do you mean, no? You did not understand the benefits? I will show you the numbers on the calculator…”
“I understood the benefits. Your benefits,” Nika said clearly. “You want to deprive me of my only home, drive me into debt for an apartment in the middle of nowhere that will become jointly acquired marital property, and take the liquid remainder for yourself under the guise of a ‘studio for Mom.’”
“How dare you speak like that?” her mother-in-law’s voice rang with steel. “I am caring about the family! About the future of your marriage! You are selfish, Nika. You think only about your own skin. And your husband is suffering. Your husband is unrealized!”
“If my husband wants to realize himself, let him earn the money,” Nika felt anger boiling inside her, but her voice remained icy. “The apartment is not for sale. It is my safety cushion. Period.”
“Yours?” Tamara Vitalyevna stood up. She was shorter than Nika, but at that moment it seemed as if she filled the entire kitchen. “Dear girl, you are married. In a family there is no ‘yours’ and ‘mine.’ There is ‘ours.’ And if you are not ready to invest in a shared future, then what kind of wife are you?”
Igor jumped up too.
“Nika, you are seriously acting like a dog in the manger! Mom is offering a real solution. I am suffocating in that office; I need capital! And you are sitting on your square meters, trembling over them!”
“I am trembling because I worked myself to the bone for those square meters for five years without weekends! While you, Igor, were finding yourself in guitar lessons and crypto-investor courses!”
“Do not throw money in his face!” Tamara Vitalyevna shrieked. “Money ruins people, I have always said so. You, Nika, have become spoiled. But do not worry. We will find a way to handle you. Igor, tell her.”
Igor drew air into his chest, looked at his mother for support, and blurted out:
“Nika, if you do not agree, I… I will consider it a betrayal. And we will split the budget. Since you are so principled, pay for yourself. And half of the utilities too.”
“And the depreciation of household appliances!” her mother-in-law chimed in. “The washing machine is shared!”
Nika looked at them.
Two close people. One whom she loved — or thought she loved — and the other, who had given birth to the first. Right now, they looked like debt collectors who had come to collect a debt that did not exist.
And then Nika laughed.
Loudly, sincerely, until tears came.
“And who told you that you have any right to my premarital apartment? Lower your expectations,” Nika laughed, looking her mother-in-law straight in the eyes. “And you too, Igor. Split the budget? Excellent. We will start right now. You owe me half the rent for living in my apartment. The market price in this area is sixty thousand. So that is thirty thousand a month from you. Plus half the utilities. Plus groceries.”
Tamara Vitalyevna turned crimson.
“You are going to take money from your husband? Prostitute!”
“No, Tamara Vitalyevna. Landlord. And by the way, our hotel is paid too. One day’s stay is five thousand. Check-out time is noon.”
Her mother-in-law clutched at her heart. Dramatically, beautifully, like in bad theater.
“Oh… Igor, water… She has driven me to this… My heart…”
Igor rushed to his mother, fussily pouring water with trembling hands.
“What are you doing?!” he shouted at Nika. “Mom feels sick! She is having a crisis!”
“She is not having a crisis. She is performing an acting exercise,” Nika said calmly, though her heart was pounding somewhere in her throat. “I am going to work. Tomorrow morning we will discuss when you are moving out.”
She left the kitchen, firmly closed the study door, and leaned her back against it.
Her legs buckled.
Through the door came Tamara Vitalyevna’s lamentations and Igor’s muttering: “It is okay, Mom, we will pressure her. She is just emotional…”
Nika sat at the desk and opened her laptop, but the letters blurred before her eyes.
She needed to calm down.
She turned on the voice recorder on her phone — a habit from recording ideas for work — but now it might be useful for something else.
An hour passed in silence. No more sounds came from the kitchen. Nika relaxed a little, deciding they had gone to bed. She quietly went out into the hallway to make her way to the bathroom.
The kitchen door was slightly open.
Voices sounded quietly, almost in a whisper.
“…Mom, how else can we do it? She dug her heels in.”
“Nothing, Igorek. If she dug in, we will break her. The main thing is, do not cancel the meeting with Vadim. Did he already give you the deposit?”
Nika froze, not breathing.
What Vadim? What deposit?
“He gave it,” Igor’s voice sounded muffled. “Three hundred thousand. I used it to pay off the credit card and repay the guys who had started the meter running.”
“Good boy. There is no turning back now.”
“Mom, but if Nika finds out that I sold the car under a vehicle-title loan… Or rather, not sold it, but pawned it at a pawnshop… She will kill me. The car is registered in her name. I only drive it by power of attorney.”
“You are a fool, Igorek,” Tamara Vitalyevna said affectionately. “Do you have a general power of attorney? You do. That means you have the right. And when we sell the apartment, we will buy the car back, and she will never know. The main thing now is to force her to sign the apartment deal. I saw some pills in her medicine cabinet, mild antidepressants. We will slip a couple into her tea, and she will be as obedient as silk. And my realtor, Svetochka, will arrange everything quickly. We will say they are documents for refinancing…”
Nika felt the ground disappear from beneath her feet.
They did not merely want to take her apartment.
Igor had already committed a crime. He had pawned her car to pay off his secret debts. And they were discussing how to drug her with psychotropic medication so they could slip her documents for the sale.
This was not a domestic conflict.
This was war.
Nika silently returned to the study.
Her hands were no longer trembling. Now they were cold and steady, like a surgeon’s before an operation.
She took her phone.
One in the morning.
To hell with it.
She typed a message to an old university friend, who now worked at the prosecutor’s office:
“Lyosha, hi. Sorry it’s late. I need your help. Urgently. I think someone is trying to scam me out of my apartment. And not only that. Can we meet in the morning?”
The reply came a minute later:
“9:00 at Coffeemania near your building. What happened?”
Nika looked at the closed door, behind which her “dear” enemies were sleeping.
“Well then, Tamara Vitalyevna,” she whispered into the empty room. “You want to play Monopoly? Let’s play. Only now I set the rules.”
She opened her banking app and blocked every card Igor had access to.
Then she went to the State Services website and placed a ban on any real estate transactions without her personal presence.
It was going to be a long night…