“Have you lost your mind, Margo?” Leonid stood in the doorway of my workshop, looking disdainfully at the shelves filled with colored glass. “That apartment belongs to me too. I did the renovations there. Besides, I haven’t moved out yet.”
I kept my eyes fixed on the stained-glass panel. The soldering iron in my hand was hot, a steady extension of my wrist. The smell of rosin and heated tin, which normally calmed me, seemed acrid today—just like my husband’s presence.
Leonid, a successful escape-room scriptwriter, was accustomed to the world revolving around his whims. He stood there in his fashionable camel-colored coat, absurdly out of place among the dust and shards of glass, radiating superiority with every gesture.
“You did the renovations with my money, Lenya,” I replied calmly, carefully applying solder to the seam. “But you slept with Diana for free. Or did she pay you extra for your efforts?”
Leonid snorted, walked farther into the room, and kicked a box of glass scraps with the toe of his shoe.
“Oh, spare me the melodrama. Diana has nothing to do with this. You and I simply outgrew each other. I’m a creative person. I need freedom and inspiration, while you… You’re always covered in dirt, with cuts on your fingers, wearing that apron. You’ve become boring, Margo.”
“Boring?” I finally placed the soldering iron on its stand and turned around.
I looked at the man with whom I had lived for seven years and saw a stranger. An arrogant, self-satisfied stranger who had somehow decided that he had the right to trample all over my life.
“You slept with the wife of your school friend,” I reminded him. “Does Pasha know?”
“Pasha is a fool,” Leonid said dismissively, picking up a glass cutter from the table and turning it in his hands. “And don’t change the subject. The apartment. I put my heart and soul into it. I chose the wallpaper. I supervised the workers. By the law of conscience, half of it belongs to me. Or you can pay me compensation. Let’s say… five million. Then I’ll disappear.”
“You’re going to disappear anyway.” I walked over and took the tool from him. “Your belongings are already with the courier. I gave him the correct address for your mother.”
“If you start a war, Margo, you’ll lose.” His eyes narrowed. “I have connections. I have lawyers. I have… I’ll simply crush you psychologically. You’re nothing but an amateur craftswoman.”
He came right up to me, towering over me. In the past, that gesture would have made me step back and try to smooth things over.
“Leave,” I said quietly.
“I’ll leave when we come to an agreement about the money. Otherwise, I won’t come alone next time, and the conversation will be very different. Think about it, Margosha. You have three days.”
He turned around and walked out, slamming the metal door loudly behind him. I stood there staring at the door.
There was no fear. There was only disgust and a growing desire to scrub the entire city clean of his presence. The restaurant was noisy, fashionable, and unjustifiably expensive. Leonid adored places like this.
I hadn’t come for the food. I was there because our mutual “friend” Larisa had arranged to meet me, swearing that she needed to give me some important documents Leonid had supposedly left at her country house six months earlier.
My intuition was practically screaming that I shouldn’t go, but I went anyway.
Larisa was sitting at a table by the window, but she wasn’t alone. Leonid was lounging casually on the sofa beside her, and on his other side sat Diana—the very woman for whom both our marriage and Pavel’s marriage had been destroyed.
“Oh, look who finally showed up!” Leonid announced loudly, attracting the attention of the neighboring tables. “Sit down, wife. Or should I say almost ex-wife?”
Diana, a striking brunette with predatory makeup, laughed, covering her mouth with a hand tipped with long, claw-like nails.
“Lenyechka, why must you be so rude?” she said. “Margarita, please sit down. We were just discussing how to resolve your… apartment issue peacefully.”
Larisa stared down at her plate of salad, trying not to meet my eyes.
“Did you know they would be here?” I asked Larisa, ignoring the affectionate couple.
“Rita, please try to understand,” she began mumbling, finally looking up at me with shifting eyes. “Lenya asked me to arrange this meeting. You’re civilized people. Why all these scandals and evictions? Lenya only wants what belongs to him. He’s a man. He needs somewhere to live, somewhere to build a new family…”
“A new family on the bones of the old one?” I interrupted.
Anger began throbbing in my temples—not because I was hurt, but because of the sheer audacity of what was happening.
“So you’ve taken a side job as their matchmaker, Larisa?”
“Watch your mouth!” Leonid barked.
He had already been drinking, and his face had taken on the unpleasant reddish hue it always acquired when he became aggressive.
“We’re offering you a deal. You transfer the country house into my name, and I’ll be generous enough to let you keep your little Khrushchev-era apartment.”
“I inherited the country house from my father,” I said slowly. “You have absolutely nothing to do with it. You never even hammered in a single nail there, ‘man.’ All you ever did was stuff your face with barbecue.”
“Ugh, how vulgar,” Diana said, grimacing. “Lenya, has she always been such a crude woman? No wonder you left her for me. With me, you feel like a king.”
“Exactly, baby.”
Leonid stroked her knee beneath the table, making sure I saw him doing it.
“Margarita, don’t be stupid. We have ways of putting pressure on you. By the way, Pasha knows everything, and he’s on my side. He and I are business partners now, so don’t expect him to come running over to punch me in the face. Everything is under control.”
He picked up his wineglass and splashed some wine onto the tablecloth in my direction.
“That’s a warning. If you don’t sign the papers willingly, we’ll do this the hard way. We’ll ruin your life. I know who your clients are. A couple of rumors that you steal materials or miss deadlines, and your reputation will collapse.”
I watched the red stain spreading across the tablecloth. Then I stood up.
“You think you’ve backed me into a corner?” I asked, looking him directly in the eyes.
My voice sounded low and hard.
“You’re mistaken, Lenya. You simply don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“I’m dealing with a frightened woman,” he guffawed.
I turned around and walked toward the exit. Behind me, I could hear Diana laughing and Larisa mumbling something.
They thought I was leaving in defeat.
They didn’t understand that I was leaving to prepare.
The unfinished cottage development where my father’s plot of land was located greeted me with a bitter, damp wind and the barking of stray dogs.
I had come to check the locks, but when I arrived, I saw that the gates were open.
Leonid’s car was parked beside the construction trailer. There was another vehicle there as well—an old SUV belonging to his colleague Oleg, a slimy man who always looked at women as though they were pieces of meat.
I climbed out of my car, clutching a ring of keys inside my jacket pocket.
Leonid, Oleg, and—to my surprise—Pashka, Diana’s husband, were standing beside the foundations of the future house. They were smoking and laughing loudly.
“I’m telling you, we’ll build a sauna right here!” Leonid proclaimed, waving his hands. “Right here, with an exit leading toward the forest. Rita will sign everything. She won’t have a choice. I put so much pressure on her yesterday that she nearly burst into tears.”
“You’re quite the strategist, Lenya,” Oleg agreed, spitting on the ground.
Pashka remained silent. He looked worn down. Apparently, accepting his wife’s betrayal and befriending the man who had taken her from him had cost him the last remnants of his conscience.
“What are you doing here?” I shouted as I approached them.
The three men turned around. Leonid’s face spread into a vile smile.
“Oh, look—the Mistress of the Copper Mountain has arrived! Did you come to hand over the keys?”
“This is private property. Get out.”
I tried to keep my voice steady, but adrenaline was already surging through my bloodstream.
“Listen, Rita,” Oleg said, taking a step toward me.
He was large and flabby, but strong.
“You shouldn’t get so cocky. Lenya and I are making plans here. He’s a man. He needs this place more than you do. You’ll find yourself some other… glassworker.”
They surrounded me.
Three men against one woman.
A classic intimidation tactic.
“Pasha, are you really with them?” I asked, looking at the betrayed husband. “He’s sleeping with your wife, and you’re kissing his ass?”
Pavel looked away.
“Business is business, Rita. Diana made her own choice. Lenya offered me a share in the project. Nothing personal. If you won’t give him the apartment, give him the country house.”
“You’re pathetic,” I spat.
Leonid suddenly grabbed my shoulder, squeezing it painfully with his fingers.
“You’re going to sign a deed of gift. Tomorrow. Otherwise, we’ll tear these foundations apart brick by brick. Then we’ll go after your workshop. Do you understand me?”
At that moment, another car pulled up to the gates—a small, nimble compact car.
Zoya, Leonid’s sister, jumped out.
“Lenya! What the hell are you doing, you idiot?” she shouted, running toward us.
Leonid released my shoulder and grimaced.
“Zoyka, get out of here. Don’t interfere in men’s business.”
“Men’s business?”
Zoya stepped between her brother and me. She was small, but fierce.
“You’re trying to take the last thing your wife owns after cheating on her? You nearly gave Mom a heart attack with all your whining about how you were ‘thrown out into the cold’! Meanwhile, you’re driving around in an SUV and taking whores to restaurants!”
“Shut your mouth!” Leonid roared, raising his hand.
I intercepted his arm.
My hand, hardened by years of working with glass, was stronger than he expected. I didn’t merely stop him—I yanked his arm down and to the side, making him stumble.
“Don’t touch her,” I growled. “And I strongly advise you not to raise your hand against me either.”
“You…” He stared at me in shock.
Oleg and Pasha exchanged glances, but neither of them intervened.
Taking advantage of the hesitation, Zoya grabbed my arm.
“Let’s get out of here, Rita. They aren’t worth breathing the same air as us.”
We backed away toward our cars.
Leonid shouted after us, yelling something about lawsuits and how I would “regret this.”
But I saw the confusion in his eyes.
He had never expected me to fight back physically.
I didn’t go home.
I went to their office.
Leonid’s company occupied an open-plan workspace on the fifth floor of a business center. I needed to finish this while my anger was still burning like pure fuel.
It was lunchtime. The employees were lazily drinking coffee.
I walked past reception without looking at the secretary. Zoya remained in the car because I had forbidden her from coming with me.
This was my battle.
Leonid was sitting at his desk, discussing something with Diana, who, as it turned out, was also officially employed there as a “consultant.”
When he saw me, he turned pale and then immediately flushed red.
“What are you doing here? Security!” he shrieked.
“I brought you some documents,” I said loudly.
The office fell silent. Every head turned toward us.
Leonid’s colleagues knew him as a successful, charming man.
They didn’t know what lay beneath the surface.
“What documents?” he asked cautiously, hoping I had surrendered.
I walked up to his desk and emptied the contents of my bag onto it.
They were not documents concerning the apartment.
They were printouts from his corporate email account, which he had foolishly left accessible on my old laptop.
There were conversations in which he discussed kickback payments kept off the books, insulted his business partners behind their backs, and even spoke contemptuously about Diana, calling her “a temporary option for sex.”
“Read them,” I said. “All of you should read them.”
Diana grabbed one of the pages. Her face fell.
“‘A stupid doll I’m going to dump soon’? Lenya, what is this?”
“It’s Photoshopped! She’s lying!” Leonid shouted, jumping to his feet.
“And are the invoices issued by shell companies Photoshopped too?” I asked, throwing a folder of financial reports onto his desk. “You were stealing from your own people, Lenya. You never had enough money to contribute to the apartment, but somehow you always had enough for restaurants.”
Leonid lunged at me, trying to cover my mouth with his hand.
“Shut up, you bitch!”
He shoved me.
My hip struck the desk, but I didn’t feel the pain.
I felt only cold, crystalline rage.
“Did you just hit a woman?” a voice called from a nearby desk.
His colleagues were no longer smiling.
I straightened my jacket.
“You lost the right to live a normal life a long time ago. And now you’ve lost your dignity as well.”
I turned around and walked toward the elevator.
Leonid was shouting something. Diana was shrieking and hitting him with her handbag. The employees were recording everything on their phones.
The rats’ nest had been disturbed.
But I knew this wasn’t over yet.
He would come for me.
He would come seeking revenge, because men like him didn’t know how to lose with dignity.
The evening of the same day.
The apartment.
My fortress—the place he wanted to take away from me.
I waited for him.
I knew he wouldn’t go to court. He now had far too many problems at work, and soon he wouldn’t have enough money to pay good lawyers.
He would go all in.
The doorbell rang for a long time, insistently.
I opened the door.
Leonid stood on the other side.
He was drunk and disheveled, with the collar of his shirt torn—apparently Diana’s doing. Oleg and a huge man I didn’t recognize loomed behind him.
“Open up, you bitch!”
Leonid barged into the hallway, pushing me aside with the door.
“I’m going to… I’m going to teach you to respect your husband!”
“You’re not my husband,” I said, retreating into the corridor.
“This is my home! Guys, throw her belongings off the balcony! And throw her out onto the stairs!” he ordered.
They advanced toward me.
They expected tears, pleading, and hysterics.
They were accustomed to seeing a woman as a victim.
But they had forgotten that I worked with stained glass.
I carried lead frames and boxes of glass weighing fifty kilograms.
My hands were like steel clamps.
When Leonid reached out to grab me by the hair, I didn’t dodge.
I stepped toward him.
All the anger that had been building inside me for weeks was concentrated into a single movement.
I grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and, with a force he clearly hadn’t expected, yanked him toward me while simultaneously driving my knee into his groin.
Leonid made a strangled sound and doubled over.
“You thought I was going to cry?” I screamed into his ear.
It wasn’t a scream of fear. It was the roar of an animal defending its territory.
“You thought I was weak?”
I hurled him toward the shoe rack.
He collapsed, knocking shoes in every direction.
The huge man rushed at me, but I grabbed the heavy metal coat rack standing in the corner.
There was something in my expression that made him stop immediately.
“Take one more step, and I’ll crack your skull open,” I said quietly, but terrifyingly. “It will be self-defense. Inside my own home.”
Oleg backed toward the door.
“Forget it, Lenya. She’s insane. You never told us she was completely unhinged.”
“Get up!”
I rushed toward Leonid, who was writhing on the floor. I grabbed him by the back of his collar, and the fabric tore.
With one sharp movement, I pulled him upright, even though he was heavier than I was.
Rage had given me inhuman strength.
“Get out of here!”
I pushed him toward the exit, shoving him in the back as he stumbled and whimpered.
I literally threw him out onto the landing.
He flew a couple of meters and struck the door of the apartment opposite mine.
His “support group”—Oleg and the hulking man—were already running down the stairs, leaping over the steps.
Cowards.
Rats fleeing a sinking ship.
Leonid looked up at me.
There was animal terror in his eyes.
For the first time, he saw me like this—not the accommodating Margo he had known, but a beast capable of breaking his spine.
“I never want to see you here again,” I said, looking down at him. “Forget my address. Forget my name. Otherwise, next time, I won’t stop.”
I slammed the door in his face and turned the lock.
Silence.
I looked down at my hands.
They were trembling, but not from fear. They trembled because the adrenaline was draining away.
There was an abrasion across my knuckles.
I walked into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water.
Outside the window, an engine roared in the courtyard and then immediately died.
Apparently, their car wouldn’t start either.
I smiled.
I felt completely, infinitely free.
My anger had done its job.
It had burned away all the pain, leaving behind nothing but pure, transparent peace.
Like glass after firing.