“Move out. We’re selling the apartment. Your brother needs money for his business,” my mother announced, forgetting that I had been paying her mortgage for five years.
“Move out by the end of the month. We’re selling the apartment,” Mom said casually as she slipped off her tight shoes in the hallway and neatly placed them on the mat. “Pasha urgently needs money for his business.”
I was flipping syrniki in the pan. The oil in the cast-iron skillet hissed angrily when a drop of water fell from the wet spatula. The kitchen smelled of vanilla and slightly scorched cottage cheese.
“What do you mean, selling it?” I lowered the heat and looked out into the hallway.
My twenty-eight-year-old brother appeared from behind Mom. Pasha was wearing a fashionable hoodie, brand-new sneakers, and the expression of a man who believed he was one step away from making the Forbes list.
He confidently walked into my kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a bottle of mineral water without even asking.
“What do you mean, what do I mean? The apartment is registered in my name,” Mom said, following him in and running her finger across the countertop as though inspecting it. “A realtor has already been here and appraised it. They’ll start showing it next week. You should slowly start packing your things. You can rent a studio nearby for now. You live alone—how much space do you really need?”
I wiped my hands with a paper towel. Suddenly, the sound of the extractor fan seemed unbearably loud.
“Mom, what sale? I’ve been paying the mortgage on this apartment for five years. Every single month.”
Five years earlier, when I had just started freelancing, no bank would have approved a mortgage for me. I had income, but no official paperwork to prove it.
Back then, after much reluctance and a long lecture about how family members should help one another, Mom offered to take out the mortgage in her name.
The down payment came from my savings. The monthly payments came from me too.
I had renovated this two-bedroom apartment from scratch, from pouring the floors to installing the very countertop Mom was now checking for dust.
“Oh, so you’ve been paying. Big deal,” she waved dismissively. “You live here, don’t you? You would have had to pay rent to some stranger anyway. Think of it as renting. Where else could you have lived this cheaply in a place renovated like this?”
“I paid for the renovation myself,” I reminded her quietly, feeling irritation begin to boil inside me.
“Oksana, don’t be such a bore,” Pasha interrupted as he opened his mineral water. “This business is a sure thing. We’re opening a premium barbershop for dogs. With craft beer for the owners. An investor is ready. I just need to contribute my share. I’ll triple my money within a year. Then I’ll buy you a one-bedroom apartment in a new development myself. I swear.”
I looked at my brother.
Before the dog barbershop, there had been a microgreens farm in a basement that had rotted away from mold. Before that, there had been a business reselling Chinese phone cases, which were still gathering dust on Mom’s balcony.
Pasha’s business empire existed entirely because of Mom’s belief in his genius—and other people’s money.
“And how much do you need for this… dog barbershop?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
“Three million,” Pasha announced proudly. “That’s why we’re selling the apartment a little below market value, so it goes fast. You can take the microwave. I’m not greedy.”
Mom sat down on the chair I had waited two months to have delivered from Italy and folded her hands in her lap.
“Sweetheart, try to understand. You work online. You can always earn more money. But the boy needs a start in life. He’s almost thirty already. It’s time for him to build a family. You’re his sister. You should understand. We’re one family.”
I turned off the stove. The syrniki were cooling, but I had lost my appetite.
I leaned against the kitchen cabinets and looked carefully at the two of them.
They weren’t joking.
They sincerely believed they could walk into my home on a Wednesday evening and throw me out onto the street so that Pasha could groom poodles.
“All right then, family,” I said, crossing my arms. “Legally, the apartment is yours, Mom. I can’t argue with that. Go ahead and sell it.”
Mom’s face immediately brightened, and Pasha gave a victorious little snort before taking a sip from his bottle.
“But there’s one small detail,” I continued, looking directly into Mom’s eyes. “I’m a very meticulous person. For all five years, I transferred the money from my account to yours. And in the payment description, on the tenth of every month, I wrote: ‘Payment toward mortgage loan under agreement number such-and-such.’”
Pasha’s smile slowly began to disappear.
“And the down payment,” I paused, enjoying the silence, “was transferred to your account with the description: ‘For the down payment on the apartment.’ All my income has been officially declared for years. I pay self-employment tax. Every receipt is stored in the tax app.”
“So what?” Mom challenged me, though her voice trembled slightly. “A daughter was helping her mother. You’re allowed to do that!”
“No, Mom. Legally, that isn’t simply ‘help.’ It can be classified as unjust enrichment. Article 1102 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. I consulted a lawyer three years ago, when Pasha was trying to breed expensive chinchillas and you first mentioned that maybe the apartment could be sold or exchanged.”
Pasha choked on his mineral water.
“Hey, what the hell? You’d sue your own mother?” he demanded, wiping his chin with the sleeve of his fashionable hoodie. “You’d choose money over your own family?”
“If you put the apartment up for sale, I’ll file a lawsuit the very next day,” I said completely calmly, without raising my voice. And the calmer I spoke, the better I felt. “The court can immediately place restrictions on the apartment until the dispute is resolved. You won’t be able to sell it or give it away. And the lawsuit could drag on for a long time. Two years, maybe. Your dog barbershop will have time to go bankrupt before it even opens.”
Mom suddenly stood up from the chair.
Red blotches appeared on her face—a sure sign that she had run out of arguments and was about to switch to hysterics.
“Shameless!” she screamed. “I raised you! I stayed awake at night because of you! And now you’re quoting legal codes at your own mother?! We’re selling this apartment anyway! We already have a buyer!”
“Go ahead,” I shrugged. “Just remember one thing. I’ll take everything out of here.”
“What do you mean, everything?” Pasha asked, confused.
“Everything I paid for. I’ll dismantle the kitchen cabinets. I’ll take the built-in appliances. I’ll pull up the laminate flooring. I’ll unscrew the electrical outlets—they cost fifty rubles each, by the way. I’ll take the bathroom fixtures too. I still have the receipts. I’ll leave you with bare concrete walls and exposed wires. Good luck selling that ‘below market value.’”
Silence filled the kitchen.
Mom stared at me as if she were seeing me for the first time.
She had expected tears, pleading, hysterics.
She had expected me to surrender, just as I had surrendered when I was a child and the best piece of candy was always given to little Pasha because he was “the younger one.”
But I wasn’t ten years old anymore.
And Pasha was old enough to earn money for his own toys.
“You… you’re a monster, not a daughter,” Mom finally spat out, grabbing her handbag from the chair. “You don’t have a family anymore.”
“I think I’ll survive,” I replied, turning back toward the stove.
Pasha tried to say something. He opened his mouth, but when he met my gaze, he silently placed the half-empty bottle of water on the table and hurried after Mom into the hallway.
They put on their shoes in complete silence, angrily huffing as they fumbled with shoelaces and zippers.
I waited until I heard the front door lock click.
Then I walked to the table, placed a golden-brown syrnik on my plate, poured myself a cup of coffee, and calmly took a bite.
Mom was already standing on the landing, repeatedly pressing the elevator button. Pasha shifted impatiently beside her.
“Leave the keys on the cabinet,” I said calmly through the open door. “And don’t come here again without calling first.”