“Fifty square meters for a single childless girl? Ludmila, that’s just wrong, both before God and people. Oleg and Lena can barely fit in their tiny rented place, while you’re living alone here in a palace with your cats.”
Ludmila didn’t even turn around. She kept tracing a delicate line on her blueprint with her stylus, drawing the intricate capital of a column. Only her fingers gripped the matte plastic pen a little harder.
Margarita Pavlovna entered without knocking, unlocking the door with her old key—the same one she swore she’d ‘lost at the dacha’ a year ago, back when Ludmila divorced Oleg.
“Margarita Pavlovna,” Ludmila put down her stylus and slowly swiveled in her desk chair. “Either leave the apartment or take off your shoes if you’re going to stand in the hallway. I saved up for six months to get this laminate flooring.”
“Just listen to her, putting on airs,” her mother-in-law scoffed, ignoring the request as she walked further into the room. Gray, wet footprints appeared on the light floor from her autumn boots. “She cares more about the floor than her own nephew? Oleg and Lena just had twins and they’re screaming in that one-room place at his mother-in-law’s! They need to move somewhere bigger. Oleg’s a man, he needs his own home. And what do you need this place for? You’re childfree, aren’t you? Living just for yourself, God forgive you.”
Her mother-in-law stopped at Ludmila’s desk. High up near the ceiling, a small green camera light blinked almost imperceptibly on its tripod. According to the strict policies of the fintech holding where Ludmila designed banking app interfaces, her workspace was streamed 24/7 to a secure private cloud. The NDA was serious business—a data leak meant not just getting blacklisted but also a massive fine.
Margarita Pavlovna, smacking her lips contentedly, reached out her hand—shiny with rich moisturizer—toward Ludmila’s professional Eizo monitor, her pride and joy, a purchase that had cost 300,000 rubles.
“Keep your hands off,” Ludmila stood up sharply, blocking the screen. “It has a special anti-glare polarizing film. The grease from your hand cream will ruin the coating, it can’t be cleaned.”
“Oh, stop making such a fuss!” her mother-in-law sneered and jabbed her thick finger right in the center of the screen, leaving a greasy, shiny gray smear on the matte surface. The glass bent plaintively under her finger. “Your precious ‘coating’! You internet people are so spoiled. Still playing with your toys, grown woman, but not doing any real work. You need a real job, at a factory or a clinic, not just drawing these pictures all day.”
Right underneath the greasy spot, Ludmila’s monitor glowed with the open restoration project: digitized schematics of the old city theater. It was the last work of her father, a renowned architect who had passed away three years earlier. Ludmila had painstakingly recreated every millimeter, staying up until she had dark circles under her eyes. It was her way of honoring his memory—the only thing that kept her afloat after her tough divorce.
“Step away from the desk,” Ludmila’s voice turned icy. “Don’t touch my father’s blueprints on the tablet.”
“The dead don’t need your papers, Lyudochka,” her mother-in-law narrowed her eyes angrily. “But living children need space! Write the consent to sell the studio, right now. I’ve already found a realtor, she’ll handle Oleg’s share in no time. You won’t be poorer for it—what do you need so much space for alone?”
Suddenly, her mother-in-law lunged for the table, where Lyuba’s big mug of sweet black coffee was still steaming.
“Sign it, I said! Or I’ll rearrange everything in here my way!” Margarita Pavlovna shouted.
She grabbed the heavy mug and in a dramatic move, splashed the hot, dark drink directly onto the keyboard and the Wacom Cintiq interactive display lying next to it.
A short, dry crack sounded. The tablet’s screen flashed blue, streaked with gray lines, then went dark. A thin wisp of bluish smoke started to trail from the delicate laminated seam.
“Oh,” her mother-in-law covered her mouth with her hand, but triumph flickered in her eyes. “So what, a piece of plastic is burned. You’ll buy a new one, since you’re so rich. And you’d better think about the apartment. Oleg will be here tomorrow with the documents.”
Lyuda silently stared at the thin wisp of smoke.
“For deliberately damaging property belonging to a legal entity, Margarita Pavlovna, you can get up to two years. And for group extortion of apartment shares—up to seven real time.”
The heavy glass door of the meeting area slid quietly into the wall. Out of the darkness of the office stepped Artyom, buttoning the cuffs of his crisp gray shirt as he moved. In his hand was an open corporate laptop.
Margarita Pavlovna flinched, her chubby fingers clenched tightly.
“And who are you supposed to be?” the mother-in-law tried to put on her usual brazen face, but her voice wavered. “Lyuda, who is this? You got yourself a new lover? With your ex-husband alive and in his own apartment, you’re bringing men into the house?”
“The apartment belongs to Lyudmila on the basis of a purchase contract from May 6, 2019. Your son Oleg didn’t contribute a single ruble,” Artyom didn’t even smile. He turned the laptop so the screen faced the mother-in-law. A real-time feed from the ceiling camera was playing. “I’m the senior legal counsel for the fintech holding, and also Lyudmila’s attorney.”
He pressed the space bar. The screen replayed the last three minutes: Margarita Pavlovna applying hand cream, then smearing greasy streaks across the matte polarizing glass of the Eizo monitor, then—a close-up in 4K—her hand grabbing the mug and pouring sweet boiling coffee onto the keyboard and the graphics tablet. The video clearly showed Lyuba’s scared face and the mother-in-law’s triumphant smirk.
“So what?” Margarita Pavlovna nervously wiped her hands on the hem of her fancy skirt. “Big deal, a movie! I accidentally knocked the cup, it happens to everyone! My hand shook, I’m an elderly, sick woman! And besides, this is Lyuda’s computer, she was married to my son, we’re one family! I have the right!”
“You’re mistaken,” Artyom said as he closed the laptop. “This graphic tablet, which costs 260,000 rubles, and the monitor worth 310,000 rubles, do not belong to Lyudmila. They are property of our holding company, assigned to her under an individual material responsibility agreement for working with confidential databases. Lyudmila operates under an NDA.”
Her mother-in-law blinked in confusion, glancing from the burned-out tablet—which still reeked of fried wiring—to Artyom.
“What… what’s an N-D-A?” she stammered.
“A non-disclosure agreement regarding commercial secrets,” Artyom explained, his voice flat. “Allowing outsiders into the remote workspace of a bank employee is already a serious incident. And deliberately destroying server equipment is a criminal offense. The damages exceed half a million rubles—that’s considered large-scale, Margarita Pavlovna. We’re talking a criminal case here. Our legal department will be filing a report with the police at 9 AM tomorrow.”
Margarita Pavlovna suddenly drew a deep breath. Big drops of sweat appeared on her forehead, right beneath her dyed bangs.
“Are you… out of your minds? What police? Over some plastic? I’m Oleg’s mother! I’m raising your grandchildren!”
“Let’s talk about Oleg, then,” Artyom said, stepping forward and forcing his mother-in-law to retreat right into her own muddy footprints. “You just said on camera that Oleg will be coming tomorrow with documents to demand a share of this apartment. That’s extortion, done by a group with prior agreement—up to seven years in prison. Oleg works as a lead analyst at a commercial bank, right?”
His mother-in-law froze, her mouth left hanging open.
“As soon as our legal department submits the request to open a criminal case tomorrow, Oleg’s bank security team will fire him within twenty-four hours. No bank in the country will keep an employee who is under investigation for financial extortion and damage to banking property. Your Oleg will never again get a job in his field—not even as a cashier at a payday loan place.”
“Ludmila…” Margarita Pavlovna suddenly turned to Lyuda, her voice sickeningly sweet. “Why are you so quiet, dear? I got carried away, I’m old… My teeth hurt, my head’s not working. There can’t be prison for Oleg, can there? He’s got little kids, Lena will go mad! We’re not strangers!”
“You are no one to me,” Lyuda said, looking her mother-in-law straight in the eye.
“Five hundred seventy thousand rubles. To Lyudmila’s personal account. Deadline is 7:00 PM today,” Artyom pulled out a blank A4 sheet from a leather folder and laid it on the coffee-stained table, right under his now-pale mother-in-law’s nose. If by 7 PM there’s no money and no signed document, the video goes to the police and his bank’s security team.
Oleg showed up forty minutes later. He looked completely drained, the collar of his jacket soaked with sweat, and fear flickering in his eyes. Margarita Pavlovna, spotting her son, tried to start lamenting again about ‘cruel people’, but for the first time ever, Oleg barked at his mother so sharply that she bit her tongue in shock:
“Be quiet, Mom! Stop this circus! Do you even realize they’re going to escort me out tomorrow?! Lyuda, Artyom, we’re family… Yes, Mom lost her temper, yes, she’s an old fool, but how are we supposed to have half a million just lying around right now?”
“Your Kia Rio, Oleg,” Lyuda replied coldly, not even looking at her ex-husband. “You bought it a month ago. Take it to the auto market, the dealers will buy it off you in fifteen minutes. Sure, you’ll lose a third of the price. But you’ll keep your freedom and your job.”
At 5:45 PM, Lyuba received a notification from her mobile bank: “Transfer credited: 570,000 rubles.” Forty minutes later, a courier delivered a notarized statement from Oleg renouncing any future housing disputes.
Lyuda silently closed the iron door and turned the key in the lock.
A month passed.
Where the ruined computer equipment had been, a brand new monitor now stood. Most importantly, Lyuda managed to recover almost all of her late father’s drawings from the backup cloud. The theater restoration project was finished right on schedule.
Yesterday, her neighbor Zhanna caught her in the stairwell, standing there with a trash bin.
“Oh, Lyuda, how could you do that?” Zhanna pursed her lips, eyeing Lyuba’s stylish leather jacket. “Oleg’s sister, Tanya, called me yesterday—she was in tears. Told me how you took away their car because of your precious computer! Now Oleg’s got nothing to drive the kids to the clinic, they have to shake along on the bus. So your mother-in-law broke your toy, why couldn’t you forgive her, like family should? You childfree people have all lost your minds, no sense or heart—just obsessed with your gadgets!”
Lyuda glanced at Zhanna’s greasy house robe and gray bin full of potato peelings. She didn’t feel a single thing inside.
That morning, her colleague Valery had written in the work chat: “Lyuda, you did the right thing. You have to defend what’s yours, or else they’ll devour you without a second thought.”
“All the best, Zhanna,” Lyuda said quietly, and walked toward her own door.
Sometimes, to protect your peace from other people’s anger and endless demands, you just need to close the door at the right moment. And behind that door are often those who don’t care about square meters, fancy jobs, or others’ gossip. While I was working on this story, my fluffy assistant never left my side, curling up next to me on the couch and quietly purring, as if reminding me: whatever’s happening outside, home should always be a place of peace. In the photo—that’s my favorite and the real keeper of warmth in our home.