The apartment is mine, so the rules are mine! Go wherever you want, even under a bridge. My patience has run out.”
Roman stood in the middle of the living room in the pose of a Roman patriarch, except instead of a toga he was wearing a velour tracksuit. He pointed dramatically toward the door, as if he had rehearsed the gesture in front of a mirror.
I nodded silently. As a logistics dispatcher, I was used to emergency situations. A truck full of fish stuck at customs? A driver getting drunk in Voronezh? A husband deciding to play alpha male? The algorithm was the same: assess the damage, map a new route, remove the unreliable link.
On the sofa, like spectators in a VIP box, sat his relatives. My mother-in-law, Zinaida Sergeyevna, pursed her lips with the expression of someone personally signing my eviction order from her former dormitory. Beside her, my sister-in-law Zhanna fidgeted, already mentally trying on my shoes.
“Roma is right,” Zinaida Sergeyevna declared weightily, adjusting the brooch on her enormous chest. “You brought nothing into this home. The manager of an auto repair shop needs a reliable rear guard, not a woman who is always buried in her spreadsheets. He needs a wife with status.”
I methodically packed my things into a suitcase. Rolling clothes is the best way to save space. Practical and fast.
“Exactly!” Zhanna chimed in, fluttering her fake eyelashes. “Romka is a wealthy man now. I’m about to open my own boutique, and he’ll give me the startup capital. We’re businesspeople. And who are you? A salaried little mouse.”
I carefully zipped up my toiletry bag, straightened, and looked at my sister-in-law.
“Zhanna, a boutique requires either sole proprietor or LLC status. And according to our country’s law, if a citizen has enforcement proceedings with the bailiffs for more than five hundred thousand rubles in overdue microloans, their accounts are automatically blocked. Your business will end at the cash register purchase stage.”
Zhanna jerked so sharply that she dropped her phone. The device landed on the parquet floor with a crack.
She deflated and turned pale, like a punctured Chinese air mattress on a pebble beach.
Roman turned crimson, realizing that his triumph was being spoiled.
“The conversation is over! Keys on the table. Did you think I would tolerate your cold face forever? I want emotion! Passion!”
“Passion isn’t my department, Roma. Try the fire inspection,” I said, placing the keys on the cabinet. “Goodbye.”
Stepping out into the cool March evening, I did not “slide down the wall” or sob in an alley. I called a taxi to a hotel. Sitting in the back seat, I took out my phone and made exactly one call.
“Katya, hi,” I said, watching the evening city lights flash past. “You said your TV channel needed juicy material for the Consumer Shield segment? Write down the address. Empire Motors auto repair shop. Yes, the one where expensive foreign cars get serviced.”
Katya, my school friend and also the executive editor of a scandalous local TV show, immediately perked up.
“Olya! Are you really ready to turn in your beloved husband?”
“He is no longer beloved. Write down the facts,” I said, my voice as smooth as asphalt on a federal highway. “The scheme is classic: on the invoices, they list original German parts. In reality, the mechanics install cheap Chinese substitutes or cleaned-up used parts. Roman pockets the difference, bypassing the cash register. That’s Article 14.7 of the Administrative Code — consumer fraud — plus tax evasion. I’ll email you the license plate numbers of three cars that had fake brake pads installed yesterday. The owners still don’t know they’re driving time bombs.”
“I adore you, Olya! Tomorrow morning we’ll go there with a mystery shopper and hidden cameras.”
The next morning, I was drinking cappuccino in a cozy rented studio apartment, scrolling through the news feed. My phone chimed. It was the building chat, where Larisa — my former mother-in-law’s close friend — was listed as the administrator. A loud woman with a greedy appetite for other people’s dirty laundry.
“Dear neighbors!” Larisa announced in large letters. “Our respected Roman Nikolayevich has finally kicked out his leech! Let’s support a good man! She lived there with everything provided, no borscht, no warmth!”
I took a sip of coffee, opened the keyboard, and typed my reply.
“Larisa Gennadyevna, supporting a man who hides part of his salary in envelopes so he doesn’t have to pay child support for his two children from his first marriage is, of course, very noble. By the way, since we’re talking about laws: how is your illegal renovation with the removal of a load-bearing wall onto the balcony doing? The housing inspectorate doesn’t just fine people 2,500 rubles for such tricks — it also requires them to restore everything to its original state at their own expense within a month. I was just planning to clarify this matter with an inspector.”
A silence hung in the chat that could have been cut with a knife. A minute later, a system notification appeared: “User Larisa Gennadyevna deleted the group.”
She vanished from the digital space as quickly as a cockroach caught by a suddenly switched-on light.
By lunchtime, the real show began.
Katya sent me a link to the TV channel’s livestream on social media. Roman was in the frame. His face, usually arrogant and polished, now resembled an overripe beet. He ran around the reporter, waving his arms, while the mystery shopper demonstrated on camera an oil filter crumbling in his hands — sold as an original part for an outrageous price.
“This is a provocation! You have no right to film! This is my territory!” my ex-husband screeched.
“Roman Nikolayevich,” Katya chirped sweetly into the microphone, “the territory belongs to the owner of the service center, Mr. Markov. Who, by the way, will soon arrive here, along with officers from Rospotrebnadzor and the tax authorities. You are simply a hired manager, aren’t you? How would you comment on the double bookkeeping?”
Roman froze, opening and closing his mouth.
His pomp crumbled like plaster in a Khrushchev-era apartment block during an earthquake.
Three hours later, my phone was burning up with calls. Zinaida Sergeyevna called. Roman called. I methodically pressed “Block.”
In the evening, a message came from an unknown number.
“Olya, it’s Zhanna. Roma was fired with a disciplinary record and blacklisted. The owner is pinning all the losses and shortages on him. Mom is bedridden with high blood pressure. Roma is screaming that you sicced the TV people on him. Tell me that’s not true! How are we supposed to live now?! He was going to take out a loan in my name to solve the auto shop problems!”
I smiled. I opened the window, letting in the fresh autumn air.
Algorithm completed. Toxic cargo dumped. The logistics chain of my life had been rebuilt — without marriage and without defects.
“Go wherever you want, Zhanna. Even under a bridge,” I typed in reply. “Your rules, your problems.”
I pressed “Send,” blocked the final contact, and went to make myself dinner.
Ahead of me was a calm, comfortable, and, most importantly, entirely my own life.