“My son built himself up from nothing, and he only took his wife in out of pity!” the mother-in-law announced at the banquet. But her smug grin vanished when I picked up the microphone…
“My son built himself up all by himself, from the ground up!” Galina Alexandrovna’s voice, fueled by champagne, soared toward the ceiling, drowning out the clatter of dishes.
The mother-in-law stood there, swaying slightly on her thin heels. Her massive amber necklace thudded against her ample chest, tightly wrapped in lurex fabric, while the large rings on her plump fingers glittered beneath the bright spotlights.
The crystal pendants of the chandeliers in the Versailles banquet hall trembled with every bass note from the speakers. The sound seemed to become trapped in the burgundy velvet curtains, which smelled of stale dust. The room was unbearably stuffy. Lena could feel the underarms of the evening dress she had hurriedly purchased on sale especially for that night slowly becoming soaked with sweat. The corset squeezed her ribs, preventing her from taking a full breath, and every movement sent an ache through her shoulder blades.
“And he only took his Lena in out of pity! Why has everyone suddenly gone quiet? Are you going to tell me that isn’t true?”
She sharply waved her glass. Golden droplets flew from its delicate rim and landed in a fine trail across the snow-white tablecloth. The liquid was instantly absorbed into the fabric, leaving damp marks directly in front of Lena’s plate.
Andrei, who was sitting at the head of the table, narrowed his eyes smugly. A thin vein bulged on his neck, which had turned noticeably red beneath the stiff collar of his tuxedo. He gave Lena a patronizing pat on the shoulder. The heavy gold watch on his wrist clinked.
“Oh, come on, Mom. We have to help the people close to us,” he said, his voice filled with the well-fed condescension of a man accustomed to easy victories.
An uncomfortable silence fell over the tables. Pyotr Semyonovich, one of the company’s key investors—a large man with a heavy chin and a habit of studying people for a long time before speaking—lowered his fork to the edge of his plate. Duck in lingonberry sauce was growing cold in front of him, and the greasy shine of the meat suddenly seemed nauseating to Lena.
The employees of StroyMetProekt-M, seated at the neighboring table, simultaneously hid their smirks behind glasses of whiskey.
Lena remained motionless, staring down at her plate. The blue light of a spotlight fell directly across her face. The roaring in her ears did not come from the music but from the emptiness that had gradually been filling her from within over the past several months.
Beside her, thirteen-year-old Artyom shifted anxiously. The boy nervously tugged at the cuff of his blue jacket. He smelled of freshly ironed fabric and mint chewing gum.
“Dad,” he whispered, pulling at the sleeve of Andrei’s tuxedo. “Why is Grandma saying that? Mom…”
Andrei did not even turn his head. His face retained its ceremonial, welcoming expression, his eyes narrowed in a smile intended for the investors.
“Quiet, kid,” he hissed through his teeth, barely moving his lips. “Stay out of it when adults are talking. Listen to your grandmother.”
Lena turned her gaze toward her mother-in-law. Galina Alexandrovna had already lowered herself into her chair and was breathing heavily as she dabbed her upper lip with a lace handkerchief. She looked victorious—a woman who had finally put everything in its proper place in front of respectable society.
“If it weren’t for my dear Andryusha,” she continued more quietly, addressing the woman seated beside her, “Lena would still be sitting in Ryazan, counting pennies at some design institute. But look at her now! A real lady, attending banquets. A true rags-to-riches story…”
The gold rim of Andrei’s watch gleamed faintly in the dim hall as he took a sip of champagne. There was not the slightest trace of embarrassment on his face, only deep and sincere agreement with his mother.
In his version of reality, that was exactly how things had happened. He was the benefactor who had pulled a quiet young woman with an old laptop into the world of big money and panoramic windows.
Seven years of her life, spent drawing in AutoCAD until her joints ached and her eyes burned, crumbled into fine gray ash across that expensive tablecloth among dirty plates and half-eaten duck.
Lena pushed her chair back.
The evening’s host, a young man in a glittering jacket who had spent the entire night fluttering between the tables with artificial enthusiasm, immediately noticed the movement. Deciding that the moment had arrived for a touching family toast, he eagerly rushed over to their table and extended a black microphone toward her.
“And now, let us hear from our triumphant hero’s loyal companion!” he shouted joyfully.
The announcement echoed from the walls and struck painfully against Lena’s temples.
She took the microphone. Its metal mesh was cold and smelled of someone else’s cheap lipstick. Lena rose to her full height. The corset of her dress finally loosened slightly, allowing her to take her first deep breath of the evening.
For a moment, the blue restaurant spotlight shining directly into Lena’s eyes reminded her of the glow from her old Asus laptop.
Five years earlier, that screen had been the only source of light in their tiny kitchen on the outskirts of the city.
The Khrushchev-era apartment always smelled the same: dampness rising from the basement and the faint odor of gas from a water heater that was half a century old. At night, the heater sighed in the corner as a small yellow flame sprang to life inside it, while an icy draft blew through the cracks around the balcony door.
Lena wrapped herself in Andrei’s old woolen blanket, but the fingers of her right hand still went numb.
They had been in a desperate rush to complete their first contract, the design of a shopping center. Andrei, burning with dreams of easy money, had hired two recent graduates through acquaintances.
They had arranged the panels beautifully but had completely ruined the structural calculations.
A week before the government inspection, it became clear that the entire project was falling apart at the seams. Under the first serious snow load, the roof of the shopping center would simply have collapsed inward.
For three weeks, Lena slept only two hours a night.
Time dragged on. In the silence of the apartment, the only sound was the monotonous hum of the Asus laptop’s cooling fan. Darkness pressed against Lena from beyond the window, where a few streetlights glowed faintly in the gray twilight of the residential district.
Sometimes it seemed as though the shadows in the corners of the kitchen were thickening and slowly creeping toward her table, and only the blue glow of the AutoCAD monitor kept them at a distance.
Every click of the mouse and every line she drew drained a little more of her strength. She practically became part of those blueprints, correcting other people’s mistakes while strong tea grew cold on the kitchen table, leaving a dark stain around the inside of the cup.
On the day the project was submitted, Andrei organized a celebration for his friends at a country club.
Lena remembered him returning home noisily just before dawn, smelling of frosty air, birch smoke from the barbecue, and expensive alcohol.
“Lena, we’re rich!” he shouted as he burst into the kitchen without even looking at the pile of blueprints on the table.
He swept her—half-asleep and completely exhausted—into his arms and spun her around in the narrow space between the stove and the refrigerator.
Lena felt nauseated. Blue coordinate grids and load tables were still floating before her eyes.
“Andrei, put me down… I’m dizzy,” she asked quietly, pressing her face into his jacket.
He lowered her and frowned in irritation.
“Why are you always so miserable? You should be celebrating! The project has been submitted and the investor is satisfied. I made the deal—they’re transferring the first payment. Lena, this is our beginning! We’re finally getting out of this dump!”
The following day, Galina Alexandrovna arrived to “help around the house.”
In reality, her mother-in-law had come to assess the scale of her son’s first success. She walked around the apartment for a long time, running a finger over the dust on the baseboards. Then she sat at the kitchen table, pushing Lena’s plate with its half-eaten sandwich aside in disgust.
“Lena, why are you sitting there looking like a drowned hen?” Galina Alexandrovna pursed her lips as she examined the dark circles beneath her daughter-in-law’s eyes. “Andrei is the breadwinner in this family. He has brought so much money into the household. He needs dependable support at home, but all you know how to do is sit around looking miserable. A man needs to be inspired, not greeted by a wife who looks like a suffering martyr.”
Lena remained silent.
Something resembling a warning stirred inside her, but she suppressed it. She looked at Andrei, who was smiling contentedly as he listened to his mother, and decided not to create a scene for the sake of peace in the family.
That became her first and greatest mistake.
She herself had allowed them to believe that her exhausting, round-the-clock work did not deserve to be valued.
The new supermarket known as “The Glass Box” rose at the same time as the debts of their family company.
The new office in a prestigious part of the city also seemed foreign to her. Enormous panoramic windows stretching from floor to ceiling let in too much light. An air conditioner hummed in the corners, creating the sensation of a constant draft that made Lena’s neck ache.
The office smelled of expensive carpeting, printer toner, and new particleboard furniture, but there was no warmth in it. It was an attractive glass façade concealing emptiness behind it.
Andrei quickly adapted to his new, respectable life.
He traded his old Lada for a brand-new black Camry purchased on credit, without hesitation assigning the monthly payments to company expenses. Almost every day, he disappeared to important meetings at restaurants, returning to the office only in the evening—relaxed, slightly drunk, and smelling of expensive perfume and grilled meat.
Then, six months earlier, the crisis had struck.
A major client froze its payments, leaving a hole of half a million rubles in the company’s account. There was no money to pay the taxes, the deadline for the designers’ salaries was approaching, and Andrei merely waved away every concern before leaving for another round of negotiations.
That evening, Lena sat in their kitchen at home, reconciling income and expenses in Excel. The blue and red cells of the spreadsheet blurred before her exhausted eyes. A half-finished cup of tea grew cold beside her.
The front door slammed, and Andrei entered the kitchen. He carried an expensive supermarket bag that rustled as he moved, releasing the smell of fresh bread and cured meat.
“We’re hiring Dima as commercial director,” her husband announced casually as he removed a bottle of cognac made of heavy, faceted glass from the bag. “Mom asked me to find him a position. The guy is thirty years old and still jumping from one temporary job to another. It’s time he got serious.”
Lena looked away from the screen and stared at her husband.
“What do you mean, commercial director, Andrei? We have a cash shortfall of five hundred thousand rubles. The software license hasn’t been renewed, and the taxes are overdue. Dima has never held a contract in his hands in his entire life. How are you planning to pay his salary?”
“Lena, don’t be such a bore,” Andrei said with a grimace.
He pulled off his tie and poured the amber liquid directly into a teacup.
“Dima is a presentable-looking guy. He’s almost six foot three, with broad shoulders, and suits fit him perfectly. He’ll look authoritative during meetings with investors, and he’ll learn as he goes. We need a public face, understand? The finances are my concern.”
“Yours?” Lena rose from the table, feeling everything inside her beginning to boil. “Have you ever opened a bank statement? Do you know how much we spend renting this ‘respectable’ office of yours and maintaining your car? This entire business is held together by my calculations! If I don’t submit the project to Pyotr Semyonovich tomorrow, they’ll shut us down!”
Andrei placed the cup on the table.
His face changed. His usual smile disappeared, his eyes narrowed, and his voice became cold and dry.
“Stop trying to make yourself sound more important than you are, Lena. Your technical routine is worthless without my connections. There are thousands of draftsmen online who will draw any component for next to nothing. I’m the face of this brand. I’m the one who goes into those offices and secures the contracts. The business is mine. It’s registered in my name, and I’m the one who will make the decisions. Your job is to draw the details and stay out of management.”
He turned around and walked away, leaving behind the smell of cognac and expensive tobacco.
The following day, Dima appeared at the office.
He lounged arrogantly in a chair inside Andrei’s office, playing with his car keys and smiling insolently at Lena. He smelled of sickly sweet men’s cologne that did little to conceal the odor of cigarettes.
“Well, sis, shall we get to work?” he said with a smirk, without even rising from the chair to greet her.
Lena looked at his hands—hands that had never known real work—and understood that the crack in the foundation of their company would never close.
The company she had built so carefully was doomed.
Lena took a breath and returned to the echoing Versailles banquet hall.
She was still clutching the microphone. The noise inside her head had disappeared, leaving behind perfect clarity.
“Thank you for those warm words, Galina Alexandrovna,” Lena said.
Her voice, amplified by the speakers, sounded calm, without the slightest tremor.
“Andrei truly is a great man. He knows how to wear a tuxedo beautifully and drink expensive whiskey with investors.”
A whisper swept across the hall.
Andrei frowned. His champagne glass froze halfway to the table, while his mother’s smile slid from her face, revealing tightly pressed lips and bewilderment.
“But let us add a few facts to this beautiful celebration,” Lena continued, looking directly at Pyotr Semyonovich. “Our main government contract, for which you allocated an advance payment of thirty million rubles, was developed by me. From the first structural joint to the final bolt. The patents for every load-bearing structure are registered in my name: Elena Voronova, individual entrepreneur. And the self-regulatory organization approval, without which Andrei’s company has no right even to approach a construction site, was issued under my personal professional license.”
Galina Alexandrovna inhaled sharply, choked on her champagne, and began coughing loudly into her lace napkin.
The muscles in Andrei’s cheeks twitched, while his neck beneath the stiff shirt collar became covered in red patches. He attempted to stand, but his knees appeared to give way beneath him.
“Your son doesn’t even know how to launch the Kompas design program, Grandma!” Artyom’s loud voice rang out.
The boy stood beside his mother, his thin fists tightly clenched and determination blazing in his eyes.
“I saw Mom editing presentation videos for him at three in the morning while he was out at clubs! He knows as much about technical drawings as a sheep knows about oranges!”
“Artyom, sit down!” Andrei roared.
His hairstyle had become disheveled, and a thick blue vein bulged across his forehead.
“Don’t interrupt your son, Andrei,” Lena said sharply, without even looking at her husband. “And don’t forget to tell the investors that, for its first three years, your empire survived on a personal loan I took out before our marriage. I’m still making the payments from my own bank card.”
Pyotr Semyonovich turned toward Andrei.
His face, which had previously appeared good-natured, became as hard as stone.
“Andrei Sergeyevich, is that true?” the investor asked.
His voice promised nothing good.
“Who is the chief project engineer? Whose license is the approval connected to?”
Andrei opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
The charisma that had been worth millions during his presentations evaporated in a single second, leaving behind nothing but a confused, frightened man with beads of sweat on his forehead.
“Tomorrow morning, I am withdrawing my licenses from all project use and terminating our partnership agreement.”
Lena placed the microphone on the tablecloth, directly in the damp patch left by the champagne her mother-in-law had spilled.
She took Artyom by the hand, and the two of them walked toward the exit.
By lunchtime the following day, the bank had blocked the next payment under the government contract. Without Lena’s signature as the chief engineer, the financial documents had lost all legal force.
Pyotr Semyonovich terminated the contract unilaterally and demanded the immediate return of the advance payment.
A week later, the prestigious office with its panoramic windows was sealed because of unpaid rent.
The presentable-looking Dima was the first to resign, taking Andrei’s work laptop with him as compensation for his unpaid salary.
Andrei’s empire, which turned out to be nothing more than a soap bubble, burst with a loud pop.
A month passed.
Lena sat in the kitchen of her new apartment.
It smelled clean and new, like a home that had not yet been fully lived in. A blooming geranium stood on the windowsill, its fragrance calming her.
On the table lay a newly issued patent for her latest foundation-joint design.
This time, it had been registered solely in her name.
There was a quiet, hesitant knock on the door.
Lena approached it and turned the lock.
Andrei was standing on the other side.
The collar of his shirt was greasy and turned up, his shoes were cracked, and a pathetic, doglike devotion had replaced the confidence that had once filled his eyes.
“Lena…” he began quietly, sniffling and not daring to step across the threshold. “Mom has been bedridden with high blood pressure… Come back, please. Everything collapsed without you. You’re smart—you’ll think of something. You’ll receive seventy percent of the profits. We’ll transfer everything into your name.”
Lena looked at the man she had once loved with all her heart and felt nothing.
How had she carried that heavy burden on her shoulders for so many years? How had she ever believed his words?
“Seventy percent?” she said with a smirk, shaking her head. “No, Andrei. From now on, I’m taking all one hundred percent. And you can hire those students online. They’ll do everything for next to nothing, remember? Those were your words.”
She did not wait for his answer.
She pulled the door closed and turned the lock twice.