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“— And what is this supposed to be?” Alexey’s voice—steady and cold, like a scalpel—cut through the cozy evening quiet. Larisa, absorbed in her reading, didn’t look up right away. He stood in the living room doorway, arms folded across his chest, his gaze fixed on a small paper bag with a bookstore logo lying … Read more

  When Vera Nikolaevna received a message that her third cousin Tatyana, who lived somewhere deep in the Urals, was asking to stay with her in Moscow with the kids for a couple of weeks, her first reaction was to refuse. What could they possibly have in common? The last time they’d seen each other … Read more

— “So this wreck is all you’ve managed to earn!” — those words lashed at Zhenya the whole way. — “What were you expecting, Zhenka? A happy life? Well done, you got what you deserve!” She dropped her heavy bags and sank onto an old stump. It had all started so well… Or had she … Read more

— Redo it. I want it on my desk by morning,” my boss Tamara’s voice clanked like a bolt being drawn. She tossed a folder with the report onto my desk. The corner of the pricey leather jabbed unpleasantly into my stack of papers. “Tamara Igorevna, but we submitted this project last week. Everything was … Read more

  Just grab and run, you know? Immediately…” “But why me? What’s so special about me?” Thirty years have passed, yet these phrases still ring clearly in my memory, as if spoken only yesterday. That fateful evening radically changed the course of my life. Now, looking back through the prism of all these years, I … Read more

  — “Do you have your own car? Or are you planning to rely on Kostya’s?” Nika froze with a glass of juice halfway to her lips. At that moment, Kostya was slicing cheese at the kitchen counter; a slow flush crept over his cheeks. The woman who had just entered the apartment stood in … Read more

Monday at the spacious, sunlit offices of the agribusiness buzzed like a disturbed beehive. A wrap-up meeting was underway in the hall, but most people were already thinking about their own tasks. Suddenly the director—a sturdy man of about fifty named Vitaly Semyonovich, always impeccably dressed in a neat checkered shirt—raised his hand, calling for … Read more

Ludmila automatically wiped her hands on her apron and listened. The front door slammed—Vasily had come home from work earlier than usual. Strange. On Thursdays he always stayed late for meetings. “Lyud, are you home?” Her husband’s voice sounded different somehow. “In the kitchen,” she turned off the stove and covered the pan with a … Read more

“Come on, come on, don’t dawdle! Grab your suitcases and move it! We live here now—me and my wife with the kids,” Nikolai declared boldly. “How do you mean, you? On what grounds? This house is mine! By law. The will names me as the heir, and you know that perfectly well,” Larisa said, trying … Read more

— “The soup turned out very light, of course…” Irina Pavlovna’s voice was even, almost gentle, but the spoon with which she stirred the golden liquid in her son’s bowl moved with surgical precision, as if searching the broth for evidence of criminal negligence. “Valerochka could use something richer right now, with some bone. For … Read more