“Now she can live in peace.” “And I… I’m no longer needed by her. I’m a burden to her.”
“A witness.” He looked at Anisa again, and there was panic in his eyes. “You don’t understand everything.”
“That embezzlement in the company, the file Filatov took… It was her plan from the very beginning. She thought of it all, she dragged me into it.” “And she… she kept all the documents. All the invoices, all the bills, all the transactions.”
“And only my signature is on all the papers. Only mine.” He grabbed Anisa’s hand. His fingers were icy.
“She has me by the throat. From the moment she returned, she’s been blackmailing me with those documents. She said if I don’t do everything she says, if I don’t help her throw you out of the apartment, out of the city, she’ll take that file to the police.”
“And I’ll go to prison alone. And she’ll come out unscathed. She’s thought of everything, Anisa.”
“She always thinks of everything.” David’s words fell into the silence of the car interior like stones into a deep well. Blackmail.
There it was. The last link in the chain that explained everything. His cowardice, his submissiveness, his betrayal.
He wasn’t just an accomplice; he was a hostage. And now, having laid everything out, having confessed to the most terrible things, he was finally broken. He was no longer crying.
He just sat there, staring ahead with unseeing eyes. The look of a man standing on the edge of an abyss and realizing there was no way back. Kira would destroy him as methodically and mercilessly as she was destroying Anisa.
He understood that. And that fear, the fear of prison, of complete oblivion, turned out to be stronger than the fear of Kira. “She’ll put me in prison, Anisa,” he whispered.
“As soon as I’m no longer useful to her, she’ll hand that file over. And that’s it. The end.”
“And she’ll leave, clean, with the money.” At that moment, something switched in him. The instinct of self-preservation, dormant under layers of fear and guilt, finally awoke.
He turned to Anisa, and something new appeared in his eyes—a desperate, insane determination. “I don’t want to go to prison,” he said firmly.
“I don’t want to rot there because of her. You… you have to help me. Help both of us.”
Anisa looked at him without any sympathy. Help him? The man who had destroyed her life? But she understood that he was now her only chance. Her only source of information.
He was the weak link in Kira’s defense, and she had to use that. “How can I help you, David?” she asked coldly. “She holds all the cards.”
“She has the documents on you, she has the marriage certificate, she has the property rights to the apartment. And we only have your words. Which no one will believe.” “There must be something.” He clutched at her sleeve. “There must be at least some evidence against her.”
“She couldn’t have thought of everything. She… she’s very sentimental.” “That’s insane.”
“She would never have thrown out her past life completely. All her things, everything, everything that was before her ‘death.’ She couldn’t have.” “She loves herself, her memories, too much.” He feverishly searched his memory, trying to find something.
And suddenly his eyes widened. He remembered. “The storage unit!”
“Exactly! The storage unit!” he almost shouted. “When she… disappeared, we had to get rid of her things.”
“To make it look believable. Her parents took some, we gave some away. But the most expensive, the most memorable things for her—her dresses, jewelry, some papers, albums—she forbade me to throw out…”
“She said she would come back for them someday.” “We rented a storage locker on the outskirts of the city. An old, Soviet-era place, where no one asks any questions.”
“I’ve been paying for it all these five years. It’s registered in my name.” “I completely forgot about it.”
He fumbled in his wallet, his hands trembling, started sorting through old business cards, receipts. Finally, he pulled out a small, worn key with a plastic tag attached. Number – 137.
“Here.” He handed the key to Anisa. “Take it.”
“She doesn’t know I gave it to you. She’s sure I’m still on her side.” “Go there.”
“Her whole past is there. Maybe you’ll find something. A letter.”
“A diary. Anything.” “It’s our only chance.”
Anisa took the key. It was cold and heavy. It really was a chance.
A ghostly, weak one, but it was there. “And you?” she asked. “What will you do?”
“I’ll go back to her,” he said, and bitterness appeared in his voice. “I’ll pretend nothing happened. Buy time.”
“But I won’t last long.” “She’s too smart, she’ll sense I’m up to something.” “You have little time, Anisa. Very little.”
She dropped him off at his friend’s house and drove away. She didn’t go home. She went straight to that storage facility.
The place was even more dismal than she had imagined. An old brick hangar in an industrial zone, surrounded by a rusty fence. Inside—long, dimly lit corridors with rows of identical metal doors…
It smelled of dust, dampness, and oblivion. She found locker number 137. The key turned with difficulty in the rusted lock.
She pulled the heavy door open. It was dark inside. She turned on her phone’s flashlight.
The beam of light pulled a pile of things heaped in a mound out of the darkness. Old furniture covered with sheets. Boxes tied with rope.
Suitcases. It was a crypt. The crypt of Kira Dobrynina’s past life.
Anisa closed the door behind her and got to work. She felt like a grave robber, rummaging through someone else’s belongings, but she pushed that feeling aside. She was looking for a weapon.
She opened box after box. One contained dishes, an expensive porcelain set. Another—clothes.
Dresses of silk and cashmere, dozens of high-heeled shoes. The belongings of a woman who loved luxury and didn’t hide it. Anisa methodically felt every pocket, every fold.
Nothing. She spent over an hour on that. Then she moved on to the suitcases.
They contained papers. Old university notes. Business documents related to her work before marriage, folders with some accounts.
Anisa carefully examined every sheet. And again—nothing suspicious. Time was passing.
She was starting to get cold in the damp, chilly room. Despair was creeping in again. Maybe David was wrong? Maybe Kira wasn’t as sentimental as he thought and had destroyed everything that could compromise her.
There was one last, largest box left. It stood in the very corner. Anisa dragged it with difficulty toward the light and opened it.
Inside were photo albums. Dozens of albums in thick, tacky plush and leather covers. She sat down right on the cold concrete floor and started looking through them.
Here was Kira, very young, at a student party. Here she was with her parents at the seaside. Here was her wedding to David, happy, smiling faces.
Here they were traveling—Paris, Rome, Prague. In every photograph—the same confident, proprietary smile. The smile of a woman who knew the world belonged to her…
