Anisa turned the pages one after another, and the feeling of disgust and hopelessness grew. These were just memories. Happy, serene.
No evidence. She took the last, thickest album, in an ugly cover of burgundy velvet. She was already looking through it almost without seeing.
And suddenly her fingers felt something strange. Two pages in the middle of the album, glued together, seemed thicker than the others. As if there was something between them.
Anisa’s heart beat faster. She tried to carefully separate the pages with her nail. They gave way with difficulty.
It was clear they had been deliberately glued along the edges. She took a small nail file from her bag and carefully, millimeter by millimeter, began to cut the glued spot. Finally, the pages yielded.
She peeled them apart. Between them, in a specially cut-out recess in the cardboard, lay a sheet of paper folded in four. The paper was yellowed and brittle.
It was a letter, handwritten in a familiar, sweeping script. The same one that was on the receipt from the fur salon. Anisa unfolded it.
At the top was a date. Five years ago. A week after Filatov’s disappearance and Kira’s “death.”
The letter was addressed to “My dear Mama.” She began to read. And with every line, her eyes widened in horror.
This wasn’t just evidence. It was a confession. Written with cynical, triumphant glee.
“Mama, hello. I’m fine, I’m safe. Our plan worked perfectly, even better than we thought.”
“That idiot Filatov got what he deserved, he won’t be getting in our way anymore. The body, I think, will never be found. And my ‘death’ is just genius.”
“Everyone is mourning, crying, bringing flowers to an empty grave. What a spectacle!” “David, of course, behaved as always. Whined, was scared, but did everything I said.”
“He’s useful, my spineless little fool. The perfect scapegoat. If anything goes wrong.”
“I’ve left him enough instructions and money. Let him spin his wheels now, manage our assets, while I rest for a few years in warm climates.” “Don’t worry about me.”
“And most importantly, don’t feel sorry for him. He’s just a tool.” “When the time comes, I’ll return and take everything that belongs to me by right.”
Anisa sat on the cold concrete floor of the storage unit, and the letter trembled in her hand. This was it. The very weapon she had been looking for.
Not just proof; it was a death sentence for Kira. A sentence written in her own hand. Every word in this letter tore the mask of an innocent victim off her and showed her true face—the face of a cynical, cruel, and calculating criminal.
She carefully folded the letter and put it in a hidden pocket in her bag. She didn’t look at anything else. The main thing had been found.
She walked out of the dusty crypt of the past into the fresh air. It was already late; the city was lighting up. But for Anisa, the real dawn was only just beginning.
Her first thought was—to the police. Immediately. Take the letter to an investigator, file a report.
But she immediately dismissed that thought. She had come to know Kira too well. Kira would do something when cornered.
She would turn on all her charm, all her acting skills. She would cry, scream that it was a forgery. That it was the revenge of a scorned mistress ready to do anything to destroy her happy rival.
She would hire the best lawyers, the best handwriting experts who, for a lot of money, would prove anything. And in the eyes of society, it would again look like a battle of two women over one man. And again, there would be those who sympathized with her.
No. Simply handing her over to the justice system wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t restore Anisa’s good name.
It wouldn’t wash away the shame with which they had covered her. Kira’s destruction had to be as public, as loud, and as final as her own had been. She had to detonate this bomb so that the shrapnel would hit everyone involved…
So that no one would have even a shadow of a doubt about who was the victim and who was the monster. She drove home, to her apartment, which was still a battlefield. She took out the letter and took several high-quality photographs of it with her phone.
Then she hid the original in the safest place she could think of—a safe deposit box she had rented that morning. Now she had both a copy and an invulnerable original. She sat in the kitchen, thinking over the plan.
She needed a stage. The perfect stage. She needed an auditorium full of the very people who had turned away from her on the street yesterday and whispered behind her back.
She had to reclaim her reputation in the very place where she had lost it, in front of the whole town. But how to do that? How to gather them all together? And then, as if in answer to her thoughts, the phone rang. It was Masha.
“Anisa, where are you? I’m worried.” Her friend’s voice was anxious. “Something’s happened. Well, I was tidying up your office after you left and found this on the floor near the trash can.”
“Looks like one of ours dropped it, hoping you’d see it.” “What is it?” Anisa didn’t understand.
“An invitation.” “I took a picture, I’ll send it to you now. Take a look.”
A second later, a message arrived on her phone… Anisa opened it. It was a photo of an elegant card made of thick, embossed paper. In gold letters, it read:
“Kira Dobrynina and her family have the honor of inviting you to a ‘Celebration of Life,’ dedicated to her miraculous return and complete recovery. We will be happy to share our joy with you and celebrate this second birth.” Below were the date, time, and place.
And the place was all too familiar to Anisa. The “Imperial” restaurant. The most expensive and prestigious in the city.
The very one where the industrialists’ banquet had been held. The very one from which she had fled, disgraced and humiliated. Anisa laughed.
For the first time in many weeks, she laughed out loud. It was incredible. It was too perfect to be true.
Kira, in her arrogance and confidence in her own impunity, had prepared the scaffold for herself. She herself was gathering the audience for her own execution. “Masha, this isn’t just an invitation,” Anisa said into the phone, her voice ringing with excitement.
“It’s a gift from fate.” She quickly outlined her plan to her friend. The plan was daring, risky, almost insane.
But Masha, having heard it, didn’t doubt it for a second. “I’m with you,” she said firmly. “To the end.”
“What needs to be done?” The plan began to take shape. They discussed the details—every step, every little thing. Anisa didn’t just need a scandal.
She needed a flawlessly directed operation. She prepared for this day as for the main battle of her life. She put her affairs at the factory in order, transferring all key authority to Masha, just in case something went wrong.
She contacted lawyer Roitman and, without going into details, asked him to be on standby on the day of the celebration. She lived on adrenaline. The fear was gone.
Only cold calculation remained. She knew Kira was preparing, too. And that she would stop at nothing to make sure her main enemy didn’t spoil her triumph.
The day before the party, as Anisa was conducting a final briefing at the factory, Masha called her mobile. Her voice was breaking with panic. “Anisa! Get out of the factory! Now!” “Masha, what’s wrong? Calm down, speak clearly!” “I can’t over the phone.”
“Just leave. I’ll meet you at your place.” Anisa didn’t understand, but the panic in her friend’s voice was so genuine that she obeyed.
She told the head of security she had to leave urgently, and within five minutes she was in her car. Masha was waiting for her in the yard. Her face was white as a sheet.
“Get in, let’s get out of here,” she said, jumping into the passenger seat. They drove a few blocks away and stopped in a quiet square. “What happened?” Anisa demanded.
Masha took several deep breaths, trying to calm down. “I was in the smoking room. And I accidentally overheard a conversation.”
“It was our foreman from the pressing shop, Pyotr Zakharov. And another worker. Zakharov, he’s a distant relative of the Dobrynins.”
“He’s always been loyal to them.” “And?” Anisa hurried her.
“He was bragging. He was a bit drunk. Bragging that he’d been paid good money.”
“For a small service.” Masha looked at Anisa with eyes wide with horror. “He said that tonight he would ‘adjust’ one of the steam presses. The one you were scheduled to inspect tomorrow morning.”
“He said he would ‘accidentally’ loosen the safety valve on it. Right when you were standing next to it.” The car stood in a quiet square, but the tension inside was so thick it seemed to ring. Masha’s words about sabotage fell on Anisa’s already strained nerves like a spark on a powder keg. She had thought Kira would act more subtly—through rumors, legal pressure. But she had miscalculated.
Kira was no longer playing games. She had decided to simply remove her from the board. Physically.
A cold wave of fear ran down Anisa’s spine, but it was immediately replaced by icy rage. Attempted murder. That’s what it had come to.
This was no longer just a family squabble. It was moving to a completely different level. And it untied Anisa’s hands.
“She has crossed a line,” Anisa said quietly. Her voice was calm, but Masha shivered, hearing the steel in it. “And she will pay for it.”..
