She looked at him as if he were empty space. As if he simply didn’t exist. She didn’t dignify him with an answer.
She simply opened the front door and walked out, leaving him standing bewildered in the middle of the hallway. The new residential complex was on the other side of the river, in the city’s most prestigious district. Tall towers of glass and concrete, a gated territory, security at the entrance.
Anisa left her car on the street and walked through a side gate that was, fortunately, open. She entered a spacious, marble-lined lobby. A polite concierge in a uniform cap gave her a questioning look.
“Who are you here to see?” “The Dobrynins,” Anisa said, the first thing that came to mind. The surname came to her lips on its own. “Which apartment should I go to?” The concierge checked a list.
“Dobrynina, Kira Igorevna. Penthouse, 16th floor. Elevator on the right.”
Anisa’s heart skipped a beat. Kira Igorevna. Not her mother, Regina.
Herself. The one who had supposedly died of a stroke in a Swiss clinic. The one who supposedly rested beneath a granite slab.
She was here. Alive. She stepped into the silent, mirrored elevator.
As the cab rose smoothly upward, Anisa looked at her reflection. A pale face, burning eyes. She didn’t know what she would say…
She didn’t know what she would do. She was simply riding to meet the ghost who had stolen her life. The sixteenth floor had only one door.
Massive, faced with dark wood, with a shiny brass handle. No number. The penthouse.
Anisa took a deep breath to calm her wildly beating heart and pressed the doorbell. She expected anything. That no one would open it.
That a maid or some unfamiliar man would answer. She was prepared for almost anything. Almost.
An eternity seemed to pass. Then quiet footsteps were heard behind the door. A lock clicked.
The door swung open smoothly and silently. She stood on the threshold. The woman.
The same one Anisa had seen under the streetlamp. Only now she wasn’t wearing a hat or a coat. She was dressed in an elegant house robe made of heavy emerald silk. Her dark, shiny hair was styled in a neat coiffure. Her face bore flawless, calm makeup. She looked healthy, rested, full of energy.
And she was strikingly beautiful with that predatory, self-assured beauty that only sharpens with age. It was Kira Dobrynina. Alive.
Real. She didn’t look surprised. A slight, barely perceptible smirk played on her lips.
She looked Anisa up and down, though they were the same height. Her gaze was full of cold, undisguised triumph. “Well, you finally figured it out,” she said calmly.
Her voice was low, with a slight huskiness, authoritative and mocking. “Come in, don’t stand on the doorstep. Although, you can stand there if you prefer.”
Anisa couldn’t utter a word. The air was stuck in her lungs. The world had narrowed to this woman in the emerald robe.
Standing in the doorway of an apartment bought with Anisa’s money. All the pieces of the puzzle—the lie about the death, the fur receipt, the glove on the pillow, the public humiliation, the empty bank account—fell into one clear, monstrous picture. She wasn’t just being deceived.
She was being systematically, step by step, driven out of her own life, like a cockroach. And the conductor of this entire performance was this woman. “Don’t take it so personally,” Kira continued, leaning lazily against the doorjamb.
“It’s just business. David was simply… keeping the house warm for me.”
“And the bed. You turned out to be a decent temporary manager. But the lease is up.”
Every word was like a drop of poison, slowly seeping into her bloodstream. Anisa looked at her, and the reality of what was happening crashed down on her with all its weight. The husband she had loved was not just a liar. He was an accomplice.
He had been leading a double life all these years, playing the role of a devoted husband while his dead wife waited for her time. And it was at that moment, as Anisa tried to draw a breath to say something, to spew out all her fury, that a quiet elevator chime sounded behind her. The doors opened. David stood on the landing.
In one hand, he held a large paper bag from the most expensive gourmet shop in the city, from which a baguette and some greens protruded. In the other—a net bag of oranges. He looked up, saw the two women standing opposite each other in the doorway.
And his face became a grey mask of horror. The grocery bag fell from his weakened hand. A bottle of wine inside shattered with a dull thud, and a dark red puddle spread across the marble floor.
He looked from Anisa to Kira and back, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly, like a fish thrown ashore. He had been caught. Caught so stupidly, so ineptly.
Anisa expected shouting. Accusations. A scandal.
She expected Kira to lunge at David for bringing his “temporary manager” here. But Kira didn’t even raise her voice. She looked at the confused, pathetic David with a faint expression of disgust and disappointment, the way one looks at a careless servant who has broken the mistress’s vase.
And then she smiled. She stepped out from behind the door, glided over to David, ignoring the shards and spilled wine, and took his arm. She pressed herself against his shoulder as if nothing had happened.
As if Anisa weren’t even there. “Darling, you’re late,” she cooed, looking straight into the eyes of the petrified Anisa. “And our guest was just about to leave.”
Anisa looked at them, at Kira clinging to David’s arm, and at David himself, paralyzed by fear and shame. Kira’s words, “our guest was just about to leave,” hung in the air, humiliating and final, like a verdict. She was the outsider here.
Not just an outsider, she was an obstacle, a misunderstanding that was about to be removed. She didn’t say anything. What was there to say? To scream? To accuse? That was exactly what they expected.
It would have given them pleasure. Instead, Anisa turned around silently. She stepped toward the elevator, carefully avoiding the puddle of red wine and the shards, as one avoids a crime scene.
She pressed the call button. There was a deathly silence behind her. She could feel their gazes on her back.
Kira’s gaze, triumphant and mocking. And David’s gaze, pathetic and pleading. The elevator doors opened.
She stepped inside without looking back. As the doors began to close, cutting her off from the scene, she saw them one last time—the perfect couple standing amid the chaos they had created. They were already in their own world; she was outside it.
She drove home, but the word “home” now felt alien and false. It wasn’t her place. She had been a temporary tenant there, a caretaker, without even knowing it.
Every object in the apartment—the sofa they had chosen together, the painting on the wall bought on vacation, even the cup she drank her morning coffee from—was all part of an enormous, carefully planned set. Entering the apartment, her first action was to go to the bedroom. She opened the wardrobe.
His clothes hung next to hers—shirts, suits, sweaters. Without a moment’s hesitation, she began pulling his things out and throwing them on the floor. She worked methodically, without fuss.
First, the clothes. Then the shoes from the hallway. Then his shaving kit from the bathroom.
Everything that belonged to him, everything that carried his scent, his presence, became one big pile in the middle of the living room. She found two old, large suitcases in the storage closet and began silently, neatly, packing up his life. Items carelessly thrown, she smoothed out; suits she placed on hangers, which also went into the suitcases.
There was no love in this, nor hatred. Only a cold, surgical precision. She was cutting him out of her life.
Amputating him. It took almost two hours. When the last suitcase was fastened, she carried them out the door and onto the landing.
Then she found the number for a 24-hour locksmith service in the phone book. “I need to urgently change the lock cylinder on my front door,” she said into the phone. “The sooner, the better.”
The locksmith arrived in forty minutes. While he worked on the door, Anisa sat in the kitchen drinking water. She felt nothing.
No grief, no anger. Only a strange, ringing emptiness, and at the same time, a firm certainty that she was doing the right thing. It was the only correct action.
When the locksmith finished and handed her the new set of keys, she felt the first wave of relief wash over her. She locked the door with two firm, new turns. This was her territory now.
Her fortress. Even if only a temporary one. David showed up closer to midnight.
She heard him trying to insert his key into the lock. Once, twice. Then he started jiggling the handle.
Finally, he rang the doorbell uncertainly. Anisa looked at the door but didn’t move. “Anisa.”
His voice through the door sounded muffled and pitiful. “Please open up. I’ll explain everything.”
“This isn’t what you think.” She remained silent. “Anisa, I’m begging you…”
“At least let me get my things. Talk to me.” She walked up to the door.
“Your things are on the landing,” she said loudly and clearly. “You can drop your keys in the mailbox. Nothing else in this apartment belongs to you anymore.”
Silence fell behind the door. Then she heard him picking up the suitcases. Heard him slowly, heavily, descending the stairs.
And that was it. He was gone. That night, for the first time in a long while, she slept peacefully.
She had lost her husband, lost all her savings, her reputation was in tatters. But by throwing him out, she had reclaimed the most important thing—herself. She was no longer a victim, waiting for the next blow.
She had become a player. And she was ready for the opponent’s next move. The next move wasn’t long in coming.
The next morning, as soon as Anisa arrived at the factory and entered her office, her secretary reported, fearfully, “Anisa Nikolaevna, you have a visitor. She doesn’t have an appointment, but… she insists.” “Who?” Anisa asked, though she already knew the answer.
The door opened without a knock. Kira Dobrynina stood on the threshold. Today she was wearing a perfectly tailored cream-colored business suit…
She looked like the owner coming to inspect her enterprise. She walked into the office, looked around with mild curiosity, as if appraising the furnishings. “Not bad,” she said, running a finger over the polished surface of the desk.
“Cozy. A bit tacky, though. But what else can one expect?” She sat down in the visitor’s chair without an invitation. Crossed her legs. Her whole posture exuded superiority and confidence.
“I haven’t come to quarrel,” she began in a businesslike tone. “But to clarify some legal nuances. You’re a pragmatic woman, a factory director. You should understand the language of facts, not emotions.”
Anisa silently sat down at her desk. She looked at Kira, waiting for the blow. “I consulted a very good lawyer yesterday,” Kira continued, examining her manicure attentively…
