Darling, can’t you put more effort into this?” Rita said, watching as Stas, sprawled across the couch cushions, took long drags on his cigarette, deep in thought.
He snorted irritably: “Rit, do you even realize what you’re suggesting? I have no desire to swap the comfort of this couch for a prison cell.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Rita softened her tone. “I’m just curious—don’t you want to be rid of this burden as soon as possible?”
Stas rolled onto his stomach and fixed her with a penetrating look: “And you? We’ve said a thousand times that it’s better to wait it out for now.”
“I agree, but Olga isn’t someone you can easily fool,” Rita countered. “She knows that time is against her. All it needs is a little push… As long as there’s hope, a person clings to a straw. And when it’s gone…”
Stas silently studied the features of his companion. Their secret affair had lasted a year already, yet the dream of a life together was shattered by two obstacles: first, abandoning a wife bound by illness would be scandalous, and second, all their shared assets—the apartment, the car, the bank accounts—legally belonged to Olga. Stas had tried more than once to start his own business using her money, only to face failure every time.
“A true master of manipulation,” he smirked. “Maybe if we play to her weaknesses, she’ll decide to speed things up on her own?”
“Exactly!” Rita nodded in agreement.
Stas returned at dawn. In the kitchen, Olga awaited him, pale, with dark circles under her eyes.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped, unable to hide his irritation.
“I was waiting… I felt uneasy without you. Where have you been?” Her voice trembled.
“Am I now obliged to report to you?” he said coldly. “Or have you forgotten that at home I’m not waiting for a cripple, but a woman with whom I can talk about something other than pills and diagnoses?”
Olga lowered her gaze: “Sorry… I was just asking.” Struggling to get up, she leaned against the wall and headed toward her room, but Stas caught up with her at the doorway.
“Tomorrow we’re going somewhere. Let’s take a walk.”
“Will I… be able to?” A spark of hope flickered in her eyes.
“Of course. I’ll help you,” he replied, barely containing a smirk.
“Thank you!” she managed a weak smile.
He recoiled at the smell of medications lingering in her room.
Olga’s illness had struck suddenly. Once, she could do it all: run a company, manage a household, be the life of the party. But one day her strength simply ran out. At first, she dismissed her malaise as fatigue, but after a brief improvement, her condition sharply deteriorated: while driving, she nearly hit pedestrians and lost consciousness.
The hospital, endless examinations, yet the diagnosis remained a mystery. A year of torment. Thoughts of selling the business gnawed at her: Stas, once he inherited, would bankrupt the company in a month. People would be left without jobs. Although Nikolai, her manager, kept everything under control, Olga increasingly worried about the future.
When she opened her laptop, she stumbled upon a letter from Nikolai. The text stunned her. He not only revealed Stas’s and his mistress’s plans to hasten her demise but also confessed his own feelings.
Olga read the lines over and over. There had been suspicions of her husband’s infidelity, but such a cynical plot… Her eyes lit up with a familiar fire—the very same that flared during risky business deals. Nikolai was offering not only help but something more. Now she had an ally. And the game was just beginning.
“Get ready to go out,” Stas said that morning as he peered into Olga’s room.
She studied his face intently: “Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out when we get there,” he snapped, avoiding her gaze.
After gathering themselves, they got into the car. As Stas buckled his seatbelt, he remarked sarcastically: “You’re unusually silent. Not even complaining about how you feel. Is today some kind of angelic patience?”
“Is there any point?” she said wearily, leaning back against the headrest. “My complaints are nothing to you.”
Stas gripped the steering wheel. His plan required precision: the shock of visiting a cemetery was supposed to break her will. But Olga, it seemed, was reading his thoughts.
At the cemetery, leaning on his elbow, she surveyed the gravestones with a troubled look: “Why did you bring me here?”
“Your time is running out,” he replied with a sardonic smile. “Pick a grave plot so we don’t have to guess later.”
He expected tears, panic, but Olga merely sighed. Noticing Nikolai’s car in the distance, she straightened as if finding support: “Alright, let’s look at the options.”
Stas tensed. Since childhood, cemeteries had filled him with a superstitious dread. The silence, broken only by the rustling of leaves, was oppressive. Memories of Olga’s colleagues’ warnings echoed in his mind: “Don’t mess with her if you cross her path.” He used to laugh at them, but now her determined stride between the tombstones made his heart contract.
“We’re here,” Olga announced, stopping at a plot enclosed by a wrought-iron fence.
Stas was stunned to see plaques bearing their names.
“What the hell is this nonsense?!” he blurted.
“You wanted me to secure a place in advance,” her voice was icy. “And I did.”
“I’m not planning to go to the afterlife for the next several decades!” he hissed.
“Are you sure?” she stepped closer. “What about the vows ‘to be together until the end’? If I leave this world, you’ll follow me.”
Steel flashed in her eyes. “Affairs, overspending—you let everything slide. But a conspiracy with a mistress to hasten my departure…” she moved her face closer to his as if hypnotizing him. “Keep it up—and your name on a headstone will become a reality sooner than you can even be frightened.”
Stas recoiled. The woman he had thought was broken suddenly revealed the strength of a predator.
“You’re talking nonsense!” he spat. “I’ll leave, and you’ll perish here. Everyone will think you took your own life!”
He dashed off, stumbling over stones. Olga sank onto a bench, watching his figure fade into the distance.
“Why torture yourself?” a familiar voice said.
Nikolai, sitting down beside her, gently took her hand: “Get up. It’s time to reclaim your life.”
“Go to a restaurant?” she asked with a weak smile. “I’d forgotten what that felt like…”
“Even better,” he said, helping her to her feet. “Choose: cabbage soup, dumplings, or pancakes?”
At a table in a cozy eatery, after tasting the first piece of cabbage pie, Olga unexpectedly laughed: “Thank you, Kol. You’re… like a breath of fresh air.”
“Empty words,” he waved his hand dismissively. “Those plaques at the cemetery were a masterpiece. I thought Stas would turn as white as chalk.”
“Too bad I didn’t see his face at that moment,” she suddenly mused. “But what now?”
“Now—rest,” Nikolai declared firmly. “Your home is a nerve-wracking hell right now. Move in with me.”
Olga paused, then nodded. For the first time in a year, she felt that the future was not a dead end but a road with unexpected turns.
“Kol, I can’t be the same as before,” Olga said, gazing out the car window as the landscapes flashed by like scenes from a forgotten movie.
Nikolai abruptly turned to her: “Who told you that rubbish?”
She fell silent, fiddling with the folds of her dress.
“The doctors never gave a definitive answer,” she began hesitantly.
“Clear your mind of that empty space that’s just waiting for your end,” Nikolai said harshly, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. “I have a plan. Let’s go to my hometown.”
“To your mother’s?” she frowned. “Why?”
“The air there smells of childhood and apple pies,” his voice softened. “It’s the best place to reset.”
“Show up at a stranger’s house in a semi-conscious state?” she laughed nervously. “That’s absurd!”
“More absurd than breathing poison in a house where you’re being slowly killed?” he countered.
The ride rocked Olga. She woke from a gentle jolt—the car had stopped at an old house with carved shutters.
“My God, it’s like being in a fairy tale…” she gasped, examining the garden fence, drowned in hydrangeas.
Ekaterina Yevgenyevna, embracing her like a daughter, led her into a room adorned with embroidered cushions and porcelain elephants on the dresser. That evening, Nikolai found Olga lost in thought over an album of black-and-white photos.
“Kolya, I… won’t go back there,” she sighed, caressing the tattered snapshots with her finger. “This morning I was preparing for death, and now…”
He sat beside her, clasping her cold hands: “You will live. Even if I have to convince you of that all over again every day.”
A stubborn spark pulsed in his eyes—the very same spark that had ignited the fires in their company’s workshops during crisis times.
“Let go of the past,” he murmured, bringing her hand to his lips. “Death can wait. But not your mother’s cherry compote.”
Meanwhile, Stas, fidgeting on Rita’s leather sofa, chewed mint gum as if to muffle his nerves: “File a missing person report? If they don’t find the body, the inheritance will be frozen for years! And what if the bitch escapes?”
“You always said she smells like incense,” Rita clicked her nails on her phone screen. “We should have finished her off at the cemetery then! What about the money she was transferring? You blew it all on my fur coats, didn’t you?”
“Damn fur coats!” he leapt up, knocking over a vase. “It’s all your fault—I…”
The door slammed. Rushing out into the street, Stas frantically thought: Olga took her phone. That means she might record our conversations. So…
Three weeks later, he paused at the entrance of a building. On a bench sat Olga—emaciated but with bright red lipstick and a laugh as she sorted through documents with two men in sharp suits.
“Let’s play family,” Stas sneered as he stepped out of the car with a saccharine smile.
Olga gave him a dismissive glance, as if dusting herself off: “That’s the former tenant. He’ll vacate the premises by Thursday.”
He blocked her path, ranting about his right to half the property, but from around the corner, Nikolai appeared with a video camera in hand: “Please, continue, Mr. Sokolov. Every word will be used in court.”
As their car pulled away, Olga didn’t turn her head. The wind played with her scarf, and in her purse lay a referral from a private Swiss clinic marked “Urgent Diagnostics.