Valery stood in the middle of the room, gasping for air, and she could see his world crumbling. He had been a son, an heir, a master, the center of the universe, and now he was—nobody. A foundling, a castaway, a man with no roots, thrown out into the cold in a cardboard box. He sank heavily onto the stool, clutching his head in his hands. For a few minutes, there was silence in the room, broken only by the crackling of wood in the stove and the howling of the wind outside.
“Fine,” he finally forced out, raising his head and staring at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Let’s say it’s true. Now what? What do you want from me?”
Viktoria took out the next folder and placed it in front of him.
“I consulted with a lawyer, a good one from Dnipro. According to the law, an adopted child has the same rights as a biological one. You are the heir of the first priority. But along with the inheritance, you also inherit the deceased’s debts, down to the last penny.”
She laid out a list, printed and signed: a loan for a roof repair for eighty thousand (unpaid), three years of utility arrears, her expenses for the treatment, which she, as a family member, was entitled to claim—almost half a million.
Valery stared at the figures with growing anger, his jaw muscles working.
“And what are you proposing?” he hissed through his teeth.
She placed a divorce petition and a property settlement agreement in front of him. All that was needed was his signature in three places.
“We’re getting a divorce. You waive any property claims against me and this house. I take on all the debts. You walk away free, with no obligations.”
He studied the papers, and she saw the calculation in his eyes. On one hand—a collapsing house in the middle of a dying village, debts, the shame of being adopted. On the other—freedom and the chance to quietly go to Lilia, start over, forget this nightmare.
“You take on all the debts?” he clarified, and a poorly concealed hope sounded in his voice. “And no claims later? No alimony, no lawsuits?”
“We have no children together. The apartment in Dnipro is mine, bought with my premarital money, that’s easy to prove. You have no legal claim to anything there. Sign, and you’re free as the wind.”
He almost snatched the pen from her hand, and his signature hit the paper—quick, sprawling. He didn’t even reread the document to the end, didn’t notice the third point in fine print.
“Done.” He was already putting on his jacket, zipping it up. “I’m leaving. You can keep this junk, I don’t need it.”
“Wait,” Viktoria said to his back, her voice as calm as a doctor delivering a diagnosis. “There’s something else important.”
She took out printouts of his bank card statements for the last three months, neatly highlighted with a colored marker. Red marked spending on restaurants and hotels in the Carpathians, yellow for purchases in expensive stores, and green for cash withdrawals. The amounts were so large that Viktoria’s vision had blurred when she first saw them.
“The total amount spent over three months is one million hryvnias,” she stated. “Credit cards you opened in your name at three different banks.”
Valery froze with the jacket in his hands, and his face turned a grey, earthy color, like a corpse.
“How did you?..”
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