— Lena took a drag from her cigarette. “The one who blackmailed a pensioner with a bad heart for his apartment, threatened to kill him if he didn’t sign the deed?”
Galina returned to the ICU and quietly relayed the conversation to Olga. The two nurses exchanged a look, and something in their eyes changed. When Lyudmila Vasilievna asked for water half an hour later, Galina nodded and left, but only returned an hour later. The IV was inserted roughly, the needle not going in on the first try, and no one apologized.
Dr. Kuznetsov came in that evening, looked at the cardiogram, at the test results, and his face remained impassive.
— “You’ll have heart problems for the rest of your life now,” he said dryly, without a hint of sympathy. “A second-degree disability is unavoidable. You’re lucky you survived at all.”
Lyudmila Vasilievna lay and stared at the ceiling, where dark water stains from an old leak were visible. She thought about her son, about the apartment she never got, about the two nights in a cell where soup was poured on her and she was called scum. And for the first time in many years, she was truly afraid.
Maxim had been standing at his father-in-law’s building for two hours. The rain was pouring down, his jacket was soaked through, and his shoes were squelching. He smoked one cigarette after another, gathering the courage to go up, but every time his hand reached for the door, something inside him clenched with fear.
Finally, he went up to the fifth floor and stopped at the door, from behind which he could hear the quiet sound of a television. Maxim wiped his face with his sleeve, ran a hand through his hair, and pressed the doorbell.
Pyotr Nikolaevich opened the door. He was wearing house pants and an old shirt, holding a newspaper. When he saw his son-in-law, his expression didn’t change, only his eyes grew colder.
Maxim fell to his knees right there on the landing. The words burst out of their own accord, through the lump in his throat, through the tears he could no longer hold back.
— “Pyotr Nikolaevich, I understand everything. It’s my fault. Please, let it go. I’ll be ruined. My mother is in the hospital with a heart attack. I’m jobless, no one will hire me.”
Pyotr Nikolaevich stood and looked down at him. He was silent for thirty seconds, and in that silence, Maxim could only hear the beating of his own heart and the sound of the rain outside the landing window.
— “You raised your hand to my daughter,” Pyotr Nikolaevich’s voice was icy. Each word fell like a stone. “You robbed her for three years. Your mother threatened to kill me. And you think you can just ask for forgiveness?”
— “Pyotr Nikolaevich, I…”
— “Get out,” Pyotr Nikolaevich pointed to the stairs. “Before I change my mind and make it so you can’t leave your house at all. I have that ability, believe me.”
Maxim got up from his knees, staggering. He went down the stairs and out into the street, where the rain was coming down even harder. He walked through the wet streets, not paying attention to where he was going, and understood that it was all over. That the life he had just a week ago was gone. And it would never come back.
Vera went to the legal aid office on Sobornaya Street three days after her father threw Maxim out. The lawyer, Elena Viktorovna Samoilova, met her in a small office on the third floor that smelled of coffee and old paper. A woman of about forty-five in a smart suit with attentive gray eyes listened to Vera’s story in silence, occasionally making notes in a notebook.
— “Your father already called me, explained everything,” Elena Viktorovna put down her pen and looked at Vera calmly and seriously. “We will file for divorce and alimony simultaneously. We have every reason to demand compensation for moral damages. Systematic appropriation of your salary, psychological pressure, physical assault.”
Vera sat and listened as the lawyer listed the points of the future lawsuit, and with each word, she felt something changing inside her. For three years she had lived in fear, for three years she had considered herself guilty of everything that was happening. And now this calm woman was telling her that she had the right to demand, the right to defend herself.
— “Compensation for moral damages—300,000,” Elena Viktorovna wrote the number on a piece of paper and underlined it twice. “Alimony—one-third of his income for the child. Plus, I will request statements from your bank to prove he was taking your salary. This will strengthen our position.”
A week later, Vera filed the documents with the court. A summons arrived for Maxim at the address of their shared apartment, which he hardly visited anymore. He read it while sitting on a sagging sofa in a rented room in a dormitory and realized that this was the end…
