Yegor clung to his hand with a strength unexpected for a dying man. His eyes—cloudy, feverish, with dilated pupils—cleared for a second, and something lucid flickered in them.
“If I lose control,” he whispered, and every word was an effort, “if I try to call her, inject me with a sedative. Do you hear me? Inject me and put me to sleep. I must not break. She must hate me. It’s the only way she’ll survive. Promise me, Petro.” “I promise.”
On the last night, a thunderstorm broke over the city, with a wall of rain and lightning over the Dnieper slopes. The wind howled in the cracks of the windows, and somewhere below, an unlatched building door slammed, counting the seconds like a metronome. “Help me sit up,” Yegor asked. Petro carefully lifted him, placing pillows behind his back, trying not to look at what his friend’s body had become: skin and bones, covered in a grey, almost transparent film.
Yegor looked across the street. The windows in Angelina’s apartment were dark. She was already asleep, unaware that this night was his last. “So cold,” he whispered. “I want to go home. But I don’t have a home anymore. I sold it myself. I kicked her out myself. Petro, I’m such a fool.” “You’re not a fool. You’re the most stubborn man I’ve ever known.” “It’s the same thing, Petro. It’s the same thing.”
At dawn, when the storm had subsided and the first rays of sun broke through the torn clouds, painting the sky a pale pink, Yegor Konstantinovich Bogorodsky passed away quietly, without agony, like a candle that has burned down. His eyes, until the very last second, were fixed on the window across the street, where the woman he loved more than his own life slept, the woman he had hidden from for three months, just a hundred meters away.
Petro had him cremated according to the instructions left in a sealed envelope and buried him in the Northern Cemetery among nameless graves, where no one brings flowers or lights candles. On the headstone, there were only his name and dates. No epitaphs, no words of love or loss. Yegor didn’t want her to ever find this place and cry over him.
From the hill, though, you could see the distant lights of Kyiv—the city where his wife lived, never knowing she had become a widow. Seven years passed. Angelina still lived in the same communal apartment in Lukianivka; only the neighbors had changed twice, and the water stains on the walls had spread wider. She worked as an administrator at a small travel agency that didn’t pay much, but at least it was stable.
Her mother in Boryspil was getting sicker, and money was draining away on medicine and a caregiver. That morning, the landlord gave her an ultimatum: either pay for three months by evening, or her things would be on the street tomorrow. “And I don’t care where you go.” In her wallet were a thousand hryvnias and a handful of change—not even enough for a week’s worth of food. And then she remembered the card.
For seven years, the black plastic rectangle had lain at the bottom of a drawer, under old receipts and photos from a past life that she could neither throw away nor look at. She would take it out sometimes, squeeze it in her hand, reminding herself of the betrayal and of the fact that she had survived without his handout, that she had managed on her own. And each time, she would put it back, clenching her teeth.
But today, she would go to the bank, withdraw the paltry fifty thousand, block the card, and close this chapter forever. Let the money go towards the rent debt—a final gift from the traitor, which she would accept only because she had no other choice. The young teller at the branch on Khreshchatyk took the card with two fingers, barely hiding her disgust at the sight of the visitor’s worn coat, and began to check the account. Suddenly, she froze.
Her expression changed: bewilderment, shock, a strange fear, as if she had seen something impossible. She jumped up: “Wait just a minute!” and rushed behind a partition, her heels clicking. A moment later, the branch manager came out, wiping sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. “Dear Angelina Mikhailovna, please come with me to the VIP area. Can we get you some tea, coffee? Anything else? Perhaps some water?”
They seated her on a leather sofa and brought her a cappuccino in a porcelain cup with a gold rim. The manager sat opposite her, nervously shuffling papers, hesitating to start the conversation. “You may not be aware… This is a special investment account with automatic reinvestment and compounding interest. It was opened seven years ago in your name.”
Angelina couldn’t understand anything; the words reached her as if through cotton wool. “In short,” the manager took a deep breath, steeling himself, “on this account, including interest, dividends, and capitalization, there is one hundred and twenty million hryvnias.” The ceiling swam, the walls tilted. A white noise in her ears drowned out all sounds. One hundred and twenty million.
Not fifty thousand, as he had said then, throwing the card into a puddle. One. Hundred. Twenty. Million. She left the bank and dialed a number she once knew by heart, one that had haunted her nightmares for the first few months after the divorce. “The subscriber’s device is switched off or out of network coverage.” Five times, ten, fifteen.
Then she found Petro Kravchuk’s number in her old contacts—his best friend, who had been the witness at their wedding. “Hello.” The voice was rough, hostile, wary. She introduced herself, said she was looking for Yegor Konstantinovich, that she urgently needed his new number, that something important had happened. A pause. Heavy breathing on the line, like someone trying to compose themselves.
And then—an explosion. “You… Seven years. Seven goddamn years! And now that you’ve found the money, you remember? Now you need him?!”. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about…”. “You want to talk?
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