“Get out, you penniless nobody!” My sister-in-law ripped the keys to my foreign car from my hands and spat in my face. Thirty-five minutes later, her husband had no business left.
The crystal glass in my sister-in-law’s hand struck the gold-trimmed edge of her serving plate with a sharp clink. Inna leaned across the table, adjusted the heavy diamond necklace around her throat, and spoke loudly enough for every guest seated around the oak table at the country club to hear.
“Polina, you should move that bucket of yours away from the entrance. People are arriving in respectable cars, and your Korean junker is ruining the entire view of the veranda.”
I didn’t lift my fork from my salad. My husband, Ilya, nudged me under the table and whispered:
“Pol, don’t start. It’s Vadim’s anniversary celebration—thirty-five years of the company. Inna’s just stressed.”
“Your sister has called my new car a bucket three times tonight,” I said evenly.
“Oh, give it a rest!” Inna fluttered her false eyelashes and burst into loud laughter. “I tell the truth, and she immediately starts sulking! So what if you bought a two-year-old wreck on credit for two million? One of Vadim’s trucks costs more than your entire life.”
Vadim, seated at the head of the table in a dark blue suit, grimaced but said nothing. He finished his cognac and called for the waiter.
I felt the key ring in my jacket pocket. Hanging from its leather strap was a heavy steel device with a small display—a generator for one-time server access keys. The cold metal pressed into my palm.
“Polina is a very modest girl,” Inna continued, addressing the wife of the region’s chief logistics officer. “She only crawls out of her little hole on the outskirts for major holidays. She entered our family with one suitcase, but she makes demands like a countess.”
“Inna, that’s enough,” Vadim attempted to interrupt.
“What do you mean, enough?” My sister-in-law stood and adjusted her tight silk dress. “I’m only telling the truth. If it weren’t for my Vadim, her Ilya would still be working for someone else for sixty thousand a month. We dragged them out of the dirt, and she sits here with that sour expression!”
I placed my napkin on the table. Inside me, everything was empty and perfectly clear. One year earlier, in November, Vadim arrived at our home at eleven at night. The old route-management system at his logistics company, Trans-Logistic, had collapsed. Forty trucks carrying perishable goods were stranded on highways, dispatchers were crying into their phones, and contractual penalties were accumulating at five hundred thousand rubles per hour.
Vadim sat in my kitchen, drank cold tea, and nearly whimpered:
“Polya, save me. The head programmer disappeared, we don’t have the passwords, and the databases are down. The contractors want three million to restore everything, and they say it will take two months. I don’t have that kind of money. Everything is tied up in the business!”
I spent two days at my laptop without sleeping. I built a new system architecture, transferred the data to my private cloud, and wrote automatic dispatching scripts.
The company started working again. The trucks moved.
When I cautiously mentioned payment for the development a month later, Inna, who had arrived at our home in a brand-new German crossover, looked genuinely surprised.
“Polina, are you out of your mind? What payment? Vadim is your sister-in-law’s husband! Family members are supposed to help each other without sending bills, but you measure everything in machines and money! We don’t charge you when we invite you to the family’s country houses.”
Ilya supported his sister.
“Pol, she’s right. Vadim is family. Is it really so difficult for you to press a few buttons? You sit at home in front of a computer all day doing nothing anyway.”
I remained silent.
That was my mistake.
I had given them permission to believe that my work was free household noise, no more significant than a washed cup. For three years, I maintained their servers without payment, updated their software, and protected them from cyberattacks.
Every month, I saved Vadim approximately two hundred thousand rubles in engineering salaries.
A month before the anniversary celebration, I bought myself a foreign car. I had spent four years saving money from my private contracts, denying myself practically everything.
When Inna learned about it, she flew into a rage.
“Ilya, why is your wife buying herself a separate car when Vadim’s third branch still doesn’t have a forklift? Do the two of you ever think about the family?” The waiter brought the main course. An unfamiliar man in an expensive jacket approached our table. He was the chief accountant for Vadim’s business partners in the capital.
“Vadim Sergeyevich, congratulations on the anniversary!” He shook Vadim’s hand, then looked at me and smiled. “So you must be that freelance administrator Inna Alexeyevna told us about.”
I looked up.
“What exactly did she tell you?”
The man hesitated and glanced at Inna, who abruptly stopped chewing and froze.
“Well…” the accountant mumbled. “She said Vadim Sergeyevich hired you out of pity, part-time for thirty thousand a month, so you wouldn’t starve at home. She also said your entire system was a standard free program from the internet that any schoolchild could install.”
Inna quickly interrupted him.
“Anatoly Viktorovich, let’s drink to the prosperity of the business instead! Polina, pass the gravy boat.”
I didn’t move.
I looked at Ilya. My husband avoided my eyes and poked at his food with his fork.
“Ilya, did you know what your sister was saying about my work?” I asked quietly.
“Pol, don’t make things up. What difference does it make what people say? The important thing is that Vadim’s business is doing well. Do you begrudge him that? Is it so difficult for you to sit quietly?”
At that moment, it felt as though someone had flipped a switch inside me.
The pain disappeared.
All that remained was cold, technical clarity.
I took out my phone and opened the administrative console. The application requested verification. I touched the steel token from my key ring to the back of the smartphone.
Green text appeared on the screen:
“Administrator: Krylova P. A. Access active. Hosting: Personal account. System status: 100% load.” At ten in the evening, Vadim stood to deliver the main toast.
“Friends! Today Trans-Logistic generates three million rubles in net profit every month! We’re expanding and signing new contracts with major retail chains!”
The guests applauded.
Inna beamed as she deliberately twisted the sapphire ring on her finger.
“Polina,” my sister-in-law called loudly from across the table. “Give me your car keys.”
The room fell silent.
“Why?” I asked.
“The girls and I need to go to a nightclub, and Vadim took my car out of town. Give me the keys. Actually, you can leave the car with me for a month. You sit at home all the time anyway, and I’m embarrassed to take taxis in front of my friends.”
“No,” I said.
Inna stared at me in disbelief. Red blotches spread across her face. She stepped toward me, leaned over, and violently ripped the key ring from my fingers, tearing the skin on my index finger.
“Get out, you penniless nobody!” she shrieked for the entire restaurant to hear. “Who do you think you are? You’re nobody in our family! Every piece of clothing you own was bought with my brother’s money!”
Then she leaned forward and spat directly into my face.
The guests gasped.
Ilya didn’t even stand up. He merely hissed:
“Polina, stop humiliating us. Go to the bathroom!”
I didn’t start a fight.
I didn’t cry.
I took a paper napkin from my handbag and calmly, carefully wiped my cheek.
Then I stood, picked up my phone from the table, and walked outside onto the terrace overlooking the pond.
The restaurant’s outdoor clock showed 10:15 p.m.
I opened the mobile terminal. My fingers weren’t trembling.
First command: Stop the routing service.
Second command: Revoke the security certificates.
Third command: Delete the databases from the primary server.
Fourth command: Block the backup channel.
Red lines raced across the screen. The private server whose forty-thousand-ruble monthly rental fee I paid from my own pocket disconnected itself from Trans-Logistic’s logistics terminal.
I put my phone in my pocket and stared at the water.
Exactly twelve minutes passed.
The first scream came from the dining hall. Vadim’s head of dispatching rushed outside with two phones in his hands.
“Vadim Sergeyevich! Everything has stopped! The navigation system is offline! Forty trucks are stranded on the M-4 highway, and the barriers at the Domodedovo distribution center won’t open! The server says, ‘Authorization error. Access denied’!”
Ten minutes later, Vadim’s personal phone rang.
It was the general director of a nationwide retail chain—the company’s largest client.
“Vadim, have you lost your mind?!” the man shouted so loudly that he could be heard on the terrace through the closed door. “We have forty tons of perishable goods stuck outside the distribution center! The shipping system can’t see your invoices! If you don’t restore everything within fifteen minutes, we’re terminating the contract and issuing a twelve-million-ruble penalty!”
At 10:48 p.m.—exactly thirty-three minutes after Inna had spat in my face—Vadim ran onto the terrace.
His face was gray-green, and his tie had slipped to one side. Ilya ran behind him, while Inna trailed after them, her legs nearly collapsing with fear.
“Polya!” Vadim shouted, grabbing my sleeve. “Polya, what happened to the server? Call your contractors! Do something! We’re finished! Everything is collapsing!”
I carefully removed his hand from my sleeve.
“There are no contractors, Vadim. The server belonged to me. The program belonged to me. The hosting account was registered in my name. I simply shut down my personal project.”
“You… You’ve lost your mind!” Ilya roared. “Turn it back on immediately! Don’t you understand that Vadim is bankrupt?”
“Family members are supposed to help each other without sending bills,” I calmly quoted Inna. “Besides, you only kept me around out of pity. Why would you need a free internet program created by a penniless nobody? Hire professionals for three million. They’ll build everything for you in two months.”
Vadim turned toward Inna. His eyes filled with blood.
“This was you…” he rasped. “You insulted her, you bitch? You took her keys?”
“Vadim, darling, I… I didn’t know…” Inna stammered. For the first time in her life, she seemed to shrink as she backed toward the wall. “I thought she was just an administrator…”
“Crawl over to her!” Vadim screamed so loudly that the terrace windows rattled. “Get on your knees and apologize! Now! If she doesn’t restore the software within two minutes, I’ll throw you into the street wearing nothing but your underwear!”
Trembling all over, Inna awkwardly lowered herself onto the cold terrace tiles. Her silk dress became dirty, and her sapphire ring struck the concrete.
“Polina… Forgive me… Polya, please… Bring the software back online. Vadim could be sent to prison because of the penalties…”
I looked down at her.
I felt neither triumph nor satisfaction. There was only a simple realization: these people would never have understood any other way.
“Put my car keys on the table,” I said.
With trembling hands, Inna took out the key ring and placed it on the small wooden table.
I picked up the keys, attached the token fob to the ring again, and turned toward Ilya.
“Tomorrow at nine in the morning, I’m filing for divorce. Don’t come to my apartment. I’ll have the locks changed in the morning.”
“Polya, are you seriously divorcing me over this nonsense?” Ilya shouted at my back.
I didn’t answer. The government services center was quiet the following morning. I took a numbered ticket from the electronic queue, sat on a metal chair, and removed the documents from my bag.
The divorce application had already been completed.
Attached to it was a recent extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate: a two-room apartment on Gagarin Street, owned by Polina Alexeyevna Krylova.
My husband’s share: zero.
At ten in the morning, Vadim’s lawyer called me. His voice was exceptionally polite.
“Good morning, Polina Alexeyevna. Vadim Sergeyevich is prepared to pay you five million rubles for the rights to the server software. We need to restore the system. The penalties owed to our partners have already reached eight million.”
“Tell Vadim Sergeyevich,” I replied, “that the system’s source code has been permanently deleted from the servers. It cannot be restored. He’ll have to hire an outside company.”
By lunchtime, my mother-in-law was calling me.
She cried and begged. She told me that Inna had been forced to put her entire collection of designer handbags and jewelry up for sale to cover at least the first portion of the debts owed to the Moscow clients.
Vadim had also filed for division of marital property.
I listened in silence.
Then I pressed the red button and ended the call.
A notification from the tax service remained on my smartphone screen:
“Application to register P. A. Krylova as an individual entrepreneur accepted.”
I slipped the car keys into my pocket, picked up my numbered ticket, and walked toward service window number seven.
Do you think Polina had the moral right to destroy her relative’s business in response to a personal humiliation, or should she have limited herself to getting divorced and walking away?