Part 4 — My husband threw me out of the house and brought his lover in right there — but he turned pale for the first time at my calm answer

After Sandro’s message, such silence fell over the room that I could clearly hear the ticking of the wall clock.

“This is a threat,” Nika said.

“I know,” I answered.

Irina took the phone from my hand.

“I’m calling the police now.”

“Not yet,” I stopped her. “I want to enter the house and let him think that I am still afraid of him.”

Irina looked at me for several seconds.

“Elene, this is not a game.”

“Neither was my life a game when I paid for everything instead of him for ten years.”

That same night the bank called me. The suspicious transfer had finally been blocked. Then the head of the company’s security called me and said that Marina was trying to return to the office.

“Do not open the door for her,” I said.

Five minutes later Sand­ro called me.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I simply took care of my accounts.”

“You froze the money! You forbade the employees from calling me!”

“You never worked at my company.”

“All of this is my life too!”

For the first time I heard panic in his voice.

“No, Sand­ro. This was my life, which you presented as your own.”

The next morning I went to the police station with Irina. We brought the recordings, the false power of attorney, bank statements, and copies of the cameras. Dato came too.

Sand­ro and Marina were arrested that same day in front of the office, when they were trying to load boxes of clients’ files into a car.

I was not there. I did not want to see their arrest.

I only wanted to see how my participation in their plan would end.

Three days later the police sent me a recording of Sandro’s and Marina’s conversation. For the court it was necessary that he himself listen to the recording.

Before the hearing we sat in a small room. Sand­ro’s hands lay on the table. Marina sat beside him and bit her lips.

Sandro’s voice sounded in the recording:

“Elene will leave by herself. She will have no evidence.”

Sand­ro lowered his head.

The recording continued:

“The apartment will become ours. Her money too. Three weeks and we will finish everything.”

Marina closed her eyes.

Sand­ro suddenly shouted:

“This is taken out of context!”

Irina calmly answered:

“Then explain to the judge what context justifies a false signature.”

“Elene, I was just joking,” Sand­ro looked at me and said.

This was the hardest moment. Not because I was looking at a criminal, but because for the first time I was seeing the man whom I had loved for years and who no longer even recognized his own words.

“You were not joking,” I told him. “You simply thought that I would always protect you from the consequences of your decisions.”

His lawyer closed the folder.

“Under these conditions there is no point in continuing my defense,” he said and no longer looked at Sand­ro.

Sand­ro turned pale.

The court confirmed the use of false documents, the attempted fraud, and the illegal removal of the company’s data. The apartment remained entirely mine. The company accounts were released. Marina had to return the clients’ data, while Dato’s sentence was reduced because of his cooperation with the investigation.

Sand­ro was sentenced to several months in prison and was then ordered to compensate for the damage. I did not meet this decision with celebration.

When I returned home, I found that same suitcase by the door again. Nika had kept it there all this time.

The striped shirt was still inside. The brown scarf too.

The rooms seemed strangely empty. Sandro’s clothes were gone, but his habit remained on the walls — the indentation on the sofa, an old list stuck to the kitchen cabinet, a half-empty perfume in the bathroom.

But my daughter’s room weighed on me most of all. Nina’s father had almost never played with her in that house, but he had left her small wooden horse under the bed.

Nina had been taken to my mother. That evening I went to her.

“Won’t Dad live with us anymore?” she asked me.

I knelt before her.

“No, Nina.”

“Because he became bad?”

I could not find the right answer.

“Because he made a choice that had a consequence of its own.”

Nina thought for a while.

“Won’t you have to work all the time anymore?”

This question struck me more strongly than any words of the court.

“I will work, but now I will come home on time.”

“Then will you stay with me tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow too.”

In the following weeks my life slowly changed. I hired a new financial manager at the office. Every morning I took Nina to school myself. On Sundays I returned from the market with hot bread and turned on music in the kitchen.

I installed a new lock at home.

Not because I was afraid of someone.

But because for the first time this door was truly mine.

Three months later I received a letter from the court. Sand­ro was asking for an additional meeting. The letter said that he regretted it, wanted them to start everything over, and wanted to return the “old family.”

I asked Irina:

“Am I obliged to meet him?”

“No.”

“Then there is no need for an answer either.”

But I wrote to him anyway.

“I wish you to learn to take responsibility for your own choice. My house, money, and life are no longer a place where I will hide your mistakes.”

Sand­ro did not write to me again.

The first snow came in December. Nina was sitting on the floor and drawing a house with colored pencils. She had drawn large yellow windows on the sheet, smoke was rising from the chimney, and a small suitcase stood by the door.

“Why did you draw this?” I asked.

“Because that suitcase is no longer frightening now,” she told me.

I went to the window. The brown scarf hung on the chair, and I looked at the yard buried in snow.

I put the suitcase away in the closet, but I did not lock it anymore.

Some doors open in order to leave.

And this one I opened for the first time in order to return.