Part 4 — My Brother Asked Me for Ten Thousand for the Festive Dinner, but After My Calm Answer the Guests Suddenly Stopped Laughing

The investigator Nino Lortkipanidze placed the phone on the table and immediately called the police.

And for the first time I saw Dmitri completely lost.

“There should be no one there,” he said.

“That is exactly why we have to go,” Nino answered.

“You cannot enter my house.”

“I already have a court warrant.”

She took a sealed document out of her bag. Dmitri did not touch it.

At that moment his expensive watch stopped. The second hand froze at six, as if even time itself no longer believed that everything in this house would continue normally.

My mother came over to me.

“Sergei, please help Dima. He simply made a mistake.”

“Mother, he put my life in danger.”

“But he is your brother.”

“I was his brother too when he was doing this.”

Dmitri suddenly raised his head.

“You did not know how I lived! Everyone wanted money, everyone expected something from me. I was simply looking for a way.”

“You were stealing in my name?”

“You did not represent anything in their eyes anyway! You are just a doctor whose salary barely covers things.”

These words scattered through the room and returned to him as an echo of his own voice.

Nino played the conversation recorded on the phone again.

“If something happens, he will be responsible.”

Dmitri heard his own voice and fell silent.

I watched his face. For the first time he understood how his truth sounded in someone else’s ears. There was no longer the confident businessman there whom Mother called a genius in front of everyone. There stood only a frightened man who had cut off every path with his own words.

The law-enforcement officers arrived soon.

The house, which only a few minutes earlier had been full of noise and music, was suddenly occupied by the sound of heavy footsteps in the corridors.

One of the investigators placed Dmitri’s hands in front of him.

“Dmitri Sergeyevich, you are under arrest on charges of fraud, document forgery, and illegal transfer of funds.”

My mother screamed.

“No! He did not do this!”

Nino answered calmly:

“Madam, your signature is also on the foundation’s account.”

My mother fell silent.

I looked at her and realized that all her praise, all her trips, and all the stories she had told with pride now stood before her as empty boxes.

Dmitri reached toward me.

“Sergei, tell them that you are my brother. Tell them this is a misunderstanding.”

“I am your brother,” I said. “But I will no longer live in your lie.”

The next day my lawyer, Elene Maisuradze, met me in a small hospital café. We sat by the window. Outside, the snow was melting, while on the table the coffee was growing so cold that a thin crust had formed on it.

“Do you want to know how they found out about your signature?” Elene asked me.

“Tell me.”

“The old electronic signature of yours was used on that document. You had it stored in only one place.”

“Where?”

“On your mother’s computer.”

I lowered my eyes.

What hurt me most was not Dmitri’s betrayal, but my mother’s silence.

That same evening the police took the main evidence from Dmitri’s apartment: a small hard drive on which the entire scheme of the transfers, forged contracts, and copies of my personal data were stored.

But the case did not end there.

It turned out that part of the money stolen from the foundation’s account consisted in reality of donations collected in the names of patients. Among those people were children who needed heart operations.

That was the boundary beyond which there was no forgiveness left for Dmitri.

Several weeks later we met in the courthouse corridor.

He was no longer wearing an expensive suit. He wore a simple dark jacket, and the collar was slightly crooked. He held a folder in his hand and kept moving his fingers constantly.

“Seryozha,” he said to me, “they have offered me a deal. If you say that you pressured me, my sentence will be reduced.”

“How did I pressure you?”

“Just say that you were angry because of the money.”

“I refused to pay ten thousand. But you stole millions.”

“I will lose everything.”

“This all was not yours from the beginning.”

The lawyer put a hand on Dmitri’s shoulder.

“Stop talking to him.”

“No,” Dmitri said. “He has to listen to me.”

“I have already listened to you,” I answered.

The court found Dmitri guilty. He was sentenced to a long prison term, while part of the illegally obtained property was used for the treatment of the victims. My mother was not sentenced, although she was ordered to cooperate with the investigation and compensate the damage.

After the trial, my mother called me several times.

I did not answer the first time.

Nor the second.

The third time I heard her voice in a message.

“Sergei, I was only a mother. I thought Dmitri was truly successful.”

I sat in the kitchen for a long time and looked at the phone.

Then I wrote to her:

“Mother, success does not give a person the right to humiliate others. When you want to live with the truth, call me. But I will no longer come to save Dmitri.”

This time no answer came.

Three months later Irina and I moved into a small apartment on the other side of the city. The apartment was not luxurious. The kitchen window looked out at the courtyard garbage bins, and the paint on the wall was scraped off in one place.

But there we slept for the first time without anyone knocking on the door.

I was still working in the ambulance service. Irina moved to the children’s cardiology department. In the evenings we told each other not how much money we had earned, but how many people we had saved.

One day Irina handed me a pregnancy test.

My hands trembled so much that I almost dropped the test on the floor.

“Really?” I asked.

She smiled.

“Really.”

Nine months later our son, Luka, was born. In his room we had only a bed, a small wooden wardrobe, and a yellow armchair placed by the window. It was not luxury, but every morning the sunlight left a golden stripe on the floor.

Luka’s favorite thing became my old silver keychain. When he cried, I gave it to him, and he touched the chipped red enamel with his finger.

“What is this?” he asked when he turned three.

“A vehicle that once saved someone’s life.”

“Did it save mine too?”

His question was so simple that my eyes filled with tears.

“You saved my life,” I told him.

More than a year passed.

I received a final letter from Dmitri from prison. In the letter he wrote that he had changed, that he had understood everything, and that he wanted to see Luka.

I put the letter on the kitchen table.

Irina asked me:

“Will you answer?”

I went to the window. The first snow was falling outside. The city noise was softly covered by white silence.

“No,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Forgiveness is possible. Going back is not.”

I folded the letter and put it in a drawer. Not because I was waiting for his return, but because I finally understood: his remorse was not an obligation of my new life.

That evening Luka drew four people on a sheet of paper. Me, Irina, himself, and a small red vehicle.

“Where is Uncle?” I asked, because there was still space left in the drawing.

Luka put the pencil aside.

“He does not live in our house.”

That was all.

I saw the keychain in his hand. The chipped corner of the red enamel was still shining, but now it no longer reminded me of humiliation, fear, or my brother’s betrayal.

It reminded me of the day when I first understood that saving a person does not always mean that you must also leave that person in your life.

Luka put the keychain on the windowsill.

Outside, the snow was falling quietly.

And for the first time in many years, only the sound of peace could be heard in my home.