Artem’s apartment was warm and bright. Here, life did not stop, did not pause, and never turned into a battle for survival.
The kettle had already boiled; two cups were waiting on the table. Steam rose evenly—mockingly calm. Artem sat down beside her, not leaving her alone in the silence.
Anya took the cup in both hands, warming her palms against it, although in truth she was not cold. She simply felt wrong in a different way, like after a long journey, when the body is already home, but the mind is still somewhere else. Her face remained composed.
She began to speak without preamble and without any real order—a dry list of facts about what had happened to her. As if she were trying to push them out of herself, so they would stop belonging to her alone.
She spoke about the fakes briefly and without emotion. He had run her social media in her place. Posted stories, replied to people, showed her “life”—coffee, walks, little things that had never actually happened. He made it look from the outside as if she were nearby, as if she were all right, as if she had simply disappeared from chats and calls because she was “busy” or “tired.” And if anyone had started to suspect something, he had photos, and her voice, and messages—everything needed to bury any alarm beneath the image.
But that was not what had kept her there.
He had told her directly that he would kill her. Told her he would kill her mother. Told her he would get to her friends. At one point, he showed her a video. Not “generated”—simple, everyday footage: her mother at a cash register, with him behind her. Her friend Lena in a park—and him nearby. Filmed in such a way that there could be no doubt. He knew where they lived. He could come close, wait, strike at any moment.
She spoke about it calmly, and that made Artem feel worse. He kept lifting his mug to his mouth, then setting it back down, not knowing what to do with his hands so they would not be empty.
She mentioned the supermarket too—also without details. Said that she had run away from Artem then not because she did not trust him. Because Viktor could strike. Could make sure she never went there again.
Then she remembered the day Artem’s car had broken down near Viktor’s house. When he had come in “for a minute”—for tools, and to get some water.
“I heard you,” she said. “Talking. I was downstairs.”
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She did not add “in the basement,” did not play up the horror; she spoke dryly, calmly, like listing someone else’s events.
“I couldn’t shout. Because then he would have killed you.”
The phrase came in the same unnaturally calm tone. Something tightened inside Artem. Suddenly he saw that situation differently: there he was, standing in the kitchen, filling a bottle with water, while a few meters below him she could hear his voice—and did not dare take a breath. He tried to imagine that paralyzing horror, but his imagination failed. It came out either like a movie scene or not at all.
“That’s… awful,” he breathed, and immediately cut himself off. It was far too weak a phrase for what she was telling him.
He looked up at her, checking: was she really saying it like that? And saw the thing that finished him: a strange smile flickered across her face—brief, inappropriate, like a glitch. As if a facial muscle itself had remembered that sometimes people were supposed to smile, and had switched on for a second while everything inside remained flat and empty.
Artem looked away and tightened his fingers around the edge of the mug. He felt sick. To him, the car breaking down had been a minor episode. He could not make such an ordinary situation fit with the fact that, only a few meters away from him, someone had stayed silent so that he would remain alive.
He wanted to ask a thousand things. But he understood that right now there was only one thing he could do: listen, and not stop her from speaking in whatever way she could. Without pity and without trying to cut in.
She finished her tea, fell silent, and placed the cup on the table. Artem looked at her for several seconds, trying to digest what he had heard, then asked quietly, afraid of the answer:
“And he… where is he now?”
Anya lifted an empty, cold gaze to him.
“Where do you think…” she said flatly. “Hanging. In the basement. In a noose.”
She did not add “dead.” She did not add “on his own.” She said it the way one speaks of a broken object left where it had ended up.
Her tone chilled Artem. The way she said it so simply—as if she were saying, “the tap is dripping in the bathroom.” The cup in his hand suddenly seemed heavy, and he carefully set it back down.
“Jesus…” he breathed. But it sounded weak, like an attempt to grab hold of a word that could not bear the weight.
He looked at her as if trying to find a crack in her expression, some confirmation that now she would start crying, that this would “break” her, and then he would understand it better. But Anya was composed—too composed.
“And… how did you…” He faltered. “Why did he let you go?”
She shifted her shoulder slightly, as if correcting some inner axis.
“He didn’t let me go,” she said. “He lost.”
And only then added, almost without changing her voice:
“I simply left.”
Artem nodded—he understood, though in truth he did not understand at all. He could not imagine either “he lost” or “I simply left.” In his head, he was still trying to put it together into a normal story, but what came out was impossible.
He sat beside her, looking at her, while a frightening feeling grew inside him. At last, he was “in the know.” He knew the truth. But it brought no relief—it only showed how dangerous the world had become, and how alien the woman sitting at his table now seemed.