“Your crazy wife almost pushed me down the stairs today! Go back home right now and do something with her! Avenge your mom!”

—Have you finally come? I thought I wouldn’t live to see it.

Andrei crossed the threshold of his mother’s apartment, shaking off the weight of a long day’s work. The air was familiar, thick, and heavy with the smell of valocordin and fried onions. All he wanted to do was collapse into the old armchair, drink tea, and switch off his mind for half an hour. But the sight of his mother instantly erased the fatigue from his face, replacing it with concern. Zinaida Arkadyevna stood in the hallway, one hand clutching her chest. Her normally tidy hair was disheveled, and on her forearm, visible under the sleeve of her robe, a fresh, red wound burned.

—Mom, what happened to you? Did you fall?

She let out a short, bitter laugh, laced with theatrical tragedy. Her eyes looked toward the door, as if afraid someone was listening behind it. She approached her son and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

—Your crazy wife almost pushed me down the stairs today! Go home and do something with her! Avenge your mother!

The words hit Andrei like a slap. He froze, trying to comprehend them. The image of Olga—calm, almost phlegmatic—didn’t fit with that of a raging rage pushing an old woman down the stairs. But the scratch on his mother’s arm was real. Her frightened eyes, too.

—What… what are you saying? Why?

“Why? For nothing!” Zinaida Arkadyevna threw up her hands, her voice rising with indignation and righteous anger. “I came to see you, to see little Katya, I brought her some candy. We were just talking. I took out a piece of candy, I wanted to give it to my granddaughter. And your Olga went crazy!” Her eyes went wild, her face twisted. She started shouting that I was spoiling the child, that I should mind my own business.

He stopped for breath and pointed to his scratch.

—I tried to calm her down, to say a word. And she grabbed my arm—look!—she dug her nails into me like a wild beast! She threw me out into the hallway like a bag of garbage, slamming the door in my face!

Andrei listened, and dark, heavy anger boiled in his veins. Every detail, every word of his mother’s story fell into the fertile ground of his exhaustion and the dull irritation that had been building up for weeks. He imagined the scene: his mother arriving with good intentions, and his wife making a scene out of nothing.

“And then,” Zinaida Arkadyevna continued, reaching the climax of her story, “I started down the stairs, and she opened the door and pushed me from behind! Right on the stairs! I barely held on to the banister, Andrei! I barely stayed on my feet! One more step and I would have tumbled down the stairs! She wanted to kill me!”

That was it. The final straw. The mental image of her mother falling down the concrete steps burned away everything else in her mind, leaving only one thing: the urge to act. Immediate. Firm. She asked no more questions. Her world narrowed down to one task: restoring justice. Putting the person who dared to raise a hand against her mother in their place.

He turned around without a word. His movements became sharp, precise. The exhaustion vanished, replaced by a cold, focused fury. He didn’t say goodbye to his mother, didn’t even look at her. He simply flew out of his apartment, his hand already searching his pocket for his car keys. His pulse hammered in his head along with a single word dictated by his mother: “Fix this.” And he drove home to fix it. Once and for all.

The key turned in the lock not with its usual soft click, but with force, as if Andrei wasn’t opening the door, but breaking it down. He burst into the hallway like an icy wind, ready to sweep everything away in its path. He already had the script in his head: he enters, Olga greets him at the door—screaming or silent, filled with guilt—and he unleashes all his righteous anger on her, all his resentment for his humiliated mother. He already had the words ready—sharp, cutting, irrefutable.

But the apartment didn’t greet him like that. It greeted him with silence. Not the ordinary silence of a sleeping house. It was another—thick, unnatural, absorbing all sound. There was no television murmuring in the kitchen, no noise from toys in the nursery. Even the air seemed heavy and still. His rehearsed accusations caught in his throat. He entered the living room, and his burning fury began to cool, replaced by anxious confusion.

Katia was sitting on the sofa.

She sat unnaturally for a five-year-old, staring at a spot on the opposite wall. She was wearing her favorite yellow dress, the one with the giraffes, but Andrei didn’t recognize it immediately. His eyes were fixed on her face. It was monstrously wrong. The small nose he loved to kiss was now a swollen, blue-violet mass. Under her nostrils and on her upper lip, there was a dark crust of dried blood, with several brown stains on the shiny collar of the dress. She wasn’t crying. She just sat and stared, her normally lively eyes empty. Hollow.

All the rage, all the righteous fury of seconds before, disappeared. Vanished. Replaced by a sticky, paralyzing horror that crept up his spine like icy needles. His world shrank to that small, disfigured face. He forgot why he’d come, forgot his mother, his scratch, the ladder. Everything shrank to nothing in the face of what he saw.

Olga came out of the kitchen silently. Her face was as white as a hospital sheet, motionless, carved from stone. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed, and looked at him. There was no fear, no guilt, no anger in her gaze. Only a cold, burning calm.

Andrei looked between his daughter and his wife. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. The air caught in his lungs. He managed only a whisper, almost inaudible:

—What happened?

Olga didn’t move. Her voice was flat, lacking the slightest intonation, as if she were reading a weather report.

—Your mother.

He paused, letting those two words fall into the deafening silence.

—Katia grabbed a piece of candy from the table. Your mother grabbed her hair and slammed her face against that same table.

She nodded slightly toward the dark wooden coffee table. Andrei followed her gaze. The same old table, the one with the magazines and the TV remote. A simple piece of furniture. Now it rose like a sinister weapon. Olga continued, her voice still dead and flat:

—I kicked her out. Yes, I wanted to push her down the stairs. But I stopped. That woman will never cross our threshold again.

Andrei listened, but his eyes remained on his daughter. His mother’s words, her story of the “innocent candy,” of “crazy” Olga—suddenly everything clicked, forming a horrifying, undeniable picture. The lie was so obvious, so pathetic compared to what he saw. He looked at Olga again. And for the first time in years, he saw not a wife, but an ally. Another father facing the unthinkable.

The silence that followed Olga’s words wasn’t empty. It was filled with shards of broken reality. The world Andrei had lived in ten minutes earlier—a world of wronged mother and guilty wife—crumble to dust. The house of cards Zinaida Arkadyevna had built in her mind crumbled with a single glance at her daughter’s face. He looked into Olga’s pale, rigid face and saw, not a stranger, but the only one who had been there when hell broke loose on that coffee table.

He didn’t answer. No words were needed. Slowly, as if moving underwater, he approached and knelt before the sofa where Katia was. His knees sank into the soft carpet. His eyes met the girl’s blank, glassy stare. Rage, horror, confusion—all vanished. Only a dull, stabbing pain remained, as if he himself had received the blow.

Carefully, afraid to hurt her further, he reached out. Not toward her face, not toward the wound. His fingers brushed her shoulder, gently squeezing the thin fabric of her yellow dress. He just needed to know she was there, that she was real. Katia didn’t move. She didn’t even blink. As if his touch belonged to a world he no longer had access to. And that silence, that distant stillness from his daughter, terrified Andrei more than anything.

At that moment, the silence was broken by a sharp, demanding sound. Her phone vibrated and rang. She knew who it was. She didn’t need to look. The one waiting for a report. The one waiting for news of the “crazy” daughter-in-law’s punishment.

He slowly pulled out his phone. A single word flashed on the screen: “Mom.” He looked up at Olga. She hadn’t moved; she was still looking at him. The question wasn’t “What will you do?” but “Which side are you on?” He realized that the answer wasn’t just his own or hers, but above all, that small, motionless figure on the couch.

He slid his finger and brought the phone to his ear, still kneeling before Katia.

“Well? Have you taken care of her?” Zinaida Arkadyevna’s voice crackled with impatience, full of expectation and power. The voice of someone certain of her own rightness and of her son’s loyalty.

Andrei was silent for a second, gathering what remained of his voice. He spoke quietly, but coldly and clearly, making sure Olga heard every word.

—Yes, Mom. I took care of it.

He paused, and in that pause hung everything: disappointment, contempt, and the end.

—Don’t call here again. Don’t ever come near my house again. Do you understand?

He didn’t wait for a reply—the incredulous protest was already rising in the receiver. He simply pressed the red button. Then, without hesitation, he opened his contacts list, searched for “Mom,” selected her, and chose “Block contact.” Simple, everyday actions on a screen that, at that moment, seemed to sign the death warrant for his old life.

He put the phone away. He was still kneeling before his daughter. He looked at Olga. Their eyes met. Silence returned to the room—but it was a different silence now. Not that of shock, but that of a burned-out bridge. Behind them, only smoldering ashes. In front—only the three of them. And the cold knowledge that the war had only just begun.

Half an hour later, Andrei brought a basin of warm water from the bathroom. Olga dipped a soft cloth into it and, inch by inch, carefully cleaned the dried blood from Katia’s face. The girl remained motionless, like a porcelain doll with a broken mechanism, flinching only when the cloth touched the swollen skin of her nose. Her new, fragile world was shattered.

The doorbell wasn’t just insistent. It was an assault. Short, furious rings, one after the other without pause, as if someone wanted to drill a hole in the door with the button. It wasn’t a knock, but a demand. An ultimatum.

Andrei stood up slowly. He didn’t say anything to Olga—there was no need. She understood. He walked toward the hallway, his steps heavy, like someone going to the gallows. He looked through the peephole. His mother’s distorted face appeared in the lens, red with anger, her mouth twisted in a silent scream. He felt no pity, no doubt. Only the cold, dull need to end this.

He turned the key and opened the door.

Zinaida Arkadyevna rushed forward, trying to push her way in, shoulder first.

—Let me in! What did he do to you, what lies did he tell you? You’ve gone crazy, pushing your own mother away for that—!

Andrei blocked her with his hand on her shoulder. That was enough to stop her. His face was impenetrable.

—Go, Mom. I already told you.

“I’m not leaving!” she shrieked, flinching away from his touch like a hot iron. “This is my house too, I raised you! You’re not kicking me out! It’s her! She’s turned you against me!”

At that moment, Olga appeared in the hallway. She didn’t hide behind her husband. She stood beside him, shoulder to shoulder. Her face was still pale and serene, but her eyes burned with a cold fire. Together they formed a solid wall, against which her mother’s fury bounced and broke.

Seeing Olga fueled Zinaida Arkadyevna’s rage. She unleashed all her venom on her.

—You! You provoked him! You manipulated him, you poisoned his mind! What lies have you told him?

Olga didn’t answer. She just looked at her, and in her gaze there was such contempt that it was more tangible than a slap. The silence drove Zinaida Arkadyevna even more mad. Unable to break the adults, she made her fatal mistake. She turned back to Andrei, her voice dripping with venomous justification.

—It’s all her fault! Always sticking her nose in where she’s not wanted! She wanted a piece of candy! Someone had to teach her discipline, not indulge her every whim! It would have done her good!

Those weren’t words she could take back. They were a sentence she had imposed on herself.

Andrei moved forward. He didn’t shout. He didn’t raise his voice. He looked at his mother as one looks at a stranger.

—Myself.

He took her by the elbow. His grip wasn’t strong, but it was unyielding. He simply turned her toward the hallway and pushed her out onto the landing. She stumbled but stayed on her feet, turning around with her face twisted no longer by anger, but by devastating disbelief. She opened her mouth to say more, but Andrei cut her off, speaking low and firm, cutting all ties.

—You no longer have a son. Nor a granddaughter.

And he closed the door. Not with a bang—he simply shut it, separating her from their lives. The click of the first turn of the key. The click of the second. The sounds echoed deafeningly in the silence. Andrei leaned against the door, his eyes closed. He didn’t look at Olga. He just stood there, feeling the cold wood against his back.

The war was over. There were no victors. Only survivors among the ruins of their family.