Igor pulled his mouth as if suddenly a toothache had twisted it. The shouting behind the office door grew louder.
“Don’t play games with me! I know it was you!” yelled Stepanov, the commercial deputy, his voice cutting through the monotonous hum of the coffee machine.
Igor slammed the folder full of reports down hard. Three months earlier, when his father handed him the office keys and went off to the healing waters for “medical treatments,” Igor thought the hardest part would be handling finances.
Now he had to realize that the hardest part was dealing with people.
The inherited team was like a jar of spiders: each one ready to bite the other.
The door slammed, and Stepanov stormed into the office, his face red, glistening with sweat, his tie askew. Behind him came the new cleaning lady, Tatjana.
Slim but with a firm posture, her face pale, yet her gaze mature. She had been working here for two weeks.
“Igor Olegovich, act immediately!” Stepanov pointed at the girl, his voice sharp and angry. “She’s stealing! Five thousand disappeared from the director’s bag, smaller amounts from the secretary. And she just walks around with a mop like a lamb!”
Tatjana said nothing. She did not cry, she did not explain. She just stood, looking at Stepanov with a heavy, adult gaze. A huge, loosely worn work coat covered her body, her hair tightly tied, her face free of makeup, her hands red from the water.
“Do you have proof, Viktor Petrovich?” Igor asked quietly.
“What proof?!” Stepanov screamed. “She has access to everything! Who else? Nothing happens without her knowing! She must be fired immediately! I’ll call the police!”
“I didn’t take it,” Tatjana replied, her voice deep, slightly hoarse. “I was cleaning the office when no one was there. I didn’t touch the bags.”
“She’s lying and doesn’t even blush!” shouted Stepanov.
“Go back to work,” Igor said wearily. “Both of you. I’ll handle it.”
When they left, Igor stepped to the window. Outside, November mud and snow mixed, the weather cold as his thoughts. If Tatjana really was a thief, that would be terrible.
But if Stepanov was trying to prove she should be removed just to place “his own person” in her spot, that was even worse.
He had to find out the truth. The method was old-fashioned, sneaky, but effective.
When the office emptied in the evening, Igor took out his wallet. He let some bills stick out, casually leaving the corner visible. He placed the wallet on the edge of the massive oak desk.
He positioned the laptop camera so it could see the desk, then turned off the monitor and covered the camera indicator light with black tape.
“Sorry, Tatjana,” he whispered into the void.
The next morning he hesitated to open the laptop. He feared that what he would see might forever destroy his faith in people.
The video file loaded. Fast-forwarded playback. Darkness. Then the lights came on. Tatjana entered.
Igor’s eyes glued to the screen.
Her movements were quick, economical. She made no unnecessary gestures. She dusted the shelves, watered the dying ficus in the corner. She approached the desk.
Igor held his breath.
Tatjana stopped. She saw a wallet. On the video, she let out a sigh, looked around.
“Don’t take it, please, don’t take it”—Igor prayed mentally.
And she didn’t take it. She pulled a sheet of paper and a pen from her pocket, wrote something quickly, then placed the wallet—holding it with just two fingers at the edge, with visible disgust—into the desk drawer and slammed it shut. She stuck the note on the monitor.
Igor looked from the screen to his own monitor. A yellow sticky note hung there, written in large, lively handwriting:
“A trap for fools. Don’t be ashamed. And water the ficus with fertilizer; it will die soon.”
Igor’s face burned. His ears felt like someone had rubbed paprika on them. He blushed. This woman, in her blue coat, was unbearably bold. He wanted to expose a thief, and instead he looked like a petty provocateur.
At lunch, he found her in the storage room. Tatjana was sitting on an upside-down bucket, eating an apple. When she saw the director, she didn’t jump up or panic.
“Did you come to fire me?” she asked calmly.
“No, I came to apologize.”
Tatjana smiled, taking a bite of the apple.
“Loyalty test? Classic.”
“People really steal here, Tatjana. Stepanov pressured me; I had to be sure. Forgive me. I acted unworthily.”
“You did,” she nodded. “But at least you admitted your mistake. Stepanov would have just thrown the bill into your pocket.”
Igor leaned against the door frame.
“Do you know about plants? The ficus?”
“I had a greenhouse at home… once.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m in a dorm room, paying my father’s treatment debt for five years.”
There was no complaint in his voice. Just the dry statement of facts.
“Igor Olegovich,” she looked at him firmly. “Look for the guilty among your own. Those who smile, shake hands.”
It’s foolish for a cleaning lady to steal—first they suspect us. But those who see themselves as the host lose fear.
This conversation spurred Igor into action. He immediately summoned the security chief and demanded hidden cameras not only in the offices but also along the corridors, aimed at the coat racks.
Three days later, the thief was caught.
On the footage brought by the solemn security chief, it was not Stepanov. It was Demyan Ilyich, the company’s elderly lawyer. The man who had worked here since the company was founded.
The video showed an old gray-haired man looking around, quickly rifling through coat pockets, taking the money, and hiding it in his fingers. Igor felt nauseous.
Demyan Ilyich sat in front of him an hour later. He did not deny it. He just slumped, transformed into a small, pitiful old man.
“My son is in debt,” he whispered, staring at the floor.
“The collectors call, they threaten, they’ll take the apartment. The amount is huge… I thought I’d quickly take it back and return it… but fear overtook me, Igor Olegovich.”
Igor remained silent. Inside, everything boiled, but he understood: imprisoning the old man would only destroy him.
“Write a resignation statement,” Igor said hoarsely. “Voluntarily. The debt will be repaid from payroll. Give me the collector’s number. Security will handle it. But I don’t want to see you here again.”
When the lawyer’s door closed behind him, Igor felt wild fatigue. He wanted simple, human warmth, not all of this.
He went looking for Tatjana. She was cleaning the stairs on the first floor.
“Tatjana,” he stopped on the steps. “You were right. It was our person.”
Tatjana stretched, pushing her hair from her forehead.
“I’m glad the truth won.”
“Tatjana, shall we have a coffee? Not here. Tonight.”
She looked at her hands, red from water and bleach.
“I don’t have clothes for a restaurant, Igor Olegovich. No shoes either. I go to work in sneakers.”
“I don’t like restaurants either. I know a place that makes the best chebureks in town. Nobody cares about shoes there.”
She laughed. For the first time since they met. And that laughter made him young, filled his face with life.
“Cheburek? With the director? Well, we’re taking a risk.”
From then on, everything began. They didn’t announce their relationship. Igor simply took her home, they walked along the riverbank, the wind cutting to their bones, yet they were warm.
He learned that Tatjana was a biologist, knew Latin, and dreamed of opening her own plant nursery. She could not tolerate lies or hypocrisy.
She was real. Alive. Without a mask.
But happiness rarely lasts long when your last name is known in corporate circles.
A month later, his father returned. Brown, thin, hard as an old shoe sole.
“Dinner on Saturday,” he announced at the threshold, without asking about the office. “Arkadij Voronov is coming. Warehouse network owner. We’ll sign a merger. This will elevate us to a national level.”
“I’m glad, father.”
“Don’t be too quick to rejoice. Voronov has a condition. Old-school in business. Guarantees are needed. Family connections. He has a daughter, for whom he seeks a husband.”
Igor froze.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly. You will marry her.”
“No,” Igor said quietly.
His father turned slowly.
“What did you say?”
“No. I’m not an object to be given for a contract. And there’s someone in my life.”
“The cleaning lady?” his father sneered. “Stepanov reported. Are you completely crazy? You are the heir to an empire! And who is she?”
“You speak as a merchant now.”
“Then it will be so,” his father’s voice turned icy. “You will be at the dinner on Saturday. In formalwear. You’ll ask Voronov’s daughter’s hand. Or on Monday I rewrite the will, fire you, and Tatjana… trust me, I will find a way that no company hires her. Not even to clean toilets.”
Igor clenched his fists, nails digging into his palms. He knew his father. He wasn’t bluffing.
“I’ll go,” Igor pressed out, “but only to say it to their faces: no.”
The air in the restaurant was heavy with the scent of expensive lilies. Arkadij Voronov, a large man, was already seated at the table. Beside him, with her back to the room, a girl in black.
His father nudged Igor under the table.
“Smile.”
“Good evening,” Igor groaned.
“Oh, the groom has arrived!” Voronov boomed. “Sit down. Meet my pride, Tatjana.”
The girl turned slowly.
Igor felt the ground slip away beneath him.
It was Tatjana. His Tatjana. Only her hair wasn’t in a bun but flowing over her shoulders, in an expensive black dress worth a year of office salary.
“Good evening, Igor Olegovich,” she said calmly. “Is the ficus alive?”
Igor stayed silent. He didn’t know if he was dreaming or being mocked.
His father dropped his fork, which clattered onto the plate.
“Do you know each other?” he growled.
“More than you think,” Voronov smiled.
“My daughter has a quirky character. She said, ‘Father, I won’t marry a millionaire until I see what kind of person he is.’ She worked as a cleaning lady with you. I protested, she insisted. My character.”
Tatjana looked at Igor. Her eyes held question and fear. She feared he would not forgive.
“So it was a performance?” Igor whispered. “Debt, sick father, dorm room?”
“My father was really ill,” she replied. “They treated him in Germany. Because of the debt… I wanted to show I am human, not a money bag. Igor, you passed the test. You were the only one who didn’t trample over me. You defended the cleaning lady. You weren’t afraid to confront your father.”
Igor remembered the cheburek dinner. Her laughter. Her warm hands.
“You lied to me,” he said.
“Not about the most important thing,” she placed her hand on his. “I was myself. So were you. Isn’t that enough?”
Igor’s father, who had been gasping for breath, finally spoke:
“So… she is the fiancée?” His face melted. “Tatjana! What wisdom! What insight! Well, Igor, why are you sitting? Kiss your fiancée!”
Igor glared at his father, then at Tatjana. She waited.
“I won’t hold you responsible for logistics,” he said seriously.
Tatjana tensed.
“But the ficus in my office will die,” Igor continued, the corners of his mouth trembling. “And someone has to watch over it, so I don’t become a cold, dry man like our fathers.”
Voronov laughed, making the glasses jingle. Tatjana smiled—the kind of smile that made Igor’s heart warm even in November’s cold.
“Agreed,” she whispered. “But the chebureks are still on you.”
