“What if I say no?” I asked, locking eyes with him.
Vladimir Petrovich leaned forward, his fingers steepled, his voice low and venomous.
“Then I’ll make your life, and hers, hell. I’ll poison her job, sabotage yours. You’ll never work in this city again, and she’ll resent you for dragging her down. Is that what you want?”
I sat motionless, adrenaline humming in my veins. Outside, the rain had turned into sleet, tapping sharply against the windows like impatient fingers. A million rubles lay between us, but it felt like a million tons.
“I didn’t come into Alena’s life with money, but I came with love,” I said slowly. “I worked for every ounce of her trust. I studied. I improved. I became more—for her.”
Vladimir scoffed. “You became more in your eyes. Not mine. And soon, not hers.”
He stood and walked to the door.
“I’ll give you three days,” he said, pausing. “Three days to decide whether you love her enough to let her go.”
That night, I didn’t sleep.
I watched Alena as she lay curled beside me, her breath steady, unaware that her father had tried to buy me off like I was a stain on her future. The lump in my throat swelled with fear and fury. I didn’t want to lose her—but what if staying meant dragging her through years of conflict, through subtle sabotage and constant tension?
The next morning, I packed my things without telling her.
I left a note on the table.
“I love you too much to become your cage.”
Then I left the city.
Two months passed in silence.
I moved to Nizhny Novgorod, took a job in a metalworks company, buried myself in work. I refused Alena’s calls. I couldn’t hear her voice without crumbling.
But every night, I replayed our first meeting, her smile in the café, her words: “You are everything.”
And every morning, I hated myself for giving in to her father’s ultimatum. I had become what he wanted—a ghost, erased from her life. But I was also becoming someone I didn’t recognize: bitter, hollow, mechanical.
Then one day, while walking home, I found a familiar figure standing in front of my apartment.
Alena.
Soaked in snow, clutching a crumpled letter I had once written her during our first month together.
“Why?” she asked. “Why didn’t you fight for us?”
Tears blurred her eyes, and I stood frozen, guilty and stunned.
“Your father—” I began.
“I know,” she said. “I found the bag of money and your note. And I confronted him.”
Her voice trembled but was firm.
“I told him he doesn’t get to decide my life. That he lost me the moment he tried to buy love.”
She stepped forward, pressing the letter to my chest.
“You said you’d become someone worthy. I never asked you to. I fell in love with who you were that first night in the café.”
“I thought I was protecting you,” I whispered.
“No. You were protecting your pride. You didn’t trust me to choose.”
Her words sliced deep. She was right. I had made the choice for her.
We didn’t reconcile that night. Love, once fractured, takes time to mend.
But she stayed. We talked. We walked the frozen streets of Nizhny Novgorod and melted the ice between us, word by word.
Eventually, she moved in. We started over—not from scratch, but from truth.
And Vladimir Petrovich?
He called, once. I answered.
“This is not over,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “It’s just beginning. And this time, it’s not your story to write.”
Then I hung up—and never spoke to him again.
Years later, our daughter would ask us how we met.
Alena would smile and say, “Your dad stole my table at a café.”
I’d add, “And your grandfather tried to pay me to walk away.”
She’d wrinkle her nose. “That’s awful!”
“Yes,” I’d say, kissing her forehead. “But it taught us the cost of love—and its worth.”
A price on love
Sometimes, love must walk away to return stronger—and some debts are paid not with money, but with truth.
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