Meet our local homeless guy, darling,” the husband said with a disgusting grin as he opened the door and let a thin, unkempt man in an old jacket step inside. “From now on, he’ll be living in our home. Feed him, wash him, give him new clothes. You can even marry him if you want.”
“What are you doing? What are you even talking about?” the wife asked, turning pale.
“I’m tired of you,” he waved dismissively. “I’m leaving for another woman — younger, prettier. And you can rot here for all I care. The only thing I needed from this marriage was our son, and he’s already grown. My life is just beginning. Goodbye, darling.”
The day before, the husband had rushed to sign a contract with a friendly notary: he had indeed sold his half of the apartment to the “first person he met” — a homeless man named Viktor, whom he had picked up outside a supermarket and “bought” with a bottle and a handful of cash.
He thought it was a brilliant act of revenge: now, by law, his wife would have to share the home with a drifter. After handing Viktor the yellowed folder of documents, he slammed the door and a few hours later was already sitting on a plane next to his heavily made-up mistress, dreaming about the sea and a new life.
After the door closed behind him, the wife stood in the hallway for a few minutes, listening to the faucet dripping in the bathroom. Then she took a deep breath and turned to the guest.
“What’s your name?” she asked tiredly.
“Viktor,” the man answered awkwardly. “I… can leave if you want.”
“No, Viktor,” she said gently. “You’re going to take a shower now, eat something, and then we’ll talk.”
Two hours later, the person sitting in front of her was no longer a dirty homeless man but a tired, ordinary man wearing her old sweatshirt. She spread the papers he had been nervously crumpling on the table.
“You understand,” she said, “that according to these documents, you now own half of the apartment… but you also know you were used.”
Viktor lowered his eyes in shame.
“He said he didn’t care, as long as your life became miserable…”
“Well, I care,” the wife replied firmly. “So here’s what we’ll do: I’ll help you get off the streets. We’ll arrange a room for you at a shelter, buy you clothes… and you transfer your share back to me. Fair and square.”
A week later, they were already at the notary’s office. Viktor signed the deed of gift, received real money from her, and a place in a rehabilitation center.
Meanwhile, the wife took care of other things as well: she packed her husband’s belongings into garbage bags and donated them to the same shelter, and transferred the car to her name.
She personally called her husband’s workplace: calmly explaining that he had been acting strangely, forgetting important things, selling property for pennies, abandoning his family and disappearing. The management quickly drew conclusions: the “unreliable” employee was first suspended and then fired.
The husband learned all of this only two weeks later, when he ran out of money at the seaside and his bank card suddenly stopped working. His mistress, tired of the problems, had already flown home earlier — she didn’t want any trouble.
Furious and humiliated, he returned home, convinced he would “set everything straight.” But when he approached the building, he didn’t even recognize it: the door to the apartment now had a brand-new lock.
