Chapter 4

... You wash your face in warm water and, once the brightest emotions have rinsed away, you think you have only made things worse. A woman’s strength is measured by the amount of pain she can bring a man. Anna is very strong. Your stunt will only provoke her answer, and hers will be harsher. Why do you need that?

Suddenly you remember the way Omar was looking at your wife in her revealing dress. Something tightens in your groin. Vague suspicions about what your angry wife might do stab through you like a hundred needles. Rubbing your aching forehead, you grab your phone.

You swipe through the app icons, then your finger catches on one. The surveillance cameras. You pull your earbuds from your pocket.

“Yuri is going to pay for treating me like that!” your wife says with a nervous smile.

You notice the straps of her dress have slipped from her shoulders. An accident? There have been too many of these “accidents” with Anna! She is sitting in the chair you once bought her for her birthday and called “my queen’s throne.”

“Yuri is simply angry with me,” the old man drones. “Don’t blame him for insulting you for no reason, little daughter.”

You are ready to smash the phone against the sink. This worm, pretending to defend you, is pouring oil on the fire! Trying to set Anna against you! What a bastard, what a nonentity! He is afraid to say one unnecessary word to your face, yet behind your back he fucks your wife and uses his Jesuit tricks to drive the two of you apart!

“He has no right!” Anna says indignantly. “And he humiliates you too, an old man!”

She has not even taken out the bruise cream; she is that stunned by the way you behaved. So, when Omar calls her a bitch, that is fine, but you are not allowed to tell the truth about her whorish dress?!

Then the man ... bursts into tears! You cannot tell from the camera whether actual tears are falling, but he certainly acts as though he is crying!

“Yes, I was just sitting here drinking tea, eating those delicious sandwiches you made ... and then he ... why?! Out of nowhere!”

Omar still has not risen from the floor. He speaks while kneeling beside your mug, the one he had been drinking from even though he knew it was yours. Anna grows thoroughly angry.

“There! You’ve reduced a harmless old man to tears! And you insulted me! No, Yuri is not getting away with this! Enough, Omar, don’t cry, what are you...”

But Omar closes his eyes and begins sobbing loudly, like a hysteric. Anna looks at him in confusion, almost at a loss. Then she looks toward the bathroom door, behind which you are standing, and her face hardens. Slowly, looking not at Omar but at the door, “at you,” Anna lowers her dress and exposes her breasts.

“Let vengeance be done!” her face says. Then Anna draws her knees up onto the seat and waits with a smile. At first Omar sobs with his face in his hands — or rather pretends to sob, you are sure — but when he realizes his performance is attracting no attention, he looks at Anna ... and freezes.

“Bitch!” you think, almost admiringly, with pain and jealousy. This is what you feared. Anna has always answered any act of revenge from you twofold, threefold. She knew no limits. She did not want to know them. And now: fine, you offended the old man; fine, you spoke crudely about her unacceptable dress — but to undress in front of another man because of that?! And once again Omar gets what he wants! Neither your status as a bank manager nor your money can help you defeat him, poor and pathetic as he is. You can buy your way out of obligations to the state. Even to your homeland. But you cannot buy your way out of fate.

Despite all your outrage — or perhaps because of it — you take out your cock and begin to masturbate.

“Little daughter...” the old goat bleats, and his bleating awakens predatory instincts in you. You want to sink your teeth into his throat so he will never bleat at your wife again!

“Yes, I’m your little daughter. And you have to obey me. Right now, I want you to calm down. How can I do that, Omar?”