Tatyana Nikolaïevna sat alone in her empty apartment, staring at her now-cold cup of tea. Three months had passed since Igor had packed his things and left to join his young lover Kristina, who was twenty-five. Twenty-three years of marriage crumbled in an instant when he said he “wanted to feel alive.” At fifty-two, Tatyana suddenly found herself utterly alone.
The sound of the phone pulled her from her dark thoughts. A man’s unfamiliar voice introduced himself:
“— Tatyana Nikolaïevna? This is Notary Petrov. I have important news for you. Your father is looking for you.”
Tatyana’s heart skipped a beat. Her father? She had never known him. Her mother had always told her he died when she was two.
“— Forgive me, but you must be mistaken,” she stammered, bewildered. “My father has been dead for a long time.”
“— No, Tatyana Nikolaïevna. I’m calling on behalf of Nikolai Sergeyevich Volkov. He is alive but gravely ill. He has been searching for you for a long time and deeply wishes to meet you. His time is limited.”
Her head spun. All her life she had believed she was fatherless—and now he was alive and seeking her. Why? And why now?
“— He asked me to tell you he would understand your anger but begs you to give him a chance to explain everything,” continued the notary. “May I convey your response to him?”
Tatyana was silent, trying to process what she had just heard. Her whole world was shaken: first her husband left her, and now this—an unknown father. Life seemed determined to surprise her again.
“— Very well,” she finally answered. “I will meet him.”
Two days later, Tatyana stood before the door of a private sanatorium in the Moscow suburbs. Her hands trembled as she pressed the intercom. A nurse guided her through the corridor to room number seven.
The man lying in the bed was thin, exhausted by illness, but she immediately recognized her own eyes in his—those same gray-blue eyes framed by dark lashes. Nikolai Sergeyevich Volkov reached out his hand, and she saw hers trembled.
“— Tanechka,” he whispered. “You’ve grown so much, you look just like your mother…”
She sat in the chair beside the bed, unsure what to say. This man was her father, but to her, he remained a stranger.
“— Why?” she finally asked. “Why did you abandon us?”
Nikolai Sergeyevich closed his eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“— I was an idiot,” he began. “I was twenty-three when I met your mother. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. A shop clerk from a modest family but with such a generous heart… I fell madly in love with her.”
He paused, breathing heavily.
“— My parents were furious. The Volkovs are an influential family with a large empire. They couldn’t accept their heir marrying a ‘simple shop clerk.’ They caused a scandal, threatened to disinherit me, to cast me out of the family home. And I… I was afraid of losing everything.”
Tatyana listened, feeling not anger but deep pity—for this man broken by illness, for the young man who failed to defend his love, for her mother who bore the pain silently.
“— My parents promised they would take care of you and your mother if I left. But it was a lie. Every time I tried to find out where you were, they said you had moved away, that your mother had remarried. It was only after their deaths that I learned the truth.”
“— Mom never told me anything,” whispered Tatyana. “She only ever said you had died.”
“— To her, I was probably truly dead the day I abandoned her. Forgive me, Tanechka. I have no right to ask for forgiveness, but…”
“— I don’t blame you,” she admitted, surprised by her own words. “You were very young. And Mom… Mom found happiness. She met a devoted man who became a real father to me. She loved me, and we never lacked for anything.”
Nikolai Sergeyevich began to weep like a child.
“— Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you for your words.”
In the weeks that followed, Tatyana visited her father regularly. They talked about life, the past, their very different fates. She told him about her recent divorce and the pain of being alone at fifty.
“— I understand your suffering,” he said one day. “I was alone all my life, too. I married twice, but those were marriages of convenience. I only loved your mother. And I had only one child… you.”
One afternoon, he called the notary.
“— Tanechka,” he said, “I have apartments in Moscow, a house in the suburbs, another in Sochi. And a construction business I built all my life. I want all of this to be yours.”
Tatyana was speechless—she hadn’t expected such a proposal.
“— But I don’t know anything about business…”
“— You’ll learn. I have competent associates who will explain everything. Time is short, but we will manage.”
Doctors said he had only months left. Liver cancer with no hope.
“— I don’t want your money,” she said honestly. “I just need to know I have a father.”
“— And I need to be sure my daughter will be protected,” he replied firmly. “It’s the only gift I can still give you.”
Tatyana nodded. Deep down, she understood how important it was for a dying man to feel he could still make amends.
In the months that followed, her life changed radically. She studied documents, met company directors, learned to read financial statements. She discovered her father was truly wealthy—the fortune was in the millions of dollars.
She couldn’t hide these changes from her friends. Ludmila, her childhood friend, was stunned:
“— Tania, seriously? Your father’s a millionaire?”
“— I can’t believe it myself,” Tatyana replied. “I always thought I was an orphan, and now…”
“— Does Igor know?” Ludmila asked mischievously.
“— Why tell him? We’re divorced, no kids. It’s none of his business.”
But Ludmila was a big gossip, and Tatyana knew the news wouldn’t stay secret long. She was right.
A week later, her phone rang at eleven at night. The screen showed Igor’s name.
“— Hi, Tanechka,” his voice was strangely gentle. “How are you?”
“— Fine,” she replied coldly. “What do you want?”
“— I want to talk. Can we meet?”
“— About what? I thought we settled everything three months ago.”
“— Please, Tania. It’s important.”
She agreed to meet him at a café near her home. Igor arrived with flowers—white roses, her favorite, which he hadn’t given her in at least five years.
“— You look radiant,” he said, sitting opposite her.
“— Thanks. Now tell me what you want.”
Igor nervously fiddled with a napkin.
“— I realize I made a terrible mistake. I can’t stop thinking about you and our marriage. Kristina… was a folly. I want to start over.”
Tatyana studied him carefully. It was the man she’d spent twenty-three years with, but now he seemed a stranger.
“— I see,” she said calmly. “And Kristina? Where is she?”
“— We broke up. She… she wasn’t the woman she pretended to be: selfish, self-interested. And I finally realized my true love was you.”
“— How touching,” she said sarcastically. “When did this brilliant idea come to you?”
“— I’m sincere, Tania. Give me a second chance. I’ve changed, I understand now.”
“— What a coincidence!” she smiled. “You decided to come back just as you learned my father is a millionaire.”
Igor paled.
“— What? What father? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“— Of course you don’t know,” she laughed. “Ludmila must have forgotten to fill you in.”
“— Tania, I swear I didn’t know… Ludmila just said you were doing better, had a better job…”
“— A ‘better job’?” Tatyana laughed aloud. “That’s how she describes an inheritance worth millions?”
Igor stared at her, speechless.
“— I don’t understand…”
“— My father, whom I thought dead, is alive. And he’s a wealthy businessman. All his assets are now mine. That’s your ‘better situation.’”
“— But I didn’t come back for the money!” he protested.
“— Maybe not. But now it doesn’t matter. What matters is I don’t want a man who left me during my worst time for a young woman. And even less one who only returns for money.”
Igor reached for her hand, but she gently pulled away.
“— Tania, please…”
“— No, Igor. That train has left the station. I’m going through an important phase in my life. I’m meeting the father I never knew. He’s dying, and we have only a few months to make up for lost time. That’s what really matters—not your attempts to come back.”
She stood up.
“— Don’t call me again. I wish you happiness, but not with me.”
Igor remained, white roses untouched in his hand, watching her walk away.
Tatyana walked into the night city, feeling a lightness she hadn’t known in a long time. Money was not the greatest gift her father had given her. The most precious was finally finding within herself the strength and independence she had long sought.
The next day, she returned to the sanatorium. Nikolai Sergeyevich, hooked up to his IV, smiled when he saw her.