💔 The Code Word: A Saturday Lie

Chapter 1: The Perfect Lie (Recap)

Mikhail had always been a reliable man and an exemplary father to our children—our little Ana, seven years old, and mischievous Vanya, five. He played hide-and-seek with them in the garden, attended their school festivals, told them bedtime stories… the kind of dad any mother would want.

So, when he started taking them every Saturday to his mother’s house, Grandma Diana’s, I didn’t hesitate for a second. Diana adored her grandchildren: she baked them cookies, taught them to knit, and followed them around the garden while they played. After his father’s death, Mikhail seemed to want to ease his mother’s loneliness, and that touched me. Those Saturday visits seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

But over time, some signs began to worry me.

First, my mother-in-law stopped talking to me about those visits. Before, she would call me every week to tell me how happy the children were with her, but one day, when I casually asked, “How was it with the children? It must be lovely having them every week, right?” she hesitated. “Oh… yes, of course, my dear,” she replied, but her voice sounded strange, forced. I thought maybe she was tired or sad.

Then, Mikhail insisted more and more that I stay home. “These are moments for my mother and the children,” he would say, kissing me on the cheek. “You need to rest, Amina. Enjoy some peace and quiet.” And he was right: those quiet Saturdays did me good. But something didn’t add up… every time I told him I wanted to join them, he avoided my gaze. For the first time, I felt a pang of anxiety. Why did he want to keep me away?

One morning, Mikhail and Vanya were already in the car when Ana ran to the door shouting, “I forgot my jacket!” I smiled. “Be good to your grandmother,” I told her.

But then she stopped, looked at me very seriously, and whispered, “Mom… ‘Grandma’ is a secret code.”

My heart leapt. Ana’s cheeks turned red, her eyes widened, and she immediately ran off. I stood frozen. “Secret code”? What did she mean by that? Was Mikhail deceiving me? What was he hiding?

Without thinking twice, I grabbed my purse and keys. I had to know the truth…

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Chapter 2: The Pursuit

I fumbled with the keys to my own car, a battered but reliable sedan, my hands slick with sudden, panicked adrenaline. My mind was racing, trying to catch up with the terrifying simplicity of Ana’s whisper. A secret code. It wasn’t just that he was hiding something; he was hiding it from me, and their grandmother was covering for him.

I drove out of our driveway and turned onto the main road, the late morning sun already high. I didn’t need a GPS; the route to Diana’s house was etched into my memory. But the anxiety was already twisting my assumptions.

If he wasn’t going to Diana’s, where was he going?

Mikhail’s car, the dark-blue SUV, was nowhere in sight. He was always meticulous about timing, never driving too fast, never late. I sped up, trying to visualize the usual trajectory. He’d take the freeway for thirty minutes, then the turn-off for the small, affluent suburb where Diana lived.

As I drove, I called Diana. I needed a baseline, a final chance for her to be innocent.

“Diana? It’s Amina. Did the kids arrive safely?” I tried to keep my voice light, casual.

There was a long, excruciating pause on the other end—a pause that contained the entire weight of her complicity.

“Amina, dear… yes, of course. They just got here. Vanya is already demanding cookies,” she lied, her voice too loud, too cheerful. The forced cheerfulness was worse than the hesitation I’d heard weeks ago; it was a deliberate performance.

“Wonderful,” I said, hating the quaver in my own voice. “Mikhail seemed a little rushed today. Tell me, how does he look? Is he stressed?”

“Oh, he’s fine, dear. He just… dropped them off quickly. He said he had to go run an errand, something about the bank. You know Mikhail, always busy.”

He dropped them off. She confirmed the children were there, but also confirmed Mikhail wasn’t. And the ‘errand’—a new layer to the lie.

“That’s strange,” I pressed, keeping the phone tight to my ear. “He usually stays for an hour or two to chat with you.”

“Well, not today, dear. He was gone five minutes after he walked through the door. Now, I have to go; Vanya is about to pull down the curtain rods!” Diana rushed, hanging up quickly before I could ask anything more.

I threw my phone onto the passenger seat. He dropped them off.

If “Grandma” was the code, it meant two things:

Mikhail needed a plausible excuse for his Saturday disappearance.

The children were actually at Diana’s house, but she was a holding station, not the destination of Mikhail’s true intent.

The children were safe, for now. But Mikhail was gone, and he was lying.

I approached the freeway exit for Diana’s suburb, but something made me hesitate. If he was running a quick “errand,” he wouldn’t turn off here. He would continue into the city, where the real secret might be.

I stayed on the freeway, my hands gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles were white, pushing past Diana’s exit and heading straight toward the downtown core.

Chapter 3: The Fork in the Road

The drive into the city was a blur of traffic and mounting paranoia. I had always trusted Mikhail implicitly. He was my rock, my partner, the quiet strength that balanced my anxiety. Now, that rock was dissolving into sand, leaving me adrift.

Is it another woman? The thought was the first, most painful place any betrayed spouse’s mind goes. A small apartment, a rushed goodbye, a mistress who only got him on Saturdays. But the intensity of the secret, the complicity of his mother, the involvement of the children—it felt too big, too structured for a simple affair.

I realized I didn’t even know where Mikhail usually went for his errands. He handled the bills, the financial calls, the bank visits. He handled all the ‘men’s work.’ I had let him. I had trusted him.

I exited the freeway onto a familiar stretch of industrial road—the one that housed the city’s largest construction firm and the main tax offices. This area was usually deserted on Saturdays.

But as I rounded a corner, my breath hitched.

There was Mikhail’s dark-blue SUV. Parked haphazardly in front of a block of old, unremarkable storefronts. The vehicle was facing away from me, allowing me to pull into a narrow alley across the street and watch without being seen.

The building he was parked in front of was a non-descript, two-story structure with blackened windows. There were no signs of life, no company names, just a heavy, bolted steel door and a single, flickering fluorescent light above it. It looked like a forgotten warehouse or a closed distribution center.

I turned off my engine. The silence inside my car was deafening. I felt sick, physically nauseous with the realization that the last thirty minutes of driving had confirmed everything.

He wasn’t at the bank. He was here.

I watched the steel door, waiting for him to emerge, to give me some clue as to what he was doing. Five minutes passed. Ten. The silence was broken only by the hum of the cooling asphalt and the distant city traffic.

Then, the steel door opened.

A man emerged, but it wasn’t Mikhail. He was tall, thin, and wore the kind of cheap, ill-fitting dark suit that screams ‘security’ or ‘low-level muscle.’ He scanned the street rapidly, his movements twitchy, before ducking back inside and closing the door with a dull, heavy thud.

My heart began to race again. This wasn’t an innocent errand. This was serious.

I reached for my phone, scrolling to Diana’s number. I needed to know what was going on, and she was the key.

Before I could dial, Mikhail appeared. He wasn’t wearing the sweater he’d left the house in. He was wearing a dark, unfamiliar button-down shirt that looked crisp and expensive. He looked older, his face strained, and he carried a flat, rectangular leather case—the size of a very large document portfolio.

He checked his watch, looked quickly up and down the street, and slid into his SUV.

He drove past my hiding spot without noticing me. I waited until he was two blocks away, then pulled out and followed him, keeping several cars between us.

Mikhail didn’t return to Diana’s house. He drove straight to a different part of the city—a place I had never seen him go—a quiet, leafy suburb that housed large, expensive medical facilities.

He pulled into the parking lot of the City Central Hospital.

Chapter 4: The Hospital Door

Mikhail parked and hurried inside the main entrance. I pulled into a visitor parking spot a safe distance away and watched him disappear.

The hospital? The sudden shift in location was jarring, confusing. Was he sick? Was this about an emergency I didn’t know about? But he was carrying a professional document case, not a change of clothes.

I grabbed a pair of sunglasses and a scarf from my bag, trying to look anonymous, and followed him inside.

The hospital was a maze of brightly lit corridors and the persistent smell of disinfectant. I tracked him using the direction he had headed: the elevators marked “Restricted Access – Oncology & Research.”

I took the stairs, my worn sneakers squeaking on the linoleum, driven by a frantic fear that had replaced the initial anxiety. I found the Oncology floor and crept through the waiting area.

Mikhail was standing at the reception desk, talking to a severe-looking nurse. His back was to me. I hid behind a large fake potted plant, straining to hear the exchange.

“I need to speak to the Administrator, Nurse Yelena,” Mikhail said, his voice low and firm, the confident, corporate tone he used when closing a business deal. “It’s urgent. Tell her the Saturday transfer is being compromised.”

Saturday transfer? My blood turned to ice.

The nurse looked annoyed. “Mr. Ivanov, she’s in with a client. And you know the rules—no unscheduled visits. The transfer isn’t until next week.”

Mr. Ivanov? Mikhail’s last name was Volkov.

My heart was pounding so hard I was afraid the fake plant might shake. Mikhail Ivanov. He was using an alias.

“Tell her,” Mikhail hissed, leaning close to the desk, “that ‘Grandma’ is talking.”

The nurse’s eyes widened. She swallowed hard, clearly recognizing the severity of the code word. She picked up the phone immediately.

I watched as Mikhail was ushered into an inner corridor. He was led past several wards, past a series of doors marked with complex warning signs, and finally disappeared into a small, windowless office.

I was left alone in the brightly lit, silent corridor, clutching the scarf around my face. The pieces clicked together with the awful precision of a trap:

“Grandma” meant Diana was the holding station and the security breach.

“Saturday transfer” meant a weekly transaction involving restricted access, medical research, and an alias.

Mikhail Ivanov was the person conducting this transaction, not Mikhail Volkov, the father of my children.

This wasn’t a mistress. This was something darker, something illegal or deeply secret, rooted in the very fabric of his professional life.

I stumbled out of the hospital, feeling faint. I drove immediately to Diana’s house. I needed to know what my mother-in-law had been hiding from me for months.

Chapter 5: The Complicity of Diana

I pulled up to Diana’s perfectly manicured lawn, the charming, familiar house now looking like a prison for my children. I didn’t bother knocking. I flung the front door open.

Ana and Vanya were sitting on the plush carpet, playing a quiet, intense game of checkers. Diana was seated nearby, knitting, the picture of grandmotherly tranquility.

The moment she saw my face, the needles dropped from her hands, clattering onto the hardwood floor. The color drained from her face. She looked like a trapped animal.

“Amina! What are you doing here? Mikhail said you were resting.”

“Mikhail is an alias, Diana. His name is Ivanov. He’s at the City Central Hospital, conducting a Saturday transfer, and he used a code word that my seven-year-old just taught me,” I said, my voice rising, fueled by hurt and terror. “Where is he going, Diana? What is he doing with my children every Saturday?”

Vanya looked up, confused by the shouting. Ana, however, looked away, her cheeks red with guilt.

Diana rose slowly, her eyes pleading with me. “Amina, please. The children. Let’s go into the kitchen. We need to talk, but please, not here.”

I knew she was protecting the children’s innocence, and I was grateful for that small mercy. I followed her into the kitchen, the room where she had baked all those “happy Saturday” cookies.

“Start talking, Diana. Now. I know he lied to me. I know you lied to me. What is the Saturday transfer?”

Diana collapsed onto a kitchen chair, burying her face in her hands. The composure was gone, replaced by raw, painful fear.

“It started three months after his father died,” she whispered, her voice choked with tears. “Mikhail needed money. Not just for us—for the treatments. For him.”

“Treatments? What treatments?” I demanded.

“Mikhail… he has a rare neurological condition. It’s genetic. It started manifesting six months ago. The treatments are experimental, expensive—hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Insurance won’t cover it. And he can’t tell anyone. If his business partners found out he was ill, they would tank his company and his personal savings.”

The shock was paralyzing. Mikhail was dying?

“But why the secret code? Why the alias? Why involve the children?”

Diana looked up, her eyes wet but intensely serious. “The money, Amina. The money comes from the hospital’s black market research program. He’s selling access. Not drugs. Not organs. He’s selling rare disease samples and trial participant information to a European pharmaceutical firm. He created a backdoor ledger system for the Administrator, getting paid exorbitant fees for the transfer of data every Saturday—when the hospital is quiet.”

My mind struggled to process the gravity of the crime. My husband, the exemplary father, was risking years in prison for medical espionage and black market activity.

“And the children?” I asked, my voice barely audible.

“The children… they are his reason. He needed them here, safe, under my roof, while he conducted the transfers. He wanted you to rest, but he also needed you away from the truth. He knew if you came here, you’d see him leave too quickly, or you’d call me, and the pressure would break me.”

The “Grandma” code wasn’t about another woman or an illicit hobby. It was a terrible, desperate security measure for a man who was quietly committing a crime to buy his own life.

I stood there, surrounded by the remnants of the life I thought I knew—the scent of cookies, the comfortable silence, the picture of a loving family. All of it was tainted by disease, desperation, and betrayal.

“Does he know I know now?” I asked.

Diana shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t think so. But he’s on edge. He thinks the Administrator is skimming from him. If he finds out you know about Ivanov and the hospital… he might run. Or worse, he might finish the transfer and disappear forever.”

The initial fear was gone, replaced by a cold, hard determination. My husband had lied and sinned, but he had done it for his own life, and the safety of his children. I couldn’t just stand by. I needed to confront him, not as Amina the betrayed wife, but as the partner he should have trusted.

I took the keys to my car, leaving the confusion and the betrayal behind. I was going back to the hospital, not to spy, but to intercept the Saturday transfer before he could complete it.