My husband was often gone on business trips. He’d leave for weeks at a time, sometimes without even warning. A lingering silence remained in the apartment, and only his strict prohibitions constantly echoed in my head.

One of them was to never call repairmen, especially for the air conditioner, or to try to fix it myself. He answered all my questions with the same answer: “Don’t touch it. I’ll fix it myself.”

When Victor left again, the silver SUV disappeared around the corner, and for the first time, I felt relief.

But suddenly the air conditioner began to grind, slam, and finally break down. It was the fifth time this week. My husband was constantly fixing it, and the air conditioner was constantly breaking down.

The room suddenly grew hot. The children lay on the floor—sluggish, sleepy, with shiny faces.

I called Victor. He didn’t pick up right away. I could hear voices in the background, a woman’s laughter… and children’s.

“The air conditioner broke again, I’m calling a repairman, you don’t know how to fix it,” I said.

“Just try!” he shouted sharply. “No repairmen. No one in the house. I said it!”

The connection cut off so abruptly, as if he’d deliberately turned off his phone.

I stood there for a minute, then finally opened the app and called a repairman. An hour later, a man with a toolbox rang the doorbell.

He examined the unit, set down a stepladder, stood up, and carefully removed the air conditioner cover.

And then his expression changed. His gaze became hard, intense. It was as if he’d seen something he shouldn’t have.

“Ma’am, has anyone fixed this air conditioner before?”

“Yes, my husband. More than once. It breaks almost every day.”

“Where are your children?” he asked quietly but sharply.

“In the kitchen… Is something wrong?”

He took a respirator out of his suitcase, put it on, as if preparing for dangerous work, and only then looked at me again. Panic was in his eyes.

—Take the children and run from this house right now. Right now. Quickly… 😲😱

My breath caught in my throat.

—What did you find there?

He removed a flat block from the top shelf of the air conditioner, covered in dust. At first, I thought it was a filter. But tiny diodes were visible inside. A small lens. Soldering. An antenna.

—That’s not part of the air conditioner, he said. —It’s a camera. A good one. It records 24/7 and sends the data to a remote location.

I felt my hands go cold.

—You mean… they were watching us?

—A long time ago, the technician replied. —And professionally.

I stood there, unable to breathe. Fragments of thoughts swirled in my head: his long “business trips,” sudden outbursts of jealousy, strange questions about who came to see me during the day. And how he forbade me from touching the air conditioner, as if it were something sacred.

The repairman put the camera in a bag.

“You need to decide what to do next. But leaving this in the apartment unattended is definitely not an option.”

After he left, I sat in the kitchen for a long time, holding the children close.

Only now did I finally understand that his “business trips” were just a cover. He was living with another woman, cheating on me, and all the while, he was keeping an eye on me. He suspected me of doing what he himself was doing.