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dream, and I have no idea what is happening. And at this moment, it’s as if time disappears, freezes. And then it passes, and I come back to my senses and feel everything again.

Nadezhda-Hope acted the same way around me and my friend back then. It was like she was doing hypnosis. First, to my friend, I don’t know what she did to him. And then she comes to me with the piece of paper, and looks at me with these furious eyes and says, “This is not in dollars but in rubles.”

Even if I wrote this story down with the names of all the people, with the specific dates and places, and all the facts, still no one would believe it. I don’t know why this is, but from somewhere, I came up with this. This is what my life became.

I remember when Nadezhda was talking about the crosses, she showed me an Orthodox cross and a catholic cross. And I asked her:

– Why is the catholic cross made of two sticks, and the Orthodox cross has one more stick here?

She said Times were different. Sometimes, the money was in abundance, and other times, it was in scarcity. Sometimes, there was more than enough material and other times, they had to make do with the little they had. But ultimately, there is no difference.

That’s the message she conveyed. That there is no difference. She means that in the essence of religion, there is no difference. Please note this.

When Nadezhda pointed her horns at my friend, making it clear that he was horned, why did she do it? At that moment, she made it clear that she sees things the same way as I do. That she is an insider. Because I knew that he was a devil. How he behaved then is how he has always behaved. He told me:

– Alex, I can connect you with a client. But let me wait for him here so that you can give me a commission from this deal.