Albina's life changes in an instant: under threat of arrest, her oligarch husband leaves her, taking all the money with him. All that remains of the spouse are two children and a Russian factory on the verge of bankruptcy. Now Albina is forced to forget about the luxurious life in a London mansion and remember what she was told in business courses. Just to start life from scratch in a provincial town without a penny in her pocket, no one taught her.

Victor Gromov, once a legend of Moscow’s criminal underworld known under the nickname “Butcher”, has since retired and now spends his days enjoying life on his farm. One day, Victor’s former “colleagues” show up and tell him that he must store the mafia’s common fund in his offshore bank account. Victor has no choice but to help them. Several months later, on the day when he is supposed to give the money back, Victor gets hit on the head by a falling billboard. As a result, he forgets the password to his bank account. Fleeing for his life from his former cronies, Victor decides to hide in a freight train’s boxcar but ends up getting locked inside. The train departs, and several days later he finds himself thousands of kilometers away from Moscow, in a small northern town called Polyarny, which, as it turns out, is not so easy to get out of...

The plot is set in modern Moscow, in the 1990s, with "New Russians", Hummer H1 SUVs, bribery, violence, truck fulls of tinned stew as a dowry, etc.