The Supposed Terrorist

Chapter 4

26 minutes. That's how long more we had stayed in that cafe. It was basically me trying to come in acceptance with the fact that I really had no choice. Artem hadn't even sounded insisting, but he was just making sense and sitting there, waiting for me to make my call. If my call was saying 'you shouldn't bother yourself', he would just say 'again, Miss Wayland, what will you be doing the entire night then?' and again, I hated how much sense he was making, without even saying too many words.

But I finally had to let my shame go, for one night. Dire times. And his place was frankly pretty nice, a bit office-ish feeling to it though. His guest room had the softest mattress. Maybe it was just the shift from granite mattresses, but crap, I slept like a baby for the night. Most heavy and sound sleep I had in who knows how long.

I had set an alarm to wake up quite early, 5.40 am or something, rather reluctantly.

I needed a clear head before I had a long nice talk with him about certain things I was dying to clarify. And a clear head began with a shower. I didn't exactly recall when I had bought the 5-6 pairs of sweatshirts and pants in the bag, but at least I had enough clothes I could shuffle between. Homeless, but not cloth-less. Win, right?

Around 7 am, I was sitting around the table, my lawyer on the other side. My gaze was fixed on him, meaningfully. He just stared back, unperturbed.

I wasn't going to waste his time, so I jumped directly to the thing that mattered heavily right now– money.

"So, your fees," I said. "How much is it?"

"You are quite fascinated by that topic," he noted. It baffled internally how strange this entire thing was. He was an advocate, shouldn't he be concerned about it in the first place?

"Yes, that, sure," I said. "So, your charges?"

"Miss Wayland, look–"

"No. Not words. Numbers," I cut him off. "I need numbers. Please."

Clearly he was going to give words because he didn't continue his cut-off sentence.

He took a napkin and ballpen from the table and made a singular zero on it. "This," he said. "This is how much I am charging."

"Are you sure you didn't forget a one and some zeroes?"

He gave half a shrug. "No."

"Seriously," I said slowly. "How much do you actually charge?"

"I said I am not taking fees from you."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to," he said as if that reason made complete sense. "And honestly, Miss Wayland, my fees should be the last of your concerns."

"It should be your first concern."

"Not yours."

"It's not like you don't charge usually," I began. "You charge and you charge good and heavy. So why not now?"

"Did you look me up, Miss Wayland?"

"I did. Why not now?" I repeated myself.

"If you looked me up," he leaned forward. "You must have also noticed I waive off fees whenever I feel like it."

I had noticed that. Twice. He had not charged for intricate cases twice. Both were the kind of situations an average lawyer could leech a lot off.

That didn't matter to me, though.

"You are saying you risk condemnation, give your time, energy and efforts to this case and don't charge simply because you don't want to?"

"Yes."