“What kind of lawyer are you? You can’t even string two words together!” — I’d heard those words from my father since childhood. He was a well-known prosecutor in our city, ashamed of my stutter, and he did everything he could to crush my dream. But he failed to account for one thing: while I was silent, I was learning to see what others didn’t notice. And one day I had to use that gift against him—to save him from prison, and myself from the “loser” label.
“Matvey, stop m-m-mumbling! Speak clearly or sit down! You’re disgracing me and the entire faculty!”
The law professor, Semyon Arkadyevich—gray-haired and heavyset—turned crimson with rage. The whole lecture hall burst into laughter. I stood at the lectern, feeling my face burn as that traitorous spasm tightened my throat again.
I only wanted to say something simple: “The prosecution has provided no evidence of motive.” But my tongue became a clumsy block of wood.
“I… I… I-a-a…”
“Sit down, Nefyedov! Two!” the professor barked. “Maybe you’ll at least learn to write without mistakes, since you can’t speak.”
I trudged back to my seat under the mocking snickers of my classmates. Again. Same thing. Every seminar, every presentation turned into my personal Golgotha.
That evening at home, another “debriefing” awaited me. My father—Igor Petrovich Nefyedov, Senior Counselor of Justice and the terror of the regional prosecutor’s office—came back from work dark as a storm cloud.
“Semyon Arkadyevich called me,” he began without even taking off his coat. Mom immediately fussed in the hallway, trying to help.
“Igor, maybe you’ll eat dinner first? Matvey is tired…”
“Don’t interfere, Elena!” Father cut her off. “I’m talking to this… to my son. So—you embarrassed yourself again? The whole group laughed at you again?”
I stayed silent, staring at the floor. What could I say?
“I told you a thousand times: forget advocacy! It’s not for you!” He stepped toward me, and I instinctively pulled my head into my shoulders. “In court you need eagles—men who can nail a criminal to the wall with a single sentence! And you… you can’t even order coffee in the cafeteria without people staring at you like you’re insane!”
“Igor, stop it!” Mom broke in. “He’s trying. He’ll manage!”
“He won’t manage anything!” Father’s voice thundered through the apartment. “My son is a stutterer! A disgrace! I’ve spent my whole life earning respect, and my heir can’t string two words together!”
He hurled his briefcase onto the floor.
“Tomorrow you’re withdrawing from the university. I’ll put you in the archives at my office. You’ll sort papers. That’s where your defect belongs. In silence.”
“N-n-no,” I forced out.
“What do you mean ‘no’?!” Father loomed over me. “You’ll do what I said! I won’t let you keep disgracing my name!”
I looked up at him. Inside, everything boiled with hurt and helpless rage.
“I w-will be a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” He laughed in my face. “You? Don’t make my gray hairs laugh, Matvey. With your tongue you belong as a street sweeper. No talking required there.”
He turned and went into his study, slamming the door so hard the glass in the cabinet jingled. Mom came over and hugged my shoulders.
“Don’t listen to him, sweetheart. He’s just worried. He loves you.”
“L-loves me?” I gave a bitter smirk. “He h-hates me. For not b-being like him.”
That night I didn’t sleep. His words burned like hot iron: “disgrace,” “loser,” “street sweeper”… I lay staring at the ceiling, and a cold, hard resolve grew inside me. I would prove him wrong. I would prove it to everyone. Even if I had to walk through hell to do it.
The next few months became a chain of humiliations. I tried to answer in seminars, but each time it ended the same: laughter, the professor’s fury, and my father’s icy contempt in the evenings.
I almost gave up. I started skipping classes, spending hours deep in the university library. There, among dusty shelves and archival files, I felt safe. No one demanded that I speak.
That’s where I met her.
Alina was in my year, but she kept to herself. Sharp-tongued, always in jeans, with a constant sarcastic gleam in her eyes. People thought she was odd, but they respected her brain.
She walked up to my table piled with books and asked without preamble:
“Nefyedov, was that you who grabbed the last copy of Lebedev’s commentary on the Criminal Procedure Code?”
I lifted my head and nodded, bracing for another joke.
“Got it,” she sat down across from me. “So—find anything interesting for your silent protest?”
I frowned.
“W-what?”
“Well, you’re not hiding here for nothing,” she smirked. “You think if you stay quiet, everyone will forget your…—” she hesitated, searching for a word, “…feature?”
“I-I’m not hiding,” I forced out, feeling the spasm rising again. “I-I’m preparing.”
“For what? An exam in competitive silence?” Her sarcasm was merciless, but oddly not cruel. There was no malice in it—only curiosity.
Without a word, I slid my open notebook toward her. Every page was crammed with tight handwriting: diagrams, tables, comparative article analysis, extracts from case law. I was preparing a report on procedural errors—a report I’d never be able to deliver.
Alina took the notebook and began flipping through it. Her eyebrows rose higher and higher.
“No way… You did all this yourself?”
I nodded.
“You realize half of this is grad-school level, not our seminar?” she said, stunned. “You dug up nuances even Semyon Arkadyevich probably hasn’t heard of.”
She looked at me differently now. The mockery was gone.
“The p-professor w-won’t listen,” I said.
“Then make him,” she replied unexpectedly firm. “Not with words—with action. Print this chart,” she jabbed a finger at the page, “and put it on his desk. Silently. Let him try to ignore it.”
There was such certainty in her voice that, for the first time in a long time, I felt something like hope.
“Y-you think?”
“I don’t think. I know,” she leaned back. “You know what your problem is, Nefyedov? You’re obsessed with how you speak and you’ve forgotten what you want to say. And it turns out—you actually have something to say.”
From that day on, we studied together. Alina wasn’t just smart—she was brilliant. She absorbed everything instantly and asked questions that forced me to dig deeper.
She never interrupted me. She just waited—sometimes a full minute while I wrestled a word. Then she answered calmly, as if the painful pause had never happened.
“A-Alin, w-why do you do this?” I asked one evening as we left the library late.
“Do what?”
“W-wait while I… g-give birth to a word.”
She stopped under a streetlamp and looked at me seriously.
“Because what you say after the pause is usually worth waiting for,” she said. “Unlike the chatter from most of our classmates.”
And in that moment, I think I realized I was falling in love.
Our studying didn’t go unnoticed. My father heard almost immediately—the law faculty was a small world, and “well-wishers” always existed.
“What’s this girl?” he demanded at dinner, drilling me with his eyes. “I’m told you’re dragging her around everywhere. Some professor’s daughter? Trying to sneak through exams on someone else’s back?”
“She’s j-just my classmate,” I said, trying to stay calm.
“Just a classmate?” Father snorted. “I checked. Alina Zvyagintseva. Mother—a schoolteacher. Father—a factory mechanic. Simple people. What can she possibly give you?”
“She’s smart. And she h-helps me.”
“Helps you?” He slammed his fist on the table. “She helps you bury yourself deeper in your delusions! Instead of accepting the truth and leaving, you cling to that girl like a drowning man to a straw!”
Mom tried to intervene:
“Igor, they’re just studying together. What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong is he’s wasting time!” Father roared. “I gave him a condition: either he withdraws and goes to the archives with me, or I cut off all support. Enough dragging this out!”
He stared at me—an ultimatum in his eyes.
“So, Matvey. Last chance. Dump the girl, take your papers, and start working where your silence is an asset, not a flaw. I’ll arrange everything. You’ll live calmly, without ridicule and shame.”
I looked at Mom. She watched me with pleading eyes, torn between husband and son. Then I remembered Alina’s gaze—full of belief in me.
“N-no,” I said quietly, but firmly.
“What do you mean ‘no’?” Father repeated, as if he hadn’t heard.
“I w-won’t leave university. And I w-won’t leave Alina.”
A ringing silence filled the room. Father rose slowly. His face turned stone-hard.
“I warned you, Matvey. You made your choice.”
“Igor, don’t!” Mom cried.
“Be quiet, Elena! He’s a big boy. If he thinks he has the right to decide—let him bear the consequences. From this moment on,” he pointed at me, “you’re no son of mine. Pack your things and get out.”
“Where will he go?” Mom’s voice broke.
“Anywhere! To his mechanic’s girl! Let her feed him!” Father snarled. “There’s no place for disgrace in my house. Out!”
I stood up. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel fear of him—only cold emptiness.
“O-okay.”
I went to my room and began packing. Mom followed, crying without sound.
“Son, forgive him… He doesn’t mean it…”
“I k-know, Mom. Don’t cry.”
She slipped a few bills into my pocket.
“Take this—for the first little while. I’ll call you.”
I hugged her and walked out of the apartment where I’d lived my whole life. Father stood in the hallway turned toward the window. He didn’t even glance my way.
The door slammed behind me. I was alone on the stairwell, a bag in my hand, with no idea what to do next.
The first few nights I slept at my only friend Stas’s place, on a folding cot. But I knew it was temporary. I needed housing and work—any work.
I told Alina everything. She listened in silence, then said:
“My grandmother died half a year ago. Her apartment is still there—old, on the outskirts. No one lives there. You can stay for now. For free.”
“Alina, I c-can’t… It’s not right.”
“It’s not right to sleep as a guest,” she snapped. “This is helping a friend. Don’t argue. And you’ll keep an eye on the place.”
That’s how I got a home. A tiny one-room apartment with a sagging sofa and an ancient fridge felt like paradise.
But money was a problem. I took a job as a night watchman at a parking lot—two nights on, two off. They paid pennies, but it covered food. Most importantly, I didn’t have to talk there.
I almost stopped going to university. I slept during the day, and at night, in my guard booth under a dim lamp, I kept studying. Alina brought me notes and assignments.
One day she arrived especially agitated.
“Matvey, I found something out. There’s a man—Arkady Borisovich Zamyatin. A legend of a lawyer. Back in Soviet times he was one of the best criminal defense attorneys. He won several cases everyone thought were hopeless.”
“And w-what?”
“In the nineties he handled some shady political case. Looks like he was framed. They stripped his license, and he left the profession. Now he lives outside the city like a hermit. They say he’s completely drunk himself to death.”
“W-why are you telling me this?”
“Because he doesn’t care about titles, public opinion, or how you speak,” Alina’s eyes blazed. “But he’s a genius. If anyone can teach you something real, it’s him. You have to go.”
It was a crazy idea. But I had nothing left to lose.
That weekend we drove to the address Alina had dug up. An old, crooked house behind a tall fence. A dog barked, and a hoarse voice called out:
“Who the hell is there?”
A tall, gaunt old man stepped onto the porch in a stretched sweater. Unshaven face, cloudy eyes—but in his gaze, the remnants of a once-sharp mind.
“What do you want?”
“Arkady Borisovich?” Alina began. “We’re law students. My friend Matvey wanted to—”
“Can’t help you,” the old man muttered, turning away.
“W-wait!” I stepped forward. The spasm clenched my throat, but I forced the words out. “I… I r-read about your case. The ‘Crystal’ plant case. N-nineteen eighty-eight.”
Zamyatin stopped.
“And?”
“You b-built the defense on… on i-inconsistencies in the inspection protocol. But I th-think the key was… in the expert report. It was f-faked.”
The old man turned slowly and studied me for a long moment.
“You’re not as simple as you look, kid. Where did you learn that? That case was classified.”
“I f-found a mention… in an old ‘Soviet Justice’ journal. And I c-cross-checked the facts.”
He stared at me a few seconds, then wheezed out a laugh.
“A prosecutor’s son kicked out of the house? And stuttering like a broken gramophone?” He shook his head. “That’s a movie. Fine. Come in—since you’re here. But understand this: I’m not a teacher and I won’t babysit you.”
Inside, the house was chaos—books, papers, empty bottles. It smelled of dust and tobacco.
“So you want to become a lawyer,” he said, pouring something from a decanter into a cloudy glass. “Why? Justice?”
“T-to prove.”
“To whom? Your daddy?” He smirked. “Stupid. But a good motivation. Fine. Here,” he tossed me a thick, dusty folder. “Case of old Aunt Nyura from the next village. Her dacha cooperative wants to kick her off her plot because she supposedly seized it illegally. Figure it out, and we’ll talk. Don’t figure it out—get out of my sight.”
I opened the folder. Denials from every office, reports, orders. The case looked utterly hopeless.
For an entire week I barely slept. I sat in my booth surrounded by Aunt Nyura’s documents—reading, comparing, drawing charts. Alina helped me search archives.
It really did look unwinnable. According to the new cadastral plans, the plot belonged to the cooperative. Her old land-allocation papers were considered lost.
“Matvey, maybe we should drop it?” Alina said after we hit another dead end. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“N-no,” I said stubbornly. “There has to be s-something. They’re missing something.”
And I found it—by accident. In a bound volume of an old district newspaper from 1975, I stumbled on a tiny note: “The ‘Red Plowman’ collective farm carried out land reclamation, changing the course of the local stream.”
The stream. That was it.
I ran to the maps. An old prewar map showed the stream in a completely different place. Aunt Nyura’s plot—now “beyond the stream”—had once been “before” it, on village land, not collective-farm land.
The cooperative had grabbed the land, taking advantage of the fact that after the stream changed course, the landmarks shifted, and no one checked the old documents.
Hands shaking, I called Alina.
“I f-found it.”
Two days later I stood on Zamyatin’s porch again. He was sober and even gloomier.
“Well? Giving up?” he asked.
I silently handed him my bundle: the newspaper note, maps from different years, and my conclusion—ten pages long.
He read for a long time, frowning. Then he looked up at me. For the first time I saw something like respect.
“The stream…” He muttered. “Damn it, kid—your head works. And how it works. I looked at this case myself and didn’t see a thing.”
He paced the room.
“Fine. Tomorrow we go to court. You’ll be my representative under a power of attorney.”
“Me?” I froze. “B-but I—”
“I know you stutter. So what? You’ll keep quiet. I’ll talk. You’ll sit next to me and hand me documents. But the judge needs to see who actually dug up this truth.”
The court was small—a district one. The cooperative chairman, smug in an expensive suit, and his lawyer looked down on us: a washed-up old man and a scared student.
Zamyatin spoke brilliantly—laying out facts like a gripping detective story. And when he reached the stream and presented the evidence, our opponents’ faces went long.
At the climax, Zamyatin paused and turned to me.
“And now, Mr. Nefyedov, please hand the court the main document—the diagram showing the boundary changes.”
I stood. Blood surged to my face. I picked up the paper and carried it to the judge’s desk. The cooperative chairman hissed after me:
“And they dragged a stutterer into court… Clowns.”
And then I stopped. Turned to him. And looking him straight in the eye, I said—slowly, with effort, but clearly:
“Th-this ‘st-stutterer’ found what your ‘l-lawyer’ missed. And n-now you’ll return the old woman her land. And p-pay all costs.”
Dead silence fell. The judge stared at me. Zamyatin’s mustache twitched with a smile.
We won.
Outside the courthouse, Alina threw her arms around my neck.
“Matvey! You did it! You said it!”
I stood there smiling. For the first time in many years, I didn’t feel like “a stutterer.” I felt like a person worth something.
The victory in Aunt Nyura’s case became my small legend. Zamyatin began trusting me with harder cases. I didn’t speak in court, but I built the entire evidentiary foundation. I learned to “speak” through documents, facts, and proof. My stutter made me ten times more attentive and meticulous than any other lawyer.
Alina and I moved in together. Her small apartment became our world—the complete opposite of my parents’ cold mansion. Mom called me in secret, crying into the phone, retelling how furious Father was.
And then thunder struck.
One evening Alina burst into the apartment, white as a sheet.
“Matvey—turn on the news!”
On screen was a courtroom report. My father, Igor Petrovich Nefyedov, stood inside the defendant’s cage. The announcer said in a flat voice: “Senior Counselor of Justice detained on suspicion of accepting a bribe on an especially large scale. According to investigators, Nefyedov received money to terminate a criminal case against a major businessman.”
I stared at the screen and couldn’t believe my eyes.
Father. In a cage.
“Th-that’s impossible,” I whispered. “He… he could be h-harsh, unfair… but n-not a bribe-taker. Never.”
“He was set up,” Alina said. “It’s obvious. Too loud, too theatrical an arrest. Someone decided to remove him.”
That night Mom called, sobbing.
“Matvey, son… you have to help him! The lawyer they gave us says the case is hopeless. The evidence is ironclad: marked bills were found in his office safe. No one wants to take it. Everyone’s afraid.”
“I… I d-don’t know, Mom…”
“You’re his only hope!” she screamed into the phone. “Please, forget the insults! He’s your father!”
I hung up and sat in silence for a long time. Hurt, anger, pain—everything that had piled up for years battled inside me against a son’s duty. He threw me out. He called me a disgrace. And now I was supposed to save him?
“What will you do?” Alina asked quietly.
“I d-don’t know.”
The next day I went to Zamyatin. He already knew.
“Well, prosecutor’s son—time to pay your debts?” he asked, without his usual smirk.
“I h-have to help him.”
“Have to?” he scoffed. “After everything he did to you? Interesting morals you’ve got.”
“He’s m-my father.”
Zamyatin studied me for a long time, then sighed heavily.
“It’s a nasty case. I looked through what leaked to the press. A frame-up, clean and masterful. To get him out, you have to find who organized it. Which means going against the whole system. You ready?”
I nodded.
“Then listen. You need to get to him as a public defender. He’ll refuse, scream, humiliate you. But you have to push through. You’re the only one who can see what everyone else will miss. Because you know him better than anyone. And because you have nothing left to lose.”
Meeting Father in the detention center felt like a horror film. He sat behind glass, older, hollow-cheeked, but with the same arrogant stare.
“You?” he hissed into the phone. “Why are you here? To laugh? To watch my shame?”
“I c-came to help.”
“I don’t need help from a stutterer!” he screamed so loudly the guard flinched. “Get out! I’d rather rot in prison than let you defend me! You’ll disgrace me completely!”
“You h-have no choice,” I said as calmly as I could. “N-no one else will take the case. And I k-know you’re i-innocent.”
He looked at me with hatred. But deep in his eyes I saw fear for the first time. He was cornered.
“Do whatever you want,” he spat and hung up.
That was consent.
Zamyatin, Alina, and I worked around the clock. I dove into the case materials with an obsession only I was capable of. Every protocol, every witness statement, every surveillance video—I watched and read dozens of times.
As always, the key was in the details. The search report stated the safe was opened at 14:30. But on the corridor camera footage I noticed something strange: at 14:10 my father’s assistant—a young career climber named Kravtsov—left the office carrying an unnaturally thick folder. Five minutes later he returned with a thin one.
“He t-took something out,” I told Zamyatin. “And th-then put something back.”
Then more surfaced. We learned Kravtsov suddenly had money for an expensive new car. And his uncle held a high position in a competing structure that had long wanted to remove my father. The picture began to form: Kravtsov planted the marked bills in the safe, and swapped out the real case file my father was building against a businessman connected to the uncle—replacing it with a dummy.
But it was still circumstantial. We needed a bomb.
And I found it.
The file contained a flash drive with an audio recording allegedly proving my father’s collusion. The voice sounded similar—but I’d heard it my whole life. I knew his intonations. I realized: the recording was edited—professionally. But in one place, for a split second, there was an extra sound: a click. Very quiet.
I gave it to a sound engineer I knew. His verdict was clear: the click was the sound of a very rare lighter model—exactly the kind Kravtsov used. I’d seen it in his hand a hundred times.
Court. I sit next to Zamyatin. My father, in the “aquarium,” stares into nothing. He’s already accepted the sentence.
Zamyatin finishes his argument and suddenly says:
“And now, Your Honor, I ask that you give the floor to my assistant, Matvey Igorovich Nefyedov. He will present the court with the key piece of evidence.”
A whisper rippled through the courtroom. My father looked at me with pure terror. He was sure I would ruin everything.
I walked to the lectern. My heart pounded in my throat. I took a deep breath.
“Y-your Honor…” I began, and a chuckle passed through the room.
I closed my eyes. I thought of Alina, of Zamyatin, of Aunt Nyura. And of my father—the father who once taught me to ride a bike.
And I started speaking. Slowly. Stumbling. But speaking. I told them about the folder. The car. The uncle. And finally—the lighter. I played the audio, and in the ringing silence of the courtroom, that barely audible click sounded out.
“Th-this lighter…” I pulled an identical one from my pocket—Alina had managed to buy it online. “…b-belongs to the prosecution’s witness, A-Arseny Kravtsov.”
Kravtsov, sitting in the courtroom, went pale. Every eye swung toward him. He sprang up, trying to shout something, but officers were already grabbing his arms.
The case collapsed. My father was acquitted right there in the courtroom.
When they removed the handcuffs, he walked up to me. Reporters formed a tight ring around us. He looked at me for a long time, then said softly—so only I could hear:
“Thank you, son. Forgive me.”
I only nodded.
Two years passed. I graduated with honors. Zamyatin and I opened our own small practice. I still stutter. But now no one notices. Clients come to me because they know: if Nefyedov takes a case, he’ll dig down to the core.
Father retired. We see each other rarely. He tries to repair things—calls, invites me over. But there’s still a wall between us made of the past.
Alina and I got married. We’re expecting a baby. Sometimes in the evenings, when we sit in the kitchen in our little apartment, she asks:
“Are you happy, Matvey?”
“Y-yes,” I answer—without a stutter. And it’s the pure truth
