Chapter 7 - The Final Plea
Two months later, I received an official notice from the county jail.
Frank Rossi’s legal counsel had submitted a formal request for a pre-trial disposition meeting. He had requested twenty minutes alone with me in the attorney consultation room before entering a formal guilty plea.
Daniel advised me against going. "You don't owe him a single second of your time, Clara. The state has enough evidence to put him away for fifteen years."
"I know," I replied quietly. "But I need to close the book myself."
Dominic drove me to the facility, waiting quietly in the high-security visitor lobby while I walked into the consultation room flanked by two guards.
I sat down at the heavy wooden table.
A moment later, the side door opened, and Frank stepped inside. He wore an orange jumpsuit, wrists cuffed to a belly chain. He looked twenty years older—his hair thin and unwashed, his face gaunt, his eyes sunken and hollow. The arrogant lieutenant who had thrown crystal glasses and ordered scotch was completely gone.
He sat down across from me, his chains clinking against the wooden table.
"Clara," Frank rasped, his voice trembling as he looked at me. I wore a crisp cream wool coat and a simple gold necklace—looking every bit the sovereign CEO of the Rossi Trust. "Thank God you came."
"You have ten minutes, Frank," I said, my voice cool and even. "Say what you brought me here to say."
Frank leaned forward as far as his chains allowed, tears welling in his red-rimmed eyes. "Clara... you have to help me. The public defender they gave me is useless! They’re talking about twelve years in maximum security! At my age, I’ll die in there!"
"You should have thought about your age before you signed a contract transferring a human being in satisfaction of a gambling debt," I said without a trace of pity.
"It was Arban!" Frank sobbed, wiping his nose with his sleeve. "He threatened me! He said he’d burn the house down if I didn't give him three million! I was desperate, Clara! I did it to protect your mother! I did it to protect the family!"
I let out a soft, humorless laugh. "You did it to protect your own skin, Frank. You spent six years embezzling my grandmother’s money, and when you ran out of funds, you tried to sacrifice your daughter."
"I was wrong!" Frank cried out, pressing his cuffed hands against the table. "I admit it! I was a terrible father! But I’m still your father, Clara! Blood has to mean something! If you tell the prosecutor you forgive me, if you drop the civil asset forfeiture, I can get probation! I can start over!"
I looked at him—at his pathetic, desperate tears—and realized that even now, sitting in a prison jumpsuit, he didn't feel a single drop of genuine remorse for what he had done to me. He only regretted that he had gotten caught.
"Blood gave me my name, Frank," I said, standing up slowly from my chair. "But my grandmother gave me my character. And you gave me the motivation to ensure that men like you never hurt another woman again."
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"Clara! Please!" Frank screamed, struggling against his belly chain as the guards stepped forward to hold him down. "Don't leave me in here! Clara!"
I turned my back on him and walked out of the room, his desperate, echoing pleas dying against the heavy steel door as it clicked shut behind me forever.
