Chapter 6 - The Fall of Mason
The news of the arrests at Rivera Medical Supply hit the San Jose business journals by late afternoon.
SAN JOSE MEDICAL MOGUL'S MOTHER AND BROTHER ARRESTED IN DRAMATIC BOARDROOM FRAUD AND ASSAULT SCHEME.
The article included high-resolution stills from the security footage—stills of Mason opening the safe with a signal duplicator and Rosalind striking my wife. The public humiliation was absolute. The elite social circles in San Diego that my mother had spent decades trying to impress immediately revoked her memberships and scrubbed her name from their charity boards.
By Saturday morning, Mason was sitting in a orange jumpsuit behind the glass barrier at the Santa Clara County Main Jail.
I walked into the visitation room carrying a single envelope.
Mason looked defeated. His manicured hair was matted, his eyes bloodshot, his hands trembling as he picked up the gray plastic telephone receiver on his side of the glass.
"Mateo," Mason begged the moment I put the phone to my ear. "You have to post bail for me. Please, man! The public defender says because of the grand larceny and corporate extortion charges, the judge set bail at one point five million dollars! I don't have that kind of money!"
"Where is the five hundred thousand in cash you took from my safe, Mason?" I asked calmly.
Mason swallowed hard, looking down at the metal table. "It's... it's gone, Mateo."
"Gone? It was five hundred thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. You took it four days ago."
"I owed money to a private lending syndicate down in Los Angeles," Mason confessed, his voice shaking. "I leveraged two hundred thousand of it to secure the bridge loan for the bank notes from Pacific Commerce. The rest... the bookies took it the night before we came to your house. Mateo, if I don't pay back the syndicate, they’re going to come after me inside here!"
I looked at my younger brother—a man I had bailed out of debt three times over the last decade, a man I had given a monthly allowance to so he could "find himself"—and felt nothing but pity mixed with profound disgust.
"You traded your brother, your sister-in-law, and your unborn nephew for a gambling debt," I said softly.
"Mom told me it was safe!" Mason cried out, pressing his hand against the glass. "Mom said you were soft! She said Daphne was manipulating you and that if we took the company, you’d eventually forgive us because we’re family! She planned the whole thing, Mateo! She was the one who hired the locksmith to track your biometric card code!"
"You're thirty-two years old, Mason," I told him. "You're not a child. You made a choice."
I took the envelope I had brought with me and pressed it against the glass.
"What is that?" Mason asked, his eyes wide with desperate hope. "Bail papers?"
"No," I replied. "It's a formal notice of civil litigation from the Lumen Heritage Trust. We are suing you and Rosalind individually for five million dollars in damages for corporate disruption, tortious interference, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Any asset registered under your name—including your sports car, your motel holdings, and your future inheritance from our father's estate—has been frozen by court order."
Mason’s face went completely blank. The phone slipped slightly in his hand. "You're... you're ruining me, Mateo."
"You ruined yourself the moment you walked into my home and called my wife a servant," I said. "Enjoy your trial, Mason."
I hung up the receiver, stood up, and walked out of the visitation room without looking back. Behind the glass, Mason began pounding his fists against the partition, screaming my name until the guards dragged him backward into the corridor.
When I stepped outside into the bright morning sunlight, Harrison Vance was waiting for me beside my car.
"How did he take it?" Harrison asked.
"He blamed our mother for everything," I said, leaning against the car door. "How is Rosalind doing in her cell?"
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"Her high-priced San Diego lawyers tried to file for emergency medical bail this morning, claiming high blood pressure and cardiac distress," Harrison smiled grimly. "The court-appointed physician examined her an hour ago. Her blood pressure is completely normal. The judge denied the motion. She’s remaining in custody until her preliminary hearing on Tuesday."
"Good," I said. "Now let's go check on Daphne."
