The state’s lab confirmed the tampered cup for exactly what it was.
There was, by the end, simply nothing left of the man’s story.
Judge Valdes did not merely rule against him.
She took him apart.
She invalidated every lien Damian had ever placed on my father’s property.
She voided Karla’s fraudulent note.
She awarded me the full marital estate and what remained of the dealership’s inventory, and ordered full restitution, and then she handed the whole file to the state prosecutors for wire fraud, forgery, attempted poisoning, and elder abuse.
The criminal side moved quickly after that.
Ramona was indicted as a co-conspirator.
Efrain was arrested on federal racketeering and extortion charges — and when federal agents searched one of his properties, they found deeds from a dozen other families Damian had helped him hollow out over the years, which told me the thing I’d already begun to suspect: I had not even been his only long con.
Just his longest.
Damian lost the dealership.
The marshals took the luxury cars.
He was sentenced to twelve years in a federal penitentiary, and the man who had always needed to be the smartest one in the room went to work in a prison auto yard, turning wrenches, which was, I’ll admit, the one poetic thing in the entire affair — a con man who’d spent his life avoiding honest labor, sentenced to it at last.