Chapter 6 - The Emergency Petition
Teresa Vance’s office occupied the twenty-fourth floor of a glass tower in downtown Dallas.
Ms. Vance was fifty-five years old, wore a tailored gray wool suit, and had spent twelve years as a senior prosecutor in the Texas Attorney General’s White-Collar Crime Division before entering private practice.
She sat behind her wide oak desk, her reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose, reviewing the transcripts her paralegal had typed up from my audio recording over the past three hours.
On the table between us sat my cashier's check, the PDF attachments Mason had emailed my father, and a flash drive containing the raw digital audio file with its original metadata untouched.
"This is incredible," Ms. Vance said softly, leaning back in her leather chair and taking off her glasses. "Simply incredible."
"Is the recording legal in Texas?" I asked, my fingers tight in my lap. "I know some states require both parties to consent to being recorded."
Ms. Vance smiled—a thin, sharp expression that reminded me of a shark catching the scent of blood in open water.
"Texas is a one-party consent state under Texas Penal Code Section 16.02," she explained clearly. "As long as one party to the conversation consents to the recording, it is entirely lawful. Since you were present in the bedroom, in the car, and at the breakfast table, you were a party to the ambient environment. Furthermore, because the recording captures active evidence of an ongoing criminal conspiracy to commit bank fraud and grand larceny, it is fully admissible in both civil and criminal proceedings."
She tapped her pen against the file folder.
"Here is what we are dealing with, Valerie," she continued. "Mason Cardenas and his father’s company are under severe financial distress. First Texas Capital issued a formal Notice of Default on their Westlake commercial development three weeks ago. They owed $450,000 in immediate cash reserves or equivalent cross-collateral by five o'clock this afternoon to avoid foreclosure and a referral to the State Banking Commission for loan application fraud."
"So the wedding wasn't just a marriage," I said. "It was a financial rescue operation."
"Precisely," Vance said. "Mason targeted you because your father’s business owns its commercial property outright—no mortgage, no liens, valued at roughly $1.2 million in current Plano real estate prices. By tying your father’s property to their defaulted note via a fraudulent guaranty, they could satisfy First Texas Capital’s collateral requirements and buy themselves another six months to strip assets from their shell companies."
She stood up, walked to her door, and called out to her senior associate.
"Marcus! Bring in the emergency filings for Judge Miller’s court."
She turned back to us. "We are filing three separate actions within the hour:
"First: An Emergency Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and Temporary Injunction against Mason Cardenas, Linda Cardenas, and Cardenas Development, prohibiting them from contacting you, approaching your family, or attempting any financial transactions using your name or your father's business.
"Second: A Petition for Annulment of Marriage under Texas Family Code Section 6.102, based on fraud, misrepresentation, and duress. Because the marriage was never consummated and was entered into entirely under fraudulent pretenses, we will have this marriage legally erased as if it never existed.
"Third: A formal criminal complaint accompanied by the digital audio files delivered directly to the Financial Crimes Unit of the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Dallas Field Office."
My mother let out a long breath, clutching my hand tightly. "Can they fight the annulment?"
May you like
Ms. Vance picked up her pen and signed her name with a sharp, decisive flourish at the bottom of the petition.
"With this audio recording?" Vance laughed softly. "They won't be fighting the annulment, Mrs. Ortega. They’re going to be fighting to stay out of federal prison."
