Chapter 22 - The Women He Chose
Rachel, Melissa, Catherine, and Sophie met once.
No cameras.
No reporters.
No lawyers at the table.
Just four women in a private room at a restaurant Rachel chose.
I did not attend.
Sophie told me about it later.
At first, they compared stories.
The repetition was almost absurd.
Mason loved coffee.
Mason said his mother was dead.
Mason had a father who “taught him never to depend on anyone.”
Mason hated controlling parents.
Mason admired independent women.
Mason wanted a simple life.
Mason hated talking about money.
That last one made all four of them laugh.
Then they compared differences.
With Rachel, he acted ambitious.
With Melissa, artistic.
With Catherine, spiritual.
With Sophie, grounded and family-oriented.
“He became the answer to whatever question the woman was asking,” Sophie told me.
“Did that make you feel better?”
“No.”
“Worse?”
“Different.”
Rachel’s family lost money.
Melissa had taken loans to support a business Mason claimed they would run together.
Catherine caught Erica searching her office and forced Mason into a settlement in exchange for ending the relationship quietly.
For years, Catherine felt guilty for taking the money.
Sophie told her not to.
“You got out.”
Catherine responded, “But he went to you.”
That was the burden each woman carried.
If I had exposed him.
If I had called.
If I had fought harder.
If I had warned the next person.
Sophie understood that disease.
Blame traveling backward.
They decided to stop feeding it.
Each woman gave investigators what she had.
Messages.
Contracts.
Bank records.
Old photographs.
Mason had survived partly because every relationship looked isolated.
Now they were one record.
The pattern became undeniable.
The emotional revenge Sophie wanted arrived quietly.
Not in court.
Not when Mason was handcuffed.
It came when his strategy stopped being unique.
He had told every woman she was special.
Then targeted her through the same machinery.
The fraud depended on each victim believing her experience was private.
Once they spoke to each other, his power shrank.
Patricia eventually reached a plea agreement on financial and document-related charges.
She did not apologize.
At sentencing, she said she had “made mistakes trying to help her children.”
I wanted to throw something.
Sophie squeezed my hand.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
Erica’s agreement required testimony against Mason.
She appeared in court months later.
Sophie watched.
Erica admitted blocking the kitchen door.
Admitted knowing a confrontation was planned.
Admitted she kept participating after understanding Mason’s target strategy.
Then the prosecutor asked why she finally saved evidence.
“To protect myself.”
No hero narrative.
No redemption.
Just truth.
That mattered.
Mason’s attorney attacked her.
“You lied for years.”
“Yes.”
“You committed fraud.”
“Yes.”
“You helped manipulate women.”
“Yes.”
“And now you expect this court to believe you?”
Erica looked at Mason.
“No.”
The attorney frowned.
She continued.
“I expect you to believe the recordings.”
That sentence ended the exchange better than any speech could.
The evidence did not depend on Erica becoming a good person.
That was its strength.
The recovered files contained Mason’s own words.
His plans.
His edits.
His financial transfers.
His reactions.
His lies in sequence.
By the time the main criminal case approached resolution, Mason faced enough exposure that his attorney reopened plea negotiations.
Sophie surprised me.
“I hope he takes it.”
“You don’t want trial?”
“I want it over.”
Months earlier, she had wanted every detail publicly proved.
Now she understood another cost.
A trial would require reliving everything.
Cross-examination.
Photos.
Ava’s kitchen footage.
Years of appeals and uncertainty.
A plea could still bring serious consequences without requiring the family to build its future around Mason’s courtroom calendar.
“What if people think he got away with something?”
Sophie looked at me.
“People always think something.”
I smiled.
“You really are thirty now.”
“I’m twenty-nine.”
“Emotionally thirty.”
“That’s insulting.”
Mason eventually agreed to plead guilty to a package of fraud, conspiracy, unlawful surveillance, assault-related, and child-endangerment offenses, with additional financial counts resolved as part of the agreement.
The exact sentence would be left to the judge within a negotiated range.
He did not plead guilty because he became remorseful.
He did it because the evidence had made his alternatives worse.
At the plea hearing, the judge asked him whether he understood that by pleading guilty he was admitting the factual basis for the charges.
Mason said yes.
The judge asked whether anyone had forced him.
“No.”
“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?”
A long pause.
His attorney touched his arm.
Mason looked toward the gallery.
Toward Sophie.
She did not look away.
“Yes,” he said.
One word.
May you like
Not enough to repair anything.
Enough to end the lie.
