Chapter 4 - THE MAN WHO TOLD ME I WAS DOING THE RIGHT THING
Thomas Weller lived in Scottsdale.
He had left venture investing.
Married.
Two children.
Beautiful house.
Clean public biography.
No mention of the twenty-two-year-old founder he impregnated, manipulated, and left behind.
Dana located him.
We did not confront him at his home.
We sent counsel.
His first response:
He had done nothing wrong.
His second:
All adoption documents were valid.
His third:
He had no recollection of Samuel Keene beyond a referral.
Then Rebecca found a payment.
From a company controlled by Vivian Kane.
To an entity associated with Thomas.
$350,000.
Three weeks after Evan’s birth.
Not labeled:
BUY BABY.
Of course not.
Consulting agreement.
Strategic advisory services.
The company had never actually used Thomas as an adviser.
Adrian stared at the bank record for almost a minute.
Then said:
“I want to kill him.”
Rebecca replied:
“No.”
Adrian looked at her.
She did not flinch.
“We handle this through evidence.”
I liked her.
Records began arriving through subpoenas and consent where available.
The picture that emerged was ugly.
Thomas had contacted Keene before I gave birth.
Keene had relationships with private adoption facilitators.
Vivian Kane had contacted Keene separately while desperate for a child.
Somehow those two paths met.
My original hospital documents included a consent to adoption.
But the version later filed with the court differed from the copy preserved in a hospital archive.
My copy had language providing for revocation rights under applicable law and identifying an agency.
The filed version contained additional acknowledgments and a different witnessing page.
My signature looked real.
Because part of it was.
Other pages appeared assembled later.
Worse:
The adoption agency named in my documents had no record of ever taking custody.
Dana said:
“This is where it becomes very serious.”
The hospital social worker testified later that she believed an outside agency was handling placement.
The agency believed the placement had been canceled before intake.
Keene’s records claimed a private placement proceeded directly.
Too many gaps.
Then Thomas agreed to a deposition.
Not because he wanted truth.
Because the records were closing around him.
I watched remotely.
Dana asked:
“Did Emily Carter tell you she wanted to raise her child?”
Thomas sighed.
“She was emotional.”
“Did she?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell her she could not afford a child?”
“I told her the truth.”
“Did you tell her her company investors would withdraw if she kept the baby?”
He paused.
“Yes.”
That was new.
My stomach turned.
Dana asked:
“Was that true?”
“I believed it.”
“Which investors told you that?”
Silence.
“Name one.”
He could not.
Then:
“Did you receive $350,000 from a company associated with Vivian Kane?”
“It was consulting compensation.”
“What consulting?”
“Business strategy.”
“For what business?”
“I don’t recall.”
Dana stared at him.
Then:
“Did that payment have anything to do with placement of Emily Carter’s infant son?”
“No.”
“Did you introduce Samuel Keene to Vivian Kane?”
Thomas hesitated.
“I may have.”
There.
Not proof of everything.
Enough to keep digging.
When the deposition ended, I sat motionless.
Hannah asked:
“You okay?”
“No.”
Again, the useful answer.
Thomas had spent seven years inside my memory as the man who made a cruel decision seem responsible.
Now I understood something worse.
He may have profited from it.
That changed my grief into something sharper.
But Dana warned me:
“We still prove what we can prove.”
Not what feels obvious.
May you like
That distinction became the spine of the case.
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