Chapter 3: The Word That Unlocks Everything
Grace didn't move.
Her eyes stayed on the bag.
"Don't touch it," I said.
"Don't go near it."
"But it has your name—"
"I know." I pushed myself up against the pillow.
My ribs screamed.
"That bottle is the reason I need you to find Dr.
Haan right now.
Before Veronica comes back for it."
Grace turned from the bag and looked at me.
Something had shifted in her face.
The trembling had stopped.
Her jaw was set.
"The word is Castello," I said.
"Say it back to me."
"Castello."
"Tell him only that.
He'll take it from there."
She nodded once and slipped out the door.
I lay still and watched the bag.
The orange bottle sat half-visible above the leather edge.
The label faced outward.
My full name in black print.
Below it, a prescription date from three days ago.
Below that, a doctor's name I didn't recognize.
Dr.
P.
Voss.
I had never heard of a Dr.
P.
Voss.
Six minutes passed.
Then the door opened and a man in a white coat stepped in, pulling it shut behind him.
He was in his late fifties, silver at the temples, with the kind of face that gave nothing away.
He looked at me for a long moment.
"You look terrible," Dr.
Haan said.
"I feel worse."
He crossed the room, checked the corridor window, and pulled a chair to my bedside.
"Grace said Castello.
That's the first time I've heard that word in eleven years." He sat down.
"Your father used it the night before he died."
That landed somewhere deep.
"He told you?"
"He told me if anyone ever said that word to me inside a hospital room, it meant the Moretti name was in danger and I was the only person left who could be trusted." Dr.
Haan folded his hands.
"So.
Tell me what's happening."
I told him.
All of it.
The brakes.
Nico.
The five days of silence.
Anthony.
The lawyer.
The politician.
And Veronica — her words, her visits, the man named Roland, and the instruction to make it look natural.
Dr.
Haan listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he stood and walked to the chair by the window.
He studied the bag without touching it.
"A prescription bottle with your name on it that you never received," he said quietly.
"In your fiancée's handbag."
"Yes."
He turned.
"Dominic.
If that bottle contains what I think it contains, someone with medical access helped her.
This didn't come from a street corner.
The label, the format, the prescription date — that takes someone on the inside."
"Dr.
P.
Voss," I said.
His expression didn't change.
But his hand went to the back of the chair.
"You know that name," I said.
"He was suspended from New York-Presbyterian four years ago." Dr.
Haan's voice was very even.
"Overprescription.
Two patient complaints that were quietly settled.
He still holds a license, technically." A pause.
"He does private work now.
For people who can afford discretion."
The room felt smaller.
"She hired a disgraced doctor to prescribe something that would finish what the crash didn't."
"That's what the evidence suggests." Dr.
Haan moved toward the door.
"I'm going to have that bottle collected by someone I trust personally.
Not hospital security.
Not administration." He stopped with his hand on the frame.
"And Dominic — no one can know you're awake.
Not yet.
Not until we know how far this goes."
"How far do you think it goes?"
He looked back at me.
"Your father asked me the same question, the night before he died." He opened the door.
"I didn't have an answer for him either."
He was gone before I could ask what he meant.
I stared at the ceiling.
The white lilies Grace had replaced sat in their vase beside the bed.
She was right.
They did smell like a funeral home pretending to be a wedding.
My father.
The word Castello.
May you like
Eleven years ago.
I had always been told my father died of a heart attack.
