Chapter 6 - SUBJECT ZERO
Dominic turned toward his mother.
Teresa sat perfectly still.
“Mom?”
She stared at the ledger.
“I didn’t know they called me that.”
“But you knew you were in the study.”
Teresa nodded.
The truth went back farther than anyone realized.
Before Rosewood.
Before Hannah’s mother disappeared.
Before Dominic had built his father’s businesses into an empire.
Twenty-one years earlier, Teresa had suffered complications after heart surgery.
Keller offered her access to an experimental medication that might reduce inflammation and improve recovery.
“It was legitimate then,” Teresa said. “Or I thought it was.”
Carlo signed the consent paperwork.
Teresa improved dramatically.
Santoro saw an opportunity.
“If one wealthy patient responded well,” Evelyn explained, “he believed the compound could become enormously valuable.”
The original research expanded.
Controls weakened.
Consent became vague.
Then disappeared.
Teresa looked at Hannah.
“Your mother discovered it.”
Hannah finally understood why Teresa had remembered Evelyn after eighteen years.
Evelyn had been the laboratory employee who warned her.
“She told me my blood results were being used beyond what I’d agreed to.”
“And you helped her?”
“Eventually.”
The word hurt.
Teresa didn’t hide from it.
“Not quickly enough.”
That was why she had secretly brought Hannah to Rosewood years later.
She had seen Hannah’s application in a stack of kitchen candidates and recognized the surname.
Then she saw the photograph attached.
Evelyn’s eyes.
“I thought if you were close, I could protect you while I found out whether you were Evelyn’s daughter.”
Hannah shook her head.
“You brought me into the same place these people were operating.”
“I didn’t know Rosewood had become another trial site.”
“But when you realized?”
“I tried to get evidence before frightening you.”
Hannah laughed bitterly.
“Everyone keeps protecting me by not telling me anything.”
Teresa accepted the blow.
“You’re right.”
Dominic sat beside his mother.
“What happened to Subject Zero?”
Teresa rubbed her hands.
“Tremors. Memory gaps. Heart rhythm problems.”
Hannah had seen all three during Teresa’s time at Rosewood.
Everyone had blamed age.
Keller had blamed age.
The thought made Hannah furious.
The original compound had never disappeared.
It had evolved into the blue pills.
Rosewood’s residents were not random victims.
They were the latest stage of a twenty-one-year experiment built from Teresa’s initial response.
That explained why Santoro had chosen Rosewood.
Access to Teresa.
Access to elderly residents.
Access to Romano money.
And eventually, access to Hannah.
“Why Hannah?” Dominic asked.
Evelyn answered.
“Because Hannah saw Keller attack Dr. Price. And because I hid the original lab reference inside something Hannah carried out of the hospital.”
Hannah touched the moon necklace.
Evelyn nodded.
“The pendant.”
Dominic opened it carefully.
Inside the moon was a tiny rolled strip of film.
Microfilm.
Vanessa stared.
“You carried that around?”
“Until I lost it.”
“You didn’t lose it,” Evelyn said. “Carlo took it.”
To protect her.
Hannah looked at the necklace differently.
Carlo Romano, a man she barely remembered, had spent his final years preserving a sixteen-year-old girl’s evidence.
They found an old microfilm reader in Rosewood’s administrative archive.
The strip contained photographs of original lab pages.
Drug formulations.
Adverse events.
And a handwritten memo signed by Keller.
Subject Zero response demonstrates commercial viability despite neurological complications. Recommend expanded geriatric cohort.
Dominic’s hands tightened.
“He knew what it did to her.”
“Yes,” Hannah said.
“And kept going.”
A second memo contained Santoro’s signature approving funding.
There it was.
Medical responsibility.
Financial responsibility.
Together.
But one page was missing.
The formula ownership page.
Without it, Santoro could argue that another company controlled the research.
Vanessa examined the frame numbers.
“Page twelve.”
Evelyn nodded.
“Dr. Price took it.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Eric, standing near the doorway, finally spoke.
“I might.”
Everyone turned.
For years Eric had performed small tasks for Vanessa without understanding the entire operation.
Three weeks earlier, she had sent him to deliver groceries to an elderly man living under the name Samuel Pierce.
“Where?” Hannah asked.
“Lakewood.”
Dominic sent security.
Forty minutes later they returned with surprising news.
The apartment was empty.
But not abandoned.
On the kitchen table sat a newspaper from that morning.
Beside it was a hearing aid case.
Inside was a folded note addressed to Evelyn.
MARTIN KNOWS I’M ALIVE. I’M GOING BACK TO WHERE WE STARTED.
Hannah knew immediately.
“St. Matthew’s.”
The original hospital had closed twelve years earlier.
Most of it had been demolished.
One outpatient building remained, now used for medical storage.
Dominic looked at Hannah.
“You’re staying here.”
She stared at him.
“No.”
“Hannah—”
“Do not become the next person who decides what I’m allowed to know.”
That stopped him.
He nodded once.
“Fair.”
They drove together.
Not as mafia boss and chef.
Not rescuer and victim.
As two people whose families had been trapped inside the same lie.
At the old hospital, Hannah found the corridor from her memory.
The vending machines were gone.
The blue symbol remained faintly visible beneath peeling paint.
Then she saw a wheelchair.
An elderly man sat beside the former laboratory entrance.
Evelyn stopped.
“Sam.”
Dr. Samuel Price looked up.
His eyes filled.
“You made it.”
Evelyn crossed the hallway and embraced him.
Hannah watched her mother hold someone she had mourned for eighteen years.
Price then looked at Hannah.
“You got tall.”
Despite herself, Hannah laughed through tears.
“You remember me?”
“You threw a juice box at Keller.”
“That sounds like me.”
“It was.”
Then Price’s smile vanished.
“We don’t have much time.”
He removed a fountain pen from his coat.
Inside its barrel was a tightly rolled piece of paper.
Page twelve.
The ownership agreement.
Santoro and Keller jointly controlled the experimental intellectual property through a shell company.
Dominic exhaled.
“This finishes it.”
“No,” Price said.
Everyone looked at him.
“This proves what they did eighteen years ago.”
He pointed toward Rosewood’s direction.
“It doesn’t prove what they did tonight.”
Hannah frowned.
“The vials. The pills. The resident records—”
“Can be blamed on employees. Contractors. Vanessa. Even Dominic.”
Price looked directly at her.
“You need the current master log.”
“Where is it?”
Price’s face darkened.
“Keller keeps it with the one thing he never trusted Santoro to hold.”
“What?”
“The adverse-response archive.”
Evelyn whispered, “Where?”
Price pointed down the corridor.
“At Rosewood.”
Dominic frowned.
“We searched the records room.”
“It isn’t in the records room.”
Price looked at Hannah.
“It’s in the kitchen.”
Hannah stared.
“My kitchen?”
Price nodded.
“Keller built the archive there because no one investigates a freezer that belongs to a chef.”
Hannah suddenly remembered something.
A freezer that maintenance had forbidden her to unplug.
A freezer that never held food.
And a temperature alarm only Keller could reset.
Her phone showed a Rosewood security alert.
May you like
The freezer temperature had just begun rising.
Someone was destroying the evidence.
