The Cost Of Desire

Chapter One

This part of the city always smelled like rain and century-old secrets.

From the pier where I have been standing for a few minutes now, I could see the harbour lights dragging thin silver paths across the water. They trembled whenever the wind picked up, as though even the light here wasn’t brave enough to hold steady. The wooden boards beneath my leather boots creaked, damp with last night’s storm, and the air clung to my skin like a warning.

Timothy Cruze’s body had been found here, floating between rust-bitten pilings and a fishing boat with its paint curling away. That was a week ago. A week, and yet the scent of salt and diesel still seemed sharper here, as if the water itself remembered him.

I pulled my collar higher against the wind.

It was late, way too late for anyone but drunks, fishermen, and those with reasons to be where they shouldn’t. I had reasons. They were folded in my notebook, wedged between shorthand that only I could read, and in the restless knot at the back of my mind that wouldn’t let me sleep.

Cynthia had warned me earlier today before reluctantly handing over the case to me.

"This isn’t a story, Tess. It’s a sinkhole. You fall in, you don’t climb out."

She didn’t understand, or maybe she did, and that’s why she’d tried to stop me. There’s a certain kind of itch in the blood for people like me when it comes to stories like this. Once you’ve pulled on a thread, you just have to keep going until it unravels completely, even if it cuts your fingers wide open.

I crouched near the edge of the pier, squinting into the water. The police report had been extremely vague, a masterclass in omission. “Accidental drowning.” That was the official word. No mention of the bruises on his ribs. No mention of the way his wallet had been emptied but his watch left untouched, which was an insultingly bad attempt at staging a mugging, by the way.

And certainly, no mention of Alexander Cole.

I’d only heard his name once before, in a whisper from a bartender who’d made me promise several times not to print it. The kind of promise you know you’ll break the second you smell a bigger truth. Alexander Cole was the kind of man whose face didn’t need to be in the papers for people to recognize him. Wealth like his didn’t need a spotlight; it built its own shadows.

A car door slammed behind me.

The sound was sharp in the stillness, ricocheting off the warehouses lining the street. I straightened, my pulse picking up, every nerve tuning to the rhythm of approaching footsteps.

"Late night for a walk," a gruff voice I didn’t recognize said.

I turned slowly. A man stood just beyond the edge of the pier’s light, tall enough that the shadows cut across his face. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could feel them crawling all over me with quiet assessment, the kind that makes you aware of every movement you’ve ever made.

"I like the view," I said, slipping my hands into my coat pockets. My voice was steady. It had to be.

He then stepped forward, letting the sodium-vapor light catch his features. He had broad shoulders and a sharp jaw. And those steel-grey eyes were exactly as I’d imagined them. The photos I’d seen of him hadn’t done them justice; they didn’t capture the way they pinned you, as if you were a single line in a book he’d already read.

"Journalist," he said, the word sounding more like an accusation than a fact. "Tessa Green."

Hearing my name in his mouth sent a flicker of heat down my spine, and this was not the good kind of heat.

"And you’re…?" I already knew. But sometimes you ask a question just to hear the answer.

"Alexander Cole." He didn’t extend his hand. Didn’t need to. His presence was introduction enough.

The wind picked up again, carrying the faint scent of rich smoke from his coat.

"You’ve been asking annoying questions about Timothy Cruze," he said again.

I held his gaze; it was hard. "That’s what I do. Ask questions. Part of my job description."

"Some questions," he said, almost idly, "have a cost."

He didn’t smile, but something in his tone suggested amusement. This amusement was the kind that came from knowing the odds were in one’s favour.

I kept telling myself not to look away, not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me hesitate. But the truth was, standing this close to him felt like standing at the edge of something too deep to see the bottom of. Some sort of cataclysmic abyss.

He took a step closer. The boards of the pier creaked beneath us.

"Be careful where you step, Ms. Green," he said with that same tone of amusement. "Some piers don’t hold."

And then he walked past me, his shoulder brushing mine just enough to leave the scent of that rich smoke clogging up my lungs, threatening to suffocate me.

I stayed there a long time after he was gone, staring at the dark water. Somewhere beneath that surface was a story worth killing for; that same story was probably worth dying for, too. And Alexander Cole, alongside whatever role he had to play in it, had just made sure I knew I was already in too deep. A cold shiver ran up, or down, my spine. This should be fun.