Chapter 2 Dangerous Curiosity

Aria Blake stepped into the cold night air outside Cole Tower with her pulse racing and her mind spinning.

She had done her research. She had dug through archives, whispered to nervous ex-employees, and followed paper trails that led to more questions than answers. But after ten minutes in the same room with Damian Cole, she realized something crucial-she was playing a much bigger game than she'd anticipated.

He was dangerous. Not in the way criminals were dangerous, but in the way power could be-silent, seductive, unpredictable.

And damn if that didn't intrigue her more than it should.

She made her way toward the curb, flagged down a cab, and tossed her camera bag beside her.

"Chelsea," she said, barely above a whisper.

The driver pulled into traffic as she stared at the recorder in her hand.

She pressed stop.

Only half the interview had been recorded. The other half was buried in the tension between their words-in the long pauses, the way he looked at her, the hint of something darker behind his confidence.

She didn't need just a story. She needed the story. The kind that could make her career or destroy everything in its path.

And she had a feeling Damian Cole had both in his arsenal.

---

Meanwhile, back in Cole Tower...

Damian stood alone, the ice in his whiskey melting untouched.

He shouldn't have let her in. He knew the moment she said his father's name that she was too close. Aria Blake wasn't just some reporter looking for a juicy headline. She was looking for truth. And truth had a price-one that his family had paid once, and wouldn't survive paying again.

He opened the drawer in his desk and pulled out a photograph.

It was old. Tattered at the edges. A boy, maybe five years old, sitting on his father's lap, both of them smiling for the cameras. A staged smile. A photo taken just weeks before his father's arrest.

He'd buried that part of himself years ago. But Aria... she was unearthing the past with every step.

He tapped his phone.

"Marcus," he said when the line picked up.

"Yes, Mr. Cole?"

"I want everything we have on Aria Blake. Every article, every case, every person she's connected to. Discreetly."

There was a pause. "Understood."

He hung up and turned back to the glass.

The city glowed beneath him like a diamond mine. And somewhere in that glittering maze, a woman was pulling at the threads of a life he'd spent years sewing shut.

If she kept digging, she'd find things no one else had. And then she'd have to choose: write the truth-or protect the man behind it.

---

Across town...

Aria poured herself a glass of wine, kicked off her heels, and sat cross-legged on the bed with her laptop glowing.

Cole Foundation. Zurich account. Offshore banking links. And...a single name that kept showing up again and again.

"Lucien Ward."

A name whispered in corruption trials, bribery cases, and in the sealed pages of court records.

And tied, somehow, to Damian Cole.

She searched again. Nothing new. Scrubbed clean.

But there was something deeper going on. Something even Damian himself might not control.

Suddenly, her screen blinked. A new message.

Unknown Sender:

"If you value your life, stop looking."

Her heart stilled. She stared at the screen.

Another message popped up.

"There are things you're not meant to uncover. Walk away while you still can."

She sat frozen for a moment. Then took a deep breath and typed back.

Aria: "Too late."

She hit send.

Then deleted the messages.

She didn't know who was watching.

But she did know one thing.

She was closer to the truth than ever before-and she wasn't backing down