All I need is you

Chapter 2

**Mr. Wells — POV

Night in my city is different than most imagine. To them, it’s soft, quiet, romantic. To me, it is steel and shadow. Every alleyway, every neon glow, every flicker of streetlight is a chessboard where lives are traded, debts are collected, and weakness is punished.

I move through it like a predator. Calm. Certain. Untouchable.

The warehouse smells like iron and smoke. Crates stacked to the ceiling, each containing something people would kill for—or die for. I have both in abundance. And yet, the air is still, expectant, like it knows something is coming.

I descend the iron staircase slowly, my polished shoes echoing against cold metal. The men below—my soldiers—freeze mid-task, eyes darting upward. Fear is ingrained in them, but it is the wrong kind of fear. Fear of me is not enough; they must revere it, or they fail entirely.

A shipment had been tampered with. A traitor exposed himself. I knew who, even before they told me. Predictability is a curse for some; for me, it is a weapon.

I crouched before the man they brought me—a kid, trembling, tied to a chair that creaked under his panic. Sweat glimmered on his pale skin. His teeth chattered as if he could physically shake away what was about to happen.

“Boss…” one of my lieutenants muttered nervously.

I ignored him. My gaze locked on the kid, and the air between us thickened. I could hear the drip of water in the pipes above. The scurrying rats in the walls. The distant hum of city life outside.

“You know,” I said softly, almost conversational, “people often think fear is something you feel. That’s a mistake. Fear is a currency. Spend it incorrectly, and it will bankrupt you.”

The kid whimpered. I didn’t flinch.

I straightened and circled him slowly, each step measured, precise. I could smell his panic, taste it almost—like copper and rotten sweat. Most people break under this. Most people beg. Most people lie.

I do not.

One of my men, younger, eager to impress, raised a knife. “Shall I—?”

I turned my head slowly. The light caught the steel in my eyes. “Do nothing,” I said. My voice was calm. Ice wrapped in velvet. “Let him feel every second of his mistake. Let it sink. Understanding will come soon enough.”

And then I left him.

The city outside awaited, relentless, indifferent. I stepped into the black sedan that waited for me—sleek, powerful, silent. The world beyond the glass window did not touch me. It could not. It was theirs. Not mine.

I lit a cigarette. Inhaled. Exhaled. Smoke curled around my face, caught in the reflection of passing streetlights. Power, I reminded myself, is a living thing. It breathes. It watches. It punishes.

And then there was her.

I had thought of Kelly Parker only in fragments—her reckless stare at the bar, the audacity to speak to me as if I were not a man built to command fear. She should not have existed in my world. No one like her survives in places I walk. But somehow, she had. Drunk, defiant, unafraid.

It was… distracting. Dangerous.

I found her apartment, a thin veil of paint over crumbling walls, the scent of cheap detergent and despair. She opened the door—hair in disarray, cheeks flushed, eyes alert, wary. Vulnerable and alive.

I held out her ID. “You dropped this.”

Her lips parted. A gasp, a murmur. “You…”

“Yes,” I said. “Me.”

Her defiance did not fade, even under the weight of my presence. She was small, fragile, yet somehow unyielding. I did not often encounter that combination. It unsettled me in a way I had long convinced myself I was incapable of feeling.

“You live here?” I asked, eyes scanning the sparse apartment.

“What’s it to you?” she snapped.

“It’s… small,” I replied. My tone measured, observing. Analytical.

She glared. “It’s what I can afford. Not everyone has a mansion built out of their ego.”

A sharp tongue. Good. Bad. I did not know yet. But I knew it made her memorable.

I studied her face—her eyes, glassy from too-little sleep or perhaps too much life; her lips, tense but willing to speak; the slight curve of her jaw, defiance curling in the air around her. Most people fear me. She did not.

And that… fascinated me.

“You vomited outside the bar,” I said finally. “You’re dehydrated. My driver will take you to the clinic.”

She stiffened. “I don’t need your help.”

“You do,” I said, flat, absolute.

Her challenge hung in the air. “What if I refuse?”

“Then I’ll wait,” I said. Steadily. Calmly. Dangerously. “Until you agree.”

She looked away first. She always did eventually.

As we walked down the street toward my car, I allowed a thought to creep in, unwelcome and sharp: She does not belong in my world.

And yet… she had stepped into it anyway.

The car ride was silent. My hands rested on the steering wheel, controlled, unyielding. She fidgeted beside me, glancing out the window, watching the city with weary eyes. I could sense her calculations, her attempts to measure me, to understand me, to survive. Survival. It is an admirable trait. Most fail at it. She… may not.

My phone buzzed once. My men reporting. Everything under control. Routine. Predictable. Necessary. I ignored it. She, however, was unpredictable. Dangerous. Compelling.

I do not make mistakes. I do not falter. I do not feel.

And yet, I wondered—briefly, disturbingly—what it would mean if she remained.

And the darkness in me smiled.

---

The city never sleeps. Not truly.

I do. But only in fragments. Shallow, calculated, a sleep that teaches me nothing but how to remain untouchable.

The apartment is silent now. My guards gone. My empire resting on its habitual tension, each cog turning as it always does. But I am not resting. Not really. Because she—Kelly Parker—lingers in my thoughts, uninvited, like a pulse I can’t locate.

I should not think of her.

She is chaos. Reckless, unpolished, alive in a way that is… inconvenient. Dangerous. Yet compelling.

She should fear me. Everyone does. My name carries weight in every shadow, every whispered conversation, every locked room. People bend, break, and pray when they meet me. She did none of that.

She laughed at me. Drank my wine. Spoke without caution. Even when she should have fled, she stayed. And I… I watched.

I hated that I watched.

I have always been a man of control.

Control of the streets, of the men, of the empire I built from ashes.

Control of every breath in my world.

And yet, she unsettles it.

I light a cigarette, inhale slowly, feel the smoke curl around the cold edges of my mind. But the thoughts will not leave.

She is a disturbance.

A question without an answer.

A riddle I cannot solve with fear, money, or force.

I am not used to being… unmoored.

I replay last night in my mind, unwilling to stop.

The bar. Her laughter. The reckless tilt of her head. The audacity to ask if I could kiss the moon.

The moon.

I stare out at the city. Lights flicker, distant sirens wail, shadows move and retreat, obeying my commands—or fearing them. All of it predictable. All of it mine.

Except her.

I should want to dismiss her. I should want to erase the memory like a blot of ink.

I cannot.

A part of me—the part I buried long ago—wonders why she captivates me.

It is not beauty alone. I have seen women who could bend men with curves, smiles, the simplest tilt of their gaze. She does not seduce. She does not ask for attention.

She defies it.

And that is… dangerous.

I inhale again. Exhale. Smoke curls, twisting into shapes I cannot name. Shapes like questions without answers.

I feel… irritation.

I feel… curiosity.

I feel… something else, something I cannot place, because I do not feel.

Yet it is there.

She intrudes on my world. On the precision, the discipline, the cold machinery of my life. She intrudes on the part of me I have kept hidden, locked behind iron doors and gunmetal walls.

I hate that.

I hate that I notice the small things—the curl of her hair in the morning, the set of her jaw when defiant, the sharpness in her eyes that matches her survival instinct.

I hate that I imagine her laughter breaking the silence of my office. That I imagine her voice challenging me when everyone else obeys.

I hate that I want her to survive.

I am Wells. I do not want. I do not need. I do not falter.

And yet, here I am. Faltering in thought. Wanting in silence.

I throw the cigarette into the ashtray. The tip glows a dying orange. I am reminded of her—the flicker of life that refuses to obey the darkness around her.

I stand and walk to the window. Below, the city moves, unaware of the man who commands so much and yet cannot command his own mind.

I should hate her.

I should forget her.

I should burn her memory like the night she entered my world uninvited.

But I cannot.

And I know, somewhere deep, that if she remains… nothing will ever be the same.

Not the empire.

Not the men.

Not me.

Not me.