by July Hall
Bradley couldn’t hold back the surge of scorn. “Uncle Charles asked me if I loved her. Can you believe it?”
He hadn’t loved Sandra. There was always a part of her that he felt he couldn’t get to, that she was holding back, and he hated that. But at least it had been a challenge. It would really have been something to get an ice queen like that to fall in love with him. And then, who knew? She would have made a good wife, probably a good mom too, and she would have learned not to make a fuss. Everything would have worked out fine.
Except for Uncle Charles, who couldn’t let Bradley have anything, ever, and who lived only to make him miserable. He’d ruined everything, as usual.
“Did you love her?” his dad asked, sounding skeptical.
Bradley looked again at the pictures on his laptop, at Sandra’s blurry face surrounded by her blurry red hair. “Who cares?” he said. “They’re both lying hypocrites who tried to make a fool of me.”
“Exactly,” his dad said, sounding satisfied, almost proud. Bradley felt something warm expand in his chest. Uncle Charles had said so many times that his dad was no good. But in the end, who’d let Bradley down, and who was on the phone with sympathy and a plan?
His father understood. He’d taught him about all this stuff. Prostitutes and strippers weren’t the same thing as cheating. They didn’t count. They practically weren’t even real. Who did Sandra think she was, calling him on the carpet about them?
This was getting depressing. Bradley thought about the coke hidden in his dresser drawer. He could use a pick-me-up. Maybe he’d call Jeremy once he was done talking to his dad and they could get high together. Jeremy had never liked Sandra, said she was stuck-up and didn’t know her place. Bradley had insisted she could learn.
He’d been so smooth, so good. Dinner and flowers and shows and everything. He’d cooked for her, shared his problems with her, because women loved all that intimacy crap and she was a pretty good listener. He’d never even made fun of her for being a virgin, for fuck’s sake. And this was what he got for it.
Hell. He’d actually wanted Uncle Charles to approve of her. To say, just once, that he’d done something right.
“So what do we do with the photos?” he asked. “Do you know somebody I can send them to? Like, Page Six or something? Anonymously, of course,” he added quickly.
“No, not yet,” Robert said. “We’ve got to be patient. We need more.”
“More?” His dad had to be kidding. “What are you talking about, what more do we need?”
“We need proof,” Robert said. “Right now we have a few fuzzy photographs of Sandra leaving the house in his car. It would make people talk, but it’s nothing he couldn’t come up with some excuse for. It’d die down fast.” His voice went hard. “And when you’ve got something better, don’t send it to anyone before you clear it with me. For God’s sake, Brad, what do you think blackmail is? Once you send it to the papers, it’s too late to squeeze anything out of him.”
“Oh.” Bradley squirmed. “Yeah, I forgot about that part.” But could his dad blame him? He wasn’t exactly worried about money. He wanted to ruin his uncle and the girl who thought she could betray him and get away with it.
Still, his dad knew best about this kind of thing. And Bradley had to admit it would be pretty sweet to watch Uncle Charles wriggle like a fish on a hook, knowing that two men saw him for what he really was, and could fuck him up whenever they wanted.
Yeah. That would be even better than Page Six…for a while.
“You just leave it to me,” Robert said. “I’ll tell you what to do. Be on your best behavior. Act like you’re sorry. Show up to work on time and do your job. Stay out of the clubs. Don’t contact Sandra—he’ll be on the lookout for that. Get back in his good graces.”
Sounded like the next few weeks were going to be incredibly lame. “Uncle Charles doesn’t have good graces.”
“He’ll find some,” his dad said. “Once we’ve got what we need, he’s going to treat you like a king, or else.” Just the thought made Bradley tingle all over with anticipation. Robert laughed. “Nine thousand dollars. He didn’t want to cough up nine thousand fucking dollars? Wait till he sees the bill this time.”
“I want to be there,” Bradley said. “I want to see his face.”
Then he imagined Uncle Charles’s face and remembered his voice saying that Bradley had never seen him truly angry. He felt a sudden, full-body chill.
Maybe this wasn’t actually the best idea. For his whole life, Bradley had watched Uncle Charles crush everything in his path. The Magister family motto might as well be Obey or Die. Were he and his dad really up to the challenge?
He looked again at the pictures and steeled his resolve. Yeah. Yeah, of course they were. If his uncle had a weak spot, it was his goddamn reputation. Sandra was the same, just the same, always needing people to think she was so pure and good. But they were both fakes and liars, no better than anybody else. Certainly not better than him.
He wondered what the hell they saw in each other, other than the matching sticks up their asses. The answer seemed obvious. Sandra saw Uncle Charles’s wallet, and Uncle Charles saw her twenty-five-year-old snatch. What else could it possibly be?
“Let’s get him,” he said. “Let’s get both of them.”
“Absolutely. Finally.” Robert laughed again. “This is gonna be so good. That prick thinks the Magisters hung the moon. But he’s about to find out what happens when you fuck with a Cliffe.”
Charles and Sandra’s story continues in Come and Get Me, the second book in the Magister Series. Available now!
Thank You!
Thank you for reading If You Want Me! I hope you enjoyed it, and that you’ll consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews really can make all the difference to an author.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Kelly Cozy, my wonderful and patient editor. Thanks also to Aria Tan for the beautiful cover art. And special thanks to Leonie Hastings, fellow writer and beta reader par excellence. I couldn’t have done it without her.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
Thank You!
Acknowledgments