Of Snakes and Men

Contents Blurb Title Rights Title 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 Acknowledgments Also by Jessica Gadziala About the Author Stalk Her! Guide Contents Start of Content Blurb: Andres “A” Alcazar. Ruthless cartel leader. The last man in the world Hope wanted anything to do with. Until he was swaggering into her private investigation office. He needed to find a snake in his organization. And he wanted her to do it. Falling for him was never part of the plan… OF SNAKES AND MEN — Jessica Gadziala Copyright © 2023 Jessica Gadziala All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review. "This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental." Cover image credit: Viktoria Hall-Waldhouser “None of this book was written using AI tools. Each word was crafted with human hands.” OF SNAKES AND MEN CHAPTER ONE Hope The blood was soaking through the denim covering my thigh, each step dragging the coarse material against the puncture wound as I tried to remember the last time I had a tetanus booster. The ragged edge of the scaffolding that had snagged me had been rusty as fuck, and I wasn’t excited about the prospect of Lockjaw. Though, objectively, that condition would make it a hell of a lot easier to keep my mouth shut around my coworkers. I let out a sigh, seeing their cars parked down the street, knowing I was going to catch endless shit about getting hurt on the job. As if they never got roughed up. But it was different to them. Because I was a woman. Gritting my teeth, I pulled open the door to the private investigation office I’d been stubbornly working at for years, despite the endless flack the men gave me as they tried to drive me out the door of my own accord since they never had a legitimate reason to fire me. The office looked different from the wrong side of morning. My sandpaper eyes didn’t take in the scuffed floors, the nicks out of the desks—five in all, lined up on the sides of the room—or the dust bunnies in the corners. It wasn’t the most modern or reputable-looking place. I think, to an extent, I’d been drawn to how rough around the edges it was when I’d walked in to apply for a job. There were other, more modern offices with their streamlined desks with fancy monitors, all the paperwork neatly tucked away. If it existed at all. Everything was digital with them, I guess. We didn’t have a snack station, a waiting area with comfortable seating, or tasteful, abstract art on the walls. No. Mason Investigations was like something straight out of a noir. The flooring was original to the building which I was pretty sure was built in the fifties. The walls had been needing a fresh coat of paint since the seventies. And the only art that donned our walls were whiteboards behind each desk and a giant corkboard that had old, faded newspaper clippings of various cases we’d been a part of over the years. Most of them before I’d been brought on. But there was one in particular that pertained to me. The one my current boss had put right in the center, the headline underlined in red permanent marker. My stomach twisted each time I saw it. I forced my gaze away as my gaze moved around the office, not seeing any of my coworkers. Which meant they were in the meeting room in the back. That made sense. Since the only reason any of them showed up early in the day was when there was a big client coming in that required “all hands on deck.” But not my hands. Never my hands. Letting out an exhale, trying to tell myself it didn’t matter, I dropped down at my desk. It was the one closest to the door. I imagined my boss had put me there because, as a woman, I was expected to be the office secretary. I made it a point never to look up when the door opened on principle. Was I poking the bear that already seemed all too happy to snap at me for no reason? Sure. But I was strong enough to deal with the repercussions of standing up on my morals. I refused to have my position be reduced to my sex just because I worked in an all-boys club. So I didn’t look up when I heard the door squeak, in desperate need of some WD-40, but I wasn’t going to do any extra, unpaid work. I barely made anything as it was. And the more you did for an employer, the more they expected. For free. Popping the cap of the hydrogen peroxide, I sucked in a deep breath and poured it over the hole in my pants. I could feel eyes on me, and since the guys were in the back, I figured I did have to greet whoever the potential client was. My gaze lifted, and there he was. A. Short for Andres, but everyone called him A. Andres Alcazar. Local drug kingpin. He’d rolled into town a few years back