Of Snakes and Men Read Online Jessica Gadziala

Categories Genre: Contemporary, Crime, Mafia Tags Authors:
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Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
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What can I say? People tended not to like us snooping around in their business. We got scratched up a lot.

“Come on, Mr. Alcazar,” Mike said, turning to lead him toward the back as I dropped back down at my desk.

“Val, sit,” A said to the dog, dropping his leash and leaving the dog a few feet from my desk. “Stay,” he added, tone both commanding and kind somehow at the same time.

When I glanced up, A was standing in front of my desk, his dark gaze on me.

“The fuck you let them talk to you like that for, mama?” he asked, knocking his knuckles on my desk, then turning and swaggering away.

Leaving me with my anger and embarrassment, and a dog that was looking at me from all of three feet away.

“I don’t like dogs,” I told Val, whose tan ears perked up at being spoken to, but stayed put. “It’s nothing personal. I don’t really… get the whole… animal-loving thing,” I admitted. “Christ, I’m talking to a dog,” I mumbled to myself as I got some triple antibiotic on a q-tip and swiped it across my wound before cleaning up my mess, then going in my phone to check my vaccine history.

Deciding I was safe from Lockjaw, I swiped through my pictures from my second phone, the one I used almost exclusively for taking pictures for the job.

I’d managed to catch the very beginnings of a flirtation as the CEO came out of his office to find his secretary at her desk.

It was all there.

The way he leaned over her desk, the smile he shot her, the way she smiled back, megawatt, inviting. Even though she knew her boss was married. She even knew that said wife had just popped out their fourth child two weeks before.

I always blamed the cheating party the most, but there was a special place in hell for women who deliberately tried to step to men they knew were married, too. Especially when there were kids involved.

True, you couldn’t break a happy home, regardless of how hard you tried.

But it was still ugly.

The job had a lot of that.

Ugly.

In an odd way, I guess that was part of what I liked about it.

What can I say? You didn’t exactly get to be the product of two professional profilers and come out completely well-adjusted.

I loved my parents. They certainly did better than their own parents. But when you knew they read into everything you did and didn’t do, it had some lasting impact.

I leaned into the harder, nastier sides of life. And I had to admit that I enjoyed exposing liars and cheats and anyone who thought they could get ahead by stepping on the backs of people who’d blindly trusted them.

From the back room, I could only make out muffled male voices, but I could tell when Andres was speaking because Val’s ears would perk up.

“You like him, huh?” I asked, getting up to go to the coffee machine sitting on top of a tall file cabinet toward the back of the room. “Of course,” I grumbled, finding it burnt.

Normally, I would just leave it for someone else to deal with, but after a night of no sleep once again, I was going to need it if I was going to get through the day, so I made a fresh pot, but only made enough for maybe half a cup after I got mine.

There was no milk, something I’d learned to live without, but I kept sugar in my desk, and put a liberal amount in my cup before taking a long sip while pretending not to wonder what kind of job A would have for us.

I mean, the cornerstone of a criminal empire was that you didn’t bring anyone else in on your business, right?

My father’s biker club didn’t go to private investigators. They just… figured shit out for themselves.

“You’re well-behaved,” I told the dog as it didn’t move an inch from the spot A had left him in. His tail swiped across the ground at being spoken to, and I had a feeling that if he wasn’t told to stay, that he would be walking over to me and asking for pets.

I’d dealt with a lot of dogs in my line of work. I’d been bitten by four so far. Nothing that sent me to the hospital or anything, but usually requiring a round of antibiotics thanks to their bacteria-filled mouths.

I didn’t have anything against them for it. I mean, I was usually trespassing. They were within their rights to bite me. And I had no doubts that Val, despite his calm and behaved demeanor, would do some serious damage if he found me snooping around his property.

“What does your owner have going on, hm?” I asked, glancing back toward the meeting room, wondering if they would even tell me what the case was when it was clear they weren’t going to let me work on it.


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