Eviscerating the Snake - The Complete Trilogy Read online

  Cover, Interior and eBook design

  by Blue Harvest Creative

  www.blueharvestcreative.com

  Edited by Jeff LaFerney

  Eviscerating the Snake: The Complete Trilogy

  Copyright © 2012 Ashley Fontainne

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Published by

  RMSW Press

  ISBN-13: 978-0615741703

  ISBN-10: 0615741703

  Visit the author at:

  Website:

  www.ashleyfontainne.com

  Blog:

  www.ramblingsofamadsouthernwoman.blogspot.com

  Facebook:

  www.facebook.com/ashleyfontainne

  Twitter:

  @ashleyfontainne

  Goodreads:

  www.goodreads.com/author/show/4958072.Ashley_Fontainne

  PRAISE FOR

  “ACCOUNTABLE TO NONE”

  …I truly enjoyed it and recommend it to all who enjoy a fast, intriguing and entertaining story with a little mystery thrown in for good measure.

  ~ Midwest Book Reviews Senior Reviewer

  Joan A. Adamak ~

  ...you are grabbed hook, line and sinker into the story as the book becomes an almost compulsive read.

  ~ Charlotte Foreman, reviewer for BestChickLit.com ~

  ... a brilliant tale...it draws you in and never lets go. I just couldn’t put it down.

  ~ author Richard C. Hale ~

  ...I like her style, characters, pacing, motivations, and plot. Some really good and different twists. I would definitely read the rest of this series.

  ~ bestselling author Janelle Taylor ~

  …I’m exhausted. I could not put this book down. It gripped me from the very beginning and the intensity level just kept building and building…an AMAZING READ!

  ~ author Sandy L. Wolters ~

  PRAISE FOR

  “ZERO BALANCE”

  ...If a black widow spider could write a book, this might be the result. Fontainne is a fearless writer...

  ~ Jon P. Bloch, reviewer, The Kindle Book Review ~

  There are very few authors that can bring you to the places you’re afraid of...Ashley Fontainne will grab your soul and bring it deeper than you could ever go!

  ~ author Timothy Paul Choquette ~

  ...This is a novel that will keep your eyes glued to its pages and your mind reeling. I highly recommend it...

  ~ author Jeff LaFerney ~

  A Tour De Force! Fontainne pulls off a triumphant labyrinth maze of such great twists and turns, it had my head spinning...

  ~ author Joanna Lee Doster ~

  I could not put the damn thing down. Accountable to None was the cause, Zero Balance is the effect... I cannot wait for the third book to come out...

  ~ Kortney Gessler, Editor, Unforgettable Books, Inc. ~

  It is very rare that I enjoy a sequel more then I enjoy the first book but this one blew me away...

  ~ author and reviewer Toni Sinns ~

  PRAISE FOR

  “ADJUSTING JOURNAL ENTRIES”

  Oh what a tangled web Ashley Fontainne weaves! The attention to detail throughout the series is astounding, leading up to an intense and insane conclusion. Nothing happens by chance or coincidence...everything that happens is tied together with a great big action-packed bow...Fontainne is an undeniable talent and is...a force to be reckoned with in the publishing world.

  ~ Charlotte Foreman, reviewer for BestChickLit.com ~

  Nothing short of mind blowing. Nothing is predictable – that is what makes this series awesome. The story twists and leaves you shocked and on tenterhooks... Ashley Fontainne has created three dimensional characters, some you love, others you really love to hate. They have an impact on you, and even after you turn the last page and you know your time with them has come to an end, they live on inside you.

  ~ author Lindsay Anne Kendal ~

  Fontainne...has a brilliant way of bringing to life the twisted psyches of her antagonists and she does it again in Adjusting Journal Entries. Fontainne has the unique ability to juggle several themes throughout her books as she artfully weaves them together, like a beautifully wrapped present...this last book will not disappoint.

  ~ author Joanna Lee Doster ~

  There are so many people I need to thank that I’m afraid it would take an entire novel to include them all. First and foremost, a sincere thank you to each and every person that has read any/all of my books. You took a chance on an unknown that started out making rookie mistakes yet you stuck with me while I honed my writing skills. Some of you even took the time to write a review or connect with me which is amazing. Your support is what drives me to continue and I thank you for helping my dreams come true.

  To my husband and family - the unconditional love and support that each of you have bestowed upon me during this journey has been truly wonderful. You have weathered “Hurricane Fontainne” as she blew into town and upended all of our lives with grace, love and understanding.

  To Melody Berning - Professor extraordinaire, friend and staunch supporter. You saw something in me and gently nurtured it and now, it has fully bloomed. Bless you.

  Betty Dravis, Barbara Watkins, Joanna Lee Doster, Lindsay Ann Kendal, Bennet Pomerantz and Jeff LaFerney - the friendships we have created I will never forget.

  To the incredible folks over at Blue Harvest Creative - connecting with you has been such a wonderful surprise! Your work on the covers and formatting astounds me each and every time I look at them. Your insightful ideas have inspired me to strive to reach new levels and I value our friendship. Thank you for all your hard work.

  I WAS FIRST INTRODUCED to Ashley and her Eviscerating the Snake series through Blue Harvest Creative, the graphic design team working with her who asked me to read and review the books.

  I’ll admit to being slightly dubious at first; accountants have never struck me as particularly . . . vengeful. And then I read Accountable to None’s first chapter. From those first few pages, I was hooked and immersed in Audra’s world of pain and darkness, feeling as if I, myself, needed justice to be done. Ashley is able to evoke real, strong emotions from a reader, a rare talent among writers. It’s almost as if she is the character, as if she has totally cloaked herself in Audra’s anger and hate.

  Ashley continues this mentality flawlessly throughout the series, making the books something truly special and I felt very excited to be amongst the few reviewers asked to read the books. From the second my eyes left the very last word of Adjusting Journal Entries, once I’d recovered from the nail-biting tension, I knew Ashley had a hit on her hands – one that was going to win her a legion of fans and followers.

  It’s not easy to keep a reader on the edge of their seat, especially over the course of three books, nor is maintaining impeccable continuity a meager feat but you’ll find both of these qualities, plus so much more, in the Eviscerating the Snake series. The books really were a labour of love and this fact leaps off the pages and hits you round the head as you try to comprehend the commitment Ashley must have given to achieve the level of writing she’s obtained.

  So, if you’re reading this foreword – in the correct order before starting
the book – buckle up because you’re in for the read of your life. Ashley’s already taken me on the journey and it will forever remain one of my all time favourites, especially now that I’ve been honored with the task of telling you all about my exploration into the murky world of Winscott & Associates. Thank you Ashley, it’s been amazing.

  Charlotte Foreman is the owner and also a reviewer

  for BestChickLit.com, a website dedicated to

  reviewing and promoting literature written by women.

  SHE PULLED HERSELF SMALLER and smaller into a tiny little ball as she hugged her legs so tightly with her thin, waif-like arms that her lower legs became completely numb. Her broken nails dug into the soft flesh of her bruised thighs, which caused fresh blood to trickle down and mingle with the old. Jammed up against the wall in her dark office, rocking slowly back and forth, she stared out the window at the city’s almost non-existent skyline and beyond to the darkened South Mountain Range and mumbled softly to herself.

  Twenty stories up, she had a panoramic view of the vibrant lights below, which up until tonight had always given her a sense of pride at her accomplishment for making the rank of partner and attaining the much sought after “corner office” at the tender age of thirty-three. Her shattered thoughts wandered to all the ridiculously long and grueling hours it had taken her to get there and how much she had lost in the process of her corporate ladder climb. James had left her six months ago after her miscarriage and subsequent post-partum depression; her parents barely spoke to her after the countless family events she had missed during the last three years due to her rigorous travel schedule; and lifelong friends had drifted away due to unreturned phone calls and missed special events.

  And now this.

  She sighed heavily as she stared at the twinkling lights below. What was once her major source of personal gratification now only brought her disgust and anger, for she realized that all of her hard work to attain this coveted space was just part of some sick joke perpetrated by the twisted hierarchy at her firm. She’d learned tonight that what her boss had really wanted was not the hard earned, well-educated knowledge between her ears that she had worked so hard to attain, but rather, power over the space between her legs.

  Her mindset shifted as she regressed into that small place held over from nature where animalistic instincts still resided. She hugged herself even tighter as she fought the urge to strike out and kill the thing that had caused her so much incredible pain, and she struggled to keep her carnal instincts from taking over. This internal seismic activity was how she had come to be crouched in the corner, literally holding herself together with every fiber of her being, as she labored to keep a tight rein on her slippery sanity. Earlier, right after the attack, she had been overwhelmed with visions of bloody retribution, standing over her kill as he lay bleeding all over his expensive, gaudy rug as a result of her retaliatory onslaught. Those thoughts were so foreign to her Ivy-League educated mind that they frightened her almost as much as the attack had.

  Almost.

  Two hours had passed since her rape and the blood on her legs and arms had long since congealed and now resembled rust-colored glue that sealed her torn, costly clothes to her delicate skin. She recalled how much she had worried and stressed over what she should wear to the meeting to discuss her promotion to equity partner, only to have her clothes yanked and torn to shreds at the hands of a vile monster. Her suit was now covered in dried blood and completely ruined, just as her personal views on hard work and ethical behavior were. The stench of him, fused together with the rusty odor of her blood, finally broke through her shocked stupor, and she realized she was going to vomit. Quickly, she uncurled her sore limbs and lunged for the bathroom, barely making it in time. The violent purging may have emptied her stomach, but it left an odd sense of what she was going to do next circulating through her head: purge and expose.

  She stood up, inhaled deeply and faced herself in the mirror, half expecting to fall apart when she finally scrutinized the damage for the first time. She had to cock her head slightly since her right eye was almost completely swollen shut and already had turned a dark mixture of blue and black; both her upper and lower lips were split and covered in dried blood, and several of her artificial nails had been snapped off down past the quick as she had attempted to fight him off. She knew she needed to survey the rest of her body, so she turned and limped out of the bathroom and grabbed her gym bag that sat in the corner by her desk. As she passed by her door, she compulsively checked once again to make sure it was locked before she headed back to the bathroom and the unforgiving glare of the fluorescent lights.

  A sick, warped grin slid across her swollen lips when she realized that her meticulous planning had actually paid off. Reaching into the side pocket of the bag, she found a large plastic storage bag that she had stuck there a few days ago so she could put her dirty gym clothes in it after working out and seal them up, thus keeping the smell from adhering to the remaining contents of the bag. Well, it had an even better use now.

  As she carefully shed her ruined clothes piece by piece, she gently folded each one and placed it in the bag. Once finished, she sealed it tight and shoved it back in the bag. Summoning up courage from deep within, she turned to the mirror and stared at the myriad of bruises on her breasts, upper arms, and thighs. Dear God, he had even left teeth marks on her left breast! As much as she abhorred the idea of doing so, she picked up her cell phone and began snapping pictures of her battered body. She consoled herself with the thought that at least some stranger at a hospital wasn’t doing this.

  Based on the pain she felt whenever she moved, she knew she needed to check out down below, but she couldn’t bear to think about what he had done in that area, so she decided to wait until she got home and began to painfully dress herself in her gym clothes. She leaned over the sink and filled the basin with enough cool water to wash off the dried blood on her face so she could leave the building without being stopped and questioned by the Maricopa County deputy rejects that served as security guards downstairs. While tenderly patting her face dry, she leaned in as close as she could to the mirror and began to truly grasp that the damage was worse than she thought and would most likely take weeks to heal. For once, she was glad that she happened to have a heavy mane of long hair that she could sweep across her horribly swollen eye.

  She knew she should be in a state of hysteria at the moment—or at the very least catatonic as she had been earlier—but oddly, instead of feeling victimized, she realized her battered, bloody, and bruised body was a trophy of her survival, and the fuel to the plan that had begun to form in her mind. She refused to shed a tear over what that bastard had done to her, so she shoved her traumatized emotions down into the deepest crevice in her soul to be dealt with another day and only allowed one emotion to remain unchecked: anger. She felt it pulsate through her like a drug, numbing everything else.

  As she continued to stare at her injured face, she couldn’t stop the playback of the words he had said after he had finally climbed off of her and began to buckle his pants: “Ah, thank you, Audra! That was good for me, but you look a little less than satisfied, which, as a gentlemen, I find rather disturbing. How about I make up for my lack of—shall we say, decorum?—and just go ahead with your promotion to equity partner? My treat, of course, as a reward for your troubles?”

  He had been so cavalier, almost chivalrous in his mannerisms as he stood there over her while her petite body was racked with pain and uncontrollable trembling in response to the violent beating and rape she had just suffered. And to top it off, he had offered to throw money and a promotion at her to make it better!

  It was at that incongruous moment that she had made the decision not to involve the police nor file any report or have any discussion with anyone about this evening, not even her attacker. A small snicker left her swollen lips, and she winced in pain as she realized that all the rumors and office gossip she had overheard for years, yet brushed aside as the ram
blings of less than devoted slackers or money-hungry high-heeled leeches, had actually been true. She had just been so embedded in her work and her determination to be noticed, she had failed to give any credence to them. Ironic that it took her being injected with venom by the snake before she even realized one had been in the room with her the entire time.

  She started forming her plan for the entire firm, the filthy place that had destroyed so many lives over the years, including that of her unborn son. The nasty, blood sucking reptile that lured people into its lair with promises of gold, only to suck them bone dry and toss their empty carcasses aside when they were no longer interesting, would pay. She would make sure they were held accountable, and would not stop until every last one of them felt the same shame and humiliation she had experienced tonight.

  Her eyes widened as she felt a strange sensation deep inside her core, and she noticed that the eyes that looked back at her from the mirror were those of someone else, a stranger she didn’t recognize. Even through the intense swelling of her right eye, she saw that they were no longer the naïve, innocent eyes from before—the ones that had viewed the world as a place where hard work and ethical behavior prevailed and were followed accordingly by just rewards. Those had been replaced with eyes full of smoldering anger which now skewed her once lofty view of the world and had turned them deep emerald green.

  Her mind crossed over into territory unfamiliar to her, and her thoughts became dark and sinister as she began to mull over her new purpose in life. Never had the snake been exposed for all to see, for its secrets were buried deep beneath its lair under countless piles of blood money, just like the pile that had been offered to her tonight. Those piles of money had bought the silence of its victims for so long that accountability was not in its vocabulary. She would change all that, no matter how long it took. She wasn’t quite sure yet how she would do it, but she would change every single one of them from being accountable to none to accountable to all.