Page 46 of Jayson (Gatti Enforcers #3)

KANYAN

T he car snarls beneath me, engine growling like it knows the war I’m driving into. I tear out of the underground garage, tires screaming, the wheel jerking in my fists like it’s trying to pull free.

The city vanishes in my rearview. Towering steel bleeds into pine and shadow. The sun’s barely risen, but the sky’s already painted in blood—orange and crimson smearing across the horizon like a goddamn warning.

The sound of gunfire is faint, distant, but sharp, but it becomes increasingly loud as I near Jayson’s estate. It’s a sound I know better than my own damn voice.

My grip tightens. My boot slams the accelerator flat. The car surges forward like hell’s chewing at its tires.

Jayson’s house comes into view—and so does the wreckage.

The gate is gone, obliterated by what looks like an explosion. Twisted metal is still smoldering, blackened from the blast. Smoke curls lazily into the sky, like it’s proud of the damage it’s done.

The gravel drive is chaos—scorched rubber, spent casings, footprints in blood. There’s a smear where someone was dragged. Another where they likely died. It looks like a battlefield.

And Jayson, I know, is in the center of it.

Fear doesn’t scream through me—it slides in silent. Cold. Efficient. A scalpel in my gut.

I yank the wheel. Slam the brakes. The car jerks to a stop half on the lawn. I’m out before the door’s open. My boots hit gravel, and my coat flares behind me as I draw both guns. There’s no hesitation. No warning required. I need to make a point here, and I need to go to war.

There’s a man at the edge of the treeline, crouched behind a shrub with a scoped rifle, his eye trained on the upper floors. He doesn’t see me coming.

I squeeze the trigger once and get in a clean neck shot. His body jerks back, hands clawing at air before he collapses into the brush with a wet gurgle. Dead before he can blink.

I move fast, low. A shadow with a mission. Another to the left—near the fountain, backlit by firelight. He’s on the radio, murmuring something in a foreign tongue.

I shoot him in the face, leaving no time for mercy and no space for doubt.

I jog to his corpse, rip off his vest, check his pockets. Nothing but a half-empty clip and a lighter. No insignia. No ID.

Maddox sent in a Ghost crew as his hired muscle, which means he isn’t sending his best—he’s sending expendables.

That tells me one thing: he was out of options. It’s good to know not many would shake hands with that kind of evil.

I reach the outer veranda just as another wave of gunfire rattles the windows. Short bursts. Close. Inside.

My heartbeat stutters. Jayson.

I sprint up the steps two at a time, pausing only to flatten against the exterior wall. My shoulder brushes blood. I don’t flinch. My brother is inside that house, probably bleeding alone. My head spins just considering what I might find inside the house once I step over the threshold.

I breach through the front—gun raised, breath locked.

The interior is carnage.

The entry hall is slick with blood. A body slumped against the staircase—throat cut so deep I can see vertebrae. Another by the doorway, still twitching from a gut shot. The floor is shredded from boot tracks, broken glass and shell casings littering every surface.

I stalk forward.

Another shot rings out upstairs.

Hold on, brother. I’m coming.

A breacher appears on the landing, rifle swinging in my direction. He’s fast, but I’m faster. There’s a reason why they call me the Enforcer.

I drop to one knee, fire two rounds into his torso. His vest takes one—barely—but the second hits just below it. He grunts, buckles, then I charge and kick him through the railing.

He screams all the way down and lands with a dramatic thump at the bottom of the stairs.

I move deeper—sweeping every corner, my footsteps discreet as I take in every room.

The kitchen is clear, but the dining room is torn apart—blood on the tablecloth, knives on the floor. A body slumped by the bar. Eyes open. Neck twisted.

Glass crunches underfoot as I enter the hallway. Another bastard charges me from the laundry wing, screaming in Russian.

I let him come.

At the last second, I pivot. Elbow to the throat. He stumbles. I drive my knee into his spine. He drops. Then I shoot him point-blank in the back of the skull.

There’s no time to play .

His body slumps to the ground, and with it comes the silence. Complete and utter silence, overwhelming the room with its presence.

“JAYSON!” I roar.

Silence. There’s too much of it. It settles over the house like a predator, thick and suffocating. My chest tightens, ribs clenching around my lungs like a vise.

And then, there’s movement. Subtle. Faint. But there. A floorboard creaks upstairs. Just one. Like a whisper in the bones of the house.

I bolt. Guns up, breath sharp, blood roaring in my ears. I take the stairs two at a time, vision tunneling. My boots thud against the wood—heartbeat, thunder, war.

And that’s when the shot cracks out of nowhere. A whipcrack of agony.

It tears through my side just beneath my ribs—burning, violent, unforgiving. The impact sends me sideways into the railing. My gun hits the wall with a thunk.

I taste copper immediately. The inside of my mouth floods with it. I stagger. Legs wobble. Shoulder slams the banister. Black spots flicker at the edges of my vision.

Breathe, Kanyan. Fucking breathe.

The pain’s white-hot, slicing clean through sinew and bone, but I lock my jaw and keep moving. One hand clamped over the wound, the other dragging my gun back into place.

That’s when I see the bastard who shot me at the top of the stairs.

He steps out from the shadows like he’s on stage—tall, calm, cocky. A thin smirk plays over his face like he’s already won.

He raises his weapon—slow, precise. He wants to savor this. But fate’s not on his side today.

Click. His gun jams. He’s out of bullets. And his face—the panic that replaces that arrogance? That’s the last good thing he’ll ever feel.

I shoot him in the thigh. Crack. He drops with a howl. I shoot the other leg for balance. Crack. He collapses fully, blood spurting, hands scrabbling at the floor.

I’m already charging. Blood leaking from my own side. Rage turning everything red. I drive my shoulder into his chest with the full force of fury and gravity behind me. We crash together, bodies slamming to the floor so hard the boards groan.

His ribs crack beneath me—one, two, I stop counting. But I’m not done. Not even close. I climb over him, straddling his chest. He’s gasping now. Trying to crawl. I grab his hair. Slam his head into the floor.

Once. He screams. Twice.

Something breaks. Three times. His face starts to split.

I keep going. Over and over until there’s no face left to recognize—just bone and pulp and the sick sound of wet meat against wood.

Only then do I stop. Only then do I push off the ruin of him, panting, sweat and blood coating my skin like warpaint.

And only then do I look up—and see Jayson.

He staggers down the hall, shirt torn and soaked in blood. His jaw is split, nose bleeding, and one eye’s nearly swollen shut. But he’s alive. He’s breathing. He’s upright. His grip on his weapons is still solid. Gun in one hand. Knife in the other. He’s every inch the soldier I built.

Our eyes lock across the destruction. For half a heartbeat, time stops. I feel the floor sway beneath me, not from weakness, but from the sheer weight of relief that slams through me like a freight train.

He grins, teeth bloody and eyes alight with that familiar Moreno family defiance.

“Took you long enough,” he rasps, voice gravel and fire.

I don’t waste my breath on a reply. Because behind him, a shadow moves. A soldier, creeping from the far room, blade in hand, steps silent—but not silent enough.

I raise my gun. Bang. The man drops mid-lunge, skull detonated into the wall. Blood splashes across the white trim like punctuation.

Jayson flinches at the sound—then looks down at the body at his feet. No words. Just a sharp nod of thanks.

I toss him a fresh clip and a spare Glock. He catches both without missing a beat, sliding the magazine in with that quiet calm that only comes from living with death.

My voice is gravel.

“Let’s finish this.”

He nods once. Resolve. That’s all we need to get the job done.

We move. Side by side. Two bloodied titans, stomping through the wreckage of our kingdom. There’s no fear. We have no mercy. And we seek only vengeance.

And for every bastard still breathing on this property? They’re about to learn what happens when you come for our blood.