Page 53 of Jayson (Gatti Enforcers #3)

JAYSON

S axon drops the file on the table between us like it’s a loaded weapon.

“We’ve got him,” he says.

I don’t need to ask who. Because I already know.

I open the file. Black and white photos. Property maps. Shell corporations and donation records scrubbed within an inch of their life. But even all that bureaucratic noise can’t cover the stench of corruption underneath.

Richard Maddox.

Saxon paces. Controlled, like always. But there’s something off tonight. His voice isn’t detached. It’s razor sharp, honed by fury.

“The name floated through the air for years,” he says. “Whispered in interrogation rooms. Scrawled in redacted files. Mocked in prison blocks where the real monsters still hide behind country club fences.”

His eyes meet mine.

“The Ringmaster.”

My stomach turns.

“He wasn’t just part of it,” Saxon goes on, his voice low. “He ran it. Quietly. Strategically. The guy behind the curtain. Never on-site. Never on camera. Just the architect. Just the one who curated the pain and let other men build his kingdom with blood.”

I clench my jaw. My hand tightens around the back of the chair.

“You knew him?”

Saxon nods. “Not by face. But the name came up enough. Two years I worked that ring. Undercover. Breathing the same air as monsters wearing Rolexes and crucifixes. I bled out leads in boardrooms and bar bathrooms. The Ringmaster was legend—untouchable. Invisible. So invisible that I refused to believe in his existence.”

He jabs a finger at the file. “Until now.”

The bastard’s name burns off the paper.

Richard. Fucking. Maddox.

“It fits,” Saxon says. “The timelines. The locations. The connections. Every property he’s ever had?

Within driving distance of known victim recovery sites.

One of his shell corps funded a foster home in Jersey that shut down six months after we started sniffing around.

Every move he made—it was always just one step ahead of the law. And now we know why.”

He pauses. Lets that settle like poison.

“Because the police commissioner has access to everything ,” Scar hisses. He’s a millisecond away from smashing his fist into something.

“But the one thing that tied it all together—the nail in the proverbial coffin—was Mayor Bishop.”

I go still. Keira’s father.

“He was never just a crooked politician,” Saxon says. “He was a fucking gatekeeper. Old money. Old blood. Deep connections. We always knew he had his hands dirty, but proving it? That was the wall. ”

“And now he’s dead,” I say, my voice flat. And I have to wonder if he didn’t take the answers we’re after to his grave.

Saxon nods once. “Bishop placed a seventeen-minute call to Maddox the day he died. Pulled the phone logs two hours ago. You said your girl turned up at the house hours before he was killed - lines up with the timeline. I believe she went home to confront him and ask him questions about Riley Kincaid. He called Maddox in a panic, and must’ve told Maddox that Keira was remembering things that should have stayed buried.

In Maddox’s eyes, Bishop and his daughter were loose ends - I believe it was a given that Bishop would end up with a bullet in his brain, because Maddox would have already started planning it.

The fact that someone got to Bishop before he did means that someone did Maddox a favor - but Keira Bishop represents the one last loose thread in that story. ”

Kanyan throws me a look across the room—sharp, silent, and steeped in understanding. We both know I showed up at Bishop’s house with blood on my hands and fire in my chest at exactly the right time. Because if I hadn’t pulled that trigger… someone else would’ve.

And Keira?

Keira would be in the ground.

That’s the truth humming beneath Kanyan’s stare. It’s not judgment—it’s calculation. Grim relief wrapped in steel. He’s not the kind of man to thank someone for doing what needed to be done, but his eyes say it plain: You bought her time. You bought us all time.

Still, I feel the weight of it settle in my bones.

My hit on Bishop was off the books. Sanctioned only by necessity. Quiet. Brutal. Precise. The kind of job that doesn’t get written down.

And it sure as hell isn’t something that ex-FBI agent Saxon North needs to hear about .

He thinks in courtrooms and clean lines. Evidence chains. Probable cause. But where we come from? Justice isn’t handed down in a courtroom. It’s carved into flesh. Paid in blood.

So I say nothing. Just lean back in my chair, jaw tight, heart thudding slow and cold. I let Saxon keep spinning his theories. Let him pace and rant about timelines and corruption and memory gaps.

I keep my silence. Let Kanyan’s gaze slide past me before his eyes settle on North. Because some truths don’t need to be spoken. Some justice doesn’t need witnesses. And some sins? They’re better off staying buried and never seeing the light of day.

Just like the man who tried to hurt her.

The air feels tighter. Heavier. Like there’s something pressing down on my lungs and refusing to let up.

“Keira was the match,” Saxon says. “She lit the fuse. She doesn’t even know it, but whatever’s locked inside her—whatever memory Maddox is afraid of—it’s enough to blow this whole goddamn thing wide open.”

Kanyan steps closer, folding his arms.

“And now she’s a liability,” he says.

I feel it like a punch to the ribs. Cold. Unforgiving.

“This has to end tonight,” I grit out.

Saxon studies me. Then nods once, slowly.

“But make no mistake, Jayson—Maddox won’t hesitate. If she remembers too much? He’ll put a bullet in her skull before anyone can blink.”

And just like that, I know. There’s no prison Maddox deserves. No courtroom that could hold the weight of what he’s done. Only a grave. And I’m going to dig it with my bare hands.

The sky’s already an inky black by the time we assemble in the estate’s private garage. There are no words spoken. No niceties. Just the scent of chaos and mayhem and vengeance in the air as we suit up.

Kanyan stands beside the table, sleeves rolled, jaw clenched.

He’s already dressed—black fatigues, utility belt locked tight, twin knives sheathed at his hips.

He’s not a man of many words, especially when he’s about to go hunting.

He just watches each of us gear up, as if memorizing our outlines in case one of us doesn’t make it back.

Lucky’s cracking his knuckles by the SUV, guns already checked and loaded. He’s humming something tuneless, low and vicious—his version of a battle cry.

Mason’s strapping on a Kevlar vest like it’s his second skin. He moves with surgical focus—no emotion, just the rhythm of a man who’s done this too many times to count. His eyes meet mine once, and we nod. Nothing else is needed.

Saxon, for once, isn’t wearing a suit. He’s dressed down in black tactical gear, sidearm strapped tight to his thigh. He tosses a duffel bag full of ammunition into the trunk of the lead car, jaw ticking.

“I don’t want any mistakes tonight,” Kanyan says, his voice gravelly. “We go in fast, we come out faster. No survivors but the target. I want Maddox breathing—because we still have questions.”

The cars line up like predators in a row—four of them, blacked-out and hungry.

I slide behind the wheel of Kanyan’s Mustang, engine purring low.

The others pile into the remaining vehicles: Mason driving the armored Denali with Saxon riding shotgun.

Lucky leads the third car, a reinforced Gatti-issued Charger, with Scar and two more men in the backseat.

The fourth vehicle is Kanyan’s personal SUV—loaded with medical supplies, extra rounds, and all the ammunition we need for an op of this scale.

We peel out in formation, a convoy stitched into the darkened shadows.

I guide the Mustang through the winding roads, trees tightening around us like fists.

Three miles from the lodge where Maddox is staying, I kill the headlights.

Everything goes dark. There’s just the pulse of the engine and the sound of rubber kissing gravel.

The others follow suit—darkened silhouettes gliding through the forest like wraiths.

The pines crowd in tighter. Their limbs scrape across the Mustang’s paint with nails like bone. I lower the window slightly, let the cold air slap me awake—the smell of sap and pine needles pervade the air.

At the trailhead, I kill the engine and pop the door soundlessly. I swap my boots for soft-soled tactical shoes and melt into the trees. We move silently—following only our instincts.

Kanyan appears beside me without a sound, twin blades already in hand. Behind us, Lucky checks his rifle one last time, eyes narrowed to slits. Saxon slides a suppressor into place. Mason shoulders a shotgun, his breath fogging like a warning.

We’re ghosts in the dark, out in the middle of nowhere.

I crouch, scanning the treeline. The lodge is somewhere beyond the next ridge—Maddox’s playground, his safehouse. But it won’t be safe for long.

I glance back once, taking in my brothers in blood. Then I move forward, into the dark. Tonight, I plan to break a man’s entire empire. And I intend to start with his fucking spine.

The foothills drink moonlight like old whiskey—slow, mean, and liable to set fire to everything on the way down.

Up there, buried in the trees like a bad secret, sits Maddox’s hunting lodge. A slab of wood and steel tucked between black firs and a lake so still it looks like nothing more than a black hole in the ground.

Saxon North’s intel said Maddox bought it under a shell corporation three years ago. Paid cash and had it wired for off-grid power and thermal shielding. The kind of place designed not just to hide—but to erase.

“Guarded. Isolated.”

That was Kanyan’s phrasing.

What he meant was: Perfect place to bury a man where no one will find him unless they know where to dig.

The cold bites harder the farther in we go. Each breath razors through my lungs, burning sharp with frost and rage. My fingers are stiff around the butt of my gun, but I welcome the ache. It reminds me to stay grounded.

We’ve been moving quietly through the woods for almost an hour. No lights. No voices. Just the crunch of boots through frost-hardened earth, the occasional snap of a branch, and the soundless language of killers who’ve done this so many times before.

Gatti’s men fan out behind me—black shapes cutting through the trees like shadows given form. They move with discipline, silencers ready, eyes hunting.

To my left, Kanyan stalks forward like a man carved from the mountain itself. Focused. Cold. The kind of cold that kills slowly.

Scar’s behind me, keeping pace like a phantom. He doesn’t speak, but you can feel the tension rolling off him in waves. That calm-before-the-kill energy. He’s holding back—but just barely.

The moon is high and bruised behind thin clouds, casting the woods in a haze of silver and shadow. We move in intervals, ducking between the natural cover of rocks and trees. Knees bent. Heads low. Every step calculated.

By the time we reach the outer ridge, we’ve counted at least four sets of fresh boot prints—recent, deep, spread apart.

They’re guarding something.bThey know this place is worth protecting.

We crouch low behind a thicket, and there it is—through the branches: Maddox’s “hunting cabin.” Except it’s not a cabin.

It’s a fucking compound. Concrete perimeter.

Spotlights sweeping like prison yard eyes.

Reinforced doors. Multiple guard towers.

One of them has thermal scopes. Fifteen-foot fences ring the structure, topped with coiled wire and motion sensors.

All for one man. One supposed public servant.

Scar mutters under his breath, checking his scope. “What kind of fucking police commissioner needs this kind of muscle?”

Kanyan doesn’t look away from the cabin. His voice is gravel. Final. “The kind who holds a position of power but is too busy breaking every law under the sun.”

My stomach turns, but it’s not fear I feel. It’s purpose.

The grip around my gun tightens. My joints pop as I roll my wrist, loosening them for what’s coming.

He’s in there.

And every second he breathes is an insult.

We wait. Watch the movements of the guards as we count them. There are seven visible. Possibly more inside. One patrols the perimeter with a short-barreled rifle, slow and bored. Another smokes near a generator, relaxed. Complacent.

They think no one would dare come this far for Maddox.

They’re about to learn how wrong they are.

Kanyan leans in close, his voice low and sharp. “South group sweeps the tree line. North group takes the tower. Jayson, you and Scar with me. We punch through the middle.”

I nod once .

My blood’s already singing. That edge is back—the one I swore I buried.

But tonight, I’ll dig with it.

I lock eyes with Kanyan. “I want him alive.”

“I know you want your pound of meat,” he says. “We’ll keep him breathing as long as possible.”

I can work with that.

Because breathing doesn’t mean he’s whole. It just means he’s still breakable—still mine to destroy. And I want him conscious for every second of the lesson. Alive long enough to understand what fear really feels like… when it’s got a name, and it’s mine.

We spread out. Silent.

A storm coming for the devil’s last refuge.

And I swear, the forest holds its breath as we begin to close in.