Page 54 of Jayson (Gatti Enforcers #3)

JAYSON

W e breach from three angles, slicing through the trees like a blade through flesh.

Kanyan takes command with a surgeon’s precision, splitting the team without hesitation. Five men veer off down the southern trail, shadows moving single file through the underbrush. Three loop around to the north, hugging the rise for elevation and cover.

I take point down the central path, flanked by Scar and Kanyan. We move in silence—no chatter, no hesitation. Just breath and bloodlust.

The first guard doesn’t stand a chance.

He’s turned away, pissing against a pine, steam curling off the ground. His rifle dangles from a loose shoulder strap, forgotten like a toy. He thinks the cold is the worst thing coming for him tonight, but he’s wrong.

I’m on him before he hears a thing. One hand clamps his mouth shut—just in time to muffle his startled grunt. My blade slices clean across his throat, a deep, vicious cut that opens him right up.

Hot blood spills over my glove, sprays the bark, paints the ground in a wet arc. He gurgles, eyes wide and disbelieving, hands clawing at the wound like he can shove the life back in. He drops to his knees, then face-first into the drift, twitching as crimson leeches into the earth.

Scar steps over his body without pause. “One down,” he murmurs, like he’s noting the weather.

We push forward, a shadow tide crawling up Maddox’s mountain.

The second guard stumbles into Kanyan’s path—wrong place, wrong time. Kanyan’s knife glints once in the moonlight, then disappears between the man’s ribs. The sound it makes—wet, final—is followed by a sickening crack as it punctures through lung and spine.

The man collapses, limbs jerking like cut strings, blood bubbling at his lips.

A third breaks the treeline in a panic. He sees us—just in time to scream.

His gun is raised, but his finger is twitching. He’s way too slow.

I fire. One shot. The bullet punches through his forehead, jerks his head back like it’s on a hook. Bone fragments scatter. Blood explodes against the tree behind him like someone flung a bucket of it.

His body hits the ground seconds after his mind shuts off.

My earpiece crackles.

“Mason to all teams.” His voice is ice—controlled, lethal. “We just breached the perimeter. Lets end this now.”

I wipe the blood from my cheek, eyes fixed on the fortress rising just beyond the ridge—spotlights sweeping, gunmen on patrol, oblivious to the blood bath creeping closer.

Alive, Kanyan said. Barely, I think.

By the time we’re twenty feet from the cabin, the ground behind us is littered with bodies and blood, but only three guards are still breathing.

Not for long.

They’ve lost their nerve. I can see it in the way they stumble back from the perimeter, weapons raised but hands shaking. One of them’s screaming into a radio, barking for backup that isn’t coming.

Lucky and Saxon move like ghosts through the treetops.

The panicked guard bolts for cover, sprinting across the open clearing. He never sees Saxon drop from the branch like a panther. Mid-run, Saxon lands on him, wraps an arm around his throat, and twists hard. The sickening snap echoes once before the man crumples like meat, mouth open, eyes glassy.

There’s no time to breathe. Scar kicks in the cabin’s back door with a crash loud enough to rattle bones.

We pour in behind him.

Two guards stand there, frozen for a second too long. Guns half-raised. Minds lagging behind their bodies. Which is their biggest mistake.

I lunge first—hit the one on the left like a battering ram. We slam into the wall hard enough to crack drywall. His rifle skitters out of reach.

My blade drives into his thigh, deep and fast, slicing the femoral artery. Blood erupts in hot pulses, soaking his pants, spraying the floor.

He screams—raw, primal—but I shut it down fast. Fist to his throat, crushing the windpipe, then I drive my knife up under his chin. The steel splits flesh, crashes through cartilage, lodges deep in the brain with a brutal crunch.

His eyes go wide. Then dark.

The other guard pulls the trigger in a panic—rounds snapping off like firecrackers.

One bullet clips Lucky’s bicep, carving an angry red groove into his arm.

Lucky doesn’t even flinch. He just raises his pistol and shoots the bastard in both kneecaps.

The man drops with a howl, legs folding the wrong way beneath him.

He tries to crawl.

Scar steps in with all the grace of a storm. One boot to the face—full force. The guard’s head jerks sideways, jaw crumpling on impact. Teeth scatter across the hardwood like loose change.

Then it’s silence.

We’re in.

The cabin’s interior is dimly lit, flickering with firelight. The smell hits hard—cigars and stale sweat, and the faintest smells of fear and desperation underneath. It’s the scent of men who know they’re running out of time.

Chains are bolted to the wall beside the basement stairwell—thick, iron, stained. A monitor hums on the table, split into four grainy feeds from outside. A red button glows on the wall near the entry—EMERGENCY LOCKDOWN, printed in black.

I slam my fist into it.

The whole place reacts. Metal shutters slam over the windows with mechanical clunks. Doors lock in place with a hiss of hydraulics. No one’s getting out now.

“Maddox is still here,” I growl, scanning the room.

Scar’s already moving toward the hallway, eyes sharp. “Find him.”

Seconds later, Kanyan strides through the rear door. Blood’s smeared up his arm, drying across the crowbar still clutched in his fist. His face is stone. Cold. Absolute.

“Basement,” he says, voice flat. “He’ll be down there.”

And if he’s smart, he’s praying. Because what’s coming for him will show him no mercy.

I take the lead.

The basement door groans open, and the first thing to hit me is the air—thick, damp, and wrong. It’s the kind of feeling that seeps into your lungs and stays there, clinging to your skin long after you leave.

Each step down creaks under our feet, a slow descent into hell. The concrete walls sweat with condensation. The dim light overhead flickers like it’s afraid of what we’ll find.

We reach the bottom.

Steel-reinforced doors loom ahead—four inches thick, bolted from the inside, slick with the kind of paranoia that only guilty men build around themselves. It’s the final barrier. The last wall between us and Richard Maddox.

Mason steps forward, calm as ever, planting the explosives along the frame. The charges are precise—enough to blow the hinges off, not the whole goddamn basement. He works fast, his gloved fingers steady.

We back away, falling into formation.

Saxon gives the nod, then flips the switch.

Boom. The explosion is sharp and surgical, not flashy. Just enough to split the silence like a throat opening under a blade. The doors buckle, then crash forward in a cloud of smoke and concrete dust.

We flood the room. Guns drawn. Formation tight. Eyes sweeping every corner.

Smoke coils around us as dust clings to our skin, mixing with sweat and the stench of evil. And then the air clears just enough to reveal Richard Maddox. Standing like a king in the middle of hell.

White dress shirt, sleeves rolled with calculated ease. Suspenders stretched over a belly fat with power and whiskey. Bare feet sunk into a Persian rug—like this is his living room, not a bunker full of sins and secrets .

He holds a crystal tumbler of bourbon, amber liquid swirling in his grip, the ice clinking gently like windchimes in a storm.

He seems surprised to see us, but he doesn’t make a move. But his eyes—they twitch. Just slightly. Enough for me to feel it: that flicker of fear trying to crawl back down his throat.

“You’re trespassing,” he says, smooth as Sunday morning scripture.

So I shoot him.

One clean shot to the shoulder. The round tears through flesh and bone with a muffled crack. The glass tumbles from his hand, shatters across the floor. He drops like a puppet with cut strings, crumpling into a sprawl of limbs and blood.

The bourbon spills. So does the silence.

He gasps, shock overtaking arrogance, blinking up at me like he can’t quite register what’s changed—like the world tipped without his permission.

I step through the broken glass, the crunch underfoot loud in the quiet.

“Just a little taste of what’s to come,” I say, voice low, steady.

“You can’t—” he starts, breathless.

I crouch beside him, shove the barrel of my pistol against his exposed kneecap.

“I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

Then I pull the trigger.

The gunshot echoes like thunder in a tomb.

He howls—raw, animalistic. The kind of scream that tears from deep inside the chest. Bone shatters. Blood splatters. His leg spasms violently, twitching as his nerves betray him.

“Jayson.”

Kanyan’s voice cuts across the room like a blade. I freeze. Not because I want to. But because I owe him.

He steps into view, slow and deliberate. His gaze settles on Maddox without an ounce of pity. No rage, either. Just that terrifying calm that makes men forget how to breathe.

He crouches beside Maddox, mirroring me.

“Alive doesn’t mean unmarked,” he says quietly. “But he has a story to tell.”

Then his eyes shift to mine.

“Get it out of your system. But be smart about this.”

I nod once.

Then I grab Maddox by the collar and drag him across the concrete. His scream bounces off the walls, ragged and wet. One leg flails behind him, useless. The other kicks at nothing. The rug bunches under him. His blood smears the floor like paint.

He’s heavy, but I want him to feel every inch.

I haul him upright, shove him into a wooden chair, and slap zip ties tight around his wrists. He groans. I spit in his face.

“You’re going to tell me what you did,” I whisper, leaning close, voice shaking with fury. “To the girls. To Keira.”

I pull the plastic tighter, making sure it digs into raw skin.

“And I promise you this?—”

I slam my boot into the base of the chair, anchoring it.

“—before this is over, you’ll beg me to finish it.”

He laughs through broken teeth, mouth dripping blood. “And you think the people I work for will let you walk away from this?”

Scar steps up behind me, cold and steady. He leans in just enough for Maddox to feel the heat of his breath on his ear.

“Best pray they don’t,” Scar murmurs. “Because we’re not done yet.”

We leave him tied to the chair, wrists zip-tied to the armrests, ankles strapped down with belts ripped from the dead.

Blood pools beneath him, a sticky reminder of how this night ends.

Shards of glass glitter across the floor, catching firelight like tiny daggers.

Around him, bodies lie cooling—silent witnesses to our kind of justice.

Maddox shifts, groaning low, head lolling forward like it’s too heavy to lift. His breathing is ragged, sharp and uneven. Every exhale sounds like it costs him something.

Scar kicks one of the corpses aside and tosses a match into the hearth. The fire catches instantly. Flames bloom up the chimney, crackling to life, licking shadows across the cabin walls. The smoke curls sweet and thick—wood and blood and bourbon and fear.

No one speaks.

The only sound is Maddox, wheezing and shivering, trying to hold on to the last scraps of his arrogance.

I turn to Kanyan.

He’s standing by the window, staring out at the tree line like he can already see the next step.

“Where do we take him?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer right away. Just breathes—slow, controlled, like he’s tasting the weight of every consequence.

Then he turns, meets my eyes.

“Somewhere no one will hear him scream,” he says.