Page 56 of Jayson (Gatti Enforcers #3)

KEIRA

I know something’s wrong the second Jayson walks into the room.

Not wrong like danger, like gunfire or blood. This is something quieter. Heavier.

His face is unreadable—but that’s the problem. Jayson wears his violence like a second skin, but this? This stillness? It’s not calm. It’s grief.

He stops just inside the door. Doesn’t come to me right away. His shirt’s wet from the rain or maybe sweat. His knuckles are bruised again. There’s blood on his collar. I don’t think it’s his, but I can’t be sure.

I sit on the edge of the bed, my book open but forgotten, lines blurred by the shaking in my hand. Lula made tea. I didn’t drink it. I couldn’t.

“Jayson?” My voice is barely a whisper.

He doesn’t answer at first. Just crosses the room, sits beside me like he’s about to confess something. His hands tremble when they reach for mine.

“I got the truth,” he says.

The air leaves my lungs .

Every nightmare I’ve ever had suddenly sits in the room with us.

“What truth?”

His jaw ticks. He presses a hand to my knee, as though in doing so, he can ground himself.

“Riley,” he says. “I know what happened to her.”

My heart stutters. My stomach lurches.

“Don’t,” I whisper. “Please don’t?—”

“She didn’t run away.”

He says it so softly. So gently. Thinking it will hurt less. But it rips through me.

I jerk back, almost falling off the bed. “No—no, she was just gone. She left. She left me.”

“She didn’t leave you,” he says. “She died.”

I scream.

It’s not loud. It’s not even real at first. Just a noise that starts in my ribs and spills out of my mouth before I know what it is. My lungs refuse to work. My hands clutch my throat like I can stop the truth from getting in. But it’s too late. It’s already inside me.

I see flashes.

Her hair. Her laugh. Her voice asking if I wanted another juice box.

My head pounding. My mouth dry. Her fingers shaking as she tugged my arm, saying we had to go.

Then silence. A door slamming. Someone laughing.

I collapse to the floor, knees hitting hardwood. My body folds around itself. I’m cold, then hot, then shaking so hard I think I’ll vomit.

“He said she screamed,” Jayson says, still kneeling. Still holding on. “She fought back. She tried—Keira, she tried.”

“No, no—stop. Stop, I can’t—” I claw at my skin, trying to rip the memories out. They come in flashes, broken shards of things I’ve never been able to hold onto.

“She was right there,” I whisper. “I heard her. I thought it was a dream. I thought—I thought?—”

Tears blind me. They burn. They scald like acid.

“She died because of me,” I choke.

Jayson grabs my face, forces me to look at him. “Don’t you ever say that.”

“She was trying to save me!” I scream. “And I forgot her. I let them erase her!”

He holds me as I fall apart. My fists beat his chest. My screams tear through the silence of the house. Lula runs to the door, but Kanyan catches her, shakes his head.

Let her break. Let her bleed.

I cry until I can’t breathe. Until I taste blood. Until my voice is a ruined thing in my throat and I don’t know where I end and the pain begins.

“She was my best friend,” I whisper.

“I know,” Jayson says, his voice wrecked.

“She was my sister. ”

“I know.”

He rocks me, his chest rising and falling like he’s drowning with me.

“Where is she?”

“She’s under a church,” he manages.

My scream echoes through the room. “They buried her like a secret.”

“She’s not forgotten,” he says, voice sharp now. Furious. “She’ll never be forgotten, Keira.”

I close my eyes and see her face. Imagine her staring back at me, her smile trapped beneath cement. I don’t think I’ll ever stop seeing it.

“She was fourteen,” I whisper.

“I know. ”

“She was a kid, Jayson.”

“So were you.”

The sob that leaves me is worse than any scream. It shatters something deep, something I didn’t even know was still whole.

“Tell me they’ll pay,” I whisper.

He doesn’t hesitate. His voice is cold steel.

“They already have.”

And still, I can’t stop crying.

I don’t remember falling asleep.

I don’t remember the storm tapering off or the soft weight of Jayson’s arms pulling me in.

All I remember is pain. Pain that sank so deep it felt like it rewrote my bones. Pain that turned my heartbeat into a funeral drum.

And now? Now it’s morning. But the sun doesn’t feel warm.

I hear voices downstairs. Quiet. Low. Familiar.

Jayson’s gone from the room, but I can feel the imprint of him still on the pillow beside me, the scent of rain and smoke lingering in the sheets like he’s afraid to let me wake up alone.

A knock sounds gently on the door.

Not sharp. Not intrusive.

Soft.

I don’t answer.

But it opens anyway.

It’s Lula. She steps in with a kind of reverence, like she’s walking into a church and I’m something sacred that’s been shattered on the floor. Her eyes find mine where I’m still curled in the blanket, the tear-stained pillow beneath my cheek, the tangle of limbs I haven’t moved in hours.

“Hey, baby,” she says, voice a whisper. “He told me. ”

I blink slowly.

Lula walks over, sits beside me without asking. Her arms don’t come around me right away. She just sits, present. Steady.

“I brought someone,” she says.

Another soft knock.

Then the door creaks open again.

Maxine steps in first. Her hair’s tied up, eyes rimmed with that soft sadness only survivors know. Behind her, her sister Mia. Then Allegra.

I sit up slowly, the blanket clutched around me like armor.

“What is this?” I ask, my voice shredded, hollow.

“Your circle,” Lula says. “Every woman needs one.”

“I’m not—” I start to say I’m not like them.

But then I stop. Because maybe I am. Maybe I always have been.

Mia sits on the floor in front of me, cross-legged like she’s thirteen again and sneaking secrets past bedtime. Maxine hands me a warm mug of tea. Her fingers brush mine. Solid. Real. Comfort without pity.

And Allegra?

She just kneels behind me and starts braiding my hair, like it's a ritual, like she’s piecing something back together one strand at a time.

They don’t ask questions. They just… stay.

Lula passes me a tissue. “Jayson didn’t know how to help you. But he knew who could.”

My chest caves in on itself. Because even in the ruin, even in his own grief, he still thought about me.

“He said you blamed yourself,” Maxine murmurs. “That you thought you let her down.”

I nod, silent tears tracking down my face.

“You didn’t,” Mia says, firm now. “You were a child, Keira. A child they drugged and manipulated. What happened to Riley—what happened to you—is not on you.”

“But I forgot her,” I whisper. “I forgot everything. She died trying to save me, and I forgot her .”

“No,” Maxine says gently. “You survived her.”

Her words hit like thunder. Like light cracking open something black inside me.

“I see her now,” I murmur. “I can’t unsee it. Her eyes. Her fear. The way she pulled me?—”

“She didn’t die for nothing,” Allegra says quietly, finishing the braid and tying it off. “Because you’re going to live. And you’re going to make damn sure the world remembers her.”

Lula leans in. “You don’t have to carry this alone anymore.”

My chin trembles. “It hurts so much.”

Maxine cups my cheek. “Good. That means your heart still works.”

They stay with me until the mug’s empty. Until my breathing slows. Until I start to believe, just a little, that maybe I’m not broken beyond repair.

Then the door opens one more time.

Jayson stands there. Eyes locked on me. Hands bloody. Shirt wrinkled. Hope bleeding from his expression like a man who just ran barefoot across glass to get back to the one thing he couldn’t lose.

Mia stands, gives him a small nod, and the women file out one by one, brushing his shoulder, their eyes telling him what words never could: we’ve got her now. She’s ours, too.

Jayson crosses the room and drops onto the edge of the bed.

“Did they help?” he asks.

I reach for him.

“No,” I whisper, pulling him into my arms.

“They saved me.”