White Knight (Dirty Mafia Duet, #2)(2)

“You always were a mama’s boy, kid.”

My entire body tensed, my prior thought brushed away as soon as he spoke, but he either didn’t care or notice and kept going.

“That shit wasn’t gonna get you anywhere in this life or the next, so you look at this as an opportunity. Not a loss.”

He did not just say that. But the man kept talking, straightening his shoulders and staring me down.

“Harness that anger and learn to become your own fucking man. No more mama to run to when shit gets bad. Figure it out yourself. Rely on yourself. Have loyalty to me and no one else other than yourself. You hear me, kid?”

I wouldn’t have been able to miss the bark behind his words even if I shoved my head out of the window of this moving limo, which I didn’t, but I wanted to. I didn’t want to hear this shit. Not from him. Not now. Not ever.

The words go screw yourself hung on my tongue, but my mom’s innocent voice echoed through my mind.

“Please don’t ruin this day for me. This is the last time I’ll ever see how much he loved me. You can see it, right, Cannon? He really loved me. It didn’t matter that he never left his wife. He loved me.”

The earnest tone my mother’s ghost used to speak in my ear was enough to make me wish I had one of those guns all the Casso men carried so I could send Dom off to tell Mom in person how much he loved her. But I couldn’t. I’d never shot a gun. I didn’t want to be like them. I didn’t want to deal out death when I was wronged—with exception of this long, cold car ride.

I wanted a normal life. Friends at school. To play sports. To be part of something that wasn’t the mob.

But you didn’t always get what you wanted. I knew that now more than ever. The only thing I truly needed was my mom back in our apartment, her hair curled and lipstick on, even as she whipped up dinner.

Something I could never have again.

Dominic Casso would never be my father. No, he’d only ever be the man who got my mother killed.

I would never be like him. Not as long as I lived.





2





Cannon





Present day





“It’s time to prove yourself. You take care of her, or I will.”

The moment I’ve been waiting for over half my life has finally come. Him or me. Dominic Casso’s fingers wrap around the barrel of his Sig and he shoves the grip toward me, like he’s expecting me to take it and put a bullet in a woman.

After all these years, he still doesn’t know jack shit about me.

I may have been born a mobster’s bastard, but I’m not a fucking mobster. Regardless, I learned at the feet of one of the best, so I relax my posture and study him lazily.

Rule number one: never let them see you sweat, even if you don’t have a single fucking clue how the hell you’re going to get out of the situation without dying or ending up covered in blood spatter.

“In a construction site? Isn’t that a little cliché?” I ask, injecting as much indolence into my tone as I possibly can. Dom hates it, but I’ve never given a damn what he likes.

He’s not taking another person from me, despite the fact that she probably hasn’t given me a word of truth since the second we met. But that’s not the point.

The point is that I am the one who will decide how this situation will be handled. No one else. I won’t let Dom take another decision out of my hands. Not now and not ever again.

No doubt a therapist would say there’s still a hell of a lot of that enraged kid rolling around inside me.

“I don’t give a fuck where you do it, but it’s time. I’m done fucking around with this shit,” Dom says, shoving the gun toward me again. “Do it, or I will. Your choice, but believe me that I will remember which one you fucking choose.”

Fingers curl into the back of my suit jacket. The touch of my betrayer. The woman who got us into this situation to begin with. The one who I would be a fool to trust now. And an even bigger fool if I were to choose her over the only family I’ve known for most of my life.

“Time to be your own man,” Dom told me once. I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean for me to remember that right now, when he’s offering me a gun and a choice I didn’t ask to make.

Before I can make a move, Primo, one of Dom’s ever-present bodyguards, shuts the passenger side door of the SUV and walks around the back to pop the tailgate. That’s when I hear muffled screaming.

My gaze cuts between Primo and Dom. “What the fuck is going on?”

One of Dom’s steel-gray eyebrows rises like he doesn’t get why I’m confused, but he doesn’t say anything.

In my mind, all I can picture is Memphis’s stepmother being hauled out of the SUV and dragged toward us. My blood, already running cold, slogs along in my veins.

But I’m wrong.

It’s not Cynthia Lockwood. It’s someone completely different.

As soon as Primo gets the woman out of the back and carries her across the gravel construction site, kicking and screaming and with her hands bound in front of her, a wave of relief washes over me.

Teal.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Thankful I have one hell of a poker face, I mask every single thought I’m having in this moment. If Dom knew what was going through my head, he’d empty the entire magazine into my chest and tell Primo to bury me under an ocean of concrete where no one would find my body.