White Knight (Dirty Mafia Duet, #2)(55)

But I know differently. I know it in my bones. I know that I’m that missing girl.

“My father would never tell me about my biological mother. Why wouldn’t he tell me about her if there wasn’t some horrible secret to hide? Like . . . he wasn’t really my father, was he?”

Cannon grips my hand, squeezing it so tightly that it hurts, but I welcome the pain. It grounds me. Keeps me from losing my goddamned mind as it feels like it’s splintering apart.

“Who the hell am I?”

My lungs heave as he wraps my hand around a glass of whiskey and helps me lift it to my lips. The burn of the alcohol slides down my throat, and I latch onto it as another lifeline.

Everything I thought I knew about who I was . . . is a lie.

Cannon turns his head, and I zero in on the sharp lines of his jaw while he speaks to Benny.

“You fucking suspected, didn’t you? And you didn’t say a goddamned thing. Why?” His voice rises with his frustration.

“What the fuck was I supposed to say? She has the same color eyes as Regina and the same lines of her face. I know because I fucking loved Regina when we were young, but her family wanted ties to the Rossettis so she married Gianni. I didn’t know your girl was wearing a wig too.”

“Then why the fuck would you give her this fucking manuscript? You wanted her to see the picture! You wanted this to happen!”

“So what if I did!” Benny erupts, his face turning red. “If you loved someone and lost them before you could ever have them, you’d want to know what the fuck happened to the last piece of her on this fucking planet. Don’t judge me, kid. You haven’t lived my fucking life!”

Benny doubles over, a harsh coughing fit racking his body until I fear the old man is going to expire right in front of us, after making this confession in the library.

“Cannon. Cannon.” I reach out and grab his hand. “Stop. Please. Don’t yell at him.”

Cannon tugs his hand from mine and guides Benny to the chair where he was sitting.

“It’s okay, Ben. You’re okay.” He snags a handkerchief from the older man’s pocket, and Benny snatches it from him. “Do you want us to call 911? We can get you help.”

The coughing slows down as Cannon fishes his phone from his pocket and Benny waves an arm.

“No. No hospital. I’m not spending my last days hooked up to machines while they try to make me comfortable, because there’s not shit they can do for me.”

“God, Benny. I’m so fucking sorry.” Cannon drops his phone on the table between us and kneels in front of Benny. One of his hands rests on Benny’s knee and the other one grips mine. “What the fuck do we do now?”

The question may not be directed at anyone in particular, but I answer it anyway.

“We have to find out the truth. I need to know who the hell I am, because if I know my father . . . I mean—” I break off because it hurts my heart not to refer to Leander Lockwood as my dad. He was everything a girl could possibly ask for in a father.

“He was still your dad, baby. No matter what,” Cannon says, like he can read my mind, or maybe it’s just the sound of the tears in my voice that I’m barely holding back.

And then it hits me.

“What if my dad had that file on Dom because he knew Dom killed my real father and was trying to figure out who killed my mother, because he wanted justice for her?”

Cannon and Benny both look at me, and Cannon curses under his breath.

“Fuck. You could be right.”

I let the thought marinate in my brain for a few seconds, and pieces lock into place. “He had to have been. It’s the only thing that makes sense. And when I found the file, I jumped to conclusions and assumed that he was killed for investigating the Casso family, but I couldn’t figure out why he was investigating them.”

“Wait. Leander Lockwood. The reporter who killed himself in his Upper East Side apartment for no apparent reason?” Benny says, his voice still rough from the coughing fit.

I spear Benny with my gaze. “Yes, but he didn’t kill himself. I know he didn’t.”

“Then who did it?”

Cannon rises to his feet. “We’re going to find that out too.” He reaches for his phone, but it vibrates before he can lay his fingers on it. His face pales when he reads the message on the screen. “Fuck.”

“What?” Benny and I ask in unison.

Cannon meets my gaze like he’s afraid of how I’m going to react to what he has to say.

“The Rossettis have your mom. They want to make a trade—for me—in two hours.”





39





Memphis





The revelations of the last thirty minutes tilted the axis of my world. No, not tilted. Rearranged it into something I no longer recognize.

I’m pacing as I attempt to collect the smithereens of my world.

Who am I? I can’t even devote the time I need to answer the question because we have to triage, and the fact that I could be someone who I’ve never heard of isn’t the most important thing we have to deal with right now.

The only mother I’ve ever known is in the hands of the Rossettis—the people who have worn the label of “evil villains” in my head up until this point. But now . . . now I’m supposed to believe that there’s a chance they could be my family?