White Knight Read online

  Selena Mazzini’s body was found by her husband, Sonny Mazzini, on the evening of August 12th . . .

  * * *

  I look back at Memphis. “Benny’s got a lot of fucking explaining to do.”

  38

  Memphis

  The photo is of a woman who looks like me, but now that I stare at it closer, I see the differences. My eyes are a little bigger and her nose is a bit wider.

  But still. It’s my face.

  I follow Cannon through the brownstone as he yells for Benny. Everyone sticks their heads out of their rooms, and he demands to know who saw the old man last. Tempo directs us to the library, and we find Benny reading in front of the empty fireplace.

  As soon as we cross the threshold, Benny looks up from the book on his lap. “You hollering for me?”

  “What the fuck do you know that you’re not telling us?” Cannon demands, holding out the journal and the picture of Selena Mazzini.

  Benny glances at the picture and then at me—sans wig and contacts—and there’s not a single shred of surprise on his face. None.

  “I told your woman I’d only seen eyes like hers once before.”

  “On a dead woman named Regina,” I add and then jerk my chin toward Cannon. “Is that her real name? Regina Rossetti?”

  Benny reaches up and scratches the rough whiskers forming a layer of scruff on his unshaven face. “Yeah. And I’m pretty fucking sure you’re the missing Rossetti daughter that Giancarlo and GTR could never find.”

  My mouth drops open and a coating of ice forms over every inch of my skin.

  “No. No. That’s not possible. My name is Memphis Lockwood. My father was Leander Lockwood, the reporter and news anchor. I’m not a Rossetti.”

  “You sure about that, kid? Because Alessandra Rossetti disappeared the night her mother was murdered, and then when Gianni, her daddy, went after Dom for killing his wife, he never said what happened to the little girl. Her uncle and cousins never could find her.”

  Cannon’s grip on my hip tightens, like he’s trying to brace me for what’s to come, but I’m sure I already know. Still, I ask the question anyway.

  “What happened to Gianni Rossetti when he went after Dom for killing his wife?” I swallow the saliva pooling in my mouth, and my entire body shakes as I wait for an answer.

  It doesn’t come from Benny, though.

  From beside me, Cannon says, “Dom killed him. He didn’t want to, but Gianni wouldn’t listen to reason. He didn’t believe that Dom hadn’t killed Regina.”

  “Oh my God.” The food I ate earlier rises up with bile from my stomach, and I shake even harder.

  Cannon must realize my knees are going to give way, and he maneuvers me into the chair opposite Benny’s. “Sit. Jesus Christ, you’re fucking white. Benny, get her some whiskey.”

  “I’ll get us all some fucking whiskey,” he says.

  I hear the chair squeak as he rises, but I don’t look his way because Cannon is kneeling in front of me.

  “We don’t know anything yet. It’s just a fucking story right now, Memphis,” he says.

  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?

  The walls of the library and the empty fire grate seem to close in on me until I have to sit. I plop into a chair, and Cannon drops to a crouch beside me.

  “Baby, it’s going to be okay. We’re going to get her back. Just breathe.”

  I nod, focusing on my clenched fists in my lap. One by one, I force myself to relax my fingers until they’re outstretched.

  “I’m okay. I’m okay.” I repeat the words, as if hoping the more times I say them, the more likely they are to be true. If . . . if I were really Alessandra Rossetti, which I’m definitely not, what would that mean?

  Visions flash before my eyes of a dark-haired man lifting me into the air, and my flouncy pink princess dress rises and falls with each toss. A woman’s voice yells at him from the house to be careful—in Italian. But I know what she’s saying.

  Is it a memory? The picture is so vivid, straight down to the white ruffled socks and the shiny black patent-leather shoes on my feet.

  It can’t be real. It’s not real. I would know if Leander Lockwood weren’t my father. Wouldn’t I? But he never told me about my biological mother. Ever.

  Why wouldn’t he tell me if there was nothing to hide?

  I flay myself with questions. Like, why didn’t I push him for more answers? I’m an investigative journalist, for God’s sake. That’s what I do. But I already know the answer to that because it’s not the first time I’ve asked myself.

  Leander Lockwood was an incredible man, and when he asked something of me, I complied without question. That was the kind of loyalty, confidence, and love he inspired in me, the most curious child to ever be born.

  But was I born to him?

  I had to have been. Maybe he had an affair? Knowing my stepmother for what she is, I wouldn’t have blamed him. Although, to hear her tell the story, the tension in their marriage didn’t begin until I arrived. Arrived, not was born.

  I always assumed I was a child born to a woman who wasn’t his wife and that’s why my stepmother treated me the way she did. But I got so much love from my father, it didn’t bother me. I was Daddy’s girl, and that’s the way I liked it. Was I looking for his approval and affection so much that I was willing to overlook all the details of my birth that didn’t add up?

  Yes. Absolutely yes. And I can’t imagine any person on the planet who wouldn’t have done the same. My father was that kind of man. Magnetic and kind and generous and all things good. Why else would the American people have loved him for so long while he brought them hard story after hard story, but did it with compassion and fairness?

  My instinct is to feel stupid and small for not digging, but when I remember my father, it all fades away. There’s nothing I wouldn’t have done for him. Nothing I wouldn’t have refrained from doing.

  But he’s gone, and I must believe that in this situation, with Cynthia at risk, he would want me to get her back safely. Even though they were divorced, he cared for her and her well-being.

  I lift my chin and meet Cannon’s gaze. Throughout my pinball machine of a thought process, he’s stayed crouched in front of me, waiting for me to digest the information.

  “Are you sure you’re okay? Because I’d understand if you’re not.” The way he says it tells me he thinks I am Alessandra Rossetti.

  I stare into those hazel eyes that I’ve fallen in love with over and over, and there’s no judgment. No hate. No disgust.

  That’s the moment I know that he’s just as incredible a man as my father. He doesn’t see me any differently, regardless of the name and family history I may share with his enemies.

  “If I were Alessandra Rossetti . . . which I’m not,” I make sure to add so everyone knows where I stand. “Who would the current Rossettis be to me?”

  “Giancarlo is your uncle, and GTR is your cousin,” Benny says.

  I blink a few times as I process the information. “There’s no way I’m related to them. There just isn’t. I can’t be. It’s not possible.”

  Cannon takes my hand between his. “Someone might say the same thing when they find out that Dominic Casso is his father. We don’t get to choose our family, baby. No matter how much we might wish we could.”

  “But they’re monsters,” I say, my voice breaking when I think of the lives they took and the injuries they caused on the sidewalk with their bullets and the blood they spilled.

  “We all are, kid. Some of us just hide it better than others,” Benny says.

  I cut my gaze to his. “I’m not a monster. I don’t care who I am or whose blood runs in my veins, I’m not like them or you, if that’s what you are.”

  Benny’s face softens, but that doesn’t make his next statement any easier to swallow. “If you’d been raised a mob princess, like your daddy had planned, who knows what you might have been capable of. Then again, you could’ve turned out like Eden. Sweet as pie. We’ll never know.”

  My shoulders tug back until I’m sitting straight up. “My father was Leander Lockwood, and he raised me to be smart, kind, curious, and compassionate.” My tone is sharp enough to wound, and Cannon squeezes tighter.

  “No one can take that away from you. You’re right, it doesn’t matter whose blood runs in your veins, you are Leander Lockwood’s daughter because he was your father. He didn’t have to give you his DNA to make that true. He gave you everything else that made you who you are.”

  I jerk forward and throw my arms around Cannon’s shoulders, tears spilling down my cheeks. “I really want that to be true. I can’t take that away from him. I can’t.”

  “You won’t. I promise. No matter what happens, I love you. I don’t care if you’re Drew, Memphis, or Alessandra. I don’t care which wigs and contacts you wear or how much makeup. I love you.”

  I pull back and blink while Cannon reaches up to swipe the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs.

  “I love you too. But still, I don’t like not knowing who I am. I need to know for sure, even if I don’t want it to be true.”

  “Then we’ll find out,” Cannon says.

  “How?”

  “I don’t think the Rossettis are going to volunteer a DNA sample, but I’m pretty damn sure we can take one after they’re dead.” The gruesome suggestion comes from Benny.

  “We’re not killing them, Ben. We’ll take them out the smart way, and they’ll spend the rest of their lives rotting in federal prison.”

  The old man hacks and coughs again. “How the hell do you propose we make that happen?”

  “I have a plan.” Cannon rises and holds out a hand to me.

  I stand, staying close to him once I’m on my feet, as if I’m using him as an anchor. Which I am, because nothing else in this room or city makes sense except for what I feel for him.

  “We trade me for Cynthia,” Cannon says, “just like they demanded.”

  At that moment, I’m glad I’m holding on tight to him, because the suggestion would have otherwise taken me to my knees.

  “No! Not a chance in hell!” My protest fills the room as Benny shakes his head.

  “No. I agree with the girl. We have to find another way. They’ll kill you.”

  “And you don’t think they’ll kill her?”

  As soon as Cannon says it, bleak despair fills my chest. I can’t let Cynthia die. No matter what, I’ll always love her in my own way. I can’t sacrifice her to keep Cannon. But I can’t lose him either.

  It’s an impossible situation. An impossible choice. The clock is ticking, and I have no idea how the hell we’re going to get out of this mess.

  I won’t lose Cannon. I can’t let anything happen to Cynthia.


  So, what the hell do we do?

  A man fills the doorway and steps inside the room. Cavanaugh Westman, Hollywood’s hottest action star. Now that I’m looking, I see the stamp of the Casso family resemblance on his features.

  He takes in all of us, giving me a double-take due to my lack of Drew Carson wig and contacts, I’m sure, before meeting Cannon’s gaze.

  “Fill me in. I might have been out of the game for a while, but whatever the hell is going on, I can help.”

  40

  Cannon

  Beside me, Memphis clutches my hand, and I can only imagine the battle raging within her. Just like it’s raging in me.

  The only choice we can make is clear.

  I won’t let a woman die to save my own ass—especially someone who isn’t and has never been involved in the game. She may be a piece of work and a terrible mother, but she’s not to blame when it comes to this. I’m not that kind of man, and I never will be.

  The Rossettis will kill her . . . of that I have no doubt. They had no problem timing their drive-by to hit the whole family standing on the sidewalk, instead of waiting until it was just the men. They won’t hesitate to put a bullet between Cynthia Lockwood’s eyes to prove a point.

  As for me? They’ll kill me too. After they torture me. Or try to, at least.

  An outsider might think it’s strange that they didn’t ask to trade for Dom, but it doesn’t to me. He’s in the hospital, recovering from a heart attack, which the Rossettis would already know through their network of informants. There’s a reason I left his security with him 24/7. Because I don’t trust the Rossettis won’t try to off him in his bed.

  Dom is an injured animal to them. Not a risk. Enzo’s also laid up, which means the most potent threat to their organization is me.

  I see their logic, even though I think it’s flawed. I’m not going to be a gangster, despite what Dom expects of me if I were to take over the family. I’m a businessman, and a hell of a good one. I could easily revamp the family businesses and create more profit from legal activities than Dom does from illegal ones. He’s just never given me the opportunity to prove it. And if I turn myself over to the Rossettis, I may never get a chance.