Page 21 of Into the Woods

Letting my brain shift into work mode was a welcome distraction. It was why I was secretly thankful Royal had put me on an assignment. With my light schoolwork load and the football season over, I needed something to keep me from spiraling any further than I’d gone.

Linc set his plate down and grabbed a beer. “Did you guys ever think we’d be here?”

“Here?” Ash asked, quirking a brow.

Linc waved a hand. “Here. I mean, for the longest time, Phoenix seemed like a pipe dream. But now it’s really happening. Royal and Rook are down in San Diego on a goddamn recruitment mission.”

“An interview with Rook’s former CO is hardly a mission,” Ash muttered. “And we all agreed—”

“I know what we all agreed,” Linc said, a little too sharply. His expression softened. “I guess I just never really let myself think it would be real.”

“Why?” I turned to him, wondering why he’d never voiced these concerns to me. To any of us.

Looking more serious than I’d seen him in a long time, Linc put his plate on the coffee table and leaned his forearms on his knees. “I was eight the first time my dad took me into one of his clubs.”

My stomach clenched, and I exchanged a look with Ash. He looked just as concerned. Linc rarely discussed his childhood. Even as kids, he’d deflected all the shit in his life with jokes and smiles.

“I was eleven the first time I had sex,” he added quietly. Ash sucked in a breath, but I knew that story. Linc’s dad, Kent Westford, made my father look like Dudley Do-Right.

To the world, Kent was the man behind over a hundred upscale hotels worldwide. He was a philanthropist who donated to causes supporting orphans, widows, and the arts.

But his hotel empire was a front for a seedy world of exclusive clubs where anything went… for a price. Most of his clubs had a heavy BDSM scene where the word consent was missing from the dictionary. He sold people the way a baker sold donuts.

Linc had been drunk when he’d confessed to me that, when he was a kid, his dad had taken him into a club to have his first sexual experience. Two women, easily a couple decades older than him, had done some messed up shit to his pre-pubescent body under the orders of his own fucking father. All because Kent wanted to bring his son into the family business from an early age.

It had gone on for years—Kent bringing Linc with him to his clubs around the world. Sometimes he had Linc watch. Sometimes he encouraged his son to participate. As he grew up, Linc managed to put literal distance between himself and his father. Now Kent was based out of New York while Linc went to Pacific Cross in California. Linc had used damn near every excuse he could think of not to see his father, but it didn’t always work, and he had to go to a club maybe once a year.

Ash leaned forward. “We’re going to stop him, Linc.” He met my gaze next. “All of them. Beckett and Gary were the first dominoes. We just have to put things in motion before Beckett can get to them.”

When we’d started Phoenix, we’d been pawns. Chess pieces for our fathers to move around a board. Taking down Ryan’s and Maddie’s dads in the fall had forced our hand a bit sooner than we’d have liked, but it didn’t change our endgame.

Phoenix International was the opposition to everything our fathers stood for. It protected the weak and gave the helpless a voice. Instead of falling in line the way our fathers had wanted, we were determined to break them and everything they stood for.

Somewhere in the chaos of losing Becca again, I’d forgotten that. I’d forgotten that there were people out there who needed us. Needed me.

That was the thing I would pour myself into. Not alcohol, not women. I’d fill the void left by Rebecca Whittier by being better. By making her proud.

Even if she’d never know I was doing it all for her.

CHAPTER 7

COURT

Nearly a week later, I drove to the private airport an hour from home. It was early as fuck, and thanks to Los Angeles traffic, I was running thirty minutes late. But the perk of taking a private plane was that being late wasn’t really an issue.

After locking up the car, I tossed my bag over my shoulder and headed for the stairs leading into the elegant Cessna waiting on the tarmac. I jogged up the steps, already anticipating my brothers giving me shit for delaying them.

“May I take your bag for you, Mr. Woods?” The breathy flight attendant with big green eyes and red hair pulled back into a tight knot at the back of her head blinked up at me.

“I’m good,” I grumbled, moving past her.

“Well, if there’s anything I can do, please don’t hesitate to ask,” she added with a bright smile. Her gaze swept down the length of me before coming back to meet mine. “Anything at all.”

Clenching my jaw, I gave her a tight nod and kept going down the aisle. The private jet technically belonged to Cain Industries, but Ryan was letting us take it to Europe. There were a couple rows of plush cream seats, two sets of four chairs around a table on either side of the aisle, and then two long couches. The back of the plane had a private bedroom and bathroom while the front of the plane had another bathroom and a galley style kitchen.

Already seated at one of the tables reading some papers, Rook barely spared me a glance.

I dropped my bag onto the seat across from him and then took the other seat facing him. “Hey.”

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