Talon - A Warriors MC Romance novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Gate
Terrence counts a short envelope and breaks her eyebrow; Alexis takes his truck keys and drives to the Ridge, where Talon meets her at the gate and her brother says she can't be here.
Terrence counted the cash in the envelope twice at the kitchen table, and both times it came up short.
It was the first Friday of the month.
Every first Friday he drove out to the county line and came home whistling with that envelope.
He had never let me touch it, and he had never told me whose money it was.
I stood at the sink with my back to him and rinsed a plate that was already clean.
"Where's the rest, Lexi?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"You cleaned my truck today."
"You asked me to."
His chair scraped back.
I knew the sound. I had five years of knowing that sound.
"I didn't touch your envelope, Terrence."
He crossed the kitchen in three steps and hit me with the back of his hand.
My head met the edge of the cabinet, and the kitchen went white and then came back red.
I was on the floor with my cheek on the tile when he crouched down and took my chin in his fingers.
"Say you're sorry."
Blood ran into my left eye.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Good girl."
He stood up, looked at his knuckles, and went down the hall to wash his hands.
The water ran in the bathroom.
I lay there and listened to it, and I did a very plain thing.
I decided.
I was not going to be in this kitchen when the water stopped.
I got up on my knees, then my feet.
His truck keys hung on the hook by the back door, next to the town council's fundraiser calendar with his smiling face on it.
I took the keys.
I lost a shoe on the back steps and did not go back for it.
The truck started on the first turn.
I drove with one hand because my left wrist would not close, and I did not use the headlights until I was past the end of Alder Street.
It was forty minutes to the Ridge.
I had not been up that road in five years.
I had not heard my brother's voice in five years either, though I still knew his number by heart.
I had never once dialed it, because Terrence checked my phone.
The gate was where I remembered it, a steel swing arm between two stone posts, with a sign painted in white on black.
BLACK RIDGE WARRIORS MC. PRIVATE.
Behind it the clubhouse windows were lit, and a row of bikes stood in the yard.
It was nearly two in the morning.
I stopped the truck, left the keys in it, and got out.
The gravel hurt my bare foot, and I walked up to the gate anyway.
There was no buzzer.
I had my good hand on the cold bar when a voice said, "Stop right there, ma'am."
A man stepped out of the shadow of the shop beside the gate.
He was tall, six foot three at least, with dark hair and a short dark beard.
He wore a black leather vest over a white T-shirt, and there was sawdust in the hair on his forearms.
On the right one, a tattoo ran from his wrist to his elbow, three black hawk claws curled around the bone.
He looked at my face for a long moment, and his jaw went hard.
"I'm looking for Dane Hourigan," I said.
"Why?"
"I'm his sister."
His expression shifted, guarded.
"Alexis," he said.
I had not given him my name.
"Do I know you?"
"No." He said it too fast. Then, more quietly, "Dane talks about you."
That wasn't true.
Dane had not talked about me in five years, or I would have heard from him.
I did not have the strength to argue.
"I need to come in," I said. "Please. I don't have anywhere else."
He did not ask me a single question.
He pulled the gate arm up with one hand and put his other under my elbow, and he was careful of the wrist.
"I'm Talon," he said. "Come on."
The clubhouse door opened before we reached it.
A man filled the frame.
He had a red beard, shoulders that took up the whole frame, and a leather vest with the same patch as the sign.
My brother had been a tall, laughing boy when I last saw him up close.
He was not laughing now.
He took in my face, the blood on my shirt, and the truck at his gate with its door hanging open, and every bit of color left him.
I had waited five years for him to open that door.
I had pictured him pulling me against his chest.
"Alexis," Dane said. "You can't be here."
The words landed worse than Terrence's hand had.
Talon's fingers tightened on my arm.
"Look at her, Dane," he said.
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