Claimed By My Outlaw Stepbrother

Chapter 9

Gage POV

The heavy iron doors of the compound garage rolled open with a loud, metallic screech that scraped right through my skull.

The morning sun was beating down on the gravel lot outside, but inside the bay, it still smelled like old gear oil, exhaust smoke, and raw metal.

I walked past the first row of lift jacks, my heavy leather club cut creaking with every step. My mind was completely split in half.

Part of me was trying to calculate our border patrol lines to catch the internal club rat, but the other part was completely trapped upstairs in my bedroom.

The taste of Sienna was still stuck in the back of my throat. My neck still felt hot where her calloused fingers had dug into my skin during that kiss, and it was throwing my entire enforcer routine out of whack.

I was running on three hours of sleep, and my brain felt fried.

"You look like you just went ten rounds with a concrete mixer, Vandal."

I stopped by the tool cabinet. Jax was leaning against a stripped-down chopper frame, a greasy shop rag in his hand and a stupid, knowing smirk plastered across his face.

He was twenty-one, reckless, and usually the first one to notice when my alpha armor had a crack in it.

"Shut up, Jax," I growled, my voice coming out extra raspy as I grabbed a heavy iron socket wrench off the pegboard.

"I’m not in the mood today. Did you clear the north fence line like I told you?"

"Fence is fine," Jax said, tossing the rag onto a tire stack. He walked over, his eyes narrowing as he looked closer at my face. He rubbed his own jaw, mimicking me.

"But you're distracted, big bro. You’ve been staring at that same wrench for ten seconds, and you haven't even checked the serial numbers on the new shipping blocks yet. Did the stepsister give you a headache at breakfast?"

"I said drop it," I muttered, my gray eyes pinning him to the spot with a glare that usually made prospects run for the gates.

Jax didn't run. He just chuckled, reaching into his pocket to pull out a cold can of soda. "Alright, alright.

Don't take my head off. But the President is already in the clubhouse Chapel. He’s calling a meeting with the senior patches in twenty minutes. Creed Vance’s scouts were spotted on the ridge again, and Dad wants a total lockdown on the border garage."

A sudden, violent knot tightened deep in my gut. I thought about Thomas Vale sweating through his shirt at the dining table, and then I thought about Sienna standing her ground in her grey tank top, refusing to let the club run her life.

"The border shop stays open," I said, my jaw locking into a hard line. "If we lock the bay doors now, Creed will know we're panicking. We keep the regular routine, but I want two prospects sitting in an unmarked truck across the highway.

If a single Jack so much as blinks at her driveway, they don't call the table they take the legs off."

"And what about the leak inside our walls?" Jax asked, his smirk completely vanishing as his face went serious. He leaned in closer, dropping his voice to a whisper.

"If someone is feeding our gate coordinates to the Jacks, a couple of prospects at the shop won't save her, Gage. The rat knows exactly how to bypass our perimeter alarms."

Before I could answer him, the heavy metal side door of the garage rattled open.

Leo, Sienna's assistant mechanic, sneaked into the bay. He was clutching a clipboard to his chest like a shield, his eyes darting frantically between me and Jax as if he expected us to pull our weapons on him.

He looked completely out of place in his oversized overalls, his sneakers squeaking loudly against the oil-stained concrete floorboards.

"Uh... hello, giant leather people," Leo stammered, stopping ten feet away and holding his breath. "I am just here to collect the spare brake pads for Sienna's flatbed truck. Please do not turn me into a human wrench. I am very fragile."

Jax let out a loud snort, shaking his head. "Relax, kid. Nobody’s hurting you. The parts are in the back cage."

Leo didn't move toward the cage. He looked at me, his expressive face shifting into a funny, desperate grimace.

"Also... Vandal, sir? Sienna told me to tell you that if you don't bring her a decent cup of coffee from the clubhouse machine when you come back, she is going to drain the transmission fluid out of your custom chopper and pour it into your boots. Her words, not mine. I am just the messenger."

Jax looked at me, his eyebrows flying up to his hairline as a massive grin broke across his face. "Pour it in your boots? Man, I like her. She’s got teeth."

I felt that slow, dangerous twitch hit the corner of my mouth again. I looked at Leo, whose knees were practically shaking through his denim.

"Tell her she gets the clubhouse coffee when she learns how to follow protocol," I growled softly at Leo. "Now get your parts and get back to the shop line."

"On it! Already gone!" Leo squeaked, grabbing the box of brake pads from the shelf and sprinting out the side door so fast he almost tripped over his own feet.

The garage went quiet again, but the tension in my chest hadn't loosened. I threw the iron wrench onto the workbench with a loud clank, turning back to my younger brother.

"I'm heading to the Chapel meeting," I told Jax, my voice dead serious as I pulled my heavy leather cut tight over my chest. "Keep your eyes on the north gate. If the rat is moving today, they’re going to use the noon patrol shift change to do it."

I strode out into the blinding California sun, my boots crunching the gravel as I headed toward the main clubhouse.

The game was getting tighter, the Jacks were circling, and I had to find the leak before the whole compound burned to the ground with Sienna inside it.

The clubhouse hallway was dark, smelling of spilled beer and old pine wood, but the heavy oak doors of the Chapel room were wide open.

I didn't enter right away. I stopped at the threshold, adjusting my leather cut over my shoulders to buy myself a second.

Inside, the smoke from fifteen different cigarettes hung low over the long table like a grey cloud.

Big Raymond sat at the head of the wood, his massive, scarred hands wrapped around a glass of neat whiskey. The senior patches were all leaned forward, arguing loudly over the boundary coordinates near the highway bypass.

"I’m telling you, Raymond, Creed Vance isn't just looking for an entry point," a senior patch named Boxer growled, slamming his fist onto the table.

"He’s trying to swallow the southern machine shop line whole. If we don’t park an armed crew on that concrete by noon, the Jacks will own our choke-point."

"The Vice President already handled the claim at the shop floor," my father growled back, his deep voice instantly cutting through the noise in the room.

He didn't look up from his glass, but his gray eyes the exact same shade as mine flicked toward the doorway the second my boots hit the threshold.

"Speak up, Vandal. Boxer thinks your new stepsister’s garage is a lost cause."

I strode into the room, my heavy boots thumping against the floorboards as I took my seat to the right of the President.

The entire table went dead silent, twenty pairs of hardened eyes waiting to see if I was going to show a single slip in my alpha posture.

"The shop isn't a lost cause, and it isn't a target for Creed," I said, my voice dropping into a low, gravelly register that filled the tight space.

I leaned forward, resting my split knuckles right on the heavy wood of the table. "I checked the perimeter myself twenty minutes ago. Sienna runs a clean bay, and she’s already rebuilding our backup frames.

If we send a massive, armed crew to sit on her driveway now, the local state troopers will think we're preparing for a turf war. The federal police will be crawling inside our gates before nightfall."

"And what about the marker her father signed?" Boxer pressed, his eyes narrowing as he leaned across the table. "Creed Vance doesn't care about federal police, Vandal. He wants the steel."

"The marker is trash under Bylaw Four," I growled, pinning Boxer to his chair with a stare that made his jaw lock up.

"I verified the property claim to his face last night, and the President logged it in the charter books. She stays in my quarters, her shop stays under my name, and if Creed Vance tries to cross that line, he’s violating an interstate treaty. End of story."

My father stared at me for three long, agonizing seconds, his weathered face completely unreadable as he looked for the lie.

He knew I was running on no sleep, and he knew I was keeping something back, but my breathing stayed perfectly steady.

I didn't let my face show a single hint of what had happened upstairs in my bedroom just an hour ago or the way Sienna's mouth had tasted against mine in the dark.

"The claim stands," Big Raymond finally muttered, knocking back the rest of his whiskey with a sharp swallow. He pointed a thick, calloused finger at the table map.

"But I want the noon patrol shifts doubled on the southern ridge. If a single Jack so much as blinks at that state highway bypass, you take their tires off. Dismissed."

The senior patches stood up, their leather cuts creaking as they began to clear out of the Chapel room, grumbling about the extra shifts.

I stayed in my chair, waiting for the room to go empty. My phone buzzed hard against my hip inside my vest pocket. I pulled it out, expecting a tactical update from Jax at the gate, but the screen showed a restricted number.

I slid my thumb across the glass, bringing the phone straight to my ear.

"Vandal," a panicked, familiar voice hissed through the static. It was Leo, and he sounded like he was currently hyperventilating inside a tool locker.

"Oh god, please tell me you're near your bike. I went back to the shop to drop off the brake pads, and... and Thomas is gone, Gage! But that’s not the bad part.

Someone left a note pinned to the flatbed bumper with a bloody knife. It has your name on it, and... and I think the rat just left the compound gate wide open."

My heart hit my chest cavity like a falling piston. The internal club rat wasn't waiting for the noon shift change anymore they were already moving the pieces, and they were using Sienna's workspace to spring the trap.