"Dad! I got Jason to come out and help us train Nox and Leo!" Lilly called as she came outside, practically dragging Jason along the way.

I chuckled. "I see that sweetheart."

Jason smiled and shook his head at me as Lilly continued to pull him, excited to have her first training session with the dogs.

"You're staying and helping right dad?"

I nodded and sat down on the grass. "Of course sweetheart, they need to learn to listen to my commands too."

For hours we stayed out there, teaching the puppies basic commands. Jason was a huge help too. With his previous experience of helping train dogs he was able to teach us little tricks to make it easier for the puppies to understand what we wanted them to do.

By the time a few hours had passed, the puppies had mastered commands such as sit, lay down, roll over, shake, stay, come, speak, and spin.

Surprisingly, the puppies were very smart.

"Maybe once they get basic good behavior down we can start training them to be protection dogs." Jason told us.

"Don't protection dogs normally turn out to be more violent then usual? Isn't is usually recommended to not have family if you have a protection dog?" Lilly asked.

Jason shook his head. "That's a misconception. It's the same for an attack dog too. A lot of people assume that since the majority of their training is about attacking a person to protect another they can't have the dog or dogs around a family, but that's not true. I've seen a lot of attack and protection dogs around newborns and toddlers without having an issue. It all depends on how they're trained. A lot of trainers will tell you if they're family friendly or not, and it just depends on how the trainer raises them to be."

"Oh, that makes a lot of sense actually," Lilly shrugged. I was too busy playing with Leo to really pay attention to what they were saying. While my mind was processing the words, I wasn't giving them my full attention.

The toy that we were playing with was just a simple toy rope, but man did Leo love to play tug-of-war with it. He would let out little growls and shake his head side to side to get me to let go. While I could easily take it away from him since he was still small, I entertained him by letting him think that I was struggling.

It was only when Nox came and joined his brother against me that I let go after a minute.

"Get overpowered by puppies Alpha?" Key asked as he watched the little scene.

I rolled my eyes. "No. My hand was just starting to hurt from the rope is all."

"Sure, I'll let you believe that," he chuckled.

I rolled my eyes but sat down next to him on a little bench that we had outside. My mind flashed back to what Smiles said about him and suddenly I was conflicted.

Do I ask about it? Do I say Smiles' name or do I just ask if he's seeing anyone in the club right now? Is it really any of my business anyways?

After having an internal battle with myself, I concluded that I wouldn't butt in and would let their situation play out by itself.

"You know, I've been thinking," Key stated. He sat up straighter and looked at me before looking away. "We could always go to Scarlett's parents house and take care of them quickly. It would be done and over with, and if we were careful there wouldn't be any evidence that we were ever over there."

I shook my head. "There's a lot of issues with that. First one is that if we went over there and took care of them then after awhile someone would go looking for them and see either their bodies, or see that their missing and then the police would be all over the place. The first people that they would talk to is Spider and Scarlett and we don't need a bunch of cops snooping around here because then they would find something that they shouldn't have. The next one is that something could always go wrong and we would be caught anyways. I'm not underestimating these people because I'm sure they have connections. This situation has gone from only dealing with an abusive ex to something bigger, and I want to take every caution necessary. Hacker is trying to get it to where we know what they're doing, so we'll be able to figure out their next move," I told him. I left out the detail about what Hacker and I saw on the camera.

"Yeah you're right. You know, I'm glad I transferred to this chapter because you guys are more fun to be around. Originally I was only here to help y'all out with Diablo, but now I'm glad that I stayed."

"I'm glad you did too, we could always use an extra hand around here," I chuckled. Key rolled his eyes and bent down when Leo and Nox came running over to us.

"These two are cute little suckers. You gonna train them to be a guard dog or some shit?"

I nodded. "That's the plan. I at least want to make it to where they know how to defend not only us but themselves if someone were to ever break in. But they have to be good around kids considering we have some pregnant old ladies and I do want grandkids some day," I chuckled. Key raised an eyebrow at me.

"What?" I asked.

"You'd be willing to let Ripper get your daughter pregnant?"

I shrugged. "She's 18 now and smart enough to make her own decisions. Even though I'm hoping she doesn't get pregnant anytime soon, if it happens then it happens. I'll always be here for her and she knows that. I never got to watch either of my kids grow up fully and so I would hopefully get that with a grandchild." I explained. He nodded and we sat there in silence for a few moments.

"You know," I looked over at him. "You're one of the most down to earth presidents I've ever been around. All of the others are power hungry or don't really care about their men or women. But you're not like that. And I like it."

I grinned. "Just don't piss me off and you won't have to deal with my bad side."

Key laughed. "I've already seen the way you can torture someone. I don't think I ever want to be on the receiving end of that."

____________________

"Would you quit moving?" I asked in frustration towards Leo. The pup and his brother had found a mud puddle and decided to roll in it until we had to grab them out. I was trying to give him a bath but the little thing decided it was funny to move around the bathroom so I couldn't catch him, splashing mud everywhere.

"Gotcha!" I picked up Leo and set him gently down in the bath. Immediately he seemed to pout as his trail drooped down. Rolling my eyes with a smile, I got to work cleaning him up.

As soon as Leo realized that I was still petting him, only with soap and water, he seemed to perk up.

"Fucking attention seeker," I mumbled as he leaned more into my hands when I went to go scratch his side lightly.

When I was done I grabbed a towel and took him out of the muddy water, letting it drain away until all that was left was dirt residue that needed to be rinsed out. I dried him off with a towel until he was ninety percent of the way dry.

"There, now you're all clean and can finally get on the bed," I told him as I set him down on top of my blanket. He watched me curiously as I turned away from him and walked back into the bathroom to clean up the muddy mess on the floor and in the bath.

I heard the door to my room open and poked my head out of the bathroom to see Lily peeking her head through the small opening she had made.

"Are you busy?" She asked.

I shook my head. "No all I'm doing is cleaning the bathroom from cleaning Leo up. Come in, I'll be done in a few seconds." She walked in with Nox in her arms and set him down as the two puppies were eager to continue their playing from outside.

When I was done I walked out and saw her sitting on my bed. I sat down next to her. "Anything wrong?"

She shook her head. "No, but I'm nervous about something and I wanted to talk to you about it."

"What is it?"

"I want to marry Ripper. Like not just be called his Old Lady but I want to make it official by law that I'm his and he's mine. But I don't know how to bring this up to him. We haven't been together for long at all and I don't know fully how biker politics work when it comes to this stuff so I don't want to offend anyone by wanting a wedding," she explained.

"Well, one, no one here would be offended by a wedding. A lot of the women here have had their own weddings too. Some MC's don't like weddings and don't have them since they consider the label of being each other's is official, but here I leave it up to the couple to decide what they want. I'm sure Ripper would be fine with having a wedding and if you change your mind then I'm sure he would be fine without one. In a MC you don't need a wedding to declare your love for each other, but if you both want one we can make one happen."

She bit her lip. "I've always dreamed of having a wedding one day. I never thought that I would get the chance to meet someone I love that much to marry. And even though our relationship hasn't been long I believe that love doesn't have a time frame. You can fall in love in days or it could take months. But I just don't know if he feels that way and would be willing to have a wedding. He doesn't really seem like the wedding type," she laughed. However even though she laughed I could see how nervous she really was.

"If it makes you that worried I'll talk to him for you and get his opinion on it. Although I say that you two should talk to each other about it rather than me talk to him. Okay?"

She nodded. "Thanks dad," she leaned over and hugged me. I hugged her back tightly.

"No problem kiddo." I pulled away. "However if he gets mad at you and yells I can't promise I won't kill him," I smirked.

"Dad!"

"Kidding! Kidding!"

Not really.

______________________

I was in my office going over some business related paperwork when there was a knock on the door. We had gotten dog beds and I had set one of them in my office, which Leo was putting to use.

"What?" I called. Hacker poked his head in.

"Hey Alpha, I found something."

"Come in. Shut the door behind you," I ordered.

He came in and sat down in the seat across from me on the other side of my desk. "What did you find?"

"Well, after what we found out yesterday about... you know, I did some extensive digging and turns out, they knew about her before he even became a part of the club." He reaches into a little case and pulled out a folder. "In here I printed out all of their text conversations and any records involving them interacting. And there's a lot in here," he explained as he handed me the folder.

Looking through all of the information, I was shocked to see how much was actually there.

Record upon record was stacked neatly, arranged by newest to oldest date. The conversations that Hacker was able to print out were also very sketchy, tripling any concern that I had before.

"What do you think this means Alpha?" Hacker asked nervously. I knew I could no longer keep this a secret, not with this information. A memory from the past was coming back to haunt one of my men, and he didn't even know about it yet. His mind had been tortured for years because of his past. And now, his past is coming back for more.

I sighed and put the documents and folder down. Hacker was eyeing me. I took a deep breath.

Prepare for destruction.

"Get Ripper in here."