Page 83 of Demo

“Thank you,” Demo answered as Paige said, “That’s not necessary.”

“The fuck it isn’t,” Demo snapped. “You could have a concussion. You’re getting checked out.”

Paige lowered her voice as she confessed, “I don’t have insurance.”

“You think I give a damn?” Demo asked, harsher than intended. “You’re going to the hospital, you’re going to get checked out, and I’ll pay any goddamn overpriced bill that comes our way.”

Then he was figuring out how to get her and the boys on the club’s insurance plan. How the fuck did he not know she didn’t have health insurance? While no longer penalized, it was not a good idea to not have coverage. Sure, it was expensive, but what if she got hurt?

Like now!

Demo seethed. He wanted to punch Richard. Maybe he needed to look into necromancy to see if there was a way to raise the bastard from the dead so he could kill him again.

Steel approached the massage bed. He carefully unbound her legs from the table. “Get her out of here. We’ll take care of this.”

There wasn’t much for the club to ‘take care of’. For once, this was a legitimate and legal shooting that they did not have to cover up. Get answers about? Absolutely, but Angel had been within her rights to shoot to kill.

Though Demo did wish Angel was a slightly worse shot, he appreciated her protecting Paige.

Demo picked Paige up and carried her out of the therapy room. Maybe it was a good thing her landlord was evicting her, even if the eviction wasn’t valid. He doubted Paige would want to stay working here after this anyway.

As he carried her from the clinic, he pressed a kiss to her temple. “I love you,” he reminded her.

She tightened her arms around his neck, pressing her nose against the warmth of his skin. “I love you too.”

Two MonthsLater

In the cool March afternoon, Paige stood next to Demo at the gravesite of Richard Hannigan. She held Mikey while Demo held Nelly Bean. Though neither one understood what the service was for, Paige felt that they had a right to be at their father’s funeral. She wasn’t sure exactly why she felt like she needed to have this service. She certainly didn’t owe it to Richard. Her therapist, Dr. Rutenberg, reminded her that funerals were for the living, not the dead. In a way, Paige supposed she was laying to rest the part of her life that she’d shared with Richard by having a service to honor his life.

Harper and Lucky stood at Demo’s right. They had not brought Conner, as the weather for the day was brisk at best. Paige had not wanted to wait longer and had chosen to bury Richard as soon as the graveyard said the ground was thawed enough to dig.

Ronald and Cindy stood at Paige’s left. They were both solemn, mourning the son they had raised and not the man he had become. With everything else that had happened the day Paige had been told about Richard’s death, it hadn’t occurred to her until later that neither Ronald nor Cindy had looked surprised by the news. When she’d asked them about it, Cindy had confessed that she’d suspected Richard was dead after so long of no contact. She hadn’t voiced it to Paige because it would have made it too real.

Demo was her rock and her salvation. He hadn’t even blinked when she told him that she wanted to have a funeral for Richard. All he’d asked was when and if she wanted him to be there.

Of course, she had. While some might consider it awkward for Demo to be present at his lover’s late husband’s funeral, Demo didn’t. And, bottom line, Paige needed him. She wouldn’t have survived the day without him.

Neither Paige nor Abby had any lasting physical injuries from the attack at the clinic. Paige had a minor concussion and some abrasions from the ropes used to bind her. But both had taken a while to get through what had happened mentally. Paige knew that Abby’s night terrors, which she’d been over a year since her last episode, had returned. Paige felt horrible about that, though neither Abby nor Bulldog blamed her.

The mystery behind the foot fetish site’s hack was finally solved as soon as Paige’s attacker was identified. Jeromy Copley was a twenty-one year old hacker who resided in Beaming, Missouri. He’d joined forces with the hacktivist group over three years ago but still did some side jobs on his own. He used the group’s signature code to infiltrate the foot fetish’s site.

Keys was able to find evidence that Jeromy had been following Paige’s postings on the site nearly from the beginning. Something about her feet called to him, because there were numerous printouts of her pictures as well as stills from her videos in his basement bedroom at his parents’ house.

What Paige hadn’t known was that a user could request a specific model for their personal requests. All of those video requests that she’d been receiving where she thought it was odd no other model had taken the job were not open to the entire community. Jeromy had requested her specific screen name for those videos and had been upping the amount he would pay per live video when she’d stopped posting.

Something about her last video with the donuts had triggered Jeromy into finding Paige, so he hacked the site. To hide his motives, he laid a trail to the hacktivist group and posted the client list to the public. While they would never know what had happened to make him act the way he did, Paige secretly wondered if perhaps Jeromy had somehow been able to tell that she hadn’t actually been eating the donuts as he’d instructed.

With his death, it would forever be a mystery.

Her stepfamily had ceased their harassment with no proof of the debt they claimed was owed to them. Paige was also able to file a restraining order following a very nasty voicemail her own mother had left her the morning the foot fetish site had been hacked. No one had heard from Clifton since his arrest for breaking into her house. Paige could honestly say she was not surprised by that news.

After filing for Richard’s death certificate, Paige was finally able to make some headway on her outstanding debts. The credit cards that Richard had in his name alone, Paige learned she did not need to pay back after his death. Though technically that money should have come out of his estate before any inheritance was given. Since Richard hadn’t left an inheritance behind, those credit card companies were just out that money. Paige did feel sorry about that, but still took the legal out.

She was not going to be filing for bankruptcy. After a long look at her finances, along with getting the remaining payout of Richard’s insurance policy, she was able to put her house up for sale. So long as the house sold for at least four hundred and fifty thousand, she would be able to break even. The remainder of her credit cards would be paid off in time.

Paige did give up her clinic. Firstly, because she did not want to pay a man rent who thought she would have any part in sexually assaulting her clients, and secondly, because she had a hard time entering her clinic following her assault.

While it did feel a bit cowardly, she just couldn’t do it. She’d been talking to Dr. Rutenberg, who was also Jumper’s therapist, to work through some of her trauma too as well as her grief and anger regarding Richard.

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