Page 20 of The Hacker (Dominion Hall #5)

VIVIENNE

T he ceiling was still. White, blank, unmoving. I stared at it like it might rearrange itself into answers if I blinked enough times.

I didn’t blink.

The sheets were soft, too soft, like they were mocking me. The kind of expensive softness that made everything else feel harder by comparison. I was curled on my side, knees to my chest, hair a tangled mess against Elias’s pillow, but I hadn’t moved in what felt like hours.

Elias was quiet, too.

He lay beside me for a while, his body heat radiating in steady waves, his hand ghosting near my arm as if he wanted to reach for me but didn’t know how.

As if the same man who could hack into secure servers and make a grown man cry with a look was suddenly helpless when it came to a woman unraveling beside him.

He exhaled. Once. Twice. His fingers drummed once against the mattress, then stopped.

Still, I didn’t move.

Neither did he.

And in the silence that stretched between us, I could feel it—the aching desire to connect, to bridge the chasm between us, and the impossibility of doing so.

Finally, he shifted, rolling to his back. “I don’t know what to do,” he said, voice low, raw. “You want to burn it all down, Red? Fine. But I can’t keep watching you disappear … Inward, I mean.”

I didn’t answer.

Because I didn’t know either.

What was there to say? I was tired of screaming. Tired of being angry about things I couldn’t control. Tired of staring at myself in the mirror and wondering where the girl had gone—the one who used to dance for joy, not just to make a meager living.

“I’m not trying to fix you,” Elias said after a beat, voice roughened by restraint. “But I’m not going to let you fade either.”

I turned my face into the pillow, the scent of him strong there.

Then the bed shifted. I heard him sit up, stand, pace a few steps. His movements were purposeful now, sharper.

A beat of silence. Then:

“Get dressed,” he said.

I didn’t move.

“And wait here,” he added, a little softer now. “I’ll be back.”

I turned slowly to look at him. He was already tugging on a T-shirt, shoving his phone into his pocket, his jaw set like he had a mission.

“What are you?—”

“Trust me.” He looked at me for a long second, then leaned down, pressing a kiss to my temple. “I’ll be right back.”

And then he was gone.

The suite door clicked shut, and I was alone again.

For a moment, I just lay there, staring at the spot he’d left, unsure whether to move or scream or curl tighter into myself.

Instead, I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling again.

Trust me.

I didn’t know if I could.

But I wanted to.

Eventually, I sat up. My muscles ached. My skin still hummed from the rawness of everything—the sex, the fight, the grief I hadn’t wanted to name.

I pulled a hoodie from Elias’s dresser and slipped it on.

Then a pair of his sweatpants. Then socks.

I braided my curls with shaking fingers and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the closed door like it might reveal his intentions if I glared hard enough.

And because waiting is a cruel sport, my mind went where it always does when it’s unguarded.

Home.

If you could call it that.

It wasn’t the place that haunted me, really. It was the people. The ones who’d made a thousand choices I never understood.

Emmaline, for one.

God, Emmaline.

Seeing her in my apartment today had shocked me more than the intervention itself.

My sister was the kind of woman who knew exactly how many cents were in her checking account at any given time.

She clipped coupons. She reused foil. She once declined a wedding because it was outside the city limits and gas was too expensive.

And yet, she’d shown up in Charleston.

That meant airfare. Time off. Maybe a hotel, unless she was crashing with one of my friends. It meant she’d rearranged her life—the brittle, carefully budgeted one—for me.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

It would’ve been easier if she hadn’t come at all.

I could’ve kept resenting her from a safe emotional distance. Could’ve kept pretending I was the only one who’d tried, the only one who’d broken herself to keep Mom afloat.

But Emmaline’s presence today complicated the narrative.

And I hated complications.

Especially the kind that cracked open old wounds and whispered maybe you’re not as alone as you think .

Maybe they do care.

Maybe love looks different when it’s limping.

I swallowed hard, blinking up at the ornate ceiling again, wondering what the hell Elias was planning, and why—despite everything—I wanted him to walk back through that door more than anything else in the world.

Finally, the door opened with a soft click.

Elias stepped inside, slower this time. His expression wasn’t unreadable—far from it. I saw it in the tightness around his mouth, the way his shoulders squared like he was bracing for rejection. But beneath all that was something softer. A question. An offering.

“Come with me,” he said gently, holding out his hand.

I stared at him.

And then—almost in spite of myself—I stood.

I placed my hand in his, and he curled his fingers around mine like it meant something. Like I meant something.

He led me down the corridor, past the suite and through a quiet wing of the mansion I hadn’t seen before. Polished floors, gilded sconces, windows that framed the Charleston harbor like it was a painting.

“Where are we going?” I asked, my voice hoarse from disuse.

“You’ll see.”

He opened a tall double door at the end of the hall, revealing a room bathed in warm light.

I stopped dead.

It was … a boutique.

A fucking boutique.

Designer racks lined the space, organized by color and texture, the kind of selection you’d find in SoHo or Paris, not tucked inside the guts of a hacker’s lair.

Glass cases gleamed with accessories. Shoes sat like sculpture on mirrored shelves.

There was a velvet fainting couch, for Christ’s sake.

A dressing area with silk robes hanging from hooks.

And in the center of it all, a marble table glistened with chocolate-covered strawberries, flutes of champagne chilling in a silver bucket beside them, bubbles catching the light.

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the harbor sparkled. Boats bobbed lazily in the distance. The lights from the pier twinkled like stars had dropped from the sky just for me.

I blinked, once. Twice.

This wasn’t real. This was something out of a fever dream.

“Elias,” I breathed. “What … what is this?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just watched me take it in.

“I know you couldn’t pack a bag,” he said finally. “I figured maybe ... you shouldn’t have to.”

I turned to look at him.

“I didn’t want you to feel like you needed anything,” he continued, voice lower now. “So I brought everything to you.”

My throat closed up.

“I wanted you to have options. Comfort. Luxury. Whatever would make you feel even one ounce better. You don’t have to prove anything to me, Red. Just … let yourself have something.”

I didn’t move. Couldn’t.

He stepped closer. “Pamper yourself. Try things on. Eat the strawberries. Drink the damn champagne. You’re allowed.”

A lump swelled in my throat. How did he know?

“I don’t—” I shook my head. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Then start here,” he murmured, brushing a curl back from my cheek. “With something soft. Something you don’t have to fight for.”

He pulled a hanger from the rack—a backless silk slip in a shade that looked like liquid moonlight—and held it up.

“You’d look incredible in this,” he said, and it didn’t sound like a line. It sounded like reverence.

I stared at the gown. Then at him.

And then I took it.

Wordlessly, I slipped behind the folding screen and let the fabric slide over my skin. It was absurd, how beautiful it was. How I looked in it. Like someone else. Someone unbroken.

When I stepped out, Elias didn’t say anything at first. Just looked at me like I’d stopped time.

Then: “Jesus, Red.”

I flushed. “Too much?”

“Not even close.” His voice was husky now. “You’re … breathtaking.”

I looked away, heat rushing to my cheeks. “You planned all this. For me.”

“I’d level a city for you,” he said simply.

I stepped toward the strawberries, my fingers trembling as I picked one up.

Maybe this was ridiculous. Maybe it was indulgent and over the top and unnecessary.

But maybe being seen, truly seen, was rarer than silk and sweeter than champagne.

I took a bite. And I smiled.

The taste bloomed on my tongue—dark chocolate and ripe strawberry, decadent and impossible. Like something a girl like me shouldn’t even dream about.

Because we didn’t do decadence in my family. We did clearance bins and secondhand school uniforms. We did patched jeans and “maybe next Christmas.” We did without.

Always without.

The Laveaus didn’t splurge. We survived.

Mom clipped coupons so aggressively she once mailed in for a rebate that earned her seventy-three cents and a fridge magnet.

Emmaline grew up learning how to stretch ground beef with lentils, how to calculate the per-ounce cost of shampoo, how to say “I’m fine” when she was anything but.

And me? I learned early that if I wanted anything outside the bare minimum, I had to earn it myself.

That was part of why I chose ballet. Not because it was practical—God, no—but because it was beautiful. Because it was discipline turned into art. Pain made into elegance. Suffering into something people clapped for.

I could never take my mother’s pain away. Not really. But I could make her proud. I could be the daughter with her name in programs and reviews, the one who rose from duct-taped kitchen chairs to standing ovations in velvet theaters.

But even that came at a cost.

Shoes that wore through in weeks. Tuition we couldn’t afford. Leotards that fit like armor because they had to. Every pirouette was a prayer that my body would hold up, that I could keep pretending I was weightless.

I’d worked double shifts at cafés to pay for classes.

Sold old costumes to younger girls just to cover rent.

Danced through injuries I couldn’t afford to treat.

Every time I’d laced up, I wasn’t just chasing art—I was chasing survival.

Chasing the idea that I could outrun poverty with perfect posture.

And now, here I stood, in a silk gown that probably cost more than my car. In a room Elias had set up just for me. With champagne chilled to the perfect temperature and strawberries that didn’t taste like compromise.

And something inside me cracked.

It was small at first. A breath that caught the wrong way. A blink that came too slow.

Then it was everything.

My knees buckled before I could stop them. I sank onto the fainting couch, the silk pooling around my legs, and curled my hands into fists in my lap.

I didn’t mean to cry.

But I did.

Not the polite, teary kind of crying either. No single, artful tear down the cheek. This was full-body, chest-heaving grief. The kind you can't package. The kind that rips you open from the inside and spills everything you've been holding back.

Elias didn’t rush me.

He didn’t speak.

He knelt instead, slow and careful, and placed one hand gently on my knee. Just that. No pressure. No demand.

Just warmth.

And it undid me even more.

Because I realized—I didn’t know how to receive.

I didn’t know how to accept without apologizing. Didn’t know how to be cared for without trying to earn it. Didn’t know what it meant to want something just because it was beautiful.

I’d only ever known how to survive.

And suddenly, the idea of being allowed to want—to rest, to be held, to try on a dress because it made me feel like something other than tired—was too much.

I buried my face in my hands and sobbed like the little girl who once taped her broken ballet slippers back together with hope and electrical tape.

And Elias?

He stayed there on the floor beside me, fingers brushing over my leg in slow, steady circles.

Saying nothing.

But everything.