Page 24 of The Hacker (Dominion Hall #5)

VIVIENNE

T he heat hung thick in the air. Charleston in the summer was a swamp masquerading as a city, and tonight, it felt like the air itself didn’t want to let go.

She was already leaning against the hood, hair piled on her head in a messy twist, boots scuffed, jean shorts showing off thighs that didn’t give a damn about approval. She had two sandwiches in hand, wrapped in wax paper like they came from someone’s grandmother’s kitchen.

“You brought food,” I said as I parked and climbed out.

“You looked like a hurricane last time I saw you. Figured you forgot to eat.”

She held one out and I took it, surprised to find my hands shaking.

We stood there for a moment, silent, chewing in sync. The sun hadn’t set yet—still hung high and angry behind the veil of clouds. It painted everything in a gold-tinged sweat. The brick buildings across the street shimmered in the heat, windows open, fans turning lazy circles in the distance.

“You okay?” she asked eventually, mouth half full.

I shrugged. “Define okay.”

“Breathing. Not bleeding.”

“Then sure. I’m fucking thriving.”

She gave me a look but didn’t push. Jessa never did until she had to.

We ate in silence again, the sandwiches going down easier than I expected. My stomach had been a tight fist for days, but suddenly it was grateful. And that pissed me off. Because I didn’t want to feel grateful. I didn’t want to feel anything.

I wanted to run until the world went quiet again.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked, crumpling her wrapper and chucking it into the backseat.

“Rooftops,” I said.

Jessa blinked. “You serious?”

“I’ve never been more serious.”

“Vivi, rooftop running in?—”

“It’s summer. It won’t be dark for hours. We’ve got visibility.”

“We’ve also got onlookers. And phones. And cops. The last time you did something this reckless, you made national news.”

“So let them watch.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Is that what this is? You want another headline?”

I laughed, sharp and joyless. “No. I want to feel something other than trapped.”

Jessa crossed her arms. “What happened?”

“Everything,” I snapped, then softened. “Nothing. I just … I can’t sit still. Not tonight. Not with all the thoughts circling like vultures.”

“Elias?”

I looked away.

“You’re trying to show him something,” she said quietly.

I didn’t answer.

She sighed. “Fine. Let me guess. Start at the East Bay parking garage, jump to the old icehouse, hit three rooftops on the way to Broad Street, then down the fire escape behind the florist?”

I grinned. “You remember.”

“I’m not the one who shattered her ankle trying to leap a four-foot gap after a bottle of rosé.”

“That was years ago. I’m stronger now.”

“You’re sadder now,” she said bluntly. “And angry. That’s not the same as strong.”

I flinched. Because she wasn’t wrong.

“Are we doing this or not?” I asked.

She studied me, long and hard. Then finally, she nodded. “Yeah. Let’s dance with gravity.”

By 6:50, we were on the roof of the parking garage, the wind whipping hot around us. Charleston unfolded below like a storybook gone sideways—church spires, rainbow row, tourists sweating through linen shirts.

The city buzzed beneath our feet, loud and oblivious.

Jessa adjusted her boots, then handed me a pair of gloves. “Try not to break yourself this time.”

I slipped them on. My heart was already pounding, but it wasn’t fear. It was anticipation.

“On three?” I asked.

She smirked. “On stupid.”

We took off.

The first run was easy. The garage to the icehouse was child’s play. I’d done it before. My muscles remembered even when my mind screamed what the fuck are you doing ?

We landed hard but clean. Boots scraping rooftop tar.

The next jump was trickier—a lean two-story building that once held a jazz club and now housed God knew what. The alley below was narrow, the kind that looked like it had stories. I didn’t look down.

I sprinted and flew.

And for a second—one glorious, breathless second—I wasn’t Vivienne Laveau with a crumbling family and a bankrupt heart. I was weightless. Infinite.

Jessa landed beside me with a grunt. “You’re insane.”

“I’m alive.”

We kept going. Building to building. Rooftop to rooftop.

Onlookers below began to notice. Fingers pointed. Someone shouted. A man with a beard and a Bluetooth headset pulled out his phone and started recording.

Jessa glanced down and cursed. “We’re gonna end up on the internet.”

“Let them post,” I said. “Let them stitch me into some dumb TikTok reel with music and slow-mo edits. Let them try to explain me in comments.”

“What are you hoping for?”

I didn’t answer.

Because I was hoping he’d see it.

That Elias would look up from his fortress of screens and data and know—know that I couldn’t be caged. Know that I wasn’t a princess waiting to be rescued.

But also, maybe I wanted him to come get me again. Not to stop me. But to stand at the edge with me. To prove he could keep up.

Another leap. This one miscalculated. My boot hit wrong and I skidded hard, shoulder slamming the rooftop edge.

“Vivi!” Jessa grabbed my arm, yanking me upright. “You okay?”

I winced. “Fine. Just bruised.”

“We should stop.”

“No.”

She stared at me. “You’re chasing something you can’t catch.”

I stared back. “So are you.”

We were both quiet after that.

The last jump was the one that scared me. Not because it was the biggest. Not because the building was sloped. But because I remembered what it felt like the last time I leapt from that ledge.

I’d been twenty. Furious. Untouchable.

That night, I’d stood on the edge and thought— what if I just didn’t? What if I let the fall win?

Now I stood there again, knees bent, arms loose, sweat dripping down my spine.

Jessa came up beside me. “You don’t have to prove anything, you know.”

“I do,” I said. “To myself.”

“To Elias?”

I didn’t answer.

Because I didn’t know anymore.

I took the jump.

The landing was messy, pain rippling up my calves, but I stuck it. I turned to grin at Jessa.

She didn’t move.

Just stared at me.

“You’re not okay,” she said. “And this isn’t going to fix it.”

I swallowed hard. “I know.”

Then she jumped, too.

We collapsed on the rooftop together, side by side, breath coming fast and uneven. The sun finally dipped, shadows stretching long and soft over the brick and iron of the city.

Below, sirens wailed somewhere in the distance. A reminder that the world kept spinning, even when we tried to outrun it.

“Next time,” Jessa said between gulps of air, “we do something normal.”

“Like what? Karaoke?”

“Or bowling. Maybe with bumpers.”

I laughed. Really laughed.

And it hit me how long it had been since that sound came from somewhere real.

“Deal,” I said. “But only if there’s cheap beer.”

“Obviously.”

We lay there, sweat cooling, city humming.

The breeze tickled the sweat on my collarbone as we lay sprawled across hot tar and gravel. My lungs burned, but my mind was quieter than it had been in days.

“Can we talk?” Jessa asked after a long pause. Her voice had softened—less bravado, more ache.

I turned my head to face her. “About what?”

“Last night.”

My breath hitched.

She sighed, propping herself on one elbow. “I wasn’t trying to ambush you. I swear to God, Vivi. I didn’t want it to go down like that.”

“You mean with a therapist and six pairs of eyes looking at me like I was a grenade?”

Her mouth tugged downward. “Yeah. I mean that.”

I looked back at the sky. Clouds smudged across it like bruises.

“I was worried,” she said. “You were doing shit that scared me. The bridge stunt, namely. It wasn’t about control. It was about not wanting to find out through some news report that you’d finally gone too far.”

I didn’t answer right away. I traced the edge of a pebble with my fingertip, feeling its warmth from the sun.

“I’m not on drugs,” I said finally.

“I know.”

“It’s not pills or booze or anything like that. I just …” I swallowed. “I just needed the silence. The high. The second before you land, when nothing else matters.”

She nodded. “I get that.”

“I wish you hadn’t done it, though,” I admitted. “The intervention. It made me feel like a suspect in my own life.”

“I know,” she said. “And I’m sorry. But I’d do it again if it meant keeping you breathing.”

That sat between us for a beat, a line of truth neither of us stepped around.

“I’m still mad,” I said.

“That’s fair.”

We sat in it. Let it hurt. Let it heal.

The breeze stirred around us, hot and restless.

Jessa picked at a scab on her knee, the quiet stretching long enough that I thought maybe that was it. Maybe we’d leave it there—two women on a rooftop, tethered together by adrenaline and old loyalty, saying just enough to keep the silence from crushing us.

But then she looked up.

“You know, if you’d just talk to us … like really talk to us … maybe we wouldn’t have had to guess.”

I frowned. “About what?”

“Everything,” she said, throwing her hands up. “The stunts that got more and more dangerous. The way you looked like you hadn’t slept in weeks. I mean, you think we were trying to control you? We were trying to figure out what the hell was going on because you wouldn’t let us in.”

My jaw clenched. “That’s the thing. Letting people in doesn’t make things better. It just gives them a front-row seat to the train wreck.”

“Or maybe it gives them a reason to stand in front of it and pull the brakes.”

I let out a dry, hollow laugh. “Cute metaphor. But no. No good ever came from dragging people into family shit they can’t fix.”

Jessa studied me for a moment. “So it is family stuff.”

I didn’t answer.

She kept going anyway. “I figured. I mean, I wondered last night what Emmaline was talking about—what she almost said.”

My head snapped toward her. “She didn’t?”

Jessa shook her head slowly. “No. She just … left it hanging. We could tell there was something, but she clammed up.”

I exhaled sharply, something breaking loose in my chest. “Huh.”

“What?”

“I just assumed she’d tell everyone. She always plays the martyr card, the ‘I did everything right’ routine. I figured the moment she had a reason to paint me as the family fuck-up, she’d go for it.”

“Well … maybe she’s better than that,” Jessa said gently. “Maybe she’s grown up. Or maybe she just realized that wasn’t hers to say.”

I didn’t have a response. Because part of me—the part that had been braced for betrayal—felt suddenly disarmed. And I hated it.

Hated that Emmaline might actually be handling this better than I gave her credit for. Hated that she’d come all the way to Charleston not to expose me, but to try—however messily—to hold me up.

It was easier when I could make her the villain. Harder when she was just a tired, worried sister trying to keep everything from falling apart.

I rubbed the back of my neck, an old ache flaring beneath my skin.

“I don’t know how to talk about it,” I admitted, so low it barely counted as a confession. “I don’t even know where I’d start.”

“Start with the truth,” Jessa said. “Whatever it is.”

I looked out at the skyline, sun glaring off windows like a dare. “Yeah, well. Some truths don’t come in words. They come in actions. In screaming from rooftops.”

She looked at me for a long beat, and I thought she was ready to call it a night. Then she nodded. “So, let’s scream.”

And that was how we ended up deciding on one last jump.

The one we’d never dared before. The one that would change everything.

I raised a brow. “You serious?”

She nodded again, her mind made up.

“There’s one more jump I’ve always wanted to try”, I said. “Never had the guts. It’s new. Unmarked.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not talking about the Tremont Hotel, are you?”

I didn’t answer.

“Vivi, no.”

I stood, walked to the edge of the building, and pointed. The Tremont rose across the street, all brick and concrete, with a maintenance platform half-extended from the fifth floor. Between us was a chasm—at least a fifteen-foot drop into alley shadows if we missed.

“No one’s ever made it from here,” Jessa said.

“Exactly.”

She exhaled, hard. “Jesus.”

I turned, my grin feral. “You coming or not?”

She stood slowly, brushing off her hands. “You’re gonna kill me one of these days.”

I laughed, and it sounded wild, unhinged, a little too close to desperate. “Not tonight.”

We paced back a few yards, then stopped. The platform loomed ahead—dangerous, unsanctioned, perfect.

“You take the lead,” she said, adjusting her gloves.

I nodded.

The adrenaline started to simmer in my veins again. That delicious, terrifying spark that made everything else fade.

One breath in.

One out.

I ran.

The air screamed past my ears as I leapt, body suspended in a second that stretched impossibly long. I reached, legs extended, heart beating in my throat.

For one terrible second, I knew I wasn’t going to make it.

Then—my hands caught the metal rail.

My feet slammed into the platform.

I staggered. Wobbled. Cursed.

But I didn’t fall.

I turned, heart in my mouth.

“Jessa!”

She was already running.

“Wait—”

Too late.

She leapt, arms flung wide, form perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

Her foot slipped on takeoff.

Her trajectory dipped.

My stomach plummeted.

“Jessa!”

She hit the edge of the platform—fingertips grasping metal.

Her body swung violently, momentum dragging her downward.

I dropped to my knees, lunged for her.

Our eyes locked.

“Hold on!” I screamed, reaching over the edge.

She tried.

God, she tried.

But her grip slipped.

Her mouth opened?—

And then she was gone.

Falling.