Page 36 of The Hacker (Dominion Hall #5)
VIVIENNE
I t was early fall in Charleston, though the city didn’t seem to notice.
The humidity still curled my hair the minute I stepped outside, and the air still smelled like salt and moss and a storm that hadn’t yet made up its mind.
The trees along the Battery were just beginning to bronze at the edges, but summer hadn’t truly loosened its grip.
Not that I minded.
Everything else had shifted.
I had shifted.
My mother was settled now, her days marked by familiar routines and soft music, by Emmaline’s visits and the scent of gardenias planted just outside her patio door. She didn’t always know who I was, but she smiled when I sang. That was enough.
Emmaline had made her decision. She and her husband were officially moving to Charleston with the baby.
Elias had found them a historic house not far from the waterfront—white clapboard, blue shutters, wraparound porch.
He coordinated the renovations, the movers, even the baby’s new daycare, like it was just another mission to execute.
He never called attention to it. He just quietly made sure the people I loved were safe.
And Jessa’s funeral had come and gone.
It had rained that day.
I stood in the back row of the church, as promised, wearing black and holding a single magnolia. I hadn’t expected her family to acknowledge me, not after everything. But her sister approached me after the service, eyes rimmed red.
“She believed in you, you know,” she said, her voice shaking. “Even when we didn’t.”
I handed her the magnolia, and I let myself cry—not in guilt, but in grief. My friend was gone, and nothing would bring her back. But I could honor her.
So I did.
I created a fund in her name—The Jessa Lane Initiative—a partnership between Dominion Hall and a national digital justice organization.
It offered grants for women rebuilding their lives after online betrayal—revenge porn victims, whistleblowers silenced by smear campaigns, and those manipulated into shame or silence through digital coercion.
Elias made the first donation in her name. I made the second.
Maybe it wasn’t enough. But it was a beginning.
As for ballet … I didn’t go back. Not in the way they wanted. I turned down the board’s offer to lift my suspension, thanked them kindly, and walked away with my spine straight and my head held higher than it had ever been on stage.
I still dance—sometimes in the studio Elias built for me in a sunroom overlooking the harbor, sometimes barefoot in the living room at Dominion Hall, music low, moonlight pouring through the windows. Not for an audience. Not for perfection. For myself.
Because I finally understand: ballet doesn’t get to define me.
I do.
And this morning—this bright, humid, breathless Charleston morning—Elias was up to something.
He’d woken me before dawn, kissed my bare shoulder, and told me to dress comfortably.
Then he blindfolded me.
Which, honestly, wasn’t even the strangest thing he’d done this week.
“You’re enjoying this too much,” I said, fingers clutched around the armrest as the SUV rolled down a road I couldn’t see.
“I am,” he admitted, chuckling. “But only because I know what’s waiting.”
We reached the airport within the hour, and when the blindfold came off, I blinked at the sunrise gleaming off his jet.
“Another secret mission?” I asked.
He only smirked. “Something like that.”
The flight was short. Smooth. No folders this time. No dossiers or burner phones. Just us.
And when we landed, I knew before the pilot said a word.
New Orleans.
I hadn’t been back since the day we moved my mom out. My chest ached before I even stood.
A car waited on the tarmac—sleek and black, because, of course, it was—and Elias held my hand the entire drive.
He didn’t speak until we stopped.
“Come with me,” he said.
I stepped out and froze.
We were standing in front of my childhood home.
The paint was fresh now. The porch swing had been repaired. Someone had coaxed the old hydrangeas back to life.
“How—” I breathed.
“I bought it,” Elias said softly. “Quietly. Off-market. I knew it mattered to you.”
I turned to him, stunned. “Why?”
“Because this house watched you become who you are. And because I wanted to give a piece of that girl back to the woman you’ve become.”
Tears blurred my vision as he stepped back, reached into his pocket, and dropped to one knee.
The ring was stunning—an antique oval diamond set in a halo of rubies. But it wasn’t the stone that made me gasp. It was the engraving I saw inside the band when he turned it toward me.
You are my fire.
“I love you, Vivienne Laveau,” he said, voice steady.
“Exactly as you are. Untamed. Unapologetic. Fierce as hell. I don’t want to quiet your wildness—I want to walk beside it.
I want to keep doing what we’re doing. Helping people.
Making the world a little safer for the ones who get left behind.
But more than that, I want to build a life with you.
One that honors your past and fights for your future. ”
I sank to my knees. My hands framed his face.
“Yes,” I whispered, before he even asked. “God, yes.”
He slid the ring onto my finger. It fit like it had always belonged.
And in that moment, I understood something I hadn’t before.
I’d always thought my need for adrenaline made me broken. Reckless.
But it didn’t. It made me hungry. Hungry for justice. For truth. For a life that meant something.
Elias had simply given me a new way to chase it.
With purpose. With balance. With love.
I would always be a little wild. But I wasn’t lost anymore. And with my mother safe, my sister by my side, and Elias with me for whatever came next?—
I was finally, fully, home in the world.
We sat together on the porch swing, the one that creaked when I was twelve and still did now, and let the moment stretch. The city hummed around us—heat rising off the pavement, cicadas buzzing like gossiping old women, someone’s saxophone crooning from a block away.
Elias brushed a thumb over the back of my hand. “So,” he said casually, “should we live here?”
I blinked, surprised by the question. Then I laughed. “You’re serious?”
He raised a brow. “You love this place.”
“I do,” I said softly. “But it’s a memory, not a plan.”
We were quiet for a beat, then I added, “I think we stay at Dominion Hall for now.”
Elias nodded, not a trace of disappointment on his face. “Then that’s what we do.”
“I haven’t even gotten to know everyone there very well,” I said, glancing down at the ring still catching sunlight on my hand. “It still feels like your place. Not ours.”
He turned to face me, earnest. “They love you, Red. They do. You’ll get to know them. You’ll see. And when we’re ready, we’ll build something of our own. Not because we have to, but because we want to.”
A breeze swept through, warm and forgiving, rustling the hydrangeas like they were nodding in agreement.
“And you’re sure,” I asked, searching his face, “that you don’t need a version of me that’s more … predictable?”
He leaned in, kissed my forehead, then my cheek, then the spot just below my ear that always made me shiver.
“I didn’t fall in love with predictable,” he murmured. “I fell in love with you.”
And just like that, every version of myself I’d ever been—ballet prodigy, adrenaline junkie, grieving daughter, woman reborn—settled into place.
Whole. Unhidden.
He pulled me closer, eyes dancing with something devilish. “You know,” he said, nodding toward the house, “we could keep this place just for wild sex when we visit.”
I choked on a laugh. “Just for that?”
“Well, and maybe beignets.”
I swatted his chest. “You’re incorrigible.”
He grinned. “You love that about me.”
“I do,” I said, threading my fingers through his. “And you’re not wrong. This place deserves some new memories.”
He stood, tugging me up with him. “Come on, Red. Let’s go christen your childhood bedroom. Think we can do it on a single mattress?”
I raised a brow. “That’s a little twisted, don’t you think?”
His mouth brushed my ear. “Exactly.”
I didn’t need more convincing.
We walked up the steps, through the door, and into the future we were choosing—messy, meaningful, a little wild.
And we made our first memory.
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