A caring bodyguard

Léonard Lafaille POV

The phone slipped from her hand before the sound of the call ending had fully faded. For a heartbeat, Anne-Marie didn’t move. Then she broke down in tears.

I froze, not sure of what to do.In all the years I had worked for her, I had never seen Anne-Marie like this. She was composed even in fury, precise even in grief. Parisian through and through trained by life to keep emotions folded neatly, like linen stored away for special occasions.

But today was different, almost similar to the day she lost her child five years ago.

“Madame?” I said, stepping closer. “Anne-Marie, what’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer. Her shoulders shook violently, her breath coming in uneven gasps. That silence frightened me more than any scream could have. I knelt beside her, careful, unsure where my place ended and my duty began.

“Please,” I said more firmly now. “Talk to me.”

But she said nothing.

My mind raced through different possibilities, who would have called her? Was it threats, blackmail or something worse? Then instantly, an idea hit me.

“Was it him?” I asked quietly. “Mr. Marchand-Trottier?”

Her face crumpled completely at the sound of his name.

“He knows,” she whispered at last, her voice broken, barely there.

I leaned in. “Know what?”

Another sob shook her, and she pressed her hands to her eyes as if she could erase the world. “My father,” she said. “He knows where he is.”

The room seemed to close in around us.

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I already feared the answer.

“He knows my father is alive,” she said, words spilling out now, uncontrolled. “He knows he’s sick. That he’s not dead. That he’s at the old farmhouse.”

“How?” I asked sharply. “How could he know that?”

She shook her head over and over, tears streaming freely now. “I don’t know. I swear, Léon, I don’t know.” Her voice rose, cracking. “I was so careful.”

The wail that followed cut straight through me. It echoed in the room, raw and helpless, nothing like the poised woman the world saw on television screens and magazine covers.

I felt something twist painfully in my chest.

Instinct urged me to pull her into my arms, to let her cry against my shoulder the way any human being should be allowed to. But I stopped myself. I was her bodyguard. She was my employer. A wealthy woman born into a world where boundaries were invisible but ironclad.

So I stayed where I was.

Instead, I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled out a clean white handkerchief. Linen. Monogrammed discreetly is an old habit picked up from years of working around people who noticed such things.

I held it out to her. She looked at it for a moment as if she didn’t understand what it was. Then she took it with trembling fingers and pressed it to her face, the fabric quickly darkening with tears.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, though there was nothing to apologize for.

“Don’t be,” I said softly.

She cried harder then, shoulders heaving, grief and fear pouring out without restraint. Outside, somewhere in the distance, a church bell rang the hour. Inside that room, everything fragile had been exposed.

Mr. Marchand-Trottier hadn’t just threatened her reputation. He had gone for the one thing she loved without strategy or pride,her father. I stayed with her, silent and steady, watching the woman I was sworn to protect break in ways no money could mend and all these years her father was the reason she was still pulling through.

“We should go to the farmhouse,” I told her gently. “Just to be sure.”

Anne-Marie looked up at me as if I had offered her air after she’d been drowning. For a second, disbelief flickered across her face then hope, bright and sudden, surged through her grief. She rose so quickly I feared she might collapse again, but instead she laughed, a breathless, fragile sound.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we should go. Right now.”

The drive felt endless and impossibly fast at the same time. Anne-Marie sat rigid beside me, hands clenched in her lap, eyes fixed on the horizon as if we could pull the farmhouse toward us.

The old Duval property emerged at last, stone walls weathered by decades of wind and silence. It was the oldest in Paris, transferred from generation to generation by the Duval family.

We had barely stepped out of the car when the maid appeared at the door. She was older, dressed plainly, her posture respectful in that deeply French way that spoke of loyalty rather than servitude.

“Madame,” she said, inclining her head. “Your father has been asking for you.”

Anne-Marie gasped softly, one hand flying to her mouth. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She simply nodded and hurried past the maid, her footsteps echoing down the familiar corridor.

I remained behind, exchanging a glance with the woman. 

“He has been restless today,” the maid said quietly. “But lucid.”

That was when Anne-Marie’s voice echoed from deeper inside the house. “Léon?”

There was urgency in it, not fear, but need.

I followed immediately.

Her father’s room was dim, curtains drawn against the chill, a crucifix hanging above the bed. Mr. Duval lay propped against pillows, thinner than the photographs Anne-Marie kept hidden in her study, his skin pale but his eyes unmistakably alive.

Anne-Marie stood frozen at the doorway, trembling.

“Papa,” she whispered.

His gaze shifted, focused, and when he saw her, a slow smile spread across his face. “Ma petite,” he murmured. “You came.”

She crossed the room in two steps and fell to her knees beside the bed, taking his hand as if afraid he might vanish. Tears streamed freely now, but these were different relief, love, release.

She turned to me then. “Please,” she said softly. “Come.”

I hesitated only a second before stepping closer.

She took my hand without ceremony, her grip firm, grounding. Together, we approached the bed. I felt like an intruder in something sacred, yet she held on as if my presence anchored her to the moment.

“ Léon is a good man, father.” she told her father. “He protects me.”

Mr. Duval studied me carefully before giving me “the look” I wished Anne-Marie had never mentioned about me.