Aline & Dante: Hearts Behind The Mask

Forced Protection

— Forced Protection

Five days after the gala, Aline's investigation took a dangerous turn. Her source called in the middle of the night, his voice shaking on the phone. "They know. They know it's you digging into Solenne. Hide, Rousseau. These people don't play games."

Aline had never scared easily, but when she saw a black car pass twice in front of her building that same afternoon, her heart started racing. She called Antoine Ferrand right away.

"We need to call the police," Antoine said, real worry in his voice.

"With what? A car that drove by twice? They'd laugh in my face," Aline answered. "And if these people have connections in the police, that could put me in even more danger."

So, against every instinct, Antoine made a call he'd never wanted to make — to a number he'd been given two years earlier, after another dangerous story, a number that had once saved a source's life when things got bad.

Two days later, the result was Dante Moreau standing in Aline's office doorway — no gala suit this time, dressed instead like a man used to fighting for his life rather than decorating a ballroom.

"No," Aline said the moment she saw him, before Antoine could even explain. "I don't need protection from a man who's supposedly working with the same people trying to kill me."

"I'm not behind this," Dante said, his voice more serious than she'd heard it before. "But I know who they are, and I know how they work. If you die, the truth dies with you."

"And if I accept your help, what guarantee do I have that this isn't just your way of controlling what information I have — for Conti?"

The question hit Dante hard; Aline saw it in the way his jaw tightened. "You don't have any guarantee," he said finally, and the honesty of it convinced her more than any pretty words could have. "But if I wanted to hurt you, I'd have done it already. I'm here because someone's preparing to do something I won't be able to live with if I let it happen."

A heavy silence settled over the office. Antoine, standing in the doorway, watched Aline with a mix of worry and quiet pleading.

Finally, Aline agreed — against her own will, but aware that a dead journalist can't publish anything — to let Dante stay close for two weeks, officially hired as private security Le Miroir had brought in after a string of threats.

The first days were tense. Aline did everything she could to prove she didn't need anyone — running her investigation without asking Dante's opinion, avoiding him more than necessary, even trying to "lose" him in the street twice just to prove her point.

"Do you understand that if you get yourself killed trying to prove something, I'll have to live with that?" Dante said after the second attempt, anger she'd never heard from him breaking through his voice.

"Nobody asked you to live with anything," Aline answered, though for the first time there was less conviction behind her words.

It was the third day that changed everything. Aline was walking back from a meeting when a black SUV accelerated behind her on a quiet street, its engine drowning out everything else. She'd barely registered what was happening when Dante, who'd been following at a distance — breaking his own rule again — pulled her aside, his body shielding hers as the car tore past where they'd been standing a second earlier, horn blaring, glass shattering somewhere nearby.

They hit the ground together, Aline's heart hammering, Dante on top of her, his back turned toward the danger, as if protecting her was simply his first instinct, no matter the cost.

"You okay?" he asked, his voice gentler than she'd ever heard it.

Aline realized she was shaking — not just from fear, but because for the first time in a very long while, someone had put their body between her and danger without asking for anything in return.

"Yes," she said finally, her voice lower than she meant it to be. "Thank you."

After that, neither of them could pretend nothing had changed.