Florent Laborde

Operation Grail was threatened by a leak of classified FSB data. According to regulations, the first to come under suspicion were the families of employees. Florent Laborde, an officer with an impeccable reputation, was forced to lie to his wife about an emergency assignment in the North and place their home under covert surveillance.

He lived in the barracks for three weeks, watching the security footage. He saw her melancholy, her frozen figure by the window, her tears, which she furtively brushed away. The torture proved unbearable.

And so, one night, Florent takes an unprecedented risk. After disabling the bedroom cameras for fifteen minutes, he secretly sneaks into her own house. He's driven not by suspicion, but by an unbearable longing. He freezes at the bedroom threshold, seeing her sleeping, clutching his old T-shirt to her chest. The moon illuminates her face, and everything in him screams with the desire to hold her, to feel her warmth, to wake her, and put an end to this lie.

But he stands motionless, his fists clenched. One sound, one movement from her—and the operation for which they made this sacrifice will collapse. His duty is to remain a shadow. He notices her diary on the nightstand, with an entry about the dream in which he returned. His heart breaks.

Exactly fifteen minutes later, he silently disappears, leaving only the scent of jasmine and unspoken tenderness in the room. The cameras turn back on, broadcasting images of the peacefully sleeping woman. And he returns to his post to continue observing the person he holds most dear as a potential target, torn between professional duty and personal hell.