**Paris, November 30, 2020**
The secrecy was short-lived. That kiss had sealed our fate, but the gilded walls of my studio were not as impervious as I'd believed. Paris sees all, especially with curious neighbors and paparazzi hunting the shot that could pay a year's rent.
It began with a blurry photo, published in an online gossip magazine. It showed a hooded male figure slipping through my building's carriage entrance at an odd hour. The quality was poor, but the caption was unmistakable: "The President and his mysterious Rue de Grenelle neighbor?" They didn't have my name yet, but they had the address. And the suspicion.
The next day, they arrived. Two, then three, then five. Men with long lenses, stationed below, trained on the door, the windows. Watchers. My fortress had become a transparent prison.
I no longer dared step outside. Delivered groceries were photographed, the delivery person hounded with questions. My precious anonymity, my safe bubble, had burst.
Then came the social media onslaught. A stolen photo from my first day at the Élysée in uniform circulated. My name was revealed. Maya Diop. Senegalese. Cleaning agent. The comments erupted, their violence stealing my breath.
"Another one climbing the social ladder"
"She's clearly illegal, right?"
"Macron and his taste for low-cost exoticism"
"If she's not happy, let her go back to her country!"
"What does she have over Brigitte? Besides youth and skin color?"
Each word was a dagger. I spent hours scrolling, horrified, unable to tear my eyes from the screen, from the relentless tide of hate. I was no longer a person. I was a symbol, a target for every frustration, every racist slur, every class disdain.
One evening, a Google alert revealed an extreme-right website had published a "dossier" on me. It included photos of my family in Dakar, my mother's name, our compound's address. It speculated on my Islam, my "likely fraudulent" visa, labeling me an undocumented opportunist.
I shut the laptop, nauseous, overwhelmed by a visceral fear. They were targeting my mother. Ma'a Ada, who knew nothing of this, who believed her daughter was happy and thriving in great France.
The special phone vibrated. A text from Emmanuel.
"Don't read anything. Don't listen to anyone. I'll handle it."
Too late. The machine was in motion. His "I'll handle it" felt like an empty promise, a pious wish from a man who'd lost control himself.
Hours later, another vibration. Claire Vidal.
"Enhanced security measures are in place. Stay away from windows. Don't answer unknown calls."
The fear shifted. It was no longer just social or media-driven. It became physical. Tangible. I turned off all lights and huddled in the studio's center, far from the glass, straining to hear every street sound. A car engine idling too long. Men's voices. A laugh. Were they journalists? Activists? Lunatics?
I thought of Jacques-Cartier. His anger, his petty fear, now cast in a new light. It wasn't mindless cruelty. It was the instinct of a small man sensing a danger he'd foreseen before I did—the peril of disrupting order, of shining a spotlight on a precarious life meant to remain unseen.
I'd wanted to become a Parisienne. I'd become a target.
The cost of this unwilling fame wasn't fleeting glory or material gain. It was the loss of my identity, my peace, my safety. It was the hatred of strangers poured onto me and those I loved.
Amid this storm, a nagging, terrible question began to take root.
Was the kiss, the intense gaze, the protection… worth it?
I was the prey. And he, the President in his gilded palace—was he my hunter or my gamekeeper?
For the first time, I doubted. Not him, but everything.