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PROLOGUE
EMILY
Love is the deadliest weapon.
It’s sharper than a sword. More precise than a sniper’s rifle. It takes without discrimination of age, gender, or race.
If you’re human, you’re defenseless. There is no barrier that can stop it. Once you’ve looked into its shadowed eyes, there’s nothing you can do to arm yourself against something so powerful.
My father warned me about love. “Keep your head down,” he always said. “Stay focused on what’s in front of you.”
He told me love would only bring me betrayal and deception and pain. That loving someone would put me in a vulnerable place. That it was like handing someone a loaded gun, placing their finger on the trigger, and pressing the barrel right over your heart, daring them not to pull.
“Their fingers always twitch, Em,” he’d say. “And a bullet to the heart is impossible to survive.”
I’d grin at him in that way I knew melted some of the frost from his expression. “I bet I can find someone on the internet who survived a bullet to the heart. Surely if someone has, I can survive falling in love.”
Therewerepeople who’d survived being shot in the heart. A quick Google search always popped up their stories. Not many, but enough to make my case.
I’d show my father, but he’d remain undeterred. “It will kill you.” His expression would fill with the pain that never ebbed, because it didn’t matter how many years had passed, his wounds couldn’t heal. “Don’t fall in love, Em. Promise me.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. No one will hold a gun to my heart. I promise.”
We had that conversation so many times, the words came without thinking. His dire prediction of what would happen if I ever fell for someone. My inability to promise not to do the one thing I so desperately wanted.
The young and naïve don’t listen, and I was something even worse than that. I was hopeful.
I hoped one day I’d meet the man who would complete me in every way. I hoped I’d find passion that would set me on fire and turn me inside out. I hoped to find the kind of love that would cut deep, that would make me ache and heal me all at once.
I hoped my father was wrong.
He wasn’t.
I should have listened. Should have heeded the sound advice that came from a man who’d loved and paid the price.
Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t be here now, my arms tied behind my back. The barrel of an actual gun pressed between my breasts by the man I love.
I wouldn’t be staring into his cold, dark gaze and listening intently as the hammer is pulled back and clicked into place.
Their fingers always twitch.
He’s going to pull the trigger, ending this once and for all with one deafening boom. His revenge finally complete.
I want to beg him to stop. Beg him not to hurt me. Plead with him not to do this.
But when he leans in and grazes my lips with his, he effectively shuts them.
He whispers something I can barely make sense of, then moves away with a clear message in his eyes.Do not beg for mercy I cannot give.
For a moment, I can’t inhale. Can’t fill my lungs with air, even though I should be relishing what could be my last breath. I laugh inwardly at the irony of it all. I never would have imagined I’d end up with a literal gun pointed at me.
A million thoughts race through my mind in the span of a millisecond. Will this hurt? Like the people on the internet, will I too survive a bullet to the chest?
If he kills me, will I love him still in death?
Even now as he narrows his eyes on me, his hand firmly wrapped around the hilt of his Glock, I love him. As deeply as I did the first time I saw his gold-flecked stare and he lit that torch inside my belly. I want him as much as the first time he touched me.
I have no more control over that than I do the desire to punch him in the face. Because right now, I hate him too.
