Chapter 82

Natalia

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 hea