The Hunter’s Empire (The Empire Legacy #2)

Prologue

I always believe that when death finally finds me, it will find an old man sitting somewhere quiet, perhaps on the terrace of a house far away from the noise of the world I helped build, with silver in my hair and too many stories in my head and my son somewhere nearby pretending not to notice that age is beginning to win battles strength never could.

The image lives in my mind for so long that I mistake it for certainty.

I imagine him grown by then, taller than me perhaps, successful in whatever life he chooses for himself, laughing at my stubbornness while I complain about things that no longer matter, and I imagine reaching the end of my life the same way ordinary men do, with enough time to make peace with leaving and enough years behind me that departure feels less like theft and more like rest. I imagine dying with my son beside me.

I never imagine bleeding out beneath a dark sky while the man responsible stands close enough for me to see the familiar outline of his face, nor do I imagine that my final moments will belong not to old age but to betrayal and ambition and the kind of violence men like us spend our lives pretending we can control.

Perhaps this should not surprise me as much as it does. A man cannot spend his life building an empire on chaos and blood, and then act shocked when darkness eventually comes to collect what it is owed.

Men like me do not build lives that lead to peaceful endings, and somewhere deep down I think I always knew that, even as I convince myself that I will somehow be the exception, that I will survive long enough to keep my promises and protect the people waiting for me at home from the consequences of the choices I make. What arrogance that is.

Because if this ending belongs to anyone, it belongs to me.

My son will grow up in a world where his father simply stops coming home one day. And if there is any mercy left in this world, I hope he grows into kindness rather than anger, and I hope he learns how to love despite everything life is about to take from him.

Most of all, I hope he never allows my death to become the center of his life.

As the darkness slowly closes around me and the world begins slipping further away, I realize that for all the promises I made him throughout the years, there is only one that truly matters and only one that I fail to keep.

I promise my son that I will always come home to him. And for the first time since the day he was born, I know with absolute certainty that I am about to break that promise forever.