The Butcher’s Empire (The Empire Legacy #1)

Prologue

They said she vanished. But I remember the way her laughter clung to the walls long after she stopped breathing.

No one talks about her now. Not in my family, not among the men who served my father. Not even in the circles that profit off silence. Her name was erased from the ledgers, her face from the photographs, her existence from every place it should have lived. But not from me.

Never from me.

Lila.

The name still tastes like ash and honey. Sweet in memory, bitter in guilt.

She came into my world like a whisper, small, harmless, almost forgettable. But there was something about the way she looked at me, as if she could see through the polish and charm and straight into the rot underneath. I should have walked away that night. I should have never let her near me.

But curiosity is a dangerous thing, and I’ve always been curious.

The island is quiet now. Too quiet.

When the wind moves through the palms, I swear it carries her voice.

Sometimes I hear her humming, soft, almost content, like the calm before the sea takes everything back.

I tell myself it’s just the ocean, just the waves against the rocks.

But the sound always comes from the same direction. The cliffs.

No one believes me, of course. They think I’ve built this place to escape my father’s empire, to wash the blood from my hands in blue water and sunlight. They don’t see the truth behind the glass walls and manicured gardens. They don’t hear the footsteps that echo through empty halls at night.

She’s still here.

Not alive, but not gone either.

Some nights, I dream of her face in the reflection of the pool, trembling across the surface. I wake before she speaks, drenched in sweat, with the scent of salt and smoke still in the air. It’s always the same dream. Always her.

I told myself Elysian Haven would be different. A place built from beauty instead of ruin. But the foundation is cracked, and I can feel it, like the island is holding its breath again, waiting for the truth to crawl out from beneath the marble floors.

Lila’s story didn’t end the night she disappeared.

It just changed hands.

And sometimes, when the tide pulls back far enough, I think I see her again , standing where the water meets the shore, hair tangled in the wind, watching me with that same knowing look.

The kind that reminds me I was never the hero of her story.

And she was never meant to survive mine.