EMPIRE OF LIES
Book Three of Crowns of the Shadow
The world thinks the DuPont dynasty is dying.
Stephen DuPont knows better.
Months after his father's fall, the youngest of the lost triplets has carved an empire beneath Paris - an invisible kingdom of blackmail, contraband, and control. Aboveground, politicians posture and the press gorges on scandal. Below, Stephen rules in the cracks between power and law, playing enemies against each other with a smile that never quite reaches his eyes.
But when a precision leak hints at crimes the family buried decades ago, Stephen's fortress begins to splinter from within. Old predators return - Zoya Malkova, the Russian queen of cyberblackmail, and Liu Xian, a triad master with a taste for truth - each offering alliances with prices that could drown him. Worse still, someone inside his own circle is selling him out.
Caught between a dangerous mentor who wants his soul, a woman who wants to save it, and brothers who still don't trust him, Stephen follows the trail into the Ghost Crown Network - a secret empire older than the DuPont name, and far deadlier. Every step closer to the truth tightens the noose around Yasmine, the only person who sees he's not spiraling... he's ascending.
In this world, crowns aren't inherited. They're stolen.
And Stephen DuPont is ready to take his.
From the tunnels of Paris to the vaults of Geneva, Empire of Lies is a high-stakes tale of blood, betrayal, and the price of becoming the king no one saw coming.
