Review: The Emperor by RuNyx

The Emperor by RuNyx

Series: Dark Verse #3

Publication date: January 6th, 2021

Pages: 443

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Synopsis:

What happens when a legacy of ruin mates with a realm of blood?

Heir to the notorious Tenebrae Outfit, Dante Maroni has been trained since birth. A silent rebel in the shadows, he has learned to hide his ruthlessness under his charm, his brutality under his suits, and his love for one woman under his silence. Infiltrating the Syndicate responsible for the missing children, Dante discovers information that shatters his reality and forces him to trigger a lethal game.

Daughter of the Maroni housekeeper, Amara has loved Dante for longer than she's known it. Abducted and tortured at the young age of fifteen, she loses herself, her life, and her home as she knows it. Years after, unknowingly protected, she's found some semblance of normalcy when her world collapses again, forcing her to join the game.

Mysteries are unraveled. Secrets are discovered. And their young love is transformed, replaced by a deep intimacy, power, and survival.

The reluctant king and inevitable queen play.

An empire of death is born.

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Review:

Amara and Dante have watched each other from afar for years. Amara knew she was in love with Dante from a very young age but Dante had some catching up to do. It was only when Amara saw something she shouldn't have and started to distance herself from Dante that he realized just how much he had come to enjoy Amara's attention. Then she was taken from him. She was held captive and tortured for three days but remained loyal to him despite her captors continuous interrogation. She was rescued but her mind and body were broken. Dante was determined to see her healed and whole once more and somewhere along the way he started to love her too. But there were forces against the union that were out of both of their control. Amara was sent away to complete her schooling with the express decree that she was not to be around Dante again. And so started a hidden love affair that spanned almost a decade. As the two navigated the world together but also apart they had to pretend they had zero connection in the public eye for both of their own safety. But as the mysteries surrounding some missing children and the all powerful Syndicate start to come to a head players on the chessboard start moving and the queen starts to show how far she would go to protect her king. 

I didn't know if I wanted to continue with the series after Tristan and his girl's story wrapped. I knew that the next installment would be about Amara and Dante and I didn't know if I really cared to watch them finally get together after watching them actively avoid each other like the plague on a normal basis. I am so glad I kept reading because the secrecy and depth to their relationship was not something I expected to see. I absolutely loved it. Those two were couple goals through and through. The way Dante worshipped Amara calling her the "beat of his heart" was so beautiful. He would be frustrated with her sometimes but for the most part he was always there to lift her up whenever she felt like she was about to fall. He built her up again after her traumatic experience over the span of years and never, not once, ever doubted her or let her doubt him. It was such a gorgeously healthy relationship even if it was hidden from the public eye mostly.

The Syndicate underlying story has so many twists and turns that I have no idea what is going to happen next with it. I thought it had mostly been resolved after the second book so the rest were just going to be mostly the stories of supporting characters finding romance but there is more to the story in every book. Runyx gives us just a little tidbit of the overall mystery before ending the book and leaving their reader in a state of, "well, now I need to know what is going on! Who is that? What role are they in the Syndicate? Are they bad or good? What happened to all the children?!" It is the best way to connect the stories of the series without the mystery becoming stale. 

The only fault I find with the book is that instead of it continuing on where Tristan's second book left off it went all the way back to the beginning and started from there. In this book it worked really well because Amara and Dante did have a long history and it did shed some light on situations in Tristan's books from the perspective of other characters, but it made the story feel kinda linear. And from the appearance of Alpha with a lady at Dante and Amara's wedding and the next book being Alpha's I suspect this will be a trend in the books. I will still read the series because it's a stellar series, but that was the only fault I could find in the entire book.

This series overall is a great read and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has a love for organized crime romance with alpha badasses and their strong queens.