Empire (Penelope Sky) Books in Order

The Empire (Penelope Sky) series is a two-book dark romance that plays like a hostile takeover with a love story in the blast radius. In Bartholomew, the hero is a man who measures the world in territory. He’s already taken Croatia, he’s aiming for Italy next, and the only thing standing in his way is another power player with his own rules.

To clear that obstacle, Bartholomew sets a trap in Paris—one that uses a woman connected to his enemy as bait. She isn’t a random target; she’s valuable, protected, and completely unwilling to become a pawn. That refusal is what makes the romance spark, because Bartholomew doesn’t respond to defiance with distance. He responds by getting closer.

The series thrives on that collision: a man who’s built an empire by force meeting a woman who refuses to be owned. It’s not a gentle story. Bartholomew’s idea of love is possessive, strategic, and tied to power, and the heroine’s fight is as much about identity as it is about physical freedom. She hates what he represents, but she’s also forced to acknowledge that he’s the only person who can keep her alive once the trap snaps shut.

Nothing stays clean for long.

Paris adds a sharp contrast to the violence underneath the plot. The city’s surface is beautiful—restaurants, streets, money—and the underworld running beneath it is brutal. Bartholomew’s people are everywhere, and even when the heroine is “safe,” she’s living inside his reach. The tension comes from that constant proximity: every conversation is a negotiation, every touch is a test, and every act of kindness can be read as manipulation.

In Barbarian, the fallout hits. Trust is broken, loyalties get tested, and the heroine has to face what it means to be tied to a man whose enemies would happily destroy her just to hurt him. Family loyalties and old betrayals complicate everything, and the romance becomes a battle over choice—whether she’s choosing him, or simply adapting to the only option left.

Bartholomew doesn’t do half-measures. Once he believes she’s his, he fights like it.

The two books are one continuous arc, so reading in order matters.

If you like dark romance with ruthless men, dangerous politics, and a relationship forged in pressure, Empire is best read straight through. It’s short, intense, and built around one question: when power is the language everyone speaks, what does love look like—and who gets to define it?