It clicked then. That was why they called him the Pretty Boy Prince.
In a house full of savages, he stood out.
I scrolled some more, but only “suspected” criminal dealings came up. Things the Scarpones had been questioned for but never indicted on. This time, I narrowed my search down.
Vittorio Lupo Scarpone
“Can’t be,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes against the glare of the screen. There were only three articles that mentioned him. The first had a picture of a beautiful woman smiling as she walked down the street. I could tell it was someplace in New York. I could tell she was going somewhere, trying to get away from the cameras, but still smiling, showing her best side. If the other side was as perfect as the one she shared; she had no flaws.
Two Kingdoms Come Together to Form One Powerful Family
The “Prince” of New York set to marry into one of New York’s finest political dynasties.
Vittorio Lupo Scarpone, son of Arturo Scarpone and the late Noemi Scarpone, and Angelina Zamboni, daughter of Angelo and Carmella Zamboni, will be wed at the Cathedral of St. Patrick, followed by a winter-wonderland themed reception at the bride’s parents’ estate in Upstate New York.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered. Was Quillon related to Angelina? They had the same last name, and when I looked at her a bit harder, there was something there. Not immediate, but something about the way they smiled. Nothing else, though, connected them. She had a slim face. Tan skin. Long, dark blonde hair. Dark eyes. Tall. She seemed very tall. And her nose was…perfection, along with her lips. She was the Italian Princess to the wildly gorgeous Italian Prince.
I pulled up a separate page, typing in her name. Very few results showed for her, too. Quillon was her brother. The rest of the articles focused on her murder.
Her murder.
Men, more than one, had attacked her in the alley beside Dolce, the restaurant that gave me the creeps. It was speculated that Vittorio went down fighting for Angelina before the men raped her and then put a bullet in her brain. She had suffered a gruesome death, the article stated. She was also pregnant at the time of her demise.
I had to close the computer for a second, take a deep, deep breath. Then I opened it again when I felt I could breathe normally.
Vittorio’s blood had been all over the scene, enough of it that they had suspected he was brutally stabbed and then his body dumped in the water somewhere. They hadn’t found him.
“Of course not,” I said to the screen. “He’s sitting in the next room. I found him.”
I couldn’t stand to read more details about Angelina’s murder, or continue to see pictures of her, so I went back to my other search about Vittorio.
The second article went on about the wedding, the A-list guests that were expected to attend, how much the wedding of the year was going to cost. I clicked that off, too. I couldn’t read an article about their wedding after I’d just imagined their horrendous deaths.
The third and final article gave details about Vittorio’s death. It was all speculation, though. No one really knew what had happened to him, but I could tell the article hinted at his father and brother, but the writer was too afraid to come out and directly say it.
Vittorio Lupo Scarpone had become an urban legend, in a sense. Some people, the article claimed, didn’t think he was dead. They thought that after his attempted murder, he took hidden money and lived on a private island somewhere, to escape the evil clutches of his family.
Like 2Pac. Or better yet, Niccolò Machiavelli. The root of the 2Pac theory. Even Elvis. All of those “is he or isn’t he dead?” magazine headlines.
“Fucka me,” I said.
I sat there for a minute, biting my lip, until I took my rosary out. I settled some after rubbing the pearls, but not entirely. My anxiety rose even higher after I searched for Noemi Ranieri Scarpone. She was even more beautiful than Angelina. Black hair. Blue Eyes. Tan skin. Thin. Big smile. The very first article spoke about her killing herself. It was rumored that she had a long history with a mental disorder.
I scrolled down a bit, familiar with the story, but what I hadn’t known was that she had left a note behind for Vittorio.
The article claimed that no one had ever seen the note, but it was rumored to have said: Marry for loyalty, not for love. Love kills the soul quicker than a sharp dagger to the heart.
Even though it didn’t make me feel any better, if Noemi had left that behind, it explained so much about my husband’s aversion to love.
“Looking for something?”
I made an ahh! noise, jumped, and the computer flew through the air, my knees liftoff point. We both scrambled to get to the computer at the same time, but he was quicker. It didn’t matter anyway; we had to have this conversation sooner or later.
I thought he was going to look at what I’d been looking at, but instead, he handed me the computer. Then he took a seat on the bed, his back to me. Instead of the computer, I grabbed the rosary, worrying it between my fingers.
Time. So much time went by—ten minutes? Which felt like a lifetime to me. Finally, I couldn’t stand the tension any longer. “Why didn’t you tell me who you are, Vittorio?”
“I gave you permission to call me any name you’d like. You even named me. Capo. But that name…that one is off limits. It belongs to someone else.”
“A ghost,” I said.
“A ghost.”
“You killed my parents,” I whispered.
“There was no other choice.” He sighed. “I didn’t mind killing your father, but I didn’t want to take your mother away from you. She was a good woman, but she married the wrong kind of man. She knew I had to. She begged me to. If I didn’t kill her, give her an easy death, Achille would’ve been sent in my place.
“He’s stupid in some ways, but when it comes to locating someone, he’s relentless. He would’ve sniffed her out eventually. Too many people knew her face. Even in Italy they would’ve found her. They have connections there, too. At that point, your parents had little money. They’d been hiding from Arturo for a while. What I did to her was a mercy compared to what Achille would’ve done. The only thing better for Achille would’ve been making your father watch as he did it.”
“He never found me.” I squeezed the rosary, hoping it wouldn’t pop from the strain.
“There’s one person who’s better at tracking than him. Better at hiding, too.”
“You.”
“I was certain they wouldn’t find you. They didn’t. I even went as far as renaming you in the blood database.”
“How did—how did they know you let me go?”
“A man playing two sides of the game was hiding in your parents’ place that night. He was getting information from your father and then delivering it to Arturo. If Arturo seemed like he was worried about something, or growing weaker, the rat would tell your father. He didn’t know who to place his bets on. You were an unforeseen circumstance that I didn’t bargain for. I should’ve checked the place twice but didn’t. I wanted to get you out. The rat came to me the next day, telling me what he’d done—he told Arturo that I didn’t kill you, that I hid you. I killed him after, but it was too late. He’d already ratted to Arturo and Achille.”