Enrico Marini – Illustratör

A heist gone wrong forces Slick to do a job for his employer, Rex, to repay the debt he owes. But Slick is in love with Caprice, Rex's ex-call girl wife-turned-burlesque legend and Rex also has the only way for Slick to avenge his murdered father. In this hardboiled noir thriller, everybody has everything to lose...

Betrayed by the beautiful Ansea Latal, the Scorpion has been captured by the Turks. But he cannot afford to tarry: Rochnan and his monks are close on his tail, Ansea is on her way to Cappadocia to find the true cross of Saint Peter, and, back in Rome, Trebaldi is preparing his reign of terror. As a prisoner or a fugitive, alone or in the reluctant company of people who have sworn his death, the Scorpion will have to reach Karabas before the agents of the Nine Families and discover the truth hidden deep inside the Holy Valley.

On the run from both agents of the Vatican and Ottoman authorities, the Scorpion is forced into uneasy alliances to continue his quest. Riding towards the Holy Land, the motley band begins to unravel the secrets of the Templars. But as loyalties shift, a confrontation looms, and in the shadow of an inverted cross, a forgotten truth will resurface that could destroy Trebaldi's power -

The lights of Rome have dimmed. When the Scorpion and his friends get back to the Holy See, it is a place of fear and death they find, a city cowering under Trebaldi's boot. Their only chance to destroy the Pope's power is to heed Rochnan's last words and look into the past of the Scorpion's mother. Dodging warrior-monks and Inquisitors, they begin to unravel a story that could yield some answers too horrible to contemplate -

A shadow from his past stalks the Scorpion-but is it from an angel...or a devil? The iron fist of Trebaldi's monks is still strangling Rome, but such an army is expensive. To pay his men before their loyalty begins to slip, the Pope must rely on the financial assistance of European monarchs-and a large sum in gold is coming to Rome. But such a convoy is tempting to many! Trebaldi, the Nine Families, thieves and conspirators...And all figure they can use the Scorpion against each other to obtain what they want.

Is the reign of terror that grips Rome about to end? One by one, the Pope's warrior monks fall to the Scorpion's blade or desert their master. Feeling his enemy circling ever closer, Trebaldi grows desperate and hires Rome's best paid assassins to go after him-and whomever else stands in his way. As the women in his life choose their destinies, an old enemy reappears to plague the Scorpion...or perhaps to bring him the truth at last, hidden behind his mask.

The truth at last-who is the Scorpion's father? The mysterious scarred man who was dogging the Scorpion's footsteps took him away from his confrontation with Trebaldi, promising to take him to his father. Forced to follow but eager to know at last, Armando doesn't resist. Meanwhile, the Pope resorts to desperate measures to make up his monks' losses. Old enemies, new ones...Conspiracies and lies...Fifteen centuries of conflicts and plots come to a head as the truth is revealed at last, shattering all certainties and leaving many dead...

Rome the beautiful is dying, the symbol of civilization falling, the empire burning. Hidden from massacres and looting, a strange meeting is held by nine families who share the Roman Empire. To retain their power, they decide to support a new religion - Christianity - as well as its representative, the pope. But who are these 9 mysterious families? Later, much later, it's the Renaissance. Christianity prospers. A brigand called 'the Scorpion' makes a living by unearthing relics in the depths of the Roman catacombs, which he sells at high prices to princes and bishops. Trebaldi, a powerful cardinal, takes an interest in this Scorpion, who is either a creature of the devil or a witness to a cursed era who must disappear. This two-volume book includes "The Pope's Secret ".

The Scorpion, whose mother Cardinal Trebaldi burnt at the stake for loving a man of the cloth, discovers that his father was the murdered Pope himself. When Trebaldi addresses a huge crowd at the end of the mourning period, the Scorpion is there to tell the truth about how the people's beloved Pope died. Trebaldi claims that the sacred cross of St Peter miraculously appeared in his castle. The Scorpion must find the real cross if he is to prove Trebaldi's treachery.