Eduardo & Giovanni Grimaldi

Eduardo and Giovanni Grimaldi are two frightening Mafia hitmen and are the primary antagonists in the tenth and eleventh Alex Rider novels, Scorpia Rising and Never Say Die.

Background
They used to be in the Mafia, but because their father was everybody's enemy they were often targeted, and it did not help the brothers were, if possible, even more evil than their father. They killed a nanny just for trying to calm them down in a tantrum they threw upon threatened with separation, by throwing her out the window. This was when they were only six years old. They were seen eerily walking by her corpse smiling.

Their influence and intimidation got them out of trouble, and they killed their father by hiring a hitman to take him out in his own home. Then they ascended the ranks of the underworld, finally joining SCORPIA.

When killing, they loved to use ornate guns, and they even engraved every bullet they used with their initials, because "it made death feel more personal."

Personalities
The brothers possessed a hive personality, thus one would state something, only to have the other finish for him. Also, unlike many siblings, these two never argued. They would possess identical clothes, and always dress identically. Thus, no one could tell them apart. They were close because they had been born five seconds apart, and this would mark them for the rest of their lives. They were cold hearted, malicious killers, who would pride themselves in their jobs. When killing, they used untraceable methods, such as poison tea, or flowers with wires concealed in them. They were, simply, sick. Willing to gun down an innocent child because his parents negotiated to pay less money than they threatened them to pay.

Scorpia Rising
The brothers first appear in Scorpia Rising, but have a reduced role here. They attend Zeljan Kurst's business meeting on how to reform SCORPIA so it will be more fearsome. The brothers do little in the meeting; only agreeing with their boss when all seems going their way. They do not react to the murder of Levi Kroll because they are malicious killers and human life means nothing to them any more.

Never Say Die
The brothers return as the primary antagonists in the eleventh novel, Never Say Die. Here it is revealed the two escaped the FBI and MI6 tracking them down, and have retired to their palace in Southern France. The two plan their Operation Steel Claw. No one knows fully what to expect from such murderous gangsters, not even Derek Vosper, their underling. But the brothers, it is revealed, hired Dragana Novak to steal a helicopter for them - a very rare helicopter, at that, valued by the military. When Novak gets injured by Alex Rider, she is of no value to the brothers any more; and after hearing her cousin will do the job for her, the brothers gleefully kill Novak with a blade hidden in a rose.

Alex Rider hitches a ride to the brothers' house, and is eventually knocked out by a gangster named Stallone. Eduardo and Grimaldi interrogate Alex, appearing very sophisticated and polite, never resorting to hateful remarks unlike the other members of SCORPIA. But beneath it all is the Grimaldi's obsession with destruction. The twins say that they will leave Alex to drown by dropping him into the Mediterranean Sea with his feet in hardened cement. The twins say it is an old Mafia tradition and their grandmother taught them to be very traditional in murder. Then the brothers give Alex to Stallone and another man named Skunk to carry out the murder; but Alex injures Stallone with a nail, before Skunk sends Alex into the ocean. Fortunately Ben Daniels, an MI6 agent, rescues Alex because MI6 had tapped into the Grimaldi's phone system and overhead everything the creeps said.

Later, the brothers send Slavo, Dragana's cousin, to hijack a coach from Linton Hall school, and kidnap a hundred children. Alex realises, almost too late, that was the brothers' plan, and he deliberately gets himself kidnapped in front of a stunned Ben Daniels. He gets himself taken to Smoke City, a mountain factory in Wales, long dead from the collapse of coal. The school coach, literally hanging off the road by the helicopter's steel claw, is deposited cunningly in a train, taken to the valley, where the children are held to ransom. However, the parents refuse to give the full amount, in fact even asking for less, to which Eduardo and Grimaldi get exasperated and tell Jane Vosper, their treacherous agent, that they will kill a boy next morning to force the parents' cooperation. Eduardo and Giovanni Grimaldi then kill Jane to stop her speaking out in retaliation. However, Alex finds Jack Starbright, his guardian whom he believed murdered, (and was in fact the reason he left America in the first place, to see if she was alive) and wounds up freeing the children, and in a very clever fashion, gets them unseen into the coach, starts up the engine, (using keys from the murdered Jane Vosper, the late coach driver) and Jack drives them out of there, not before the gangster, Stallone, kills Philby, an ex FBI agent protecting the children. However, all the children get out safe.

On the train tracks, (which Jack had no option but to drive on) she sees the Midnight Flyer, the Grimaldi's sinister black train, coming out like a beast from Hell, even after the factory plant got blown up by Alex. The Grimaldis are in the train, losing their cool like werewolves, and are gunning down anything they can see. Alex fires a Thermos full of oil at the train; and then the train catches alight. It blows up spectacularly. It transpires Eduardo dies five seconds after Giovanni; just like the fashion in which they were born. Their plan ends in spectacular failure.