After Nicole Wilson's suicide attempt, but before his public admittance of partial sin, Nathaniel Palone retired from the public eye for five weeks to a family estate outside of Tuscany, Italy. There, he waited for Catherine, matriarch and power behind the Palone family, to issue her opinion on the predicament, which would be followed as if it were a decree. He knew he wouldn't have to wait long – she was normally so quick to tell anyone with half an ear what was on her mind. And yet at the end of the first week, there was no message, no fax, no email, no call, no personal presence by the woman herself. Nathaniel, quite understandably, became nervous and he called the one who had helped him a thousand times throughout his childhood. At the beginning of the second week, the eighth day of his stay in Italy, he called Antony, his older brother.
Antony Palone handed over his business to his wife, Elizabeth, and flew to Italy, in what he thought would only be a few days' vacation to calm his tightly-wound younger brother. But when he arrived he found a broken man — one convinced that he had forsaken the love of his life and that his family had forsaken him in turn. Protective instincts kicked in; he stayed for longer than he thought he would. So when Catherine called to finally pass her judgment on her womanizing son, she found that she could only speak with his brother. And all Antony would say is that Nathaniel was being rather irrational about the situation, and needed some time. Catherine acquiesced, and left her sons alone for a few days more, another week.
Within that week he had Nathaniel thinking again, but the two stayed even longer in Italy. It was far more refreshing than either of them realized, to not have to work. Both had been raised with a strong work ethic (indeed, the only 'ethic' that the Palone family taught their children) and it had never occurred to either of them that they could simply quit for a little while. Antony continued to lie to his mother, Nathaniel continued to play the guilty ex-boyfriend. When the acting was done, the curtain down, they retired behind closed doors and shut windows, drank, and squandered their time.
Eventually, their play came to an end. But not before they indirectly brought about the next great Palone scandal.