Chapter 17
Cesare Caproni
Four years.
Four long fucking years…
And finally we were ready to take our revenge.
Actually, the waiting part was all Lucrezia’s idea.
If it had been up to me, I would’ve gone after Dario Rosolini eight months ago –
The day he walked out of San Vittore.
Not that I knew where he lived, except it was somewhere outside Florence.
So it was probably a good thing we waited. Couldn’t exactly go tearing up all of Tuscany looking for one motherfucker.
…although I wouldn’t have minded too much.
Lucrezia was the mastermind over the last four years. Under her direction, we took over other Camorra clans’ territories, bit by bit.
We mostly went after their drug trade. We’d run off their street dealers, steal their stashes, and start selling on their street corners.
The very first clan to hit back at us were the Mingozzis. We’d specifically targeted them because they were the weakest clan.
We offered them a treaty. I didn’t want to, but Lucrezia insisted. She said it was all part of the plan.
We would keep a few of the Mingozzi neighborhoods, but in exchange for peace, we offered to give back 80% of what we’d taken.
I was fuckin’ pissed. I wanted war.
Turns out, so did the Mingozzis.
After they heard our offer, they laughed in our faces, just like I knew they would.
Actually, it was worse than laughing in our faces.
They dumped our messenger in the street outside one of our businesses –
Without his head.
That’s when Lucrezia set me loose.
I rained down fucking hell on the Mingozzis.
My guys did drive-bys on their street dealers. We killed ten on the first day, and at least three a day after that.
You didn’t hear nothin’ but police sirens in the poorest neighborhoods around Naples for weeks.
I also personally went after the Mingozzis’ top lieutenants.
I managed to grab one outside a restaurant. A day later, I sent him back to his bosses – without his body.
Lucrezia included a little note: Since you like disembodied heads so much, here’s another one for your collection.
After two weeks of shit like that, the Mingozzis were begging to negotiate.
But the terms had changed.
Now it was a 50/50 split of their old neighborhoods. We were going to keep half.
Like a bunch of pussies, they took the deal.
After that, we slowly crept in on other clans’ operations.
When they bitched about it, we offered them a treaty: we’d keep 20% and give back 80%.
After seeing what we’d done to the Mingozzis, most clans took the deal.
I made an example out of the ones who didn’t.
We mostly fucked up small and medium players – the ones with the least power.
Eventually, though, the biggest clans in the Camorra got together. They told us to back the fuck off, or they were going to all band together to wipe us out.
I thought they were pussies – that there was no way they would actually go through with it.
If it was up to me, I would’ve called their bluff.
Still… when the ten biggest Camorra clans say they’re going to work together to put you in the ground, you know they’re fuckin’ pissed.
That’s when Lucrezia sprung the final trap.
She said we’d stop fucking with everybody’s territory in Naples if we could have the Amalfi Coast instead.
Every boss in the Camorra was like, What the fuck?
Why does this bitch want the Amalfi Coast?
It’s a 30-mile stretch of coastline an hour south of Naples. A bunch of pricey tourist towns like Amalfi, Positano, and Ravello.
The island of Capri wasn’t officially part of the Amalfi Coast, but Lucrezia said we wanted that, too.
The Camorra had a few operations along the coastline, but nobody wanted it that bad. All the money was in tourism, which meant you couldn’t do much business there. If the area got a reputation for mafia shit, then you scared off all the tourists, and there went the fuckin’ money.
So basically anything that happened along the Amalfi Coast had to be way under the radar, which meant there wasn’t much profit in it.
Besides, the big money in Naples wasn’t in drugs, or extortion, or the shit you’d normally think of.
It was in manufacturing.
There were hundreds of sweatshops north of the city. They all made stuff for the big designers: Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Valentino – you name it, the sweatshops did it.
But as a side hustle, they also made counterfeits of luxury brands.
We’re talking dresses, purses, shoes… everything.
The exact same workers who made the real shit made a hundred times more fakes.
And those high-quality counterfeits got shipped all around the world – China, Singapore, the US, Russia, you name it.
Sometimes they even put the designers’ tags on ‘em, too. Their fakes were totally indistinguishable from the real deal.
Those sweatshops were what the bigshots in the Camorra were really worried about. The workers were cheap as fuck, and they were some of the very best in the world.
If you put them all together, the sweatshops probably made the Camorra a couple billion euros a year.
Some of the biggest clans made 400 million euros each.
The sweatshops to the north of Naples were the crown jewels…
So when Lucrezia said we wanted everything down south instead, the Camorra bosses couldn’t figure it out.
Why the Amalfi Coast? they asked.
Never you mind, Lucrezia said.
But she offered something else to sweeten the deal.
If they gave us the Amalfi Coast, not only would we stop fucking around with everybody’s territory in Naples, but we would take out the number one enemy of every single Camorra clan:
The Amatos.
The Cosa Nostra family that had been trying to take over Naples for 30 years.
Once they heard that, all the bosses in the Camorra were like, Okay, bitch – you kill the Amatos, you can HAVE the Amalfi Coast.
What they didn’t know was that we would’ve taken out the Amatos for free…
Because Don Amato was the only guy in Naples who knew exactly where to find Dario Rosolini.