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 theCamorragot 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 biggestCamorraclans 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 theCamorrawas 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.
TheCamorrahad a fewoperations 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 areputation 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 bewayunder 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.
Theexact same workerswho 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 theCamorrawere really worried about. The workers were cheap as fuck,andthey were some of the very best in the world.
If you put them all together, the sweatshops probably made theCamorraa couple billion euros a year.
Some of the biggest clans made 400 million euroseach.
The sweatshops to the north of Naples were the crown jewels…
So when Lucrezia said we wanted everything down south instead, theCamorrabosses couldn’t figure it out.
Why the Amalfi Coast?they asked.
Never you mind,Lucrezia said.
