Page 178 of Marcello

The one rule was that I couldn’t go outside, ever. Not on the ground floor, and not on the upper battlements of the castle – nowhere a Camorra sniper could get us.

The only exception to the Outdoor Rule was the courtyard inside the walls of the castle, but I didn’t like hiding there. It was too easy for my nannies to see past the plants and catch me. The only solid thing to hide behind was the big stone well, so I avoided the courtyard and stuck to the house.

As a result, I knew every bedroom, every parlor, every sitting room.

I loved it at first, but I eventually got bored. I always beat the nannies at hide-and-seek. They were too big for the tiny hiding spaces I could fit into, and they rarely found me.

Looking back, they probably let me hide and then went and doomscrolled on their cell phones for half an hour. When I finally lost patience and came out to ask why they hadn’t found me, they always answered, You’re just too good at hiding.

I eventually stopped playing hide-and-seek with the nannies and started looking for something else to do.

That’s when I started following the servants around. They had to put up with me because they couldn’t exactly say ‘no’ to a mafia don’s kid.

Again, I didn’t know that – I only knew they were afraid of Papa for some reason. I just figured it was because he was pretty gruff with most people except me and Mama.

One day, an older servant named Maria asked, “Want to see something neat?”

“Yeah!”

That’s when she popped open a hidden door in the back hall. She pushed a section of the wood paneling on the wall, and click!

“WOW!” I shouted.

“These were used by servants in the old days,” she explained as she shined her cell phone flashlight into the dark tunnel.

I just stared, my mouth gaping wide open.

From that point onward, I had only one goal:

Explore that passageway.

Maria saw my expression and apparently had second thoughts about what she’d done.

“Promise me you won’t go in there alone,” she said sternly as she shut the door.

“I promise,” I lied.

Once Maria was off-duty, I found a flashlight and snuck back to the hall. I’d seen where she’d pressed on the wood, but I had to stand on a chair to reach it.

The door swung open, and I set off like Indiana Jones into a forgotten temple.

Turned out it wasn’t much of a temple – just a long tunnel that circled around the second story.

But during my second lap, I spied something very odd at one of the tunnel’s corners: a gap in the stone wall near the ceiling.

I immediately had to know what was on the other side.

I took off my shoes and socks, put my toes into the gaps between the stones in the wall, and climbed my way up like a monkey. Then I crawled through the space, which was a four-foot-long ledge, and more than big enough to fit my tiny body.

When I got to the end of the ledge, I shone my light into the new passageway and immediately saw –

Nothing.

Just more tunnel.

Didn’t matter – it still held the promise of adventure.

I dangled by my hands off the ledge and jumped down.