Viper

1

Prigione di Poggioreale, Napoli Camorra mobster Bruno Valsi got a five stretch for frightening the life out of people due to testify against his gang boss father-in-law. It was a walk in the park compared to the life sentences he should have served for several murders and countless sadistic assaults.

Few had cheered when he'd gone down. Few had been that brave. Maybe the fact that three of his arresting officers had been shot in the legs, and the local carabinieri headquarters had been burned to the ground, had something to do with the silence.

The Camorra message had echoed around every street corner. Cross the Family – get brutally punished. No one needed telling twice.

As witnesses withdrew, even the local cops heeded the warnings. Vital evidence vanished from inside the station house. The case against Valsi's father-in-law crumbled. But the young Camorrista wasn't so lucky. One young woman came forward and testified about being threatened. It was enough to get him the five years. One day – soon – he would find her and make her pay.

Three guards marched the Camorrista into the discharge area for him to collect his personal effects and change out of his prison clothes. He gave them the finger as they watched him strip. Above his left breast a tattoo declared who owned his heart. Not a woman. No way. It belonged to the Finelli clan. The guards' eyes were drawn to the distinctive image of a red viper, slithering down a switchblade. From its mouth dripped three blood-red words: Onore. Lealta. Vendetta. Honour. Loyalty. Vengeance. The Finellis were one of the few Camorra clans to wear gang markings. Valsi jabbed a finger at the word Vendetta and his jailers looked away. 'Andate tutti a fanculo – fuck you all,' he called to them as he struggled into his old, grey Valentino suit. Prison life had made the trousers too big in the waist and the jacket too narrow across the chest. That's what happens when you pump iron twice a day, every day for 1,827 days behind bars. You get hard. Jail rock hard. Prison had changed him in other ways too. He was meaner. And better connected than he'd ever been.

One of the bigger and more senior guards walked him the final distance to the front gates. Valsi stood inches from his face. 'Caccati in mano e prenditi a schiaffi.' The insult was well known, shit in your hand and then hit yourself, but until now, no one had ever dared say it to a prison officer.

Jacket over shoulder, he blinked as he walked into the sunlight. To the far east rose the slopes of Vesuvius and Mount Somma. Up close and all around him inner-city slums skulked incongruously in the shadows of the slick and shiny skyscrapers of the city's business district. Hardly anything of value had been built here without kickbacks to the Camorra clans – the Families who ran the System – an invisible web of corruption that supported and strangled the socio-economic life of the Campania region.

Valsi gave the guards the finger for a final time. Prison gates creaked shut behind him. Giant bolts slammed. Heavy keys turned. In the safety of the jail the guards cursed back at him. Across the road, locals cheered and clapped as he walked free. He smiled for them and they cheered even louder. Journalists flashed cameras from a polite distance. Valsi's not oriety and good looks sold papers, the Camorra was akin to celebrity. Within hours his new images would become screensavers on the cellphones of thousands of teenage girls across Naples. He was the ultimate bad boy. The rebel whom girls couldn't help but fantasize about. The man even their mothers glanced twice at.

Almost in unison the doors of five waiting Mercedes swung open and a legion of black-suited Camorristi stepped out. It was more than an act of respect, it was a public display of defiance. Heavily armed, their weapons were brazenly on show. No one dared challenge them.

Valsi soaked up the sight. Cameras clicked again. Another smile for the press and his public. Then he coolly walked towards the one car that stood out – a new chauffeur-driven Mercedes Maybach – the type of limousine that cost more in extras than most Neapolitans earned in a year. Only when he was a metre away did his proud and grateful father-in-law step out and embrace him.

If Don Fredo had known what was on Valsi's mind, he'd have had him shot dead before the prison gates had even shut.