I told the judge: “Dottore, I’m on the first floor. If they want to retaliate again, they know where to find me … All the lives they’ve taken from me – they took my brother, they took my husband. I don’t think there’s anything else.
Lucia has had a harsh life. A petite and elegant 80-year-old woman with piercing brown eyes that are starting to fail and a melancholic smile, she lives on her own in a middle-class neighbourhood of Naples near the Maradona stadium. Lucia may look like your typical well-kept Neapolitan grandmother, but there is much more to her than meets the eye.
She was born during the second world war into what would become one of Naples’ more powerful criminal families, the only girl between two boys. Her father, like many men in the immediate post-war period, got involved in any business opportunity going to make money and survive. She denies that he was ever a mafioso, saying he was only ever looking out for others – but this is how he is described in most newspaper articles, police and judicial reports.
