Before dawn on a June morning in 2010, police burst through the high security gates of a palazzo belonging to a notable mafia family on the edge of a small town in Calabria. As agents swarmed through the building, turning the place over, family members moved frantically to hide any evidence. Maria, the family’s 12-year-old daughter, was given a page ripped from a notebook. It was a list of debts owing. She was told to hide it: “Put it in your knickers, they won’t touch you.” Her brother Cosimo, 14, watched in helpless rage as his father, mother, even his grandmother, were handcuffed and led out to the waiting police cars.
After the arrests, Cosimo was the only male family member outside prison, and it became his responsibility to collect money for the lawyers’ fees. He was a baby boss with his own driver, visiting local businesses who were on the family’s books, and demanding payment with menaces. “He was recognised as the boss,” says journalist Dario Cirrincione. “If he went to a bar in the village, older men would get up to greet him. People waited on him, drove him around, did anything he needed. This sort of treatment turns these kids into little kings.”
