Page 158 of Marcello

“Adelina Amato, Don Amato’s wife.”

The next picture was of a tall guy with a full head of dark hair and a painter’s brush mustache. He was sitting in a restaurant booth next to a woman at least ten years younger than him.

“Luciano Amato, Don Amato’s son.”

Next was an attractive brunette in her 30s walking with three kids in tow – a teenage boy and two girls younger than ten.

“Luciano’s wife Francesca and their three children.”

Lucrezia set aside the empty manilla folder. “Don Amato also has a daughter, Laura Amato, who’s younger than Luciano. We haven’t been able to get any pictures of her. Either she’s not living in Naples, or she always stays in the house. She might be an invalid.

“These are your targets, people,” Lucrezia said as she pointed at the pictures. “We need Francesca and the children so we can strong-arm Luciano… we need Luciano to get us into Don Amato’s compound… and we need Don Amato so we can interrogate him.”

Cesare finally spoke up, his eyes burning with rage. “NOBODY kills Amato, because he’s the only one who knows for sure where Dario Rosolini is. GOT IT?”

All the other lieutenants and I murmured our agreement.

Lucrezia swept her hand a few inches above the photographs. “Keep them all alive until Cesare or I say otherwise. Anyone else is expendable.”

That’s when I spoke up.

“We’re not going to kill the women and kids, right?”

Everybody turned to look at me.

Lucrezia seemed irritated…

Cesare was angry…

And the other guys looked stunned.

“I already told Ciccio just to tie them up,” Lucrezia snapped. “Or weren’t you listening?”

Rather than getting nervous, my heartbeat slowed down.

This is the part of the movie where the hero tries to save innocent people’s lives.

“I’m talking about when all of this is over and we’ve got the information we need. After Don Amato and Luciano are dead, we’re not going to kill the women and kids – right?”

“We can’t have a bunch of witnesses hanging around,” Lucrezia sneered.

“These people are Cosa Nostra,” I pointed out. “They’re not going to go to the cops.”

“But they’ll definitely go to their friends in the Cosa Nostra – ”

“Who are going to realize pretty quickly that somebody in the Camorra did this. And once we go after Dario Rosolini, it won’t be too difficult for them to figure out who.”

“What are you suggesting we do, then?” Lucrezia asked in a withering tone of voice.

I looked at Cesare. “You only care about killing Dario Rosolini, right?”

“I’ll kill every last one of them!” he barked.

“But you only really care about Rosolini – right?”

“…yeah… I guess,” he admitted grudgingly.

Lucrezia took on an imperious tone. “You’re forgetting that the deal I struck with the rest of the Camorra is that we wipe out the Cosa Nostra in Naples. All of them.”