The Good Mothers: The Story of the Three Women Who Took on the World's Most Powerful Mafia

You are born in it or marry in. Loyalty is absolute – bloodshed revered. You go to prison, your grave, or kill your relatives before betraying The Family. The 'Ndrangheta is the most powerful, stealthy organised crime network in Italy and worldwide, upheld by the omertà (silence) code. This is the story of the women who broke the silence. We live in their buildings, work in their companies, shop in their stores, eat in their restaurants, invest in their shares and elect politicians they fund. But few of us have ever heard of the 'Ndrangheta. Founded more than 150 years ago as a kidnapping racket by shepherding families and farmers in the toe of southern Italy, the Calabrian mafia is one of the richest and most ruthless organized crime syndicates in the world.The 'Ndrangheta is a secret even to many Italians. Yet the industrial-scale money laundering required to clean hundreds of billions of euros ensures they are in all our lives. It runs 70% of the cocaine and heroin in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, plunders the Italian state and the EU and brokers illegal arms deals around the world. With its other interests in prostitution, people smuggling and illegal garbage disposal, it is believed to earn the equivalent of 3.5% of Italian GDP in any year – about €53bn, more than the proceeds of McDonalds and Deutsche Bank combined.The 'Ndrangheta's power rests on a code of silence, enforced through violence. Underpinning this iron rule is murderous misogyny. Girls are married off in arranged clan alliances, sometimes as young as 13. Beatings are routine and a woman who is ‘unfaithful' – even to a dead husband – can expect her sons, brothers or father to kill her then dissolve her body in acid to erase the ‘family shame'.In 2009, an opportunity came to penetrate this tight clan structure. When abused mafia wife Lea Garofalo is murdered for turning in state evidence against her mafia boss husband, state prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti realises the 'Ndrangheta's bigotry may be its great flaw. To bring down a criminal empire, she must persuade two more women to testify against the clan. The stakes could not be higher. Alessandra is fighting to save a nation. The mafiosi are fighting for their existence. The women are fighting for their lives. Not all will survive.