Here's something you might want to think about for your book. When I first watched the movie The Godfather I researched the history on how the mafia was started. What I understood was that it basically started after the black plague swept through Italy. The people there had always had to give up what food they grew to someone higher than them plus what they grew was limited because of the population. After the plague there was a huge loss of life, and so people could grow more food for themselves and different foods, like olives. I understood that the poor people in the country could have nothing because of their own government. Then the mafia was started as a protection for those poor people and because Sicily had previously been invaded by other countries so much. I could be wrong about some of the stuff I say so you'd have to research it yourself or ask someone who knows for sure. I seen it as being similiar to a government that ruled its own boundaries against a government that oppressed its own people. I watched some stuff about this on the history channel and read online about it. Now after that I don't know much and couldn't argue the point, but it seems to me that at one point in time the mafia was a good thing. I think putting in a little information on how the mafia started would help people understand your story quite a bit and would also be important for people who have no clue how the whole thing started to begin with.