Chapter 2
ENZO
I’d promised myself I’d never have anything to do with Hidden Italy.
It was my grandfather’s business and then my dad’s (in name), but anyone who knows my family knows the truth—Nonna Francesca has always run the show.
She still does, at eighty-three, long after Dad retired to Charleston, but as she always says, eighty-three is different for a Sicilian woman.
It’s only made me tougher, caro, like a piece of dry salume.
“I don’t want to be here,” I complain over the phone to my sister, Aria, as I straighten my tie in Aria’s mirror. I’m using the landline because Hideaway Harbor is so remote, so inconvenient, that most cell phone conversations tend to be cut short by bad service.
I’m staying in Aria’s old apartment because when she left town she still had five months on her lease.
Her landlord was a real dick about it, so I offered to take over the lease and stay here during my visits to Hideaway Harbor.
At the time, I didn’t expect to end up living here, but no one with even half an ego ever expects their world to implode.
But here I am in Hideaway Harbor, where it’s five and has been dark for almost an hour, and Aria’s halfway across the world, up past midnight, because that’s what twenty-five-year-olds do when they’re living the good life.
I’ve been here a week, and it already feels like too long.
“I know you don’t want to be there,” Aria says softly.
My sister is the only one in the family I’d ever admit that to.
My brothers, Nico and Giovanni, would never leave this town.
It’s in their blood. They constantly bitch about Dad’s choice to spend most of his retirement in a fishing boat off the coast of South Carolina, not that Dad had bothered much with the deli or any family matters even when he was here.
All of the Cafiero kids worked at Hidden Italy as teenagers, either the catering business or the store, and my brothers still do.
Nico makes the food and Giovanni manages the stocking and the kids and seasonal employees who man the register.
Nonna oversees the entire operation and keeps the books.
Which is what’s caused this colossal fucking problem.
When I told my brothers they shouldn’t have been allowing an eighty-three-year-old woman to be in charge of the math, they’d acted shocked.
She’s always done the books, Nico had said.
Yes, but she used to be able to see.
She’s got glasses.
And doesn’t wear them, whether out of vanity or pure stubbornness I couldn’t say. It doesn’t help that she’s still using a real paper book to do the accounting. One that looks as old as she is, although I know better than to say so.
The result? Hidden Italy is in the hole, and someone has to pull it out.
Hello, I’m Enzo Cafiero, and I’m “someone.”
It was my idea to petition for the first day of the Advent calendar unveiling to be held at Hidden Italy.
Someone had to. Nonna would never have appealed to the mayor for a favor, no matter how badly the family business might need it.
The woman can hold grudges for decades, and she’d held one against Mayor Locke for ages, having famously declared the man was dead to her after he said Nico had made him a dry sandwich.
It was dry. Nico had been nursing the hangover from hell, and he’d forgotten to use the oil and vinegar. Nonna knows this. But never let the truth get in the way of making a point when a Cafiero is involved.
I was not about to let Nonna’s pettiness get in the way of fixing things.
So I took the mayor out for lunch at Hideaway Café well over a month ago, back when I still had my own life in New York City, and insisted that he wouldn’t regret it if he advocated for scheduling Hidden Italy for the advent calendar’s first day this year.
“But you never decorate for the holiday,” he objected. There was mayo streaked across his face, but I wasn’t about to tell him and risk the possibility of inflaming old grudges about condiments.
“We will this year,” I promised. “And my best friend is willing to be the guest of honor. You saw Will’s book hit the bestseller list, right?”
I was stretching, and I knew it. Sure, my high school buddy Will was a bestselling author now, but he’d written a book about finance that was so boring I’d only managed to skim it. He probably wouldn’t appreciate me offering his services, but desperate times…
“No. No need for Will to make the trip on a weekday. I want your grandmother to be the one who unveils the number,” Mayor Locke insisted stubbornly, pushing his plate away. And I knew this was his revenge for the dry sandwich.
He wanted to be the man who made Francesca Cafiero swallow her pride and act grateful to the man who’d dared question her family.
I made him that impossible promise, because I was supposed to be the man who made miracles happen. The man who’d taken a company that had been in the red and given them their best year ever.
If I could do it for a huge, multinational corporation, I could surely do it for an old mom-and-pop shop like Hidden Italy. Even if I privately thought we’d be better off if we just gave it up.
But that was probably the one thing that would put Nonna in her grave, and no one wanted to be the Cafiero responsible for that.
“Of course you don’t want to be there, dipshit,” Aria says with her usual grace. “But you just lost your job, and the family needs help, so you got to swoop in like Superman.”
“I didn’t lose it,” I say, scowling at my reflection. “I decided to step away. It was getting stale.”
“And there’s definitely nothing else to that story,” she says wryly. “But you’d obviously like to change the subject, so I’ll play along. Nico showed me the decorations at the shop. They’re classy. You do it yourself?”
“What do you take me for?”
“A person capable of stringing lights?”
I laugh, rearranging my collar so it’s perfectly centered. “I paid a couple of high school kids. Look at me supporting the locals. But I did get Nico to make panettone.”
Everyone in the family knows panettone is Nico’s nemesis. It all tastes the same to me, which is why I was never the chef in the family, but he’s never happy with his efforts.
“Already making waves. Enzo to the rescue.”
“Giovanni’s into it too. He made us all wear suits.”
“You sure it was Giovanni and not you?”
“I know, I’m proud of him too. We look like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. We’re going to sing a Christmas carol while Nonna tears off the number.”
She snorts. “Does Nico have a suit?”
“He does now,” I say, smiling at the memory of suit shopping with my brother, who only owned a single button-up shirt.
“I wish I were there to see that,” she says with a sigh. “What else are you guys planning?”
“Samples from the deli and the good stuff we import.” I roll my eyes at my reflection. “Lots of samples of that damn Italian sub, because Nonna’s determined to prove, once and for all, that it’s not dry.”
“She does enjoy making a point,” my sister muses. “But she’s not wrong to want to prove we can make a good Italian sub. What kind of Italian deli can’t make an Italian sub? It’s a bad look. How about entertainment?”
“Didn’t I say we’d be singing?”
“Yeah, but you know how it goes. Everyone likes to pull out all the stops for these things.”
“We make and sell food,” I point out. “Tonight we’re giving it away. I offered to have Will come up, but the mayor didn’t seem interested. Though I have to be honest: when Will starts talking about finance law, my eyes cross, and I like finance law.”
“Oh God,” Aria says in disgust. “Will was your big idea? I’m with the mayor on that one. Couldn’t you do a Secret Santa thing or hire someone to dance to the Nutcracker or something?”
“Those would have been useful suggestions a few days ago.”
She laughs. “Fine. Don’t worry. It’s going to be awesome. Lots of single ladies who come in to ogle you and eat Nico’s food. Take photos. That goes for the whole holiday season. Especially of the lobster trap tree. That’s my favorite.”
It’s a Hideaway Harbor tradition—an enormous tree made entirely of lobster traps with a glowing lobster at the top.
Every year they make a big show of having one of the antique Hawthorne Fisheries boats ferry a costumed Larry the Lobstah to light the hideous tree, with plenty of pomp and circumstance and as little production value as an elementary school play.
But you’ve got to keep the tourists, and my little sister, happy.
“Ooh, and definitely get photos of Amanda Willis if you can,” she says, referring to the movie star who oversaw the tree-lighting in town square last weekend.
“I’m sure that’s exactly why she came here. Because she wants us hiding behind telephone poles to snap photos of her.”
“She probably wouldn’t mind. She seems really nice. I’ve heard she’s going to be around for a while.”
“You’re not coming home for Christmas?” I ask, turning from the mirror. The tie is straight enough.
“No,” she says with a snort. “Lars just got engaged, and I don’t need to hear Nonna flipping out every five minutes about my biological clock and her need for great-grandchildren. As if I don’t have three older brothers who are perfectly capable of impregnating women.”
“Should I go around offering that tonight?” I ask. “Would you like a sample of the lobster ravioli, or maybe some semen? It would definitely be a new spin on holiday entertaining.”
She snort-laughs, and I feel a pang of missing her.
The last time I saw her, she’d been crying inconsolably over that blond asshole Lars. What she’d seen in a guy who spent his whole life chasing after birds, I’ll never know. What I do know is that he wasn’t good enough for my sister. Then again, no man could be.
I’d told her so once before, and she’d asked, What about a girlfriend? Would you do the whole pompous, chest-beating thing if I had a girlfriend?