Page 31 of Falling for Mr. October

Plenty of money.

So when Nico and I sat down in my office to discuss strategies to save the business that didn’t involve our big brother stepping in to rescue our asses, I floated the idea of starting our own channel. “We know Italian food,” I told him. “People like Italian food. And women like Italian men.”

“They also like abs,” he replied, laughing, and paused to swig the bottle of grappa we were passing back and forth. Our nonno had loved it, and Nonna insisted on keeping it in stock to honor his memory, although almost no one ever bought it because it tasted like jet fuel. “Why don’t you just record your abs every day and set the footage to music?”

I turned toward him, feeling fired up. “What if we combined the two?”

“Your abs are gonna make Italian food?” He smirked. “I can see Nonna now—Madonn’, what a miracle!”

I laughed. “Basically, yes. I figure we can cut off the head⁠—”

“Off with the head,” he cackled.

“—so only the torso is showing,” I continued over Nico’s drunken laughter. “But you’ll have to be the one showing off your abs. You’re the cook in the family. I’m not as bad as Enzo, but I’m not much better than Aria.”

Our little sister has always preferred adventure to the kitchen. Nonna has never been known for her modern beliefs, but she’d been surprisingly okay with our little sister’s disinterest in domesticity—right up until Aria had moved to Greece to work at a vacation resort. It was one thing to be adventurous, and quite another thing to move across the ocean.

Maybe it would have been different if she’d chosen Italy, but we’ll never know.

Nico was already shaking his head. “No way. I don’t like being on camera. Besides, you just got done telling me about the Shitty Cooking guy. You can cook better than that. And I’ll help you. I’ll bet you can get more followers than him by January.”

“How much will you bet me?”

“How ’bout this. I’ll give you a bottle of grappa.”

“I thought you wanted to motivate me?”

It had felt like a joke, but when I got in the next day with a vicious hangover, the first thing Nico said to me was, “I say we start small. Spaghetti al pomodoro. We’ll make it at your house this weekend. I ordered one of those ring lights, but you should probably get a real camera if you’re gonna do this seriously.”

It took a few seconds for his words to compute. “We’re really doing this?”

He laughed. “Enzo’s making some noise about coming home to ‘fix’ the business. If we want to beat him to it, we’d better get started.”

We didn’t beat him to it.

Enzo came home, saved Hidden Italy with a few of his patented brilliant ideas, and fell in love with a great girl, who was about to become my sister-in-law.

I continued to film the videos even after the urgency passed and Nico lost interest. It gave me a sense of purpose—a job that hadn’t been passed down or assigned to me.

And people really liked the videos. They seemed to appreciate the way I talked through the recipes in steps, telling stories about my family. Plus, they liked that the recipes weren’t too complicated—I was still learning and growing as a cook too.

The first video went viral earlier this year, and others followed. Viewers started speculating about the identity of the Shirtless Chef. Someone even made a joke about my secret identity on a major late-night comedy show, which resulted in a massive wave of interest. It wasn’t long before interview requests began to stream into my inbox from major news outlets.

I turned them down, of course, without a second thought. I liked the anonymity. I preferred to maintain a separation between my two selves.

There was me, Giovanni Cafiero, and there was him, the Shirtless Chef. I could become him whenever I wanted to, and the rest of the time I could pretend he didn’t exist.

Now, not so much.

The voices filtering up from downstairs suddenly grow louder, Nonna’s chief among them.

Time to face the music.

I leave the room but make a stop in the hall bathroom to splash water on my face. Before I leave the bathroom, I roll my shoulders a few times as if I’m about to step into a battle.

When I walk onto the landing, Bianca is cresting the top of the steps.

Her dark hair is loose over her shoulders now, and her cheeks are pink. Probably from all the bickering I overheard. She’s wearing a pair of slip-on shoes.