SOME YEARS AGO in the Sicilian capital, Palermo, I stumbled across the Antimafia. Out walking one night I noticed two Carabinieri cars parked outside the Antica Focacceria San Francesco restaurant and assumed there was a VIP inside. I went to investigate and found that the police were not there to escort a visiting celebrity but to protect Vincenzo (Enzo) Conticello who, with his brother Fabio, owns the eatery. Short, chunky Enzo told me his story.

In 2005, following Enzo’s announcement that he planned to establish a second restaurant in Milan, diners’ cars parked outside the establishment began to be scratched, glue was being squirted into the door locks of the restaurant after closing time and it was flooded from a water pipe that had been tampered with. At home, the corpse of the family cat was found on Enzo’s bed.