VINCENZO FREGA, 33 YEARS OLD

Gillettenarrative welcomes you. You don’t yet know how lucky you are — you’re about to receive something, and no one asked you for anything in return. You’re stepping inside my world now, close enough to touch the blade. But I don’t sell blades. That one belongs to my mother alone. When this ends, you won’t be the same. You’ll already be looking for the next one. For now, start here. Take your moment.

Elisabetta, my last wife—no, actually, my only wife as of today, October 9, 2026—came into my room sobbing and managed to say between sobs:

“I got emotional.”

Then she started crying.

I worried that something bad had happened. Perhaps she had discovered one of my unfinished projects. Or someone had rung the doorbell, said their surname was Frega, and asked to see their father.

Fortunately, it was neither.

Ha ha ha.

She had received a phone call from our son Vincenzo, who, at the tender age of thirty-three, had been appointed director of one of the largest hypermarkets of a famous German retail chain in Northern Italy.

And that said a great deal about who he was.

His name gave the game away.

Just like his grandfather, the first Italian GILLETTE MAN.

Someone you would not expect to exist.

I was curious to know how he had pulled it off, so I went digging through the details his mother could provide.

She told me that, entirely on his own initiative, he had developed a series of projects and presented their covers to the Italian commercial management team, complete with photographs of the GONDOLA LAYOUT.

He had left everyone in the room—and any competition—standing.

Nobody had ever done it before.

His destiny was beginning to unfold.

He was the first in Europe.

It occurred to me that I, too, at the age of twenty-eight, had developed a similar project at GILLETTE ITALIA. I had presented the Italian Board with photographs of the gondolas in 350 supermarkets across Calabria, produced together with my all-female merchandising team.

The photographs showed the traditional display LAYOUT alongside a second product placement, negotiated directly with the owner of each store.

I would tell the owners that their supermarket would be seen all over the world, starting in Milan and ending up in Boston.

No Calabrian man could ever say no to a woman.

And even today, at sixty-one, I can only confirm it.

I was never certain those photographs would actually be seen all over the world.

But I had done my job.

Selling what nobody could ever buy:

a hope.

But never a promise.

I was convinced that Grandfather Vincenzo, wherever he was, was watching me and his grandson, and would surely have said:

“Well, boys. Job done.”

The faintest smile.

And then:

“Now, down to business. Save the noir for the weekend—but always after family.”