If a man’s work is his kingdom, then Dante Paoletti is in exile.

Though he’d tell you he’s been usurped, locked out of the Thornhill restaurant he founded by the investment group that now owns it. He claims these “corporate people” planned to throw him out “like rats in the night” in a sort of pizzeria coup d’état.

So naturally, for Paoletti and his family, this means war.

“There’s no damn way they’re going to take 40 years of my family’s sweat, work, loss of freedom and quality of life,” said Paoletti, 61, who started Dante’s Pizza Vino Pasta in 1976 and was turfed as manager last week.

“I’m not laying down for this. I’m going to fight them with everything I have.”

Now the long-time pizza-maker is vowing to take his recipes and customer base and start a new restaurant “as close as possible” to his former location, which still serves gourmet pies from its corner unit in a brick strip mall off Dufferin St., north of Highway 407.

The pizza brouhaha bubbled over last Monday night, but the table was laid eight years ago, when an investment firm called CDDC Hospitality Group bought the business after it dissolved into bankruptcy.

Don Di Fronzo, CDDC director of operations, would not disclose why Paoletti’s contract was cut off, and characterized the move as a welcome change in management that’s routine in the restaurant industry. He denied there was any secret plan to oust Paoletti.

“This is an open conversation with him over four weeks. There’s no corporate takeover,” he said.

“Some employees are sad to see them go, and some employees are happy to see a change …This is just one of those things in life.”

But termination isn’t something Paoletti will easily accept. Dante’s, he says, is his life’s work, the family business he ran for decades with his brothers, Marcello, Diego, Tony and Rico.

Over the years, the Paoletti family’s restaurant garnered a reputation in the Thornhill area as a gourmet pizzeria that also serves pasta and Italian sandwiches that come highly recommended.

As Paoletti puts it, “there’s children’s children’s children that are coming to our place.”

The interior has the air of a well-trimmed steak house. The marble top front desk is backed by a sleek red-tile wall, while a discretely lit dining area was closed off for renovations on Friday.

Even so, customers streamed in and out of Dante’s with pizza boxes in their arms, while cars making deliveries periodically left from reserved spots in the parking lot.

Walking out with her order, Susan Peddle said she’s been frequenting Dante’s for decades. “I’ve been coming since I was a teenager,” she said, describing how the restaurant is a staple in the area.

“The taste, it’s just a phenomenal taste,” she said.

But good eats didn’t always translate to good business. The original Dante’s at Yonge St. and Bay Thorn Dr. went belly up in 2006, with liabilities exceeding $2.2 million, according to government bankruptcy records. Paoletti blamed the floundering on renovation costs that soared out of control.

With the business in receivership, CDDC bought it up and built the restaurant’s new Dufferin St. location. One of the group’s investors wanted to bring Paoletti back into the mix, so in 2009 he signed a contract to return as manager and cook at the new restaurant.

“We’ve always owned (this location). Everything is registered to us in its entirety,” Di Fronzo said. “They definitively lost their business.”

Last Wednesday, two days after Paoletti’s management contract was cut off, a message was posted on Dante’s Facebook page, claiming there had been a “corporate takeover,” and that the “current individuals occupying” the pizzeria “do not reflect the views of Dante and his family.”

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The message names a list of people and accuses them of “slandering” the Paoletti family.

The list of names includes CDDC executives, such as Di Fronzo. But, according to Di Fronzo, it also names less influential actors, such as the restaurant’s dishwasher and “salad boy,” who didn’t heed a call from Paoletti to walk off the job to protest the management change.

When asked what “slander” the post refers to, Paoletti claimed CDDC told restaurant staff that he and his family were “thieves” who could not properly run the business.

Di Fronzo told the Star he doesn’t know what the alleged slander refers to.