6. Pietro
— ? —
Pietro
The rings sit on the kitchen counter where she left them, and I can’t stop looking at them.
I’ve been staring at them since I walked in. The engagement diamond catches the overhead light, two carats, princess cut, chosen from a jeweler in Milan because my mother said elegant women preferred simple things. I never asked Ysabelle what she preferred.
The Post-it note is small, yellow, written in her precise handwriting.
I was there. You forgot.
I read it again, and again, and the words rearrange themselves each time, and still I can’t make them say anything I understand.
My phone shows a column of unanswered calls to her number. Voicemail, every one. The last text I sent, Please just let me know you’re safe, has been delivered but not read.
The house feels cavernous. I walk through rooms that suddenly feel staged, photographs of us smiling on surfaces I’ve never really noticed. There’s Ysabelle at the company anniversary two years ago. There’s our wedding portrait. And then there’s nothing else.
I stop. Look again.
The photograph of Ysabelle at last year’s Foundation launch is gone. The frame that held our engagement photo from the Hamptons shows only a generic print of the Manhattan skyline.
I’m imagining things. I’m tired, and I’m frightened, and I’m seeing patterns in ordinary chaos.
I pour myself a whiskey I don’t drink and wait for dawn.
***
The call comes at seven-fifteen.
“Pietro.” Beatrice Sposito’s voice cuts through my fog of sleeplessness. “I’ve been trying to reach my daughter.”
“She’s - I don’t know where she is.”
Silence. When Beatrice speaks again, her tone has shifted from concern to accusation.
“You forgot her birthday.”
The words don’t land right away. “What?”
“Two months ago. August twenty-third. She turned thirty-three, and you were away for work, and you didn’t call. She waited by the phone until midnight.”
“I sent-” I stop. Did I send flowers? A gift? I remember the conference, the late dinners, the negotiations that stretched past midnight. I don’t remember her birthday.
“You sent nothing,” Beatrice says. “Your assistant sent a gift basket three days later with a card that spelled her name wrong.”
I close my eyes.
“She didn’t say anything.”
“Of course she didn’t. That’s what you count on, isn’t it?
That she won’t say anything. That she’ll keep smiling and planning your galas and writing your speeches while you-” Beatrice cuts herself off.
“Find my daughter, Pietro. And when you do, try to remember that she’s a person, not an accessory. ”
The line goes dead.
I call Remedios at eight.
“She’s here,” Remedios says without preamble. “She doesn’t want to see you.”
“Zia, please. I just need to talk to her-”
“No.” The word is flat, final. “But I need to talk to you. Come to the house at noon. Alone.”
She hangs up before I can respond.
***
The drive to Westchester takes forty-five minutes in mid-morning traffic. I use the time to call the office, to cancel my afternoon meetings, to pretend that the world is still functioning the way it did two days ago.
Giulietta texts twice. The meeting’s been moved to three. Then: Everything okay? You seemed distracted last night.
I don’t answer.
Remedios meets me at the door of her modest house, the one she’s refused to let me upgrade despite a decade of offers. She leads me to the garden, where a small table holds coffee and cornetti that neither of us touches.
“Sit,” she says.
I sit.
She places a folder on the table between us. Inside are photographs, press clippings, magazine spreads, promotional materials. All from the past eight months, all featuring Marino Foods.
“Look carefully,” Remedios says. “Tell me what you see.”
I flip through them. A feature in Town & Country. A spread in Bloomberg. The rebrand announcement in the Times.
“I see press coverage. The rebrand has been successful-”
“Look at who’s in the photographs.”
I look again. There’s me, standing in front of the factory. Me, shaking hands with people whose names I never learned. Me, at the anniversary gala.
Giulietta, in more of them than I want to count, cutting a ribbon, at a podium, standing beside me.
And Ysabelle, I keep flipping. The anniversary coverage, where she gave the opening remarks. The Foundation launch. The awards ceremony where she accepted the corporate responsibility recognition.
She’s not in any of them.
“I don’t understand,” I say slowly. “She was at all of these events.”
Remedios pulls out another photograph, this one unedited. It shows the anniversary stage, Ysabelle at the podium, me standing beside her, our hands linked.
“This is the original.”
She lays it beside the press clipping. In the published version, Ysabelle has been removed. The background has been adjusted, seamlessly, so that I appear to be standing alone.
“Every photograph,” Remedios says quietly. “For eight months. Every press release, every media packet, every company profile. Your wife has been erased.”
I stare at the images, my mind refusing to assemble them into meaning.
“Giulietta’s team coordinates all press materials,” I say. “But she wouldn’t-”
“Wouldn’t she?” Remedios slides a printed email across the table. “This was forwarded to me by a journalist friend who found it strange. An instruction from Giulietta’s people to a photo editor: ‘Per the family’s wishes, Mrs. Marino shouldn’t appear in any of the photographs going out.’”
“That’s not - I never gave that order-”
“I know.” Remedios’s gaze is steady, unforgiving. “But your Chief Strategy Officer did. In your name. To every media outlet that covers your company.”
I’m standing. I don’t remember standing.
“This is - she couldn’t-”
“She did.” Remedios folds her hands. “And you let her. Not intentionally, perhaps. But you were so busy building the empire that you forgot to notice who was being buried under its foundations.”
The photographs blur in front of me. I see them now, the pattern of absence, the careful architecture of erasure.
Giulietta in every shot where Ysabelle should have been.
Giulietta’s name in credits where my wife’s contributions went uncredited.
Giulietta’s face beside mine in publications that reach every corner of the world.
A replacement. Slower than a mistress, and worse.
“Where is Ysabelle?”
“Resting. She won’t see you.” Remedios pauses, and when she speaks again, her voice is gentler. “There are things about her you still don’t know, Pietro. Things she needs to tell you herself, when she’s ready. But she can’t tell you anything if you haven’t first made space for her to exist.”
“I’ll fix this.”
“Will you?” There’s no heat in it, only a tiredness that scares me more than anger would.
“I’ll fire Giulietta. Today. I’ll-”
“Public.” Remedios’s interruption is sharp. “If you do this in private, it disappears. She’ll spin it, the way she’s spun everything else. If you want your wife back, the world needs to see you choose her.”
She looks down at the photographs, and for a moment the steel goes out of her.
“Consuelo raised you to keep promises,” she says.
“I told her, in that hospital room, that some promises shouldn’t be asked for.
She stopped speaking to me for it, and she died without starting again.
” Her eyes come back up to mine. “I’ve had ten years to wonder whether I should have argued harder. Don’t make me wonder any longer.”
***
The meeting is at three. I arrive at two forty-five, and the room is already full, everyone who runs this place alongside us, and Giulietta at the head of the table, her laptop open, her smile welcoming.
“Pietro.” She rises to greet me. “I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”
“Clear the room.”
Her smile falters. “I’m sorry?”
“Everyone out. Now.”
The others exchange glances. One by one, they gather their things and file toward the door. I stand by the window until only Giulietta remains.
“Pietro, whatever’s wrong, I’m sure we can-”
“I’ve seen the photographs.”
She stops.
“The press materials. The erased images. The order sent in my name to wipe my wife out of every photograph your people touched.”
Giulietta’s expression shifts, just slightly, just for a moment, before settling back into practiced concern. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t.” I pull out my phone and dial my assistant. “Get me the press pool. Every journalist covering the company. I want them in the lobby in fifteen minutes.”
“Pietro-”
“You’re fired, Giulietta. Effective immediately.”
Her mask drops. Underneath is cold fury.
“You can’t do this. I built this rebrand. I delivered results you couldn’t have imagined-”
“You erased my wife. You stole her work and put your name on it. You manufactured a crisis at her Foundation gala to keep me away from her. And you did it all so slowly, so carefully, that I didn’t notice until she walked out.”
“She was in the way.” Giulietta’s voice is flat now, stripped of charm. “You needed a partner who could match your ambition. She was holding you back.”
“She built the company.” I open the conference room door. Two security guards stand in the hallway. I called them on the drive over. “Escort Ms. Greyson from the building. Her access is revoked, effective immediately.”
“Pietro, please-”
“Your things will be sent to you. Your severance will be handled by legal. If any further materials are distributed with my wife’s image removed, I’ll pursue charges.”
Giulietta stares at me for a long moment. Then she picks up her laptop, straightens her jacket, and walks toward the door.
“She won’t take you back,” she says as she passes. “You know that.”
I don’t answer. The security guards flank her, and I watch through the glass walls as she’s escorted across the office floor, past the employees who’ve stopped working to stare, past the photographers I’ve summoned who capture every moment.
Public. Just like Remedios said.
***
The flowers start that evening and don’t stop. White roses, the same bouquet every morning, with the same handwritten card tucked into the stems: I’m sorry. I’m here when you’re ready. P
She doesn’t respond.
The days run together, and somewhere inside them the story breaks: Marino Foods Executive Terminated Amid Scandal, and Giulietta’s face is on every business page.
She’s given interviews claiming wrongful termination.
I’ve given one statement: Ms. Greyson was released for conduct unbecoming a company officer.
Marino Foods is committed to integrity in all our partnerships.
Remedios calls once.
“She’s reading your cards,” she says. “Don’t stop.”
So I don’t.
***
On the ninth day, I’m sitting in my office at midnight, drafting an apology I’ll never be able to deliver properly, when Remedios’s words come back to me.
There are things about her you still don’t know.
What don’t I know?
I pull up the photographs again, the real ones, unedited. Ysabelle at every event, her smile bright, her posture perfect. Then the ones from the Foundation gala, the ones the paper ran the morning after she walked out. She’s at the microphone, and her free hand is resting on her stomach.
Every shot. Same pose. Same subtle placement.
I stand up so fast my chair hits the window.
I call Remedios. It’s nearly one in the morning.
“I need to see her,” I say when she answers. “Please. I need to find her.”
“Why now?”
“Because I think-” I stop. I don’t know what I think, only that my wife is gone, and there’s a shape in these photographs I’ve refused to see, and if I don’t find her soon, I’ll lose more than I can bear.
“Please,” I say again.
Remedios is quiet for a long time.
“Tomorrow,” she says finally. “Come to the house at ten. I’ll tell you where to find her.”
I hang up. My hands are shaking the way they shook when I found the rings, and they’ll shake again tomorrow when I face my wife and all the things I’ve failed to notice.
I’ll find her, and this time I’ll listen.
Whatever it takes.