7. Pietro
— ? —
Pietro
The speakerphone crackles with my mother’s voice, patient and measured, and I’m so tired I can barely keep my thoughts in order.
“She’s content, Pietro. You’ve given her everything she could want - the house, the children, the security. Some women aren’t meant for the spotlight. Ariah chose the quiet life.”
“Did she choose it?” The words scrape out of me, raw and uncertain. “Or did we choose it for her?”
Serena shifts in the chair across from me, her tablet forgotten in her lap, watching this conversation unfold with an expression of careful sympathy that I’m too exhausted to examine closely.
She’s been here for hours, going over final details for the launch, and somewhere along the way my mother called and the conversation veered into territory I usually avoid.
My marriage. My wife. The growing silence between us that I keep meaning to address and never do.
“You’re being dramatic,” my mother says through the speaker. “Ariah has a beautiful life. She has staff, resources, two healthy children. What more could she possibly need?”
Me, I think. She needs me to be present. To see her. To remember who she was before I turned her into someone who waits.
“I don’t know if I should have married her,” I say, and the words feel like glass in my throat. “The love isn’t there like it used to be.”
Serena’s eyes widen slightly, and I realize how that sounds - like a confession, like an admission of failure, like I’m saying something I shouldn’t say out loud. But it’s not what she thinks. It’s not what anyone would think, hearing it without context.
“What I mean is…” I rub my eyes, trying to find the right words for the guilt that’s been eating at me for months.
“She used to be so alive. When I met her, she was building an empire with her bare hands. She was loud and stubborn and she fought my lawyers for three hours over intellectual property rights on our first meeting. And now…”
“Now she’s a mother,” my mother supplies smoothly. “She’s matured. Settled down.”
“She’s disappeared.” The truth of it hits me like a physical blow. “She’s faded, and I let it happen. I watched the fire go out of her and I told myself it was normal, that marriages change, that she was choosing to step back. But what if she wasn’t choosing? What if I just - stopped seeing her?”
There’s a sound in the corridor. Something soft, almost inaudible. I glance toward the door, which is slightly ajar, but from my chair I can see only a narrow slice of empty hallway.
Nothing moves beyond it, just the hum of the building’s systems and the late-night quiet of an office that should have closed hours ago.
“Pietro.” My mother’s voice sharpens. “You’re exhausted. You’re not thinking clearly. The launch is Saturday night, and you need to focus on that, not on manufactured guilt about a wife who has everything she could possibly want.”
“She doesn’t have me.” I say it quietly, more to myself than to her. “She hasn’t had me in years.”
“Then give her a nice gift after the launch. Take her on a trip. Buy her jewelry - she likes jewelry, doesn’t she? That should be easy enough.”
I want to explain that it’s not about gifts, that Ariah never wanted my money, that what she wanted was a partner and what I gave her was an absence shaped like a husband. But my mother wouldn’t understand.
My mother has never understood Ariah. Has never tried to, has resented her from the first moment I chose her over the carefully curated options that were supposed to secure our family’s legacy.
“I should go,” I say. “It’s late. Ariah’s probably waiting.”
“Give her my regards,” my mother says, and there’s something in her tone I don’t like, something that sounds almost satisfied. “And get some rest. You need to be sharp tomorrow.”
The line clicks dead, and I sit there for a moment, staring at the phone, feeling the weight of everything I’ve failed to do settling onto my shoulders.
“She’s lucky to have you,” Serena says softly. “A husband who thinks about her this much. Who cares this much.”
“Thinking about it isn’t the same as doing something about it.”
“No. But it’s a start.” She rises, gathering her things. “Go home, Pietro. Be with your wife. The launch will still be here in the morning.”
I nod, but I don’t move. I keep thinking about what my mother said. She’s content, she chose the quiet life and wondering if it’s true or if it’s just the story we’ve all been telling ourselves because it’s easier than looking at what we’ve actually done.
* * *
The house is dark when I get home, except for a light in the kitchen and another in the hallway outside our bedroom. It’s nearly one in the morning, and Ariah should be asleep, but when I push open the bedroom door I find her sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed, staring at nothing.
“You’re awake,” I say, surprised.
She doesn’t look at me. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Are you feeling worse? The cold…”
“I’m fine.”
The word lands flat and hard, nothing like the way she usually says it. Usually there’s a slight roll of her eyes, a hint of exasperation, a silent acknowledgment that we both know she’s lying. This time there’s nothing. Just the word, empty and final.
I cross the room and sit beside her on the bed, close enough to feel the tension radiating off her body. “Ariah. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” She turns to look at me finally, and her eyes are red-rimmed, her face pale, and there’s something in her expression I’ve never seen before - something closed off and distant, like she’s looking at me from the other side of a wall.
“Talk to me,” I say. “Please. Whatever it is…”
“It’s nothing.” She stands abruptly, putting distance between us. “I’m tired. We should sleep. You have the launch tomorrow.”
“The launch can wait. You’re more important than the launch.”
She laughs at that - a short, bitter sound that makes something cold settle in my stomach. “Am I?”
“Of course you are. Ariah…”
“Don’t.” She holds up a hand, stopping me mid-sentence. “Just… don’t. I can’t do this right now.”
I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what’s changed since I left this morning, what happened while I was at the office drowning in guilt about everything I’ve failed to give her. But something has shifted, some fundamental thing has broken, and I don’t know how to fix it.
I reach for her, meaning to pull her close, to hold her until whatever this is passes. She lets me cup her face in my hands, lets me lean in to kiss her the way I’ve kissed her a thousand times.
She turns her face away.
My lips brush her cheek instead of her mouth, and the rejection lands like a punch to the gut. Ariah has never, in six years of marriage, through fights and silences and all the complicated terrain of two people learning to share a life, she has never turned away from my kiss.
“You’re tired,” I hear myself say, grasping for explanations that make sense. “You’re sick. You need rest.”
“Yes.” Her voice is colorless. “That’s what I need. Rest.”
“I’ll sleep in the guest room. Give you space.”
“Fine.”
Fine. Not no, stay with me. Not don’t be ridiculous, this is our bed. Just fine, like my presence or absence makes no difference either way.
“I’ll make it up to you,” I promise, even though I don’t know what I’m making up for. “After the launch. I’ll be better. I’ll be more present. I’ll…”
“Okay, Pietro.” She’s already climbing into bed, pulling the covers up, turning her back to me. “After the launch.”
I stand there for a long moment, watching the rigid line of her shoulders, the careful stillness of her body, and I know something is terribly wrong. I know I should push harder, should demand answers, should refuse to leave until she tells me what’s happened.
But I’m tired.
I’m so goddamn tired, and the launch is tomorrow, and my mother’s voice is still in my head saying she’s content, she chose the quiet life, and it’s easier to believe that than to dig into whatever this is.
“I love you,” I say to her back.
She doesn’t answer.
I close the door quietly behind me and walk down the hall to the guest room, and I tell myself this is temporary. A rough patch. The stress of launch season, compounded by her cold, manifesting as distance.
After the launch, I’ll fix it. I’ll be the husband she deserves. I’ll find my way back to the woman I married, the one I fell in love with, the one I’ve been failing for years without ever realizing it.
A few more days.
That’s all I need.
A few more days, and then everything will be different.
I fall asleep resolving to make it right, telling myself that tomorrow I’ll find the words to bridge this distance, that after the launch I’ll finally be the husband she deserves.