10. Pietro
— ? —
Pietro
The house is dark when I get home.
This is the first thing I notice - the absence of light, the particular stillness of a space that should be alive with children and warmth and the small sounds of a family settling into evening.
Rosa usually leaves a lamp on in the foyer, but tonight there’s nothing. Just moonlight through the windows and shadows in corners.
“Ariah?” My voice echoes off the marble, bouncing back at me unanswered. “Ariah, are you home?”
Nothing.
I’ve called her six times since the launch ended. She hasn’t answered, hasn’t responded, has dropped off the face of the earth like she was never part of my life at all.
I climb the stairs, telling myself there’s an explanation. She’s upset about something, some misunderstanding I can fix if I can just talk to her.
We’ve had fights before, difficult stretches, moments when the distance between us felt insurmountable. We always found our way back.
The twins’ rooms stop me cold.
The beds are still there, the furniture still in place, but something essential is missing.
Luca’s favorite stuffed elephant that goes everywhere with him, Lucy’s worn blanket she can’t sleep without, the small personal items that made these rooms theirs. The closets are half-empty, gaps where clothes should be.
Not stripped. Just… less.
The things that mattered, taken. The shells left behind.
I move to Ariah’s workshop next, the converted sunroom where she used to create before the twins consumed her days.
The bench is still there, the larger tools still hung on their hooks, but her portable kit is gone. The loupe she uses for detail work. The small hammer with the worn wooden handle that she’s had since she was nineteen. The things she would need if she were starting over somewhere else.
The bedroom tells the same story. Drawers half-empty. Toiletries missing from the bathroom. Her grandmother’s pearl earrings gone from the jewelry box, along with the few pieces that were hers before the merger, before me, before any of this.
She left her wedding ring.
I find it on the kitchen counter, positioned carefully in a pool of moonlight from the window above the sink. The anniversary table catches my eye again - two plates on the dining room table, two wine glasses, the Marchetti already opened, place settings for a dinner that never happened.
I pick up the ring and hold it in my palm, and the weight of it is nothing. Just metal, suddenly meaningless without the woman who was supposed to wear it.
I pull out my phone and text her: Where are you? The house is empty. What’s happening?
The reply comes almost immediately: I’m filing for divorce.
Four words. Four words that don’t make sense.
My phone rings.
I answer without looking. “Ariah…”
“It’s Piper.” Her voice is flat, hostile in a way I’ve never heard from my wife’s cousin. “Ariah asked me to let you know the children are safe. She’ll be in contact about arrangements.”
“Where is she? Where are my children?”
“Somewhere you’re not.”
“Piper, please…”
“She doesn’t want to talk to you, Pietro. She made that very clear.”
“Then let me explain. Whatever she thinks happened…”
“She heard you.” The words land like a punch. “She heard what you said. About not knowing if you should have married her. About the love not being there.”
The room tilts. I reach for the counter to steady myself, and my hand closes around the ring, the metal biting into my palm.
“That’s not… I didn’t mean…”
“She was there, Pietro. At the launch. With your children. Watching you parade around with another woman while everything she built got credited to everyone but her. And you didn’t even know she was in the room.”
I try to remember. Try to scan back through the blur of the evening - the speeches, the cameras, Serena’s hand on my arm because my mother arranged the photo opportunities, the smile I wore that felt like a mask.
Did I look for Ariah? Did I even think about her?
I don’t know. I can’t remember. And that might be the worst part of all.
“Let me talk to her,” I say. “Please. Just let me explain.”
There’s a pause, muffled conversation I can’t make out. Then a different voice comes on the line, and my whole body goes rigid at the sound of it.
“Pietro.”
“Ariah.” Her name comes out broken, desperate. “I don’t - please, just tell me what’s happening. Tell me what I can do to fix this.”
“There’s nothing to fix.” Her voice is calm, distant, nothing like the woman I know. “The marriage is over.”
“It’s not over. I won’t let it be over.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“Ariah, whatever you heard… I was talking about guilt. About failing you. About watching you disappear into a wife I never wanted you to become and not knowing how to stop it. I never said I didn’t love you.”
“You said the love isn’t there like it used to be.”
“I meant…” I struggle for words, for the explanation that will make this make sense. “I meant I’ve been absent. I meant I’ve let you down. I meant the way we love each other has gotten lost in all the other noise, and I don’t know how to find our way back to it.”
“That’s not what it sounded like.”
“Then tell me what it sounded like. Tell me what you heard.”
“I heard my husband say he regrets marrying me.” Her voice cracks, just slightly, and I hear in that crack all the pain she’s been carrying. “I heard him say it to his mother and that woman, like it was common knowledge, like everyone knew but me.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what I heard.”
“Then you heard wrong.”
“Did I?” There’s a bitter laugh in her voice.
“Because I also heard my mother-in-law credit all my ideas to other people. I heard Serena speak my words like she invented them. I stood in that room with our children, Pietro, and I watched you smile at the cameras with another woman on your arm, and you never - not once - looked into the crowd to see if I was there.”
I have nothing to say to that.
Because she’s right. I didn’t look. I didn’t even think to look, because my mother told me Ariah was home sick, and I believed her, and I let the evening carry me along without my wife because that was easier than pushing back.
“That wasn’t…” I start.
“It wasn’t what? It wasn’t your choice? It wasn’t your fault? Nothing is ever your fault, Pietro. It’s always the company, or the launch, or your mother arranging things, and you just go along with it because it’s easier than fighting for us.”
“I’m fighting now.”
“Now. When I’ve already left. When I’ve already told you it’s over. Now you want to fight.”
“Ariah…”
“Where were you when I needed you to fight for me three years ago? Two years ago? Last week? Where were you when I was drowning in your family’s expectations and raising our children alone and watching everything I built get absorbed into your empire like it never existed?”
“I was…”
“You were working. You were always working. And I told myself it was temporary, that it would get better, that you still loved me even if you’d stopped showing it. I told myself that for years, Pietro. And then I heard you say out loud what I was always afraid was true.”
“It’s not true.” My voice breaks. I don’t care. “I love you. I have always loved you. I was an idiot and I was absent and I failed you in a thousand ways, but I never stopped loving you.”
Silence on the other end. For a moment I think she’s hung up, and then I hear her breathing, ragged and unsteady.
“It’s not enough,” she says finally. “Love isn’t enough when it’s all just words. When it never shows up in the actual living of a life together.”
“Then let me show you. Let me prove it.”
“How? By coming home for dinner? By noticing I exist? You had six years to do that, Pietro. Six years.”
“I know. I know, and I…”
“I can’t do this anymore.” Her voice steadies, goes flat again. “I can’t keep waiting for you to see me. I can’t keep hoping that this time will be different, that this time you’ll choose me over the company, that this time your mother won’t find a way to edge me out. I’m done hoping.”
“Don’t…”
“Goodbye, Pietro.”
“Ariah, please…”
The line goes dead.
I stand in my empty kitchen with my wife’s wedding ring in my hand and the abandoned anniversary place settings on the table, and I don’t know how to breathe around the size of what I’ve lost.