11. Pietro
— ? —
Pietro
Three days pass before I can face my mother.
Three days of calling Ariah and being sent to voicemail. Three days of texting and receiving no response. Three days of pacing through an empty house that echoes with the absence of my wife and children, trying to figure out how everything fell apart so completely and so fast.
The separation papers arrive on the third day.
Not divorce papers, not yet, but a formal legal document from an attorney I’ve never heard of, someone Ariah found on her own, outlining her intent to pursue a separation with eventual dissolution of the marriage. Custody arrangements proposed. Division of assets outlined.
My wife, reduced to bullet points and clauses.
I read it three times, and then I get in my car and drive to my mother’s house.
She’s in the garden when I arrive, directing a groundskeeper with the particular imperiousness she brings to everything. She looks up when she sees me coming across the lawn, and her face arranges itself into concerned welcome.
“Pietro, darling. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“We need to talk.”
“Of course. Let me just finish…”
“Now, Mother.”
Something in my voice stops her. She studies my face for a moment, then dismisses the groundskeeper with a wave and leads me into the house.
The living room where she receives guests is exactly as I remember from childhood - formal, beautiful, designed to intimidate. I don’t sit down.
“Ariah left,” I say. “She took the children and filed for separation.”
“Yes, I heard.” My mother settles onto a sofa with practiced grace. “It’s unfortunate, but perhaps for the best. She was never really suited…”
“Did you tell me she was too sick to come to the launch?”
The pause is barely perceptible, but I’ve known this woman my whole life. I see it.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Someone told me Ariah was home sick. That she wasn’t coming. That’s why I didn’t look for her. Because I thought she wasn’t there.”
“She was unwell. I saw her just that afternoon, and she looked dreadful. I simply assumed…”
“She was there, Mother. She came to the launch with the children. She stood in that room and watched me give a speech that was built on her ideas while Serena hung on my arm. And I didn’t even know she was there.”
“How is that my fault?”
“Because you arranged it.” The certainty settles into my bones as I say it.
“You arranged all of it. The seating that put her at the edge of the room. The press photos with Serena. The speech that credited the merger and the partnership but never mentioned her name. You’ve been working against her for six years, and I was too blind to see it. ”
“That’s absurd.” My mother’s voice sharpens. “I have been nothing but gracious to that woman, despite her unsuitability, despite the embarrassment of having a foreign nobody as the wife of my son…”
“She’s not nobody. She built Maison d’Emery from nothing. She was a successful designer before I ever met her. And you’ve spent six years trying to make her forget that.”
“I’ve spent six years trying to protect this family’s reputation.”
“By driving out my wife?”
“By managing an unfortunate situation as best I could.” She rises, all offended dignity. “I never asked you to marry her. That was your choice. A poor one, as it turns out, but I’ve done my best to minimize the damage.”
“The damage.” I stare at her. “My marriage is ending. My children are gone. And you’re talking about damage to the family reputation.”
“What would you have me say, Pietro? That I welcomed her with open arms? That I was delighted when you threw away every suitable match I found for a woman who would never understand our world? I did what any mother would do - I tried to give you an alternative.”
“Serena.”
“She would have been perfect for you. She still could be, if you’d open your eyes…”
“Stop.” The word comes out low and dangerous, and I see my mother flinch.
Good. “Serena is nothing to me. She was a business arrangement that you orchestrated, and I let it happen because I wasn’t paying attention.
But my wife - my actual wife, the mother of my children - she heard me say something that she misunderstood, and instead of asking me about it, she ran, because she’s been running from you for six years and I never once protected her. ”
“She’s being dramatic…”
“She’s being realistic.” I move toward the door. “From now on, you don’t contact my household directly. Not Rosa, not the staff, not anyone who works for me. If you want to communicate with my family, you go through my lawyer.”
“That’s absurd…”
“It’s necessary. Because I can’t trust you anymore.
” The words land heavily between us. “No more arranging things behind my back. No more managing situations. You want access to your grandchildren, you ask me first. You want to visit, you go through proper channels. This is how it has to be until I can trust you again.”
“Pietro, this is ridiculous…”
I look at her - this woman who raised me, who shaped me, who loved me in her own complicated way - and I see for the first time how much damage that love has done.
“We’re not done,” I say. “You and I. But right now, I need distance. And you need to respect that.”
My hand hesitates on the doorframe.
The grief bound us together in ways I’ve never fully examined, and she’s used that bond ever since - not maliciously, maybe, but constantly.
Every time I try to pull away, I feel my father’s absence like a weight on my chest, and I wonder if cutting her off means cutting off the last person who remembers him the way I do.
“Your father would have wanted…” she starts, because she always knows exactly where to press.
“Don’t.” My voice comes out rough. “Don’t use him.”
“I’m not using him. I’m reminding you that family…”
“Family doesn’t do what you’ve done.”
She’s silent. I should walk out. I should make this clean and final.
But I can’t. Not completely. Not yet. The grief is still there, tangled up with love and resentment and the memory of her face at his funeral, and I hate that she still has this hold on me.
“The boundaries I’ve set are real,” I say. “Test them, and I’ll make them permanent.”
She doesn’t respond. I leave.
* * *
Piper answers on the fourth ring.
“I told you she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“I’m not asking you to betray her trust.” I’m sitting in my car outside my mother’s house, staring at nothing. “I just need to know she’s okay. That the children are okay.”
“They’re fine. She’s fine. Well…” A pause. “She’s managing.”
“Is she still sick?”
“The cold’s better. She’s mostly just… tired.”
“Where is she?”
“Pietro.”
“I know you can’t tell me. I’m not asking for an address. Just - is she nearby? Is she safe?”
Another pause. I hear the calculation in it, the weighing of loyalties.
“She’s in Naples,” Piper says finally. “She didn’t want to take the kids too far from you. She said…” A sigh. “She said they deserve to know their father, even if she’s done with her husband.”
Something in my chest cracks at that. Even now, even after everything, Ariah is thinking about what’s fair to me. What’s fair to our children.
“Can I see them? The twins?”
“That’s up to Ariah.”
“Then ask her. Please. I’m not trying to…” I don’t know how to finish. What am I trying to do? Win her back? Prove I’m not the man she thinks I am? Both feel impossible.
“I’ll ask,” Piper says. “But don’t hold your breath.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m doing this for her, not for you.” Her voice softens, just slightly. “She loved you, you know. Really loved you. That’s why this hurts so much.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you forgot to love her back.”
She hangs up before I can respond.
I sit in my car for a long time, watching the sun set over my mother’s garden, and I think about everything I failed to see. Everything I let happen. Everything I need to do if I’m going to deserve the chance to try again.
The separation papers are still in my pocket, Ariah’s neat signature at the bottom.
I won’t sign them.
I won’t let this be the end.