22. Pietro
— ? —
Pietro
The house doesn’t feel like mine anymore.
I notice it in small ways - the arrangement of flowers in the foyer that my mother chose, the particular way the staff moves through the rooms like they’re following choreography she designed, the thousand small touches that bear her fingerprints rather than mine or Ariah’s.
For six years I walked through these spaces without seeing any of it, accepting the environment as given rather than chosen.
Now I see everything.
“Rosa.” I catch her in the hallway, the longtime staffer who’s been with this family since before my father died. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, Signor Grimaldi.”
“In all the years you’ve worked here, how often did my mother give you direct instructions? About the household. About my wife.”
Rosa’s face goes carefully blank - the expression of someone who has learned to survive in complicated territory. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You can speak freely. I’m trying to understand what happened in my own home while I wasn’t paying attention.”
She’s quiet for a moment, weighing her words. Then: “Donna Rosaria has always taken an active interest in household management. Even after you married, even after Signora Ariah moved in. She would… suggest changes. Modifications to schedules, to menus, to staffing arrangements.”
“Suggest?”
“Insist, perhaps, is more accurate.” Rosa meets my eyes for the first time. “The Signora - your wife - she tried, in the beginning. She had ideas about how she wanted to run things. But Donna Rosaria always knew better. And when there were conflicts…” She trails off.
“My mother won.”
“Your mother was here. You were not.”
The words land like a verdict. I think about all the times Ariah tried to tell me something was wrong, all the careful complaints I brushed off as oversensitivity, all the ways I enabled my mother’s control by failing to challenge it.
“Things are going to change,” I tell Rosa. “From now on, my mother has no authority over this household. If Ariah chooses to come back, household decisions go through her. Until then, nothing changes without her approval.”
Something shifts in Rosa’s expression - surprise, maybe, or relief. “I understand.”
“And Rosa? I’m sorry. For however my family has treated you over the years. That wasn’t right.”
“Thank you, Signor Grimaldi.” She hesitates. “For what it’s worth - Signora Ariah was always kind to me. Even when things were difficult, she never took it out on the staff. That kind of person is rare.”
I know. I know exactly how rare she is. I just forgot to act like it.
* * *
Ariah is at her apartment when I arrive for what we’ve been calling “family time” - a few hours on weekday evenings when I come over and we parent the twins together, something that would have been impossibly normal a few months ago and now feels like the most precious thing in my life.
“Papa!” Luca throws himself at my legs the moment I walk in. “Papa, I drew a picture of a dragon and it has seventeen heads and Lucy says that’s too many heads but I said dragons can have however many heads they want.”
“Seventeen seems reasonable to me.” I scoop him up and settle him on my hip. “Where’s your sister?”
“Hiding. She says she’s going to scare you but she’s under the blanket so it’s not very good hiding.”
“I see.” I cross to the suspiciously lumpy blanket on the couch and pretend to be completely fooled. “Hm. I wonder where Lucy could be. Maybe I’ll just sit down on this nice, soft…”
“BOO!” Lucy explodes from beneath the blanket, shrieking with delight.
“Oh no!” I stagger backward in exaggerated terror. “A monster! Ariah, save me!”
Ariah is watching from the kitchen doorway, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. It’s not the full, open smile I remember from the early years of our marriage, but it’s more than I’ve gotten in months, and I’ll take it.
“You’re on your own,” she says. “I don’t interfere with monster attacks.”
The next hour is chaos in the best possible way - dinner that involves more food on the table than in the children’s mouths, a complicated game that Luca invented and that seems to have no rules except the ones he makes up as we go, Lucy demanding to show me her “very serious” collection of interesting rocks she’s been gathering from the park.
By the time we’ve wrestled them into pajamas and negotiated the complex diplomacy of bedtime stories, I’m exhausted and happier than I’ve been in years.
“They’re asleep,” I report, rejoining Ariah in the living room. “Luca wanted to know why the moon follows us when we drive. I may have promised to look it up.”
“Did you give him an actual answer or just say ‘that’s a great question’?”
“Both. In that order.”
She laughs - a real laugh, surprised out of her. “You’re learning.”
“I’m trying.” I sit down across from her, feeling the weight of everything I want to say pressing against my chest. “I’ve learned a lot, these past few weeks. About the children. About what it takes to actually be a parent instead of just having the title.”
“Have you?”
“I’m seeing things I should have seen years ago.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “About the twins. About you. About the way my mother positioned herself at the center of everything while I wasn’t looking.”
“I tried to tell you.”
“I know you did. And I didn’t listen. I was so convinced that everything was fine, that you were happy with the quiet life you’d ‘chosen,’ that I couldn’t see what was actually happening.” I pause, searching for the right words. “I’ve started making changes. At the house. At the company.”
“What kind of changes?”
“Resetting things. Taking back control that I never should have ceded to my mother in the first place. I’ve told Rosa that all household decisions go through you now - when you come back, if you come back.
I’m restructuring my work schedule so I’m actually present for the family instead of disappearing into the company and leaving you to handle everything alone. ”
Ariah is quiet, watching me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“And I want to offer you something,” I continue. “Something I should have offered from the beginning. When the merger happened - when Maison d’Emery became part of Grimaldi Holdings - I should have made sure you stayed at the center of it. Your vision. Your leadership. Your name.”
“You’re offering me my own company back?”
“I’m offering you the creative heart of the house. As your own. With your name on the door, your decisions driving the direction, your work credited to you. Not as a subsidiary of the empire. As a partnership of equals.”
“Pietro…”
“I’m not doing this to win you back.” I need her to understand this part.
“I’m doing it because it’s right. Because that work was always yours, and it should never have been taken from you.
Whether you come back to me or not, whether we stay married or not, the creative restoration of your name is something I owe you regardless. ”
She’s quiet for a long moment, processing. I can see the thoughts moving behind her eyes - suspicion, hope, the careful calculation of someone who’s been burned before and doesn’t want to be burned again.
“I’m not ready to move back into the house,” she says finally.
“I’m not asking you to.”
“And I’m not ready to take over the creative direction of anything. I have my own work now. My own clients. My own reputation that I’m building without the Grimaldi name attached.”
“I know. This isn’t conditional. It’s just… an open door. Whenever you’re ready. If you’re ever ready.”
“Okay.” She nods slowly. “Okay. Thank you.”
She said okay. She said thank you. After everything, she’s still willing to hear me out.
My phone buzzes. A text from a number I recognize with a sinking feeling.
“What is it?” Ariah asks, reading my expression.
“My mother.” I stare at the screen, feeling the familiar tension creep back into my shoulders. “She’s announcing that she’ll be attending the twins’ birthday party. Because a grandmother ‘deserves to be there for such important moments.’”
“You told her she wasn’t invited.”
“She’s not asking permission.” I scroll down to the rest of the message. “And she’ll be bringing Serena. Because ‘the children should have positive female role models in their lives.’”
Ariah’s face goes pale, then hard. “Over my dead body.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“How? She’s your mother. She’s been doing exactly what she wants for six years, and you’ve never been able to stop her.”
“Things are different now.” I stand, pacing the small room. “I’ve told her to stay away. I’ve made it clear that there will be consequences if she interferes with our family again.”
“And she’s ignoring you.”
“She’s testing me.” I turn to face Ariah, and I feel something crystallize in my chest - a resolve that’s been building for weeks, finally hardening into certainty. “She thinks I’ll back down. She thinks I’ll prioritize keeping the peace over protecting my family. She’s wrong.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Security at the venue already has her photo. And Serena’s. The access restrictions I put in place - they apply to the party too.” I take her hand, and she lets me. “She can send all the texts she wants. She’s not getting through the door.”
Ariah searches my face, looking for the doubt I’m trying to hide. “And if she finds another way in? She always finds a way.”
“Then I’ll be there. Right next to you. And we’ll handle it together.”
It’s not a guarantee. I can’t give her one of those. But I can give her this: my presence, my attention, my promise to stand beside her instead of disappearing when things get hard.
She squeezes my hand once, then lets go.
“Together,” she says. It’s not agreement, exactly. More like she’s testing the weight of the word.
I’ll take it.