The Capo’s Daughter Needs No Permission Chapter 01
The day my SAT scores arrived, I walked into the dining room carrying a metal box.
Inside were five hundred and seventy-six slips of paper, each stamped with a black seal.
My father called them permission slips. In Newark, a capo’s daughter couldn’t leave the territory or get extra cash without one. He’d turned his protection into a system of rewards and punishments that only applied to me. Finish my chores, get an A, keep my mouth shut about family business—each task earned me a single slip. Five hundred slips, and I could finally ask to take one trip outside our territory.
It had taken me three years to save them.
“I got a 1580 on the SATs,” I said, laying the score report on the table. “And I received a conditional offer from Westbridge Institute of Technology for their cybersecurity program. I’ve met all your conditions. I’ve earned my graduation trip.”
“So, when are we going to the Caribbean?”
The question landed like a stone. Marco stopped twirling his car keys.
Ava lowered her head.
After her parents died, the Ferraro Family had registered her as a protected orphan. Her travel, tuition, and security were all covered by the Family. She wasn’t subject to the permission slip system my father had designed for me.
My mother set down her coffee cup.
“Romy, you know Ava’s scores aren’t as good as yours. Why would you say that in front of her?”
“She’s already lost her parents. Do you have to remind her that in this house, everything she has depends on our charity?”
I froze.
To prove Ava wasn’t a charity case, my family gave her a credit card with no limit, a personal driver, and a full security detail.
Meanwhile, I—their actual daughter—had to hand over one of my father’s signed slips just to buy clothes, get new school supplies, or leave our guarded house on a weekend.
Their graduation gift to Ava was a full suite of the newest Apple devices, worth over ten thousand dollars.
They also bought her every birthday gift she had missed, from birth to age eighteen.
The next day, a new itinerary appeared in our family group chat.
The Caribbean cruise was off.
They were taking Ava to Orlando instead. My father assigned two cars and four guards, a full detail to ensure nothing happened to the girl the Family had publicly sworn to protect on her first trip out of New Jersey.
No one asked if I wanted to go.
I threw the metal box in the trash.
My parents always said Ava was a responsibility the Family owed the dead, so she deserved the best of everything.
But I had parents. A brother. I was a Vitale, same as them. And somehow, I was always the one left to fend for myself.
If that was the way it was going to be, then there was no reason to go back to a home that only recognized my obligations, but never me.
…
A week later, I came home carrying a gyro I’d bought from the place downstairs.
The living room was full of them.
They were back from their trip.
Ava was leaning against my father, Vincent, showing everyone the photos she’d taken in Orlando. My father was the Ferraro Family’s capo in Newark. Outside our home, he rarely smiled, but in these pictures, he wore pink Minnie Mouse ears, a dot of red face paint on the tip of his nose.
My mother, Maria, stood behind him, smiling so wide her eyes curved into crescents.
When Ava got to the photos from their boat tour, she glanced at Marco, who was crouched on the floor sorting through gift boxes.
“This was all your fault. Right before we boarded, you just had to drag me to get those croissant donuts that are all over social media.”
“Because of you, we missed the sunset. We didn’t get the most important shot.”
Marco looked up, a grin spreading across his face.
“And who was it that said she was dying to try them?”
Marco had been learning the family business from my father since he was sixteen. Everyone assumed he would take over the Newark crew one day. At the dinner table, he always sat at my father’s right hand.
I stood in the doorway, staring at the family selfie on my phone.
No matter where they were, they always looked more like a family when I wasn’t there.
I quietly shut the door.
My mother was just coming out of the kitchen with a bowl of cherries.
She caught the scent of my gyro and frowned.
“Ava can’t stand that smell. Eat that in your room.”
Only then did the others in the living room notice me.
Marco’s smile vanished.
“You’re home? Why didn’t you say anything? Didn’t the guard at the door tell you to announce yourself when you come in?”
“Just standing there in the shadows—who are you trying to scare?”
Ava opened her mouth, and my mother popped a cherry onto her tongue.
“Thank you, Aunt Maria,” she said sweetly.
I didn’t answer. I just turned and went to my room.
A few minutes later, my mother pushed the door open.
She shoved a thick stack of permission slips into my hand.
“I was too harsh the other day.”
“This was Ava’s first time attending graduation events as a protected orphan. Everyone in the Family was watching. If we’d taken you to the Caribbean first, people would have questioned whether the Vitale family was truly honoring its duties to the dead.”
“You understand the rules better than anyone. We’ll go next time.”
I watched her leave without saying a word.
Ava represented the Ferraro Family’s promise to the relatives of its fallen men. Refusing her would damage my father’s standing.
And me? I had to obey the rules, keep my grades perfect, and never bother the guards, all just to earn scraps of a life.
But even when I saved up enough permission slips, all it took was one disappointed look from Ava and one word from my father to make any promise to me disappear.
It was true for a new dress.
It was true for my favorite food.
And now it was true for the trip I had earned.
Those slips of paper had never been rules.
They were just tools to keep me in my place.
Much later, I went downstairs for a glass of water.
The whole family was gathered around Ava, discussing her college applications.
My father said that no matter the cost, he would pay for her to get her degree. The Ferraro Family had promised to see her through to adulthood, and the Vitales would not fail in that duty.
Marco went to his room and came back with a three-hundred-page college guide.
“Pick from this list. These are the safest schools and majors in New Jersey, all close to our territory. Nothing can go wrong.”
Ava’s eyes welled up.
“I hate making everyone worry so much. If only I were more like Romy and could score over 1500 on the SATs.”
My mother immediately pulled her into a hug.
“A score doesn’t determine whether you deserve to be cared for.”
“Besides, you’ll always be under the Family’s protection. No one is going to judge you based on a test score.”
Ava lifted her face from my mother’s shoulder and looked at me.
“It would be so great if I could go to college with Romy. She’s so good with computers, and she knows all the security protocols. We could look out for each other.”
My father nodded at once.
“That’s not a problem.”
Marco added, “You pick the school first. Once you’ve decided, we’ll have Romy apply to the same one.”
The glass trembled in my hand.
“Why?”
Westbridge was in California.
Its security engineering program was one of the best in the country. I already had a conditional offer. All I had to do was accept, and I could leave New Jersey and build a life on my own terms.
Why should I give that up for Ava—to attend some local state school so I could continue to be her unpaid companion and backup security?
My mother’s face hardened.
“California is too far outside the Ferraro Family’s protection zone. If you go there alone and something happens, who’s going to be responsible?”
“If you and Ava attend the same school, we can rent an apartment nearby. The guards would only need one detail. We’re thinking of you, Romy.”
I looked at my father.
He didn’t contradict her.
In this house, protection had always been a cage.
They used it to decide where I went, who I saw, and whose future my own was meant to serve.
I didn’t argue anymore.
Back in my room, I called my college counselor, Elena Albright.
“I’ve decided to accept Westbridge’s offer.”