The Capo’s Daughter Needs No Permission Chapter 02
The next morning, the whole family sat around the breakfast table.
They must have taken my silence last night as consent.
This time, my mother didn’t mention the permission slips.
For once, she had put a fried egg on my oatmeal.
My father and Marco were gentler, too. They said they would take me to a nice restaurant that night to celebrate my college acceptance.
Ava bit into a strip of bacon and raised her hand with a smile.
“I’ll pick the restaurant! Let’s go to that French place downtown.”
They called it a celebration for me, but we would end up ordering only what Ava liked.
And sure enough, she chose a table full of seafood and heavy cream sauces.
I’m severely allergic to shellfish. I wouldn’t be able to touch a single dish.
Before we left, the whole family waited an eternity while Ava did her makeup and chose an outfit.
But when I came out of my room, the house was already empty.
The car usually parked out front was gone.
The reservation time came and went. No one sent me the address or the private room number.
That night, I sat in my dark room, eating a cold, leftover sandwich.
I opened Ava’s Instagram.
In her latest photo, she was holding up a lobster, her cheek pressed against my mother’s.
The caption read:
*Family dinner. Aunt Maria is more like a mother to me than my own mother ever was.*
My father and Marco sat on either side of her, dropping peeled shrimp onto her plate. My father’s men stood guard outside the private room, as if they were protecting a gathering that actually mattered.
A strange sense of relief washed over me.
At least I didn’t have to sit there and watch them celebrate my admission in Ava’s honor.
The year Ava moved in was my seventh birthday.
That day, I’d clung to my mother, begging to go to the Cheesecake Factory.
On the way there, Ava sat in the back seat, smiling as she played cat’s cradle with my fingers.
But when the server brought out the cake and started singing “Happy Birthday,” Ava saw my name written in frosting and burst into tears.
She said she missed her mom and dad.
She said she envied me, because when I had a birthday, my parents were there to celebrate with me.
My mother picked up a knife and scraped the name “Romy” off the cake.
My father and Marco sang “Happy Birthday” all over again, but this time, they sang it to Ava.
Right there at the table, my mother promised her, “From now on, whether it’s your birthday or not, if you want cake, we’ll buy you cake.”
It was my birthday.
But I was the one left standing there, watching someone else blow out my candles.
When we got home, my mother gave me my first batch of permission slips.
Five of them.
She told me that if I was obedient enough, the next cake would be mine.
The door to my room suddenly flew open.
My mother’s face was a mask of fury as she hurled a stack of permission slips at me.
“Romy, what is this? What are you trying to pull?”
“Ava specifically chose a safe restaurant. Why didn’t you show up?”
The sharp edge of the paper scraped my cheek.
I touched the spot. No blood.
“Was it because I didn’t want to go?” I asked quietly.
My mother paused.
Only then did she seem to remember they hadn’t waited for me.
But her guilt vanished as quickly as it came. She set a takeout box on my desk.
“And whose fault is that? Everyone else was ready. You were the one taking forever.”
“I’ll make it up to you next time.”
I said nothing.
My father called to her from downstairs. She left my room and went straight to Ava’s to help them set up a new gaming system they’d bought her.
Soon, I could hear the four of them laughing as they played some motion-controlled game together.
I lay in bed, listening to the sounds of their happy family float up from downstairs.
A sharp pain was building in my lower abdomen.
I pressed the blanket against my stomach, a cold sweat beading on my forehead.
I searched my symptoms on my phone, then called an online doctor.
After listening to my description, the doctor said it sounded like acute appendicitis and urged me to go to the ER immediately.
Bent in half, I stumbled to Ava’s bedroom door and knocked.
I just needed my father to send a car to take me to the hospital.
A few minutes later, Marco opened the door.
He listened to my request, then laughed.
“A stomachache?”
“Everyone’s busy with Ava, and suddenly you need Dad’s car. You think if you make it sound serious enough, we’re all just going to drop everything and rearrange the security detail for you?”
I shook my head, too weak to explain.
Finally, my mother came to the door. Deciding I was ruining their game night, she dug a bottle of stomach medicine out from under the TV cabinet and tossed it to me.
“You probably just upset your stomach with that cold sandwich. Go sleep it off.”
I swallowed a few pills. The pain only got worse.
I didn’t knock again.
I smashed the piggy bank under my bed, grabbed the five hundred dollars I’d saved from fixing a local store’s website, and called a Lyft.