The Capo’s Daughter Needs No Permission Chapter 28
Later, things in Newark quieted down.
My mother stopped trying new numbers to contact me.
My father sent me one email a month, usually just about the weather or his health.
After losing his seat on the internal council, he didn’t pressure the advisors to reverse their decision.
He downsized his crew, handed part of his Newark territory to another capo, and began to accept it when people told him no.
Marco never got his training signet ring back.
He moved into an ordinary apartment and took a security management job at a transportation company.
Sometimes he asked if I needed money.
Every time, I told him I didn’t.
Ava never publicly mentioned me again.
She turned off the comments on her Instagram and moved into her school’s dorm.
Marco said she started working at the campus coffee shop.
When she got her first paycheck, she finally learned that one Gucci bag cost several months of her income.
None of that had anything to do with me anymore.
My life was full of classes, the library, and my job.
In my sophomore year, I won an official scholarship from the cybersecurity lab. I quit my off-campus side job, keeping only my weekend shifts at the supermarket.
Not because I needed the money.
But because I liked the taste of the meatball soup there.
Every time I saw a freshman standing in front of the shelves, mentally calculating prices, I thought of myself when I first arrived in California.
I kept all my used textbooks and gave them away for free to anyone who needed them.
Later, more and more people came to me for advice about applications and security engineering projects.
I organized my notes into a guide and uploaded it to the school website.
It wasn’t three hundred pages long.
But every step was clearly written.
The last page had only one sentence:
“Don’t give up the road that was meant for you just to satisfy someone else’s plans.”
After Ms. Albright read it, she sent me a huge smiling emoji.
She said the guide had already made its way back to my old high school.
Carol’s son was using it, too.