The Capo’s Daughter Needs No Permission Chapter 31
Ava walked over, her gaze fixed on the ground.
“I always thought you had too much.”
“You had parents, a brother, the Vitale name. So if the Ferraro Family gave me a little more, I thought that was only fair.”
“Later, when they stopped paying for everything, I finally understood that what I took from you wasn’t just a dress or a bag.”
Her voice dropped even lower.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at her.
“Losing your parents wasn’t your fault.”
She raised her eyes.
I went on.
“But it’s also true that you knew they were hurting me, and you still used your status as a protected orphan, again and again.”
“I can understand being afraid of losing another home.”
“But understanding isn’t the same as forgiving.”
The hope in her eyes flickered and died.
She nodded.
“I know.”
“I just… I owed you that apology.”
She turned and walked away.
I didn’t call her back.
Sometimes, the only thing an apology does is force the person who did wrong to finally admit what happened.
It doesn’t always buy the relationship back.
Just like those five hundred and seventy-six permission slips.
I saved them for three years.
In the end, they bought me nothing.
I didn’t go to the family dinner they had prepared for my graduation.
After the ceremony, Ms. Albright and I went to the Cheesecake Factory I’d thought about for so many years.
The server brought out a slice of cake and asked with a smile, “Whose birthday is it today?”
I shook my head.
“It’s not a birthday. It’s a graduation.”
She took a bottle of chocolate sauce and wrote my name along the rim of the plate.
No one scraped it off.
Ms. Albright took a picture of me.
In it, I’m holding a bouquet of flowers and smiling so wide my eyes are curved into crescents.
I set it as my new phone wallpaper.