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.
The Capo’s Daughter Needs No Permission Chapter 03 The ER doctor glanced at my scan and immediately paged the on-call surgeon. “Acute appendicitis with risk of perforation. She needs surgery now.” “Any longer and she could go septic.” Lying in the hospital bed, I felt my hands begin to tremble. The hospital needed an emergency
The Capo’s Daughter Needs No Permission Chapter 03 Read Post »
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,
The Capo’s Daughter Needs No Permission Chapter 02 Read Post »
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
The Capo’s Daughter Needs No Permission Chapter 01 Read Post »
