The Capo's Daughter Needs No Permission novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Who Has My Password

Livia traces the cancelled transcripts to her father's den and says so at the table; Carmine says Nico goes with her or she stays, her mother freezes her card, and at four in the morning her door is locked from outside.

I didn't need ten minutes to find it.

I built our house network when I was fourteen, and I knew where every log was kept.

The cancellation had been sent yesterday at 2:14 p.m. from the computer in my father's den.

It used my username and my password, typed in under a second.

Nobody types a password that fast unless they have typed it before.

I walked downstairs with my laptop open on my arm.

The family was at the dinner table. Two guards stood by the kitchen door.

I turned the screen so my father could see it.

"Someone cancelled my transcript release yesterday from your den, using my login," I said. "Who was in there at two?"

Franco looked up from his plate. "Why are you hacking the house?"

"I live here, Franco. It's my network."

My father didn't glance at the screen.

"Nobody touched anything," Carmine said. "The school made a mistake. Sit down."

"The log says the den."

"The log is wrong," he said.

I looked at my mother. She was cutting a lemon for Bianca's water.

Bianca pressed her napkin to her mouth.

"I was in the den yesterday, Zio Carmine, only to charge my tablet," she said. "Did I mess something up? Livia, I'd never."

Her eyes were already wet.

"Nobody is accusing you, sweetheart," my mother said, and put an arm around her.

I stood there holding my laptop and watched my mother comfort the girl I had just asked a question.

My father pushed his chair back and wiped his hands on his napkin.

"Here is how it works," he said. "You are not going to California alone."

"If the Family's daughter leaves the state with no protection, people talk."

"So you either go to State with Bianca, or Nico goes with you."

Nico drove me to school and back. He had done it for three years.

I hadn't known my father would use him like this.

"I'm not taking a guard," I said. "I'm eighteen. I have an offer and I'm going."

"With what?" Franco said. "You get your money from Dad."

My mother set down the knife. "Then there's no reason for you to keep the card, Livia. Give it to me."

She held out her hand.

I put the card in it.

My father picked up his fork. "You leave with nothing, or you leave with Nico. Think about which."

Bianca whispered, "Please don't be mad at me."

Nobody asked her what she had done in the den.

I took my plate upstairs and didn't eat.

Near midnight I sat on the back porch with my knees up. The guards were out front, and the yard was dark.

The screen door opened and shut behind me.

"You skipped your mother's cannoli," Nico Falcone said. "That's almost a crime in this house."

He was twenty-seven, with dark curls and a nick through his left eyebrow.

He wore a watch with a cracked face that he refused to replace.

He handed me a paper bag.

Inside was a gyro, still warm, wrapped in foil.

"I got it before I came in," he said. "Your mother didn't smell it on me."

I held it in both hands.

For three years he had bought one on the drive home and said, "Put that in your pocket."

He had never once asked for a slip.

"Did you know about the transcripts?" I asked.

"No."

"Do you want to go to California?"

"I want you to go to California," he said. "I'd rather do it without your father sending me."

"But he's sending me, so I'll carry your bags and keep my mouth shut."

"I don't want a guard."

"Then fire me when we land. You can do it in front of the whole campus."

His phone buzzed against the porch rail.

He turned it face down without looking at it.

I noticed, and I said nothing, because he had brought me dinner.

"Friday," I said.

"Friday," Nico said. "Eat that before it goes cold."

I ate it on the porch with the dark yard in front of me.

It was the first thing anyone had given me in that house without a price on it.

I went to bed at one and slept hard.

At four in the morning I woke up needing water and crossed the room in the dark.

I turned the handle.

The door didn't move.

I tried it again, then pushed my shoulder against it.

It had been locked from the outside.

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