"No baby of mine is going to be born in prison, sugar."
Christina gave her father a surprised look across the steel table, but then she thought, yeah, why wouldn't he think this baby was his? She looked down at the Christmas present he'd brought her. It would be Christmas in two days. He apologized for the gift, saying he couldn't bring anything better into the prison.
A cardboard rectangle with pink and green marshmallow peeps stuck to it. He—or, most likely, her mother—had wrapped it in Christmas paper, but that was torn at one end of the package. The peeps had been pulled out and bit had been snipped off each one. Christina wondered if the guards had been brave enough to do the tasting themselves. She sure hoped they hadn't had one of the dogs eat off the peeps. Sugar would kill a dog.
Of course the sugar wasn't good for her in her condition either. Her mother would have known that, so maybe her dad had done the selection and wrapping after all. Such a cheesy present, but it still made her wanting to cry, she was so starved for Christmas and any trappings at all of the season.
She almost instinctively reached for her father's big, hairy-knuckled hand as it rested on the table top, but the clearing of a throat from behind her made her snatch it back. She'd almost forgotten she was in prison, which was hard to do, especially at Christmas time. Her affection for her big teddy bear of a father was overwhelming. Of course others saw him as a wolf instead. She'd gotten a lot of razzing from the other inmates since she'd come into the prison about what she'd been letting her father do. If they only knew how much farther beyond that that it went. She'd always thought it just was natural, just what her close Sicilian family did. She'd never given a thought to denying her father—or not enjoying him, big puffy ox that he was.
"We should just let it ride, Daddy. I won't be keeping the—"
"We sure as hell will be keeping the baby," Rocco growled, causing Christina to shrink away from the table and the guards to look over at them—more in fear than in anger, Christina thought. Even here in the Edna Mahon Correctional Facility for Women, near Clinton, New Jersey, the Fabbro family, with Rocco at the helm, had a reputation and bark that was noticed.
"Uncle Enzo has it all arranged. You'll be out of here before New Year's."
"I don't know, Daddy."
"You'll just have to give it out a couple of times, sugar. But you're already knocked up, so—"
"It's a prison, Daddy. Nobody gets out of a place like this."
"Tupec Shakur's aunt did?"
"Tupec Shakur? The rapper?"
"Yep. It's what gave us the idea. Heard it on the news with this relations with Cuba thing. She was busted out of here in 1979 by the Black Panther Party and given political asylum in Cuba. If she can do it, so can you. And Uncle Enzo's come up with a great plan."
"They'll just grab me and put me back in here."
"Not in Enzo's plan. You'll have to be his live-in maid, though. He's got you fixed up to become a Guatemalan. We'll hide you in plain sight. My baby will be called his—that was the hardest part for me to swallow; his wife doesn't seem to give a shit as long as he keeps the money coming—and you'll be right there with it."
"You sure about this idea of Uncle Enzo's?" Not that she could talk to her father about it, but being Uncle Enzo's live-in maid, even if only pretend, was not what she considered to be a good idea. Under the same roof with Enzo—whose wife flitted all over the world and left him home to harvest the money tree? She always felt safe and comforted in her daddy's arms. Not so much when she slept with Uncle Enzo. He was a taker.
"It sure as hell will be better than the plan you had when you tried to lift those dresses. What were you thinking? Didn't I teach you not to lift anything that put you in the felony theft zone?"
"I read the tags, Daddy. It wasn't more than $800 worth. That was well short of $1,000."
"That's the amount for New York, sugar. You lifted the dresses in New Jersey. The amount here is down at $250."
"Yeah, that's what I found out when they arrested me. Sorry. Guess I didn't check close enough." She was taking it on herself. It hadn't been her faulty research. She had questioned it at the time, but her partner-in-crime had been so emphatic about it. In fact, before she'd gotten sent here, Rocco had practically tried to beat out of her who had been in this with her. She'd just said that it was another woman and that she didn't want to implicate her—that she'd gotten away and Christina was sure she'd get her share when she got out.
"So, what do I have to do, Daddy?" she asked, resigned to not being part of the decision-making process of this family.
"You don't need to do anything but wait for someone to come for you—there will be three of them. You just need to open your legs for them and they'll take you all the way to Enzo's car. You can open your legs for a few men to keep our baby from being born in a prison, can't you, sweetie?"
You don't know how many I've had to open my legs to to get by, Daddy, Christina thought—and more than half of them with Fabbro as a last name. But what she said was, "If that's what you want me to do, Daddy."
"We'll spring you toward the end of next week. The place is short staffed between Christmas and New Year's. It's gotta be this next week. No baby of mine is gonna be born in no prison."
"Is the whole family in on this, Daddy?"
"Just the ones who have to know."
"You and Uncle Enzo . . . and . . .?"