Deadly Embrace

too. Secretly she wished for a boy. Life–the way she’d experienced it–was too tough for girls.
Half-way home she remembered the flashy blonde and her two low-life companions. There was something about them she didn’t trust, especially since the girl had mentioned Vinny by name. She recalled that when she’d first started working at the shop, Lani had warned her to report anything suspicious. Well, they were definitely suspicious, and now she felt that she should have alerted Vinny.
In spite of the icy sidewalks and bitter cold, she decided to go back and tell her husband of the incident. As she turned round to retrace her steps, the baby suddenly kicked. Placing her hands on her stomach, she murmured, with a smile on her lips, ‘My bambino. My piccolo bambino.’
Thunder rumbled in the distance as she neared the shop. The street was dark and deserted: most people were aware of the upcoming storm and had retreated to their homes.
Standing outside, blocking the entrance to the shop, was the blonde from earlier, a scarf tied round her brassy hair. She looked startled when she spotted Anna Maria.
‘Excuse me, please,’ Anna Maria said, attempting to squeeze past her.
‘Not so fast, honey,’ Mamie said.
‘Please move. I wish to go inside,’ Anna Maria said, frowning.
‘I don’t think so,’ Mamie snapped, an arrogant tilt to her pointed chin.
‘Oh, yes, I think so,’ Anna Maria said, asserting herself. And with that she pushed past the blonde and entered the shop.
The sight that greeted her caused her to gasp in horror. Vinny was trapped behind the counter with his arms in the air. One of the blonde’s companions from earlier had a gun in his face, while the other man was busy ransacking the cash register.
‘Bastardo!’ Anna Maria screamed, fury overtaking her as every bad memory of the violence she’d experienced in her past came rushing back. ‘Bastardo! Bastardo!’ she repeated, before throwing herself at the man with the gun, arms flailing wildly, her pretty face contorted with fury.
‘No!’ Vinny yelled, frantically trying to stop her. ‘No, sweetheart! No!’
He was too late. The man holding the gun reacted fast, pointing his weapon at her, shouting a rough ‘Get off me, you crazy bitch!’
But still she attacked him, even though her heart was pounding out of control, and the baby was kicking in her stomach.
Vinny jumped into the fray, more concerned with saving his wife than his own safety.
Then it happened. One gunshot. Two. Three.
And the men grabbed the money and ran.
New York Times 10 February 1945
A baby boy was safely delivered by doctors on Saturday night, after the mother of the infant, Anna Maria Castellino, was fatally shot earlier in the evening during a store robbery. Her husband, Vincenzio ‘Vinny’ Castellino, was also shot and is currently undergoing an operation to remove a bullet lodged in his spine. The shooting took place at Lani’s, a convenience store in Queens. The police are looking for two male suspects who robbed the store and escaped on foot with a blonde female accomplice.
The baby boy, born several weeks premature, weighed four pounds three ounces, and is reported to be in stable condition.
And so Vincenzio Michael Castellino entered the world.
It was quite an entrance.

Chapter Three
Dani: 1948
Dashell Livingston had three wives, even though in the state of Nevada it was not exactly legal. Dashell didn’t care: he called himself a hovering Mormon and boasted to whoever would listen that it was a man’s right to have as many wives as he chose. Dashell had fathered seven children, all girls, which didn’t bother him because he reasoned that girls would take care of him in his old age. Girls were useful–they would never run off and desert him.
Dashell, a big man in his late fifties, with a weatherworn face and a mane of white hair cascading down to his shoulders, was a degenerate gambler. In between raising horses on his run-down ranch several miles outside Las Vegas, he would make occasional forays to the Vegas strip and score enough money to support himself and his ever-growing family for the next few months. While there, he would visit the local whorehouse and avail himself of a girl or two. Dashell had a voracious sexual appetite.
Dashell’s number one wife was Olive. Almost forty, she was the mother of four of his children and quite the controller. If Dashell wasn’t giving orders, she was.
Wife number two was Mona, a small, slight woman with a permanently frightened expression. Mona had produced three children for her big bear of a husband.
And lastly there was Olive’s cousin Lucy, who at twenty-one was the youngest of the three women, and also the prettiest, with long, corn-coloured hair and bright blue eyes. Lucy had come to live on the ranch after a bad marriage to a man who abused her verbally and beat her on a daily basis. By the time she arrived, she was fragile and exhausted.
Dashell and his two wives had offered comfort and a place to stay, and although she had not found Dashell physically attractive, she soon realized that with him she’d at least be safe.
Shortly after becoming wife number three, Lucy found herself pregnant with her first child. Regrettably, because once she discovered her condition, everyone’s attitude immediately changed. Dashell became cold and distant, Olive, bossy and demanding–forcing her to do more than her share of the household chores–and Mona who had never welcomed her into the family, chose to ignore her.
Lucy soon realized that joining Dashell’s extended family might have been a big mistake.
But once in, there was no out. She had no money, no means of leaving the ranch, which was located in the middle of nowhere. And she was pregnant.
Dashell, Lucy soon discovered, did not believe in doctors. ‘Greedy bastards. All they’re after is a man’s money,’ he complained, in his gruff voice. ‘Round here we take care of our own.’
Lucy could not