Even in prison, Winter fails to take any opportunity for self-improvement, so that she might look forward to some productivity upon release, and accepts her fate as a "normal" part of life. In the end, she is betrayed by Bullet, who leaves her to take the "fall" for his crimes, and she lands a fifteen year prison sentence. Bullet, a drug dealer from the projects, now wealthy himself, swoops her up, gaining total control of her actions and movements. Leaving Souljah's home and attempting to travel to Maryland to find Midnight, former lieutenant of her father who has gone "straight," her impulsiveness thwarts this final opportunity for change.
Instead, she attempts to use Souljah's connections to continue her "hustles" and pursuit of men with money. Uninterested in Souljah's goals for her, Winter rejects the encouragement to think beyond the next twenty-four hours and to pursue a productive career and moral behavior. In her selfishness, she betrays old friends from the projects and is then taken in by Sister Souljah, a crusader for change in the ghetto. When she is finally turned into the child welfare authorities and sent to an adolescent home for girls, Winter continues her "hustles," taking advantage of the other girls. This quest involves a great deal of creative thought and action and a wild ride of criminal activity. Interested only in her own well-being, Winter virtually abandons her mother and sisters, to embark upon an all out effort to find a means to regain her former lifestyle.
When her father's "empire" collapses, he is arrested for a variety of felonies, and all family possessions are seized, leaving the five females in the family to fend for themselves. Even a move to a mansion in Long Island does not remove Winter from her ghetto culture and principles, for there is not positive, active parenting on the part of either parent. With a mother who was more a sister than an appropriate mother role model, Winter came into adolescence a shallow, self-centered, amoral individual, motivated solely by material possessions, physical attractiveness, and the desire to attract as many men as possible, preferably with plenty of money. She grows up in the projects of Brooklyn, along with three younger siblings, insulated from her father's "business" and indulged in every way.
On one of the coldest and snowiest days in New York City, Winter Santiaga is born to a fourteen-year old mother and drug kingpin father, Ricky Santiaga.
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