Plank Sinatra — Roleplayer Guild

Name: Vivianne “Coca-Cola” Laurent
Age: 25
Appearance: 5’11 and lean, Vivianne’s statuesque beauty has adopted a somewhat intimidating reputation in the years since the European pair began their burgeoning criminal enterprise. Standing only two or three small inches below Napoli himself, the French woman could have been a gymnast if you had shaved half a foot off her height in adolescence. Instead she wears a flapper dress - usually colored in her her trademark laurel green - that highlights her long legs, slim waist, and healthy tan. An FN Model 1910 is usually hidden on her person, in one of a variety of locations that only Napoli could locate without the pistol going off.

Vivianne rarely smiles; that is an expression reserved for her irreverent other half. Her heart-shaped face is usually far more stoic, thin lips only widening into a bright, confident grin on occasion (though one of her incisors does have a slight chip in it, a badge of courage from a...mishap...while biting a headboard in Naples too hard). Despite her expression usually falling on a spectrum from “neutral” to “scowling,” her face itself is innocent enough - wide hazel eyes, a smattering of dark freckles along her cheeks and sharp nose, and a fashionable dirty blonde bob tend to take the edge off of her size and remind people that they’re still dealing with a woman.

Napoli often says that Viv should let people think that gives them an advantage...and unfortunately, whatever Napoli says goes.
Ethnicity/Nationality: Born in Paris, France; immigrated to America with Napoli Fiordilatte in 1919.
Affiliation: Napoli Fiordilatte. Though her partner delights in both reminding her that he is charmer of the tandem and in provoking her sulks or rages, she is fiercely loyal to the silver-tongued con artist and has killed in his name more than once on both sides of the Atlantic. Though the mozzarella man has several loyalties of his own amongst people who have a cut in their club, these higher investors remain inconsequential in Vivianne’s mind as long as they do right by the Italian.
Occupation: Taxi driver (legally licensed), bartender, bootlegger, part-time lounge singer (illegally)
Skillset: Though Napoli is the war veteran of the Club Sodeux management team, it is his partner who is the true muscle of the operation. While Napoli charms anyone and anything from bosses and local politicians to the unwashed Italian masses of Carroll Gardens, Vivianne is the mercurial beating heart of the Fiordilatte operation - fearlessness and business savvy rolled up into the mold of the 20th century woman and painted over with a thin veneer of calm, known to flake off at the hint of provocation. Renowned in Carroll Gardens for conducting most of Napoli’s business deals for him, Vivianne is the brawn and brains that can back up the mouth. She runs the shipments. She runs the club. Damnably enough, she is usually the one behind the gun whenever such a scenario is called for - becoming known as the only flapper with a trigger finger across Caroll Gardens. She even handles most of the money - though Napoli, understandably, has taken a greater role in this aspect of their criminal operations over the last couple years.

The greatest mark against Vivianne’s reliability to her partner is her increasingly serious addiction to cocaine. Though her habit is entirely recreational and she’s never once done a piece of work while high, more than once the temptation to skim funds from the speakeasy’s books has become great enough that she now occasionally conscripts Napoli into balancing accounts for her rather than betray his trust. Though she’s not entirely certain how he truly feels about the habit, the fact that it was Napoli who coined her “Coca-Cola,” after both her drug of choice and the name of their original bar before America went dry, has led her to believe he’s at least tolerant of it - a sign of trust that has only furthered her odd devotion to the breezy Italian.
Property: Napoli Fiordilatte, Club Sodeux, Renault Taxi de la Marne, Beretta OVP, FN Model 1910
History: Though she’s taken to it with aplomb, the criminal lifestyle has never been something Vivianne Laurent aspired to. She had no particular skills at pickpocketing, confidence tricks, or moving illicit items. She grew up with one hell of a poker face, but rarely needed to use it - she grew up as the dutiful, well-adjusted daughter of a playful and gentle antique collector and an adventurous father, an Ottoman Turk who had signed up with the French Foreign Legion in his youth and settled down into a comfortable career as the maddest Renault owner in Paris.

The Great War brought out her wild side.

Her father had taken ill several weeks before and was slow in recovering, so it was Vivianne who manned his cab in the bold (yet exaggerated) dispatch of Paris’ taxi fleet on the Marne. Amongst those stuffed into Vivianne’s cab was a smartassed Italian bastard in the uniform of a Foreign Legion member who called himself Napoli Fiordilatte. All along the ride, he jested with his cabmates and harassed Vivanne mercilessly, and the repressed young girl prayed for a quick end to the war - but not before it put an end to that Italian bastard.

Neither wish came true.

In time, her father went off with the Foreign Legion yet again, and upon his return from the war she found that the bastard had not only survived, but gotten to know and befriend her father over the course of their time in the trenches. In time, Vivianne came to know and reluctantly befriend the Italian, too - eventually becoming fiercely enamored with him, much to her own chagrin. The two attempted to settle in Italy for a short time after the war, but both eventually agreed that the real opportunity was across the Atlantic, in the United States.

It was, though not in the way that they had planned.

See, Napoli and Vivianne got it in their heads that their talents meshed together well enough to scrounge together a club. Live the American Dream. Yadda yadda yadda. For a brief time, maybe a year or so, it worked out flawlessly. The pair’s business, Club Soda (thanks Napoli) - was a financial success and even made Viv a little bit more outgoing - right up until the country went dry. Suddenly the pair’s business had gone up in smoke, and the European immigrants were back to square one.

For a girl who was so straight-laced before she had met him, Vivianne had the idea to go illicit pretty quickly. 

Using Napoli’s heritage and charm to start up their network of connections, as well as Viv’s smarts and intimidation factor, the two had managed to establish a new speakeasy, Club Sodeux (a play on this business being their second Club Soda and Viv’s native French) and by the end of 1921 the pair of fire-forged criminals had themselves a booming enterprise yet again. It was around this time that Vivianne picked up her cocaine habit, a rare indulgence that quickly blossomed into recreational use by the year 1922.
Plank Sinatra Member

the reaper won't come when you're ready for him

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