Alexandra Banks
Nickname: Alex
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Bisexual
Nationality: American (Caucasian and African descent)
Height: 5' 8"
Weight: 135lbs
Biography: Originally from Virginia, Alex moved to the great state of New York with her mother when she was twelve years old. After her father had taken off with another woman, she and her mother moved in with her grandparents, who had been kind enough to open their home to them until her mother could find a job that paid well enough to support them both. In the meantime, Alex was enrolled in public school and lived a somewhat normal life. She had friends, got good grades, and when she was in high school, she had even begun looking into scholarships to go to college. However, everything fell apart after she met Matt.
From the start there were red flags about him that she knew in hindsight that she should have paid more attention to: his short fuse, the way he oscillated between showering compliments and tearing her down, his frequent disappearances, and even the few times when he had been physically aggressive. But she had been young and naive at seventeen years old, so the pride that came with dating an older man (23) had outweighed the cons. At first, he had been charming, veritably sweeping her off her teenage feet and flattering her beauty and wit. After about six months, however, his true colors began to bleed through in the form of emotional and physical abuse.
He started convincing her that she owed him for everything good in her life (because her mother was never able to hold a steady job, he'd bought her clothes and food and other necessities) and that because he was going out of his way to help her, she had to repay him. Blindsided and unable to grasp that he was manipulating her, Alex reluctantly followed all of his orders for the next year and a half, even when he brought her along to his "meetings" and told her to go with the other men who showed up. She had been aware enough to realize that Matt was exchanging her for money every time he set up those secretive deals, but he always promised to use his earnings to keep her and her mother from being kicked to the streets, so she complied. Those had been the darkest days of her life, when she had come to see herself as a tool for her abusive boyfriend to use and toss aside when he didn't need her.
Her moment of clarity came after she turned nineteen. By that point, she had learned that Matt was a member of the Italian mob and that his other meetings - the ones she wasn't invited to - were of a criminal nature. Backed into a corner, she had grown desperate enough to find proof of his illegal activity and get him caught that she'd tailed him to a particularly quiet dealing at the docks. Her plan had been to snap some pictures on her phone as evidence and send them anonymously to the police. However, she never got that far as she ended up witnessing Matt and his goons betray the men they were meeting with. They shot them all on the spot, and she had been so shocked by the sight that she'd screamed before she could stop herself.
The instant the cry had left her lips, Matt and the other men at his side had turned toward her, shouting at her to come out, but instead, she'd turned tail and fled. She hadn't known where she was going, so she had taken cover at a hostel for the rest of the night, afraid that Matt would follow her if she went home. Waiting until the next morning before she risked venturing out again, she returned to her mother's apartment, only to find that her boyfriend had gotten there ahead of her. Her mother was already dead on the living room floor, and there was a note on the coffee table telling her to go back to Matt's apartment or else she would be next.
Horrified and convinced that she was to blame for Matt's terrible deed, she didn't give herself long to grieve before she fled again, taking only a duffel bag full of her belongings with her on the way out. She knew that if she obeyed the warning on the note, she wouldn't walk away with her life. Whatever was going on between Matt and the other mobsters, she'd seen too much. She had to run away if she wanted to survive to see the next day. And so she did, taking cover among the thousands of homeless people living in New York City for the next three years to keep Matt from finding her and finishing her off.
