i belong in hell.

— BIOGRAPHY ( tw for death, drug mention ) 

Daniela was the first born child of Isabel Marin and Luis Diaz. At the time, Isabel and Luis were midway through college, but Isabel dropped out to have her first child. Luis was never truly in the picture for Daniela’s life, though thankfully Isabel’s father helped her raise the child while she went to night school to finish her degree.

By the time Daniela was five, her mother had finished her degree and was working at a small law firm in the Bronx. From an early age, her mother pushed education, wanting the best for her daughter. Daniela a smart kid too and she was the pride and joy of the small Ortega family. When her abuelito was working, Daniela would sit in a corner booth of his diner and color photos, waiting for her mom to get off work. 

Her mother let her join a soccer team when she was eight and Daniela quickly fell in love with the sport. She had always enjoyed watching the sport, but playing it was better. At first she was on a children’s team, but eventually her coach asked her to join a more competitive team. Even at a young age, she had talent and drive to play soccer. 

She was ten years old when her mother married a man named Emilio Ortega. He’d been previously married and had one child of his own already, Hermosa. She was two at the time and suddenly Daniela was an older sister. Her small family was growing and that was important to her. Emilio officially adopted Daniela right when she turned eleven. Four years later, the family welcomed a little boy into the family, Martez. 

It wasn’t long after the baby boy, did Emilio take off. He was struggling with the responsibility of having three children to take care of. It was around then that Daniela started working at the diner with her grandfather to help support the family. 

Daniela was not the smartest student, which was an argument between her and her mother often. Her mom believed Daniela was not trying as hard as she could be, but Daniel struggled in school. She didn’t care about college or education when she only wanted to play soccer. 

By the time she was seventeen, she was playing for both her school soccer team and a competitive travel team. College recruiters were already starting to scout her, wanting to give her a full ride scholarships. Still her mother wanted her to focus on education, not the sport, regardless of what it could give her in terms of education. 

Daniela is not proud of the day her mother died. She’d gotten into a screaming match with her mom and stormed out to take a run. When she came back, an ambulance was outside her home. A heart attack, they said. Dead at the scene. She was barely eighteen and her mother was gone. 

Her abuelito had sold the diner, but Daniela still managed to keep her job. But she needed to find work and quickly, otherwise her siblings would suffer. Thankfully, she knew people from school involved in petty crime. Daniela soon began dealing, specifically for the Cartel, since they ran in her neighborhood. 

Somehow, she managed to graduate high school, but with having to take care of her siblings, Daniela ended up not being able to play soccer, meaning she lost any scholarship or chance she had to play soccer after graduation. Raising two children became her primary goal and the more she started dealing, the harder and harder it became to leave that life behind.  

When Hermosa turned eighteen, she moved out of the house in a rage. She and Daniela had stopped getting along the moment her the second Emilio left. While it always made her sad, she couldn’t do anything about the fact that at barely eighteen, she had to raise two children, not really knowing how to do that in the first place. Daniela hopes some distance from her will give her sister some perspective. 

Daniela still had one more kid to finish raising though. Her younger brother seemed to be cut from much of the same cloth as Daniela and this time, she was determined to let him have the experiences she never had. Daniela doubled down on activity with the cartel, hoping that saving the money her brother would need to be successful after graduating. 

Now that her younger brother is nineteen and moved out and at college, Daniela has slowly started wondering if she ought to back out of the Cartel, but doesn’t really know how to begin doing that. She doesn’t have a college degree of any type and doesn’t have anywhere to go either. This is all she’s known for so long that she doesn’t really know what to do for a living with no education. Maybe her mother was right about that. 

— WANTED CONNECTIONS / PLOTS

a best friend

hook up (daniela doesn’t do relationships) 

people she sells to / frequent customers

competition

fellow soccer lovers (someone to go to games with her)

good influence