❝ SHE’S NOT A KILLER BUT SHE’LL FUCKING BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF. ❞
NAME: Giannina Giarusso
GENDER/PRONOUNS: CIS Female, She/Her
DATE OF BIRTH: June 11th, 1988
BIRTH PLACE: Savannah, Georgia
CURRENT RESIDENCE: Downtown
OCCUPATION: Ballet Teacher/Exotic Dancer at LUX/Drug Dealer for the Morgan Family
FACE CLAIM: Nina Dobrev
Trigger Warnings: Homophobia, Drug Use, Drug Distribution
Giannina Giarusso, born originally as Victoria Giannina Braithwaite, is the third born of five Braithewaite children in Savannah, Georgia. Her family came from old money, her father taking over his father’s position as the CEO of a large oil company based out of Georgia, her mother a retired Broadway actress who had moved south after meeting the businessman. The girl wanted for almost nothing growing up, being thrust into ballet and ballroom dancing lessons at age three as her parents tried to instill girlish, debutante-style activities upon their eldest daughter. However, the young girl was stubborn as hell, wanting to roughhouse alongside her older brothers and take martial arts classes instead. Born with her father’s natural skill for negotiation, Giannina was able to negotiate a deal with her parents; she was able to take Hapkido and Krav Maga, as long as she remained in ballet lessons. And to this day, Giannina will say that the one thing that her parents did right was keeping the girl in ballet, because she grew to love it, and excelled at it.
Giannina knew from an early age that she was attracted to women in the way that her sisters were attracted to me. It began in middle school, when she met her best friend, Taylor. The two were practically inseparable, going off to camp together and being invited on each other’s’ family trips. When Giannina and Taylor entered high school, they decided to become an official couple, welcomed warmly by Taylor’s family. Gigi’s family, however, not so much. Her father had an image to uphold, one that didn’t include a gay daughter, so Giannina enlisted the help of her male best friend, also named Taylor, to pose as her boyfriend at family events, much to her own distaste of it. And that worked for the entirety of her high school tenure, until her father caught Giannina kissing the real Taylor, the female Taylor. He gave Giannina an ultimatum, either break up with Taylor and enter a courtship with the son of one of her father’s colleagues, or be cut off. The teen chose the latter, and with a tearful goodbye to her siblings and her mother in the middle of the night, Giannina and Taylor hopped on the first train to New York City with backpacks full of cash and a suitcase of clothing each.
Upon arriving in New York, she quickly ditched her birth name, legally changing it to Giannina Giarusso, taking on her mother’s maiden name. The couple took the money they had swiped from Giannina’s parents’ safe to pay a year’s worth of rent on a small apartment between their respective school. While their rent was paid, the girls still needed incomes, picking up jobs here and there to make ends meet through their time in college. Upon graduating from the Joffrey Ballet School, Giannina auditioned for the New York City Ballet, shocked when she was brought on as a company dancer. Giannina’s career with the New York City Ballet Company spanned eight years, from 2005 - 2016. She started out as a company member, dancing ensemble roles for the first five years of her career. It wasn’t until July of 2013 that Giannina was promoted to a principle dancer, landing the role of Rosaline in her company’s performance of Romeo and Juliet. It was once she became a principal dancer that she was introduced to cocaine. Some of the other dancers would use occasionally to avoid having to abide by their strict diet provided by the company, and Gigi, who was always a glutton for a good burger and fries, figured it would be a good way to indulge in the foods she was never allowed during her rigorous training. She landed her largest role to date when she was cast as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. On November 22nd, 2015, Giannina was in a dress rehearsal, two weeks before they were to take the stage for the first time, when she felt a pain in her ankle and calf, causing her left leg to give out. Turns out, she had torn her ACL and required surgery, causing the brunette to lose her role and position as a principle dancer within the company.
After her surgery, Giannina struggled to adjust. She took the news of not being able to dance professionally again incredibly hard, and began pulling away from Taylor. Sure, she knew it was wrong, but watching the love of her life get to fulfill her dream while her own dream was shattered absolutely broke the girl. Instead, she turned to cocaine, using more frequently than she did when she was dancing, and eventually began to deal on her own. Several long and painful fights later, Taylor gave Gigi an ultimatum – either her relationship with drugs or their relationship. Not one to be driven by ultimatums, Giannina left Taylor in 2016 without a backwards glance, a suitcase of her things and an engagement ring in her purse. She hopped on a train out of Manhattan and found Crystal City, a place about an hour outside of where her heart lived. She took a job at Encore Dance Company teaching ballet to keep her passion for dance alive, but realized quickly that while her salary at the studio was enough to cover her bills, she needed more. She began dancing at LUX at night for some extra cash, and befriended the owner, Elias. She realized quickly the kind of business he ran alongside the club and convinced him in 2018 to let her make deals for him from within the club, using her position as a dancer as a cover.
