Meet Elise Torres, one of the protagonists of Crime Spouses!
Elise Alexandra Torres was born on October 30th, 1971. She is a Scorpio.
Her family was solidly middle class and happy. She had a younger brother and sister; they were twins. She was five years older than them and she had just turned fifteen when they died.
After her entire family was killed, Elise had to grow up really fast. She was taken in by an extended uncle of hers, Great Uncle Armando Torres. He’s on the run, not from the law but from someone else with a massive reach and network. Essentially, he says, “Okay, kid, you’re on your own from here,” and dips. Elise goes directly into working, because her uncle can only afford to send her so much money before he gets found. She works a ton of odd jobs but eventually begins working in a strip club because she’s still underage and they don’t check.
She gets into stealing, first it’s small things but then it grows. Her plans get more elaborate and she finds people that are willing to play pawns. She eventually becomes the leader of a heist gangs nd begins investing in smaller operations as well. After a while she understands that she needs to find somewhere to set up a permanent base and launder her money.
“El Toro Tortilla” is her first restaurant, in a way. It’s the place that she first found, broken down, and falling apart when she first moved to San Bernard. It’s a small Colorado town, falling apart at the seams, but she likes it. It’ll serve her purposes. She begins to pump money into the town as she brings not only her stolen goods, but also previously stated pawns. She likes a couple of them, dumb as rocks though they may be, but she hires a lot of “out-of-work” people who are either immigrants, people of color, or openly queer. She figures, if they’re more grateful for the job, they’re less likely to betray her later. Also, they’re easier to disappear if they ever do betray her.
She doesn’t like the idea of betrayal, of course, but she can’t run the risk of trusting that someone won’t. She isn’t built to operate like that. To her, everything is a competition, everything is a chance to screw someone over or to come out on top.










