Description

Personality

Santo is a little prick, plain and simple. He's very charismatic, especially for his age, but it seems as though he doesn't think of other people as...well, people, but rather objects which he's in every right to use to his own advantage. He has a pretty short fuse, inherited from his father's side of the family, and whenever that fuse blows his first instinct is to use violence against whoever made it do so. His high temper means that he doesn't often have a chance to plan out his actions, but when he does he plans them well and will resort to desperate measures to go through with those plans, not thinking twice to "take care of" any poor sap who gets in his way and most likely won't feel any remorse for it afterwards. In fact, he'll probably be laughing all the way to prison. He's extremely sarcastic and has a very hard time taking anything seriously. If somebody comes crying to him about their problems for God knows what reason he'll either laugh in their face and outright tell them that he doesn't give a shxt or "charm" them with his "witty" sarcasm. Empathy? Pah, he's probably never heard of such a word.

Oddly enough, however, he is actually capable of showing affection. Not so much towards other people, but when it comes to animals he suddenly melts into a soppy old lady. He shows several early signs of psychopathy, but taking pleasure in hurting animals is not one of them. He is also a devout Roman Catholic.

Equipment

Even the Giovannis know that Santo is a little too young to be carrying a gun around, and even if he wasn't he couldn't be trusted with one, but that didn't stop them from giving him a small handgun. Santo promised that he'll only use it for self-defence or when the boss tells him to.

History

Santo was born in Naples, Southern Italy, to Stephano and Francesca Giovanni. His father wasn't around for most of his childhood because he was a busy, busy businessman, so Santo was mainly raised by his mother as an only child, meaning that, even though he's a Giovanni by blood (the blood boss is his uncle), the first eleven years of his life were fairly uneventful. Francesca was a nervous woman and a wee bit of a push over, meaning that, unless Stephano "dropped by for a visit" as Santo's grandmother Beatrice, who lived with the family, would say, Santo mostly got to do whatever the hell he wanted. One of the only things Francesca actually forced him to do was learn English, as she believed that this was the key to success. She also tried to teach him Mandarin, but gave up after the boy couldn't even say or write "nǐ hǎo" correctly. He picked English up fairly quickly, though, since the family were obviously pretty well-off so Francesca was able to hire a private English tutor before Santo had even started school. By the time he was seven or eight, he was rambling away in both Neapolitan Italian and English.

A few weeks after Santo turned ten he ended up with a baby sister, Rosalba (she was originally going to be called Beatrice, but grandmother Beatrice said that Rosalba was a much nicer name). She was a very sweet baby, but also the result of a broken condom and the pregnancy and birth were so traumatic that Francesca was left severely depressed, so Beatrice had to replace her as the head of the household (de facto, Santo had technically been the head since he was in his nappies, but y'know). During this time the old woman began to realise how much of a manipulative twerp her grandson really was.

Two years later, just as Francesca was getting back on her feet, tragedy struck. It was Stephano and Francesca's anniversary and the boss was giving Stephano the night off, so they decided to go to a nice restaurant in Sorento. It was a wonderful evening, the first time they'd been together like that in a while, but just as they were walking home a car suddenly swerved round the corner. The window opened and, before the couple could react, there were two gunshots. The guy, whoever they were, had actually been aiming for Stephano, but instead their lousy aim and the fact that the car was still moving meant that they hit Francesca in the neck instead. By the time the ambulance arrived she was as dead as a doornail.

The police done some investigations into the shooting but, being the Italian police and all, they probably never will find who the killer was, nor will they ever know Stephano's true occupation. The murder caused Stephano to spend even more time at work, probably a lot more than necessary, and it wasn't long before he moved permantly to Belladonna to be closer to his boss (who was also his brother) and further away from Naples. He was probably taking the case into his own hands. Meanwhile at home, Beatrice, devasted by the death of her daughter-in-law who she had become closer to than her own son, decided that she couldn't be bothered to put up with Santo's crap for much longer. Something about his mother's death - probably grief, she figured - caused his behaviour to get even worse and his temper was actually beginning to scare the living shxt out of her. So, after several arguments with Santo and a few battles with the social services, Santo was sent to live with his father in Belladonna along with Rosalba, since Beatrice had to admit that he was actually a lot better at looking after her than she was. Beatrice was later sent to a nursing home.

It didn't take Santo too long to settle into Belladonna quite nicely, even though it took him a few months to understand the dialect fully. Stephano convinced the boss to hire him as "an Associate" (errand boy), saying that the kid had potential to benefit the mob greatly in their battle against the D'Agistinos. He wasn't sure what to do with Rosalba now that Santo was going to either be at school or at "work" most of the time, so he eventually hired an au-pair from England or somewhere like that to look after her.

(Hooray for an unrealistic backstory and awkward sentence structure...?)