Full Name: Evony Charlotte Lorena de la Longine
Other Names: Throughout her life, Evony has had a array of different names. Professionally, she has been known as Miss de la Longine, Madam and Madam Detroit. Personally, she has been Mommy, and later, Mom. Evony believes a name defines a relationship. It's the basis to everything, the very first impression.
Gender: Female
Age: 39
Orientation: Straight
Hometown: Lansing, Michigan
Role: The Madam
Despite Evonyβs heavy involvement in an industry that is not considered savoury, she has not fallen into the traps that many others in her situation have, in a bid to make more money and further their careers. Every decision she makes on the well-being of her girls is influenced by her past and the time she spent on the game herself, so to speak. Her managerial style is also influenced by the man who used to be her pimp, and her past experiences with him. Evony considers herself a woman of certain morals, and wonβt break them. For instance, she wonβt allow anything to happen to her girls. All clients are vetted before they are allowed to book an appointment, security is employed to keep them safe and any client that is found to have hurt a girl is blacklisted and made to pay for what they did. Evony also wonβt employ minors, or anyone who is being forced into it. She makes sure all the girls are well cared for, receiving meals and a bed.
When Evony was younger, she allowed emotions to rule her. She was easily influenced and impressionable, people found it easy to manipulate her, and Evony suffered as a result. But growing up has steeled her against this. She still likes to let go, to allow herself to feel emotions and act based on what she wants rather than what she should be doing. But now, it is her choice, not someone elseβs.
Evony is a wonderful liar, a skill picked up through many years in this business. Sheβs also sarcastic, using a cutting comment to show others who is in charge. She is blunt in her comments and doesnβt sugar-coat it. Her manner is usually in this vain, but she knows when all serious is needed. By others, Evony is considered a glamorous woman. She dresses well and isnβt afraid to splash out on clothes. She is a relatively vain woman, and the way she looks is very important to her. Her whole demeanour, despite the life sheβs lead, gives the air of good breeding and class.
Evony de la Longine cares deeply for her children. Despite the front she puts on, she has a very maternal aspect to her personality. She would do anything to ensure her childrenβs happiness and safety, and would be devastated if anything were to happen to either one of them. This maternal aspect also shows through in the way she treats the girls under her care.
The Colour Purple: Something about it has just always appealed to Evony. Maybe the luxury it simplified, or the class, but she adores it.
Her Children: [The Madamβs Son] and Haley de la Longine are very important to Evony. She loves them both deeply and would never let anything happen to them. She likes to think she is a good mother to them, and hopes others see her that way too.
Champagne: Evony loves the way the bubbles feel on her tongue. In her opinion, the expensive champagne is the best, her favourite being Krug.
Sarcasm: It has been Evonyβs default style of speech for a lot of years. Most have come to understand that itβs not her being a bitch, but just simply the way she speaks.
Henry Garmoyle: Possibly it was because Henry died before heβd had chance to taint himself in Evonyβs eyes, but Evony always considers him the love of her life. Sheβs still heartbroken about the way he died, but has learnt to move on.
Fashion: The way she looks is all important to Evony, and she adores shopping. She wonβt wear anything without a designer label, and in this respect she is still closest to her roots.
Cats: She used to own a black one as a child, named Midnight. Evony adored Midnight, but she was killed by her father who accidentally shot her while out hunting when Evony was thirteen. Evony never quite forgave him for it. In part, The Midnight Lounge is named after her childhood pet. She now keeps a cat called Whisper, who lives upstairs at The Midnight Lounge.
Hospitals: Thereβs just something about those places that makes Evony feel deeply uncomfortable.
Her Roots: Evony is not proud of where she came from, and sheβs certainly not proud of the family she had. She hates their demeanour and the way they treated one another. She hasnβt seen any of them since she was seventeen.
Guns: She's had bad experiences with them in the past. She allows her security to carry one, and she too owns one that she keeps in the draw of her bedside table. However, she will not carry it with her unless completely necessary.
Danny Dedores: Evony can honestly not say she has any fond memories of her old pimp. The man was cruel, lecherous and violent. However, she is grateful for what she learnt from him about how not to run a prostitution business.
Being Pregnant: Though Evony loves her children dearly, the process to get there was not a pleasant one. Both pregnancies were difficult; she felt sick, tired, uncomfortable and sore throughout. Itβs not that she doesnβt want more children, but sheβs glad sheβs probably almost too old now to have anymore.
Misjudging Clients: Evony is a pretty good judge of character, but she is always worried she will make a mistake and one of her girls will get hurt. She knew she would feel solely responsible for what happened, which is why she has always had her trusted security employed at The Midnight Lounge.
Evony makes a pretty good cocktail. When she was trapped in her marriage to George Conrad, she had to find some way to occupy her time. And, in some of that time she decided to take a course on cocktail making. Now she knows the standard cocktail menu of most bars off by heart and can mix the recipes without hesitation.
She is also a great liar, a skill that has been very useful to her. Sheβs unsure quite where she first picked it up, and sheβs not always proud of it, but she certainly wouldnβt give it up. Sheβs also persuasive, which goes hand in hand with her skill to lie and is just as helpful.
Evony is a good mother. Despite what others may think, she doesnβt believe bringing her children up in the environment she has has done them any harm. In fact, the way she sees it, she has given them valuable life experience that you can get nowhere else. Evony would do anything for her children, and truly cares for them.
Evony sees her contacts as a strength. She has served many of the most influential and wealthy men in the city of Detroit and can easily use the contacts she has accumulated over the years to call in favours.
Evony is no good at household chores. Out of pure boredom when she was expected to be a housewife for five years of her life, she offered to do them. But she could never seem to get the tasks done in a timely fashion and even then they were done badly. Eventually, she gave up and got the staff back in.
Although she has got much better, as a teenager she was very much lead by her emotions and did what she felt she should rather than what, reasonably, she should. With age, she has got much better. But she still occasionally falls back into old habits.
It could be considered a strength or a weakness, but most see it as the later. Evony is terrible for holding a grudge. She will hold the past against someone forever and she struggles to forgive.
Her children are a weakness of Evonyβs. They could easily be used against her as she wouldnβt put anything above them and sheβd see no price as too high for their safety.
Evony is afraid of being arrested. She knows the business she runs is illegal and she has put up several precautions to try and protect herself from the law, but she knows they are already on to her and just looking for evidence to convict her. Evony is terrified sheβll go to prison, leaving her children and her business alone. But the fear isnβt enough for her to quit the job.
Being raped is something that featured heavily in Evonyβs past. It happened at one of the worst points in her life and it took her years to get over. In fact, she still has nightmares about it on occasion. She knows sheβs no longer the defenceless young girl she was all those years ago, but itβs still a very real fear to her that she would do anything to prevent.
The de la Longine family are descended from a long line of wealthy landowners. Originally from France, theyβre thought to have moved to American somewhere within the mid-nineteenth century. No one is really sure where they made their money originally, but it has gradually been passed down through the generations. And through the years, it has been invested and multiplied, leaving each generation wealthier than their predecessors. The family is old money and always will be, with traditional values. Etiquette was everything and this belief has been passed down with the money.
Evonyβs father, Desmond, grew up in the lap of luxury. His father wanted a boy, but ended up with three daughters. In a final attempt to produce himself a son, Desmond was born. In Desmond, he finally achieved this goal; an heir to carry on the family name. Desmond de la Longine wanted for nothing as a child. He was the prized son; adored by his doting mother, prized by his ambitious father. He grew up as the most important child of the de la Longine household, pushed through all the best education. He gained a degree from Harvard in a subject; no one could quite recall which. But heβd done as every de la Longine man had done before him, and heβd made the family proud. In time, his sisters were married off to various wealthy businessmen, politicians and people of power within the country. Desmond married a minor English noble, Victoria, whose father was a Viscount.
Desmond and Victoria de la Longineβs marriage was not a happy one. They married too young, to please their parents, not because they loved one another. It wasnβt that they fought; it was just that they never really loved each other. There was never any emotion behind it, they didnβt care about each other enough to fight. They seemed to tip-toe around each other, being polite, as if theyβd just met. They never broke down those barriers and gained the comfortable familiarity that comes with love. They didnβt really want a life together; they were simply going through the motions. They had three children. The first was Evony. She was born on a cold day in the November of 1973, following as relatively easy pregnancy. Two years later, her brother, Thomas was born, and three years after that, her sister, Isabella.
But as Evony grew up, she began to see her family for what it truly was. The money and the titles had done them no favours at all. Their family had become obsessed by social graces and etiquette and what was βproperβ. They were self-serving and very much focused on the way they looked to onlookers. There was no real love between them. They kept each other at armβs length, preferring to be cold and distant with one another. They did not believe in sharing how they felt or comforting each other. Secrets and personal affairs were expected to be kept just that, personal. Their family looked down on those with less wealth, believing they were unworthy of the attention of The de la Longine family. Evony, though young, knew that this was wrong. Families werenβt supposed to be like that.
Age seventeen, Evony became involved a boy named Henry. He was twenty-one year old son of the Garmoyle family, who were family friends. Though wealthy, well-spoken and connected, which was everything Evonyβs parents wanted in a husband for their daughter, he was also a tearaway. The boy was reckless, he liked to party and sleep around. He flirted shamelessly with young, impressionable Evony, and filled her head with ideas. He talked about how the money both of their familiesβ possessed was evil, how all these manners and customs were hypocrisy, set out by the wealthy to control others, how they didnβt need the money and that they should make their own wealth, without all these shackles of an old-money family. When Evonyβs parents forbid to see Henry, he convinced her to run away with him to Detroit, leaving their controlling families and the ties of wealth behind. And Evony, so in love with Henry that she wouldβve done anything for him, agreed.
They persuaded a trucker to give them a lift east to the city of Detroit, where they hoped to make a life for themselves. In the beginning it was perfect. They went out every night, no longer held back by expectations and pleasantries. But just a month after arriving in the city, Henry got caught up in a bar fight and was shot. He died immediately.
Evony, realising how alone and lost she was, tried to return to her family. But they no longer wanted her, humiliated by her abandonment and antics in Detroit. She was forced to return to the city once more, living with a friend she and Henry had made in their short time there. She gradually sold the expensive clothes sheβd brought with her to pay for the cost of living and a little rent to her friend. But no job wanted an unqualified seventeen year old. This was when Evony met Danny Dedores. He told her he could get her work, where men would pay to sleep with her. He told her this was a privilege, that she would have the easiest job in the whole city and yet still be earning more than most. Evony turned him down immediately, saying she wouldnβt sell her body to anyone.
Due to living such an extravagant life previously, Evony had no concept of saving money, and it ran dry quickly. Her friend was forced to make her leave, no longer able to pay for them both to live. Forced out onto the street, Evonyβs future looked bleak. She knew she couldnβt live like this, she was going to die. She could no longer afford to be picky about the jobs she took, and she found Danny Dedores.
Immediately, he set her up with her first client. At first, the men werenβt so bad. They were no Henry, but they didnβt ask too much of her. But the men gradually became more aggressive. And when she begged Danny not to make her see her latest client, whoβd been hitting her, Danny refused. He told her she was worthless, and that she had no choice; she would do as he said. And then, he raped her. Evony was trapped, being forced into things she didnβt want to do and being used by her pimp, to fulfil his needs sexually as well as lining his pockets.
But George Conrad was Evonyβs saving grace. He was a businessman, in his late fourties, who used the service of girls under Danny Dedoresβ management. But when he met Evony, he told her afterwards, it was as if he felt a true connection that ran deeper than the physical act they were committing. Evony, however, was not so taken with him herself. But to her, anything was better than the way she was trapped now. So George took her away with him.
They were married as soon as Evony turned eighteen, and she was pregnant with their first child not long after her nineteenth birthday. George was wealthy, and she became a kept woman once more, the way her parents had always hoped sheβd be. In a way, sheβd come full circle. Sheβd tried so hard to change her fate, and yet sheβd ended becoming the very woman she never wanted to be.
In the September of 1992, Evony gave birth to a baby boy named [The Madamβs Son]. And, on August the 31st, 1994, she had a girl named Haley. She promised herself, then, that she would never become like her parents. She would always care for her children, make sure they were close and that she never ended up holding her children at armβs length. But as her children grew up, Evony became more and more unhappy. She hosted Galas and dinner parties and she organised charity events for her husband. And as she and George became increasingly distant, she felt as if she had lost herself. She was turning into her mother day by day, her life and relationships paralleling that of Victoria de la Longine. Evony could barely stand to look at herself.
When her children were five and three respectively, and Evony was twenty-four, she caught George cheating on her. This was the end for their relationship. Looking back on it now, she realises if sheβd truly loved him she probably wouldβve worked it out and tried again. But sheβd never really loved him in the first place, and theyβd become so distant by now that sheβd had no desire to fix things anyway. In the divorce proceedings, Evony took custody of both of the children, returning to her maiden name and changing their surname too. It wasnβt that she was proud of the family sheβd come from and their roots, but she no longer wanted to be tied by name to a marriage that was never really going to ever work out. She had lost who she was between her days in prostitution and her failed marriage. And now, she felt she needed her name once more. She also received a large sum of money and property from her husband, in the settlement.
Now, Evony easily had enough money to create a nice life for her and her young children, but she no longer had a purpose. Her life had no drive behind it. Other than caring for her children, she had nothing to fill the days. Until, she met Danny Dedores once more. It was unexpected, that was for certain. Heβd heard she was no longer with her husband, and wanted to know if she wanted to come and work for him again. Disgusted, Evony declined. But it made her think. There were so many girls out there on the street, being abused and used by men like him. She could change that. Besides, with the correct management and advertising techniques, being a Madam could be a fairly lucrative business. And so, The Midnight Lounge was set up.
Evony sold some of the property sheβd received in the divorce proceedings to buy a bar just outside the main business district of Detroit. Sheβd got planning permission to rebuild the backrooms and build a whole upstairs to the building. And this, became The Midnight Lounge. At first, the business was small. She only had four girls working for her. But quickly, the classy club received a reputation and the type of clientele Evony was hoping for began to increase in numbers. She gradually took on more girls, changing the building and allowing it to grow with the business. She developed shrewd business techniques and sharp instincts, and soon, The Midnight Lounge was bringing in more money than Evony ever expected.
Now, the business is at the height of its success. Evonyβs two children have both grown up and are helping with the day to day runningβs. The girls currently employed are some of the best girls The Madam has ever had. It's thriving, and all only hope it continues.