 |
CHARACTERS |
JAKE
VIRTUE
MELISSA LEE
MARY LEE
STEVE CAAN
EDDIE LEE
MICHAEL LEE
RAFI NAVON
DAMON MALDONADO
SERGEI KAZAKOV
VLADIMIR BYKOV
YURI PEDROSSOV
VERONICA GUERRERO
MICHELLE LEE
MATTHEW LEE
JULIE LEE
LINDSAY CHEUNG
LESLIE CHEUNG
HENRY LEE
SEMION WEITZ
DEREK SIMPSON
PAVEL POPOV
ETON SINGER
KEVIN HONG
SHAGEN
ANZOR KASHIN
BORIS VOLKOV
DIMITRI VOLKOV
HARRY WONG
NICKY TAN
FRANKIE THE FENCE
JERRY CILETTI
SUZIE KIM
CARLOS CORDON
PACO CORDOVA
JOKER
DANNY WU
WANG JAK MAN
MR. CHOW
RAFIK PARSSEGHIAN
JOEY D.
WINSTON JONES
JASON FLYMMING
TAKESHI TANAKA
ANGIE GAROLO
TITO CORDOVA
VIJAY KHAN
MARCEL YAO
PHIL SMITH
CHARLIE TANG
ERIC CLAYTON
JUNIOR SOTELO
JACK CHURCH
FELIX HINOJOSA
IRINIA PEDROSSOV
WU PENG
JENNIFER CHEN
WILLIAM LO
JESSICA (RAVEN) MEIER
|
| Character
Name: Melissa Lee |
| Ties/Affiliations:
Melissa Lee is the daughter of the late Charlie Tang, who was the Cho-kun
of the Black Dragon Triad Society out of Hong Kong. |
| Aliases:
None |
| Age:
49 |
| Ethnicity:
Chinese (Hong Kong) |
| Sex:
Female |
| Health
Condition: Healthy, with a fit physique. She was a lifelong student
of martial arts, having grown up around a lot of young Triad 49s, all of
whom were eager to teach her to fight off unwanted suitors. But mainly they
taught her as a way of hoping to score points with her father. |
| Sexual
Orientation? Heterosexual |
| Does
she have a lot of friends? Aside from Jake, she feels like she
doesn’t have any friends. |
| Married?
Single? Exes? Melissa is twice divorced. After having been sent
against her will to Paris to go to fashion design school at the age of 16,
she didn’t do well. She didn’t speak French, so her mother berated
her and demanded she come home. But after refusing to come home, Melissa's
mother, Mary, said she couldn’t come home at all and she had to fend
for herself. She married Lawrence Wong and bore her first son Michael, but
the marriage fell apart after moving back to Hong Kong, when Lawrence got
mixed up in business dealings involving her mother. Melissa married her
second husband Joseph Liu out of her Rolodex. He sold her a car once, and
she had decided that she was tired of being made fun of by her mother and
sisters for being a single mother. Melissa soon had Michelle and Matthew
with Joseph and they moved, joining the family in Jakarta just before Hong
Kong was handed over to the Chinese government by the British. But despite
Melissa’s advice to the contrary, Joseph became involved in a complicated
real estate scam that somehow involved Mary, although the details remain
unclear to Melissa. Joseph absconded with the deeds to millions in real
estate that was slated for development, leaving Melissa with the kids on
their own at around the same time that her father was assassinated by his
business associates in Jakarta. The whole family had to flee Jakarta to
the United States and have been living under her mother’s maiden name
of Lee. |
| What
she does and why? Melissa works as a retail store manager of a
women’s apparel store at the Fox Hills Mall, because she didn’t
know what else to do when she came to the U.S. She used to be a fashion
model, and retail entrepreneur. She owned a few stores in Jakarta, and worked
as an independent consultant and buyer for a number of high-fashion stores
in Jakarta. But after her second marriage ended and she was forced to flee
to the U.S., Melissa has lost all of her self confidence and she fell into
a rut, until she met Jake Virtue. Melissa is desperately in love with Jake,
because he is the only person she ever met who has the balls to say "no"
to her mother, who is her horror, and the single most destructive force
in her life. Until she met Jake, Melissa never realized that she had never
experienced love before, and didn't know how to love. Before Jake came along,
Melissa was ALL business. If you didn't have money, or weren't ready and
willing to do business, she wouldn't even speak to you. But somehow he just
swept her off her feet with his blunt honesty and warmth. But because of
her destructive relationship with her mother, it brings problems for her
and Jake. She tends to binge-drink, after several weeks of dealing with
her mother's incessant betrating criticism. Melissa has, however, been flirting
with Christianity since coming to the United States, and always tries to
get Jake to go to church with her on Sundays, but he never wants to go.
|
| What
are her goals? What Melissa wants the most is to have her own business
again, and to be out from under her mother's sphere of influence. But somehow,
as much as Jake wants to move farther away from her mother, Melissa cannot
seem to bring herself to go through with it. |
