Quiet and attentive, Claudia was the perfect mafia wife, married to Furio Annunzio, associate with the Marcello crime family in New Orleans. Then, in the late 1980s, Furio began a six year long protracted battle with colon cancer. Claudia looked after him the best she could, but during his periods of incoherency while on the drugs, she began to act as his agent, directing his crew under instructions she'd been given. As the periods grew longer and more frequent, she began to improvise, correcting mistakes in his judgement and then, finally, taking initiative. When it was over and her husband began to recover, she found herself unable to let go.
In the grand tradition of the Borgia's, Claudia began to poison her husband to keep him ill. His bad health baffled his doctors and kept him manageable while his wife continued to take over his operation. With the opportunities opening with the legalization of dockside gambling, she began to expand them from their limited scope in shipping and petty crime. However, both her husband's doctors and his crew began to grow suspicious. When things looked about to come to a head and she was forced to stop dosing his food, she was approached by a distant relative who made her a rather extraordinary offer.
It wasn't easy choosing to accept the existence which Alex offered her, but, in the end, she felt that she had no real choice. Besides, her advancing age scared her. She had suffered through her husband's ill health and feared sickness and old age. Her looks were already suffering under the aegis of middle age. So, she accepted and soon her husband was bound to her will by something stronger than any drug: the blood. She has only had a couple short years to adjust to her new condition, but is managing. Meanwhile, she's set her mind and a new clarity towards making her husband's operation rival that of the glory days of the Marcello family. As the New Orleans mafia falls apart, she has her people scrambling for their share of the pieces, along with the families of Chicago and New York.
Claudia has always been a quiet, thoughtful woman, keeping to herself and carefully watching the world around her. She's been attentive to her family, raising her children and tending to her husband without fault. However, she's always been aware of how precarious their position is. Watching the Marcello family fall apart and mafia families across the country disassembled by massive federal task forces, she began to grow more and more wary of mistakes made by her husband and their crew.
When the opportunity presented itself, she couldn't not act. She hasn't got the lust for power that drives many kindred to try and control the world around her, she just wants to prevent the life she knows from falling apart. A strong sense of tradition and duty to her family drive her and her sire feeds that, inducting her into the ways of her larger family. Meanwhile, she's not lost her demeanor. She is still quiet, but her silence and her soft voice are effective, driven by her strong personal charisma. That and her success have engendered a great deal of loyalty in her, as has her perceived dedication to her husband. Now, even though he's well, she is attends to him when he's involved with business, as an advisor. And though she rarely speaks, even the most surly of his crew pays attention when she does.
Her blood bond and sense of duty have given her a deep sense of devotion to her sire, which may one day grow to be more important to her than her mortal family. Or so he hopes. She respects what he's given her and the family he represents. Her own family, though, are her close confidantes and, other than her sire, she involves herself almost entirely in mortal affairs. She is aware of the Ventrue in the city but has little or no dealings with them.
Most of Claudia's influence lies in traditional areas of mafia control: corrupt local industry, gambling, and pornography. She's kept clear of the drug trade because of the effects it has on loyalty due to the longer sentences.