Emmy was born in the early 1900's in France. Her dad moved the family to America when his construction business was called on to help build in New York.
The family was very well off, but little Emm wanted to play baseball in the streets rather than playing the piano and reciting poetry. How predictable, right?
She meets this kid John and his dad who is the head police commissioner (or.. whatever. he's the big boss, basically) and blah blah they grow up together and when Emm's parents send her away to an all girl's boarding school, John is sad. BLAH BLAH time passes and when she graduates and comes back during Prohibition, John and his dad are all "omg Emmy, you grew up to be so pretteh."
John's dad is secretly a bootlegger and when he sees how pretteh Emmerz is, he recruits her to be their "persuader."

Basically, John's dad wanted to expand his bootlegging empire, and a few mobsters wanted to join him since he could easily cover up any criminal activity with his daytime job, but all of them kind of needed persuasion, so that's where Emm would come in.
She'd meet them at a bar, show a little skin, promise them things, anything to get them to join the gang. There was never any sex involved; Emm drew the line there.


BUT of course one day she crossed that line and got into this mobster's car. John was naturally upset and he kicked her out of the gang.