peyton riley was born into the world of organized crime. she is the only child of sean riley, one of gotham's most established irish gangsters and owner of riley's old irish pub in the bowery, and as such, was expected to follow in her father's footsteps. as she came of age, however, sean and his criminal associates deemed peyton to be too soft, often telling her to "man up" or to "stop being a sissy." unable to use her as an enforcer or even a foot soldier, sean ultimately decided to marry her off to one of the daughters of the viti family in order to form an alliance with carmine falcone.
the viti family saw this as an opportunity to "make an honest woman" out of the wild child and party girl that was their youngest member, julia, and agreed to the arrangement with falcone's blessing. it didn't take julia long to figure out her newlywed was more interested in wearing her dresses than peeling them off of her, and the two came to an understanding: julia would look the other way while peyton played dress up so long as peyton kept her mouth shut about julia's sleepovers with her various friends.
one of those "friends" turned out to be johnny sabatino, an up-and-coming gangster who worked for the notorious scarface, one of the greatest crime bosses in gotham. johnny capitalized on julia's apparent dissatisfaction with her arranged marriage, plying her with vignettes of the life she deserved to have, one filled with glitz and glamor and a real man by her side... if only her current partner was out of the picture.
eventually, julia capitulated to johnny's promise of living the high life and the two plotted to take out both peyton and sean in a way that made it look like the result of in-fighting among the other irish crime families; that way, julia would inherit the riley's assets as peyton's widow while simultaneously wiping a major player off the board for the sabatino family to seize more power. johnny lured sean and members of the sullivans, irish enforcers of the falcones, to a church and had them killed in a staged shoot out. meanwhile, julia brought peyton to one of the riley's warehouses under false pretenses where she was shot multiple times and left for dead by johnny's hired guns.
at the same time, a turf war had broken out between great white shark and the penguin and culminated in a firefight in the same area. as peyton bled out on the floor, she heard several voices and the sound of more gunshots nearby. once the fight was over, batman, robin, and commissioner gordon arrived on the scene and identified one of the victims of the shootout was arnold wesker, better known as the ventriloquist; johnny had sold his boss out in hopes of becoming his own man.
arnold—still alive but critically injured—was rushed to gotham general, but his broken scarface dummy was left behind in the shuffle. once the voices were gone and the coast was clear, peyton laboriously dragged herself into the room, but was surprised to hear the doll begin to speak to her: " aw, no. who'd do an awful thing like dat to a pretty girl like you? " the horror of believing she'd gone crazy from getting shot in the head was superseded by the euphoria of being seen as a woman for the first time.
scarface encouraged peyton to take him with her; he promised they'd help fix each other up, get revenge on the ones responsible for putting them in such a sorry state but were too stupid to finish the job, and then they'd run this town—together.
a few notes about frankie's version™ of peyton riley and scarface:
scarface is sentient. canon attributes the arnold wesker/peyton riley and scarface dichotomy to dissociative identity disorder, but the dummy was carved from a block of wood from the blackgate penitentiary gallows and that's cursed as hell so I've decided scarface is indeed alive, though he requires a "host" to carry out his will. characters are free to react to peyton as if she's just "doing a bit" with the puppet.
to elaborate, peyton has said multiple times that whenever she touches scarface, "it's like he's inside my head." when the dummy is taken away from her and she is "freed" from his control, peyton is visibly distressed at all the people she's been forced to hurt on scarface's behalf. I'm interpreting the peyton/scarface relationship as a possession and not as a manifestation of mental illness.
in the original canon, arnold wesker is killed by the tally man and that's how peyton acquires scarface. I've left wesker's fate ambiguous for more possibilities to play with (is he dead? trying to get scarface back? does he have a new dummy? is he on the road to recovery?). besides, it's comics; nobody ever stays dead, anyway.