<P> In the second season, she is flown to Chicago to testify at the trial of Alex's former boss, Kubra Balik . After perjuring herself at the recommendation of Alex, Piper is returned to Litchfield to serve the remainder of her sentence while Alex is released on early parole for her testimony . After learning her grandmother is dying, Healy assists her in getting furlough to visit her, and then to attend the funeral, which aggravates some of the other inmates . She is also commissioned by a journalist and friend of Larry's to secretly investigate the prison's books, and later collaborates with Caputo to expose Figueroa's corruption, preventing Piper from being transferred to a prison in Virginia . She ends up breaking up with Larry, and after discovering that him and her friend Polly are having an affair, she asks them to report Alex to her probation officer . In the third season, Piper admits to Alex that she was the one that alerted her probation officer that she violated her parole, causing her to be sent back to prison . Piper ends up getting selected for a new work detail creating underwear for Whispers, a lingerie company . After being rebuffed on her attempt to show the company that they were wasting fabric and could make an extra pair of underwear with each sheet, she uses the extra fabric to start a used panty business with her brother Cal, recruits some of the other inmates to wear the panties, and uses Officer Bayley to smuggle the panties out of the prison . At first, she pays the women wearing the panties with ramen noodle seasoning packets, but is forced to give them money after Flaca threatens to cause a strike . However, as her business begins to succeed, she becomes darker and more ruthless, firing Flaca in retaliation for her instigation of the strike . This change in Piper's personality, as well as Alex's paranoia leads to the end of their relationship, and Piper starts a relationship with new inmate Stella Carlin and allowed her to tattoo the words "Trust No Bitch" on her arm . At the end of the third season, Piper discovers that Stella stole her money from her panty business to use as a financial cushion on the outside due to her pending release . Piper at first pretends to forgive her and allows her to keep the money, but later plants several contraband items (including a shiv and some marijuana) in her area and arranges for them to be discovered, causing Stella to be moved to maximum security, while facing an extended sentence . She uses this incident as a warning to the other inmates that may try to cross her . </P> <P> In the fourth season, Piper has allowed the incident with Stella to go to her head, and she has become arrogant and overconfident, hiring her new bunk mate Stephanie Hapakuka as muscle . As a result, when Maria Ruiz tries to persuade Piper to recruit some of her new Dominican friends into her business, Piper is rude to her . Angered, Maria starts a rival business that quickly outperforms Piper's . Faced with the loss of her business, Piper convinces the new guard captain Piscatella to let her start an anti-gang task force, but the women that gather at her meeting mistakenly assume that she wants to start a white supremacist group . During a meeting with one of the COs, the women bring the used panty businesses to his attention (after Piper tried to downplay it), resulting in Maria being caught and Piscatella recommending that she get three to five years added to her sentence . Despite her disgust with the white supremacist gang, she hangs out with them for protection from Maria's gang, but she is still kidnapped by Maria and branded with a swastika . She shows Red the brand while crying on her bed, and later shows Nicky and Alex while smoking crack cocaine in the garden . While high, Piper discovers that Kubra sent Aydin to kill Alex and she killed him after he failed . Later, she was able to get her swastika altered into a window, with the help of Red, Norma, and Alex, and she apologizes to Alex for not believing her during the branding . After the incident, she and Alex start having sex again . Piper tries to convince Piscatella to stop the increasingly draconian treatment of the other inmates by the guards, and when he refuses, she joins the protest to include standing next to Blanca Flores on the cafeteria table . When Aydin's remains are found, she tries to prevent Alex from confessing to Aydin's murder . After Bayley accidentally kills Poussey, she runs into him in the hall while he is trying to go to Poussey's friends to apologize . She tells him to let them grieve and that she will let them know he is sorry in order to prevent him from going to their cell block . At the end of the season, she discovers that Alex has written several notes with Aydin's full name on it and spread it around the prison . She convinces her to gather them up so that they can burn them, but shortly after they throw them into a garbage can and set them on fire, women participating in the riot kick over the can, spreading the papers all over the floor . </P> <P> Alex Vause (played by Laura Prepon)--Alex is a former drug smuggler for an unspecified international drug cartel . Years prior to the beginning of the series, she took a sexual interest in Piper after meeting her in a bar, and gradually integrated her into the drug trade while they traveled the world living in luxury . Alex once convinced Piper to smuggle cash through customs at an airport in Europe, the crime for which Piper is doing time . Alex specifically named Piper during her testimony, which is what led to Piper's later arrest . After Piper broke up with her, Alex began using heroin, but cleaned up in prison . She states during an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that being in prison is her "rock bottom" experience . Alex's mother had worked four jobs, and her father was a washed - up rock star . Alex tracked down her father and struck up a friendship with his drug dealer who subsequently became her industry contact in a drug cartel . Alex is not particularly broken up about being in prison, since she at least managed to free herself of her drug addiction . She admits to Piper and Nicky that she isn't sure what she'll do with her life when she gets out, as her only life skill is "moving massive amounts of heroin ." She appears to have moments of depression, telling Nicky that she can no longer "get past the swirling darkness in her brain long enough to land on anything," and mentioning to Piper that upon entering prison, she was on anti-depressants, which she now trades for black eyeliner . </P> <P> Alex is good at reading people and is perceptive, quite often surmising Piper's true feelings and intentions . During the second season, she double - crosses Piper and gives incriminating evidence at the trial of her former boss Kubra (after advising Piper to lie), earning herself an early release . When Piper calls her on the phone, she reveals that Kubra had walked free, and she is now in fear of her life . To Piper's dismay, when Alex visits, she reveals that she is planning to skip town and go into hiding . Wanting to get her old girlfriend back in prison with her, Piper secretly asks Polly to tip off her probation officer, causing Alex to violate her probation when he turns up to check on her, to find her brandishing a gun . In the third season, she returns to Litchfield, and despite finding out that Piper was the reason she was arrested, she restarts their relationship . This is short - lived, as the two break up again when Piper starts dating Stella . Alex becomes suspicious when Lolly Whitehall, a new inmate originally seen in Chicago, comes to the prison and she assumes that Kubra sent Lolly to kill her . Confronting Lolly in the bathroom, the two fight, and while choking Lolly, Alex discovers that she is just a paranoid prisoner that thinks the NSA is watching her . Alex ends up convincing Lolly that she is an undercover agent with the CIA in order to keep her from reporting their confrontation . </P>

Maria character on orange is the new black