Persephone’s Fall – Page 14
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Zeus, my father, smile.
Maybe way back, when I was little and cute and not yet old enough to piss him off all the time by being so frivolous with the cash his success provides me. But even then, it must have been a rare occasion. Zeus doesn’t smile. He’s got too much to worry about. He sits in his office like a captain in his quarters, charting the seas ahead of him. He’s got seven TVs in there, all muted, financial information ticking by at a mile a minute.
We live in the top four floors of a hotel. My father owns plenty of property, but living in the hotel affords him a lot of convenience. The kitchen staff, the maintenance staff, the cleaning staff… the hotel manager that can get him anything he needs. It’s indispensable to him. So we live in the hotel. It’s not really that bad, and I know from experience that the roof’s got a great view.
The top floor is my parents’ private space. Well, mostly it’s Demeter’s space. Zeus pretty much lives on the second floor down, which is almost entirely devoted to his office and data storage. The third floor down is shared living, dining room, tv room, all that stuff. It barely gets used anymore.
Last floor is mine, and doesn’t that crack hades up. I have a whole floor all to myself. That was my sixteenth birthday present. Before that I lived up in the penthouse with my parents. They had the fourth floor remodelled for me for my sweet sixteen, and I celebrated with a huge party that I wouldn’t let them attend. There must have been two hundred people there, all drinking, most illegally. I christened my new floor by giving my virginity away to some drunk asshole who wasn’t as drunk as I was. I think I remember Hades trying to stop me.
To this day I wonder if he was doing it out of concern, or because he was pissed it wasn’t him.
