It's 1930 and Prohibition is underway. Two rival gangs, the Olympians and the Titians, fight for control of New York City. Caught up in this battle is a young bootlegger named Percy Jackson, in love with a brilliant and beautiful architect named An...
Nico's P.O.V My half sister Hazel lived with her mother above a Harlem jazz club. Since it was only three o'clock in the afternoon, the club was empty. Hazel met me at the foot of the stairs going up to her apartment. She was wearing a pretty floral print dress and her curly golden brown hair was pulled back by a ribbon.
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Her golden brown hair was a similar color to her eyes, which was a striking contrast to her coffee colored skin. Our father, Hades Di Angelo, had immigrated from Italy as a young man. He married another Italian immigrant, my mother, Maria. My mother died when I was four. From what I remember, she was pale, pretty, and dainty with dark hair and eyes. Her health had always been delicate, especially after giving birth to my sister Bianca and I. Being a man with needs, my father looked elsewhere to have them met. That's where Hazel's mother, Marie Levesque, comes in. My father and Hazel were the only family I'd ever had since my mother and Bianca died during the 1918 influenza outbreak. I carried around two photographs of Mama and Bianca in my wallet.
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Hazel led me upstairs to the kitchen of her apartment. "Would you like coffee?" She asked "Yes," I replied. "How would you like it?" "Black, please." Hazel put a pot of coffee on the stove. "Do you have any plans for tonight?" "I'm meeting Will at Chez Tiresias tonight at eleven." "I feel like going dancing tonight and Frank is out of town. Will you come with me to Bacchanal for a couple hours before you meet up with Will?" Bacchanal was the jazz club that Hazel lived above. "Certainly, what time?" "Eight." "I'll be there." Now some words about my father and the Bacchanal. Hades Di Angelo is the head of one of the big three families in the Olympian crime outfit. The others being the Marinoses, headed by Poseidon Marinos, and the Conroys, headed by Zeus Conroy. A/N A word about names: I struggled a bit finding surnames for Poseidon and Zeus. I chose Marinos for Poseidon since it means "from the sea" in Greek. Prohibition-era gangsters are stereotypically either Italian or Irish. We have Hades Di Angelo representing the Italians and I gave Zeus the Irish surname Conroy, which means "king." Being my father's only son, I'm the heir apparent of the Di Angelo crime family as well as the undertaking business we use as a cover. Fitting is it not, my family has people killed and then prepares their bodies for burial. There are minor families such as the Wines and the Cretes. Dionysus Wine, head of the Wine family, fittingly enough, owns some of the most successful speakeasies and jazz clubs in the city, including the Bacchanal. I had dinner with Hazel, who made shrimp gumbo from the Levesque family's special recipe.
