The Blonde and the Bootlegger: A Percy Jackson story

The Parthanon

A/N I'm going to refer to Hazel and Beckendorf as being "colored" or "negro" since this story is set in the 1930s and those would have been the polite terms for African Americans. For example: NAACP (founded in 1909) stands for "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People" and UCNF (founded in 1944) stands for "United Negro Collage Fund." The story is going to be in first person p.o.v and Percy, if he lived in the 1930s, would refer to his black friends by these terms.

Percy P.O.V
After saying goodbye to Annabeth at the Lotus Hotel, I decided to go visit my parents at their apartment on the Upper East-Side of Manhattan.
They were both in the kitchen when I arrived. My Ma was feeding my one-year-old half-sister Estelle her breakfast while my stepdad Paul was reading the newspaper and drinking his coffee.
Ma finished wiping baby food off of Estelle's chin then came over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
"Good morning Percy," she said, "We weren't expecting you."
"I thought I'd surprise you," I replied.
She gave me one of her famous smiles and her beautiful blue eyes sparkled.
"Nice to see you, son," Paul joined in, rising from his chair to shake my hand.
I didn't mind Paul calling me son. Of the two stepfathers I'd had, he was by far the best but next to Gabe, that wasn't very hard to do. He worked as a high school English teacher and was a good man who earned a good living. Ever since he had married her three years ago, Ma had been happier than I'd ever seen her. She looked young and beautiful despite the grey streaks in her chestnut brown hair.
"Hello kiddo," I said to Estelle before kissing her forehead, "Miss me?"
Estelle was as pretty as a baby doll with her brown curls and big blue eyes. She cooed in reply to my question.
Paul's newspaper had a headline about a member of the Titans who been found riddled with bullets and floating face down in the Hudson. The Titan went by the name of The Minotaur and I felt a sense of relief that someone had put a bullet in him since he would have loved to put a bullet in me.
"There's some batter leftover," Ma said, "I can make you some pancakes if you're hungry."
"Can you make them blue?" I answered.
"Of course, sweetie."

If my parents knew about what I did for a living, they never brought it up. I did my best to shield them from what I was up to and it was good to know that their house was a place I could go where everything was safe and normal.
Ma still called me "sweetie" and made me blue pancakes. Paul called me "son" and Estelle was as happy and carefree as a baby should be.

After breakfast with my family, I stopped by the nearby Hephaestus Garage. Leo was tuning up a red Ford Model T with a dragon decal on one of the doors that he had named "Festus."