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“Your brother is on the front page again.”
Dread sunk into Hades’s stomach at his wife’s words. As a top figure in the country, his brother, Zeus, frequently made the headlines of the national news services. Sometimes it was to discuss Olympus Enterprise’s latest corporate takeover. Other times it was quoting Zeus himself on some hot-button political topic. Sometimes it was simply pure speculation as to where Zeus’s next political and corporate ambitions would take him next.
But if Persephone was drawing his attention to it, then it was very likely that his brother was on the front page for a completely different reason. As he reached across the table to accept the paper from his wife, he silently hoped that it was because Hera had finally had enough of Zeus’s bullshit and was, finally, filing for divorce.
It was not.
“Another one?” Hades let out a groan. Zeus had fathered yet another child. Another child that was not his wife’s, and it was all over the front page, again. The whole family had lost track of exactly how many of Zeus’s illegitimate offspring populated the globe, and Hades was sure a good chunk of his brother’s income went to under-the-table child support. It had gotten to the point that, in Hades opinion, the only effective solution involved a couple of tranquilizers and an unlicensed vet he knew that didn’t ask questions.
“You should see what Hera has to say about all this,” Persephone added. “Page 3.”
He flipped to the aforementioned page and winced. The reporters had somehow managed to quote Hera in the middle of a rage-fueled rant, which ran the entire page. The whole thing could be summed up as Hera vowing to see her husband’s new illegitimate child, and his mother, at the bottom of the bay in garbage bags.
“Wonder how much wine she had in her when she told them that,” Persephone remarked. “She’s not usually that upfront.”
Which led to the other half of the problems that accompanied his brother’s affairs. Hades would fully admit that Hera was the wronged party in these debacles. In both his, and his wife’s opinion, Hera should have divorced his brother after the second paternity suite, taken him to court for everything she could, and then gone on to have nothing more to do with their family. (He would have even given her the lawyers to do it.)
But Hera had pride, lots of it, and for some reason she had view divorce as the equivalent of surrendering. Neither she nor Zeus would back down, no matter what anyone else had to say. She was also very generous with her blame when it came to these situations. Everyone who had anything to do with her husband’s affairs was at fault, the woman he was seeing, the secretary who covered for him, the hotel in which it was conducted, even the children that resulted from the whole mess.
Hera was a woman of her word. When she said she was going to see someone in the bottom of the bay in a garbage bag, she meant it. Every word of it. Now, Hades could admit that some of the women really should have known better than to get involved with his brother. However, a shocking number of women had previously had no idea that Zeus was even married, and a disturbing amount of cases had come hand in hand with allegations of sexual harassment. But above that, it was the children who had no say in the entire mess, and they were often the ones who fell straight in the crosshairs of Hera’s wrath.
One unfortunate boy had been half-way through college, when he had the misfortune of finding out who his biological father was at the same time Hera did. Through a series of deadly circumstances, the kid had ended up camping out on their couch for two years, scared to show his face anywhere outside the safety of their house. Hades knew that even the international crime bosses would think twice about messing with him, and they wouldn’t dare risk crossing Persephone. Not even for the six digit bounty Hera had placed on the kid’s head.
At least, Hades noted with relief, the police seemed to be taking Hera’s threats seriously this time. Hopefully this time it wouldn’t end with anyone dead, pretending to be dead, or wishing they were dead.
“He’s an embarrassment to us all,” Persephone sighed. “I don’t care if he owns the biggest multinational corporation in the world and is running for his second presidency term. He behaves like a barbarian, and thinks that if he throws enough money and political clout at his problems they will go away. Honestly, I don’t know why Hera hasn’t taken him to court and divorced him already.”
“You and me both,” Hades sighed, shaking his head. The social shitstorms their family seemed to stir up on a regular basis were the main reason the two of them lived on what could be called the dreariest piece of property in the whole country, and were accessible only through an hour long drive down a poorly maintained dirt road. Which, in itself, was accessible only through a ferry owned and operated by a rickety old man who would only accept people who paid in cash.
Now, it wasn’t as if the two of them hadn’t caused their own family scandals in the past. Hades’s mother-in-law was still refusing to acknowledge his existence, let alone speak to him. Both him and Persephone could admit that the idea to have a spur-of-the-moment wedding in Barbados had been decided on entirely too much wine. They could also admit that it had been in very poor taste not to tell her mother that they were dating, before they decided to go get married. Demeter had not been happy when she had found out about the wedding through Hermes.
In Hades’s opinion, Demeter had blown the whole mess completely out of proportion. But even the shitstorm she had raised barely held a candle to whole sordid and overpublicized mess that was Zeus’s sex life.
The phone on the wall suddenly let out a ring. Persephone reached over and snagged the receiver, holding it to her ear.
“Hello? Hermes! What’s happening this time? Uh huh, uh huh. He’s doing what? And inviting who!? I’m sorry Hermes, you’re breaking up. I can barely hear you.”
Without another word, she hung up the phone, reached over towards one of the kitchen drawers, and pulled out a ballpeen hammer.
Hades watched impassively as his wife proceeded to smash the phone into a pile of crushed plastic and broken circuits.
“The phone is broken.”
Hades nodded. “Indeed. What’s my brother up to now?”
“He’s holding a family get together next weekend,” Persephone replied. “Wants to get all the family together so that we can stand united in the face of this recent scandal.”
“In other words he wants to sound us all out and see which of us are on his side.”
“It gets better,” Persephone continued. “You see when he says “all the family,” he apparently means all his family. He’s invited all his sons to this get together. Every single one that will still speak to him.”
“Damnit,” Hades’s pinched the bridge of his nose. “What’s that idiot thinking!? Hera is going to blow a gasket. Probably going to try and poison them all. At least Perseus is still in Ethiopia visiting with his wife’s family. No way he is going to come all the way back here just to be a part of this mess. But Hercules…”
“Is going to show up just to piss off Hera,” Persephone finished.
“Damn it all.”
It was then Hades’s cellphone lit up and started ringing. He glanced down at the display. Hermes.
“You know, the problem with living out here is that it’s so hard for family to get ahold of us. We often don’t hear about family events until they’re already done and passed.”
He pushed the ringing phone across the table towards his wife.
She raised the hammer above her head.