The Royal House | Chapter 1 | The Crew

I woke up on the morning of Sunday, January 12th, and went on my daily three-mile run. On my way home, I stopped by the usual hole-in-the-wall coffee shop for breakfast; ham and cheese on a bagel, and went back home. I put my keys in the door to my apartment, took a shower, and went to the mirror to shave. I spread shaving cream over my short beard and took the razor to it. After putting on some aftershave, I studied my appearance. I'm a fairly short man, only five foot nine inches, with dirty blonde hair, and a lean build. The most curious feature, however, were my eyes, one gold, one silver. After getting dressed for the day, in simple jeans and a t-shirt, and went to my kitchen to eat my bagel. There was a letter on the table that hadn’t been there when I got home. I looked around cautiously before grabbing it and slitting the top of the envelope, to take out the letter. All there was was an address and time:

318 North Grove Avenue

2:00 PM

Flipping it over, I saw the Spade symbol from a deck of cards. I set the letter down, grabbed my laptop, opened it, and looked up the address. It was a location in the warehouse district, all the way across town. It was only about 12:30, so I grabbed my jacket off of the couch on my way out of the apartment and hailed a cab from the sidewalk. 15 minutes later, we were at the address.

After paying and getting out of the cab, I studied my surroundings. There was a lot of open space around the warehouse, with plenty of doors and windows. I spent about an hour casing the area and found six possible routes that I could take out of the warehouse district. Each of those doors and windows was an exit from the warehouse, and there were enough buildings and alleyways to weave between, making it a simple task to lose anyone who tried to follow me. Clearly whoever had set this meeting wanted me to feel comfortable. Well, that, or they thought they might need a quick exit, themselves.

With 15 minutes left until the meeting, I took up residence on a rooftop, overlooking the main entrance to the warehouse. 10 minutes later, a woman in a tight blue dress made her way inside. I chuckled to myself. Not exactly subtle. Shortly after, a tall, muscular man, with bright red hair followed her in from an alley. Looks like I'm not the only one here for this meeting. With two minutes remaining, I quickly, and quietly, made my way down the fire escape of the building I was on, adjusted my jacket, and pushed open the door to the warehouse. Down a set of stairs, there was a table with 3 people around it. The woman in the blue dress, the man with the red hair, and another man, maybe 18 or 19, with glasses. They all looked at me as the door squeaked open. "I assume we're all here for the same reason." I held up my letter.

The woman was the first to speak. "Well, come on darling, we don't have all day."

"For what, exactly? It's not really clear what we're all doing here. My name's B-"

"Don' say yer name!" The red-haired man shouted.

"Calm down, sweetie, clearly he doesn't know the rules." She turned to me. "He is right though. You shouldn't give out your name."

"Then how exactly do I refer to you all?"

"Well, darling, isn't it obvious? The Royal House called us here. Surely you've heard that their very own Ace of Diamonds was arrested just last month. With his connection to the Royal House, and their fantastic heists, he won't be getting out of prison any time soon."

The man with glasses looked up from the laptop he had been staring at. "What she's trying to say is that this is a test to fill the position of Ace."

"An' don' get any ideas about taking King. That's me."

"Obviously, I'm Queen, although, it sounds a bit more natural to call me Queenie, no? And this lovely child, I've already started calling Ace, which makes you Jack."

"Alright, so what are everyone's skills?" I looked at Queen, first.

"Well, I'm an expert when it comes to distractions, but I also have the necessary connections to get into private events."

"I'll be your infiltration and get'way. Disguises are my specialty."

"As you've probably guessed, I'm the one with the tech skills," Ace gestured to his laptop, "so I'll be observing the heist from a distance, as well as making sure your identities are foolproof."

I sighed. "Well, that leaves me, I suppose. I'm the best contact for forgeries you'll ever find."

Queen clapped her hands. "Now that we've gotten introductions out of the way, how about we get started? Ace, tell them what you told me."

"Right, of course. There's a silent auction this Thursday, 4 days from today. The prize of the auction is from the Corsair family's private collection. That's our target. Monet's Bordighera, valued at 110.7 Million dollars."