Ace Of Spades, Chapter 1: The Nova Bella EVERYBODY HAS TO READ THIS!!!

My new story is called Ace of Spades. It's about a boy named Nicholas Diaz who is a world-class thief who's never been caught. He'll steal anything, but he specializes in jewels, which is why he's nicknamed "Ace of Diamonds".
He is an orphan. His young Austrian mother, Susanna, died in childbirth while his father, Roberto, was the wealthy head of a jewelry company. His father was good friends with a crime boss nicknamed Essefe who controls several crime networks all over the world. Roberto was shot and killed when three men tried to mug him. Three weeks later Susanna found out she was pregnant with Roberto's baby, although she and Roberto were never married. She was twenty when she died giving birth to Nicholas. Two days later Nicholas showed up in a blanket on Essefe's doorstep.
Nicholas is now fifteen and travels all over the world to steal for Essefe. He is in London right now and is about to discover a very strange deck of cards...

“10…9…8…” I counted under my breath.

I quickly looked around. No one noticed me, the kid hanging around outside the train station. Pretty soon, everyone would be occupied with something else.
“7…6…” I glanced nonchalantly at my cover guy across the street. He shook his head ever so slightly. Not yet.
“5…4…3…2…1.”
BOOOM. Right on cue. The explosion rocked through the ground and rang in my ears. To me, it was the beginning of another hard job.
“What the…”
“What was that?” People were shouting. Everyone was frantic except me. I looked over to my cover guy. He nodded subtly. GO!

I leapt into action.

I crossed the street quickly—all the cars had stopped because of the explosions. I turned a corner, another corner, and there it was.

The British Museum. My target. Hoo boy.

I ran around to the side of the museum. Alarms were wailing and a gigantic hole loomed out of a wall. All in all, people would think someone was stealing something over there. They would be completely wrong.
I turned and ran back to the front of the museum. A rope had been conveniently left on the ground, just waiting for someone to pick it up and use it. I looped it around my shoulder—it would come in handy.
Quickly I shimmied up one of the supportive columns in front of the museum. Gripping the column tightly with one hand, I felt around above me for a pre-loosened brick. I found it, took hold, and pulled hard.
“Hey!” A security guard ran around the side of the building and saw me. “Wot the hell you doin’ up there?” he shouted in a thick rustic accent. “You’re not—”
Before he could finish reprimanding me, I jumped down from the column and punched him in the face. He dropped to the ground, out cold.
I pulled myself back up the column and tugged hard at the dusty brick. It came away in my hand. Rope in tow, I scrambled quickly into the hole it had made.

Now I was inside the museum. I took a deep breath. This is it. This was where it would get hard.

I squirmed along the drafty crawl space under the roof, hoping (actually, more like praying) that my weight wouldn’t cause the old stone of the museum to give out and send me plummeting to my death. I kept watch through the little gaps between the bricks on what I was crawling over.
Finally, I found what I was looking for. A big gallery, filled entirely with enormous sparkling gems in glass boxes. The room was all but unlit, save for the bare underlighting of the boxes.
I kicked at the bricks underneath me to loosen them. Then I carefully lifted the bricks out of place to create a large hole.
I slid the rope off my shoulder and tied it around a pipe above me. I tied off the other end into a chunky knot and threaded the rope carefully through the hole.

Here goes…Hands shaking, I grabbed hold of the rope and hoisted myself through the hole.

I climbed down quickly, gripping the nubbly rope for dear life. I didn’t let myself look down. One fumble and this would all be ruined…
After what seemed like forever, I felt my toes bump against the ground. I let out a sigh of relief. I’d made it without setting off any alarms.

I crept quietly over to one of the glass boxes, and there it was:

The Nova Bella Diamond. Five inches wide and deep, shimmering gold. The only diamond in the world this color.

Hands shaking, I reached forward and gripped the glass box. With one hand I dug in my toolbelt and pulled out a small green cube with a suction clamp on one end. Red and blue wires looped around the outside of the cube.
Quickly I clamped the cube onto the glass box holding the Nova Bella Diamond. I reached into my toolbelt again and extracted a CO2 canister, which I attached to the green cube. I took my hand off the glass box and stepped back.
hisssssssssssssssssssssPFFP
I unclamped the green cube to reveal a perfect circle cut in the glass box. Taking a decoy of the diamond from my toolbelt, I reached in and quickly switched the two. With the Nova Bella in my hand, I scrambled up the rope hanging from the ceiling and pulled myself into the crawl space.
BRRPBRRPBRRPBRRPBRRP
Aaagh. I’d set off an alarm. I had to get out of there FAST if I didn’t want to be caught.
Crawling along as fast as I could, I reached the outside column quickly. The entire front of the museum was swarming with guards. Very big, burly guards. Is it possible for a human being to be overly burly? I wasn’t sticking around to find out.

Needless to say, I hauled booty outta there as fast as I could.

I ran back to the train station and glanced at my cover guy. I got it. He nodded slowly back, then pulled out his phone and made a call.
After a few seconds he closed the phone nonchalantly, pretending to examine a train schedule pasted to the wall of the station. This was my signal to hail a cab.
I looked over the many taxis lining the London streets and waited until I saw one with no advertisements on the sides. I stuck out my thumb casually. The taxi pulled up, the window rolled down and the driver stuck his head out. He had a gaunt face and tinted eyeglasses. He was bald.
“Essefe,” he said in a gruff whisper. I nodded. He got out and held open the door for me.
I got inside. “Le Taudis Hotel,” I said. “You know the way.”
“Sure do, Ace. ‘Notha hard job? Some biggie jewel, eh?”
“British Museum. You don’t wanna know.”
My phone started ringing. I picked it up. It was Essefe.
“Hello?”
I was met by the dignified, elegant English accent of Essefe. “Do you have the diamond?”
“Yup.”
“Good, very good. Now listen, I have another job for you tonight.”
Damn. There goes sleeping in. “What?”
“There’s going to be a party in the lobby of Le Taudis to celebrate the return of Sylvia Frigis from her save-the-hungry-children-in-Africa-rubbish campaign. You do know who dear Sylvia is, I presume?”
“The heiress to a multimillion dollar software empire. Richard Frigis is her father. Frigis Computer Technology, Inc. FCT.”
“I see you’ve been doing your research, my boy. Now, dear Sylvia will not be the only wealthy person there. I’ve been led to believe that young Talia Carter will be at the party. And recently, Miss Carter has inherited a deck of cards. Cards made out of 24-carat gold, encrusted with diamonds.”
I whistled under my breath. “Geez,” I said. “Who went insane?”
“Apparently, Miss Carter’s great-aunt.”
“Sure liked to throw her money around…”
“Ahem. Anyway, I need you to go to the party, ‘chat up’ young Miss Carter, loosen her tongue a bit…”
“I see. Info gathering about the cards.”
“Precisely. The party starts at 8:00 and ends at 11:00, although I suppose by then everyone will be too bloody drunk to find their way home. Playboys…” Click. He hung up. Essefe never says goodbye.
I shut the phone. Talk about a hard day’s night…