The Family's Affair

Chapter 1

The inky darkness of the back alley should have made me nervous, but the gun strapped to my leg helped keep it at bay. And the knife in my boot. The gun up my sleeve helped too. And the sharp hair slide that would double as a makeshift dagger if I needed one. And then there were the six inch stilettos which I could somehow still run in.

I didn't normally dress in short skirts, revealing tops and ridiculously high heels, but that kind of get up was what was worn around here when going to this particular club. I'd been staking it out for a couple of days to see what was going on and the kind of people who came here.

I had never thought, no matter my old reputation at school, that I was going to be dressed as a whore going into a lap dancing club pretending to be looking for a job that entailed a lot more than just lap dancing. All I wanted to do was talk to a guy, but I had to get in there some how. I could have used my spy training I supposed. I could have easily slipped in through a back door, tricked the security system if there was one into thinking I wasn't there and got the information I wanted and then got out. It would have been a lot easier and spared me this embarrassment, but there was a reason I didn't use the skills that our dear, hopefully soon to be departed king had forced upon me.

I scowled as I remembered the training I'd been put through. It had been long hours, hard days and had taken the chance of A levels away from me. I'd been bitter the whole time, I still was. But it had made me a better person. Stronger. More myself.

And that only made me more dangerous.

There was someone up ahead. I dragged myself out of my thoughts, fingers brushing against the knife on the outside of my thigh. It was barely disguised by the tight leather of the skirt I wore. I'd put the sheath upside down so that I could easily pull the knife out at a moments notice. I was just glad it hadn't fallen out and stabbed me in the foot.

"I'll give you fifteen," a rough male voice said not too far ahead.

He was in the shadow of the wall which ran alongside the club. Across from him was a woman in a more revealing get up than mine. She was stood in the light of the staff smoking area, cigarette in one hand and beer in another. She was about fifteen or sixteen, two years younger than me, and she was drunk off her ass.

"I wan' thri'y," she slurred. "Ismee firs' time."

The corner of the man's lips turned up into what was actually a pretty rogueish smile rather than a creepy one. Still I wanted to slide my knife through his ribs on principle. I refrained from doing that, just barely and paused a moment so that they could sort their deal out and then hopefully go inside to conduct the more business end of it. I might know how to kill a man with my credit card, but, in some ways at least, I was still pretty innocent and I really wanted it to stay that way.

Then why aren't you finding this guy somewhere else? You know that even people like him have homes to go to. Why not follow him around for a little while and surprise him in his own home?

There was a one word answer to that and it was a pretty simple one: desperation.

I'd never imagined I'd get this desperate, but well, I was. I had the life of my family on my hands, the life the second born child of my eldest brother to be precise. At least, his or her life would be in my hands once said child was born. Even just thinking about it I wanted to curse Grandfather Kit to the depths of hell, but maybe he was there already. It wouldn't have surprised me, he hadn't been a charitable soul even by Elizabethan standards and back then social rules amongst the lower classes were pretty lax and backstabbing, both literal and figurative, had been part of the game of life in the upper classes.

Oh yes, my illustrious grandfather was the one and only Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe, play write, and spy for the crown. The Marlovians had his story half right in some ways. He was a spy, he did help his mate Bill Shakey write a play or two and yes, his death at Deptford was his greatest play of them all. He'd staged his death and gone into hiding in France where he no doubt spent his down time partying it up and fornicating. I'd recently learned that he'd eventually settled in Toulouse, married, and she'd taken on his assumed name Le Doux.