If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead, be sure to check out my P-Tang12!!!
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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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He stepped out from behind a tree, his Litchfield raised. The world slowed. He painted the heads of the three guards standing panicked on the front porch. Bang. Bang. Bang. Three bodies hit the floorboards before the first empty casing hit the mud.
He charged the front door, kicking it open before the remaining guards inside could organize a defense. The interior of the house was chaotic, filled with smoke drifting in from the burning porch.
Four men were in the main parlor, scrambling for cover. Caleb didn't give them the chance. He swapped the Litchfield for his Pump Action Shotgun.
At this close range, the shotgun was devastating. He fired twice, the heavy buckshot tearing through a wooden table and the two men hiding behind it. He pumped the action, spun, and fired again, catching a third man in the chest, throwing him backward through a closed window.
The fourth man threw his hands up, dropping his revolver. "Don't shoot! I surrender!"
Caleb didn't hesitate. He drew a Navy Revolver and shot the man in the knee. The man collapsed, screaming.
"Where is Martelli?" Caleb demanded, stepping over a body to stand over the wounded man.
"Upstairs!" the man sobbed, clutching his shattered knee. "Back room! Please!"
Caleb ignored his pleas, shoot the man on the forehead, and moved to the staircase. He could hear heavy footsteps running on the floorboards above. The fire was spreading fast now, the crackle of burning wood growing louder, the smoke thickening. He had to move fast before the structural integrity of the house failed.
He ascended the stairs, his revolver leading the way.
At the top of the landing, a door burst open, and a man stepped out holding a sawed off shotgun. Caleb fired instantly, a reflex action honed by the system. The bullet took the man in the throat, spinning him around before he could pull the trigger.
Caleb kicked open the door to the back room.
Guido Martelli was there. The underboss looked nothing like the composed, arrogant man he usually was. He was sweating profusely, his suit jacket discarded, his tie loosened. He was desperately shoving large stacks of cash bills and ledgers into a leather valise in his hand from his safe, before closing the bag.
When the door crashed open, Guido dropped the bag and scrambled backward, his hand darting toward a silver plated Mauser pistol on the desk.
"Ah ah," Caleb said, aiming the Navy Revolver directly at Guido's chest. "I wouldn't."
Guido froze, his hand hovering inches from the gun. He looked at Caleb, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and furious disbelief.
"McLaughlin," Guido spat, the name sounding like a curse. "You... you survived."
"Your assassin was sloppy," Caleb said, stepping fully into the room. "And talkative. He told me everything, Guido. In Italian, no less."
Guido's face fell. The realization that his secret weapon had failed, and had betrayed him, crushed his remaining bravado.
"Bronte..." Guido started, his voice trembling. "Angelo sent you?"
"Bronte gave me permission," Caleb corrected. "But I would have come anyway. You tried to put a bullet in my head while I was just getting up from my sleep. That's bad manners."
"Listen to me!" Guido pleaded, holding his hands up, backing away from the desk. "You don't have to do this! Bronte is weak! He's a fool who plays at being a king! We can run this city together, you and I! I have the men, the connections—"
"You have a burning house and a bullet with your name on it," Caleb interrupted coldly. "You're done, Martelli. The game is over."
Guido's eyes darted frantically around the room, looking for an escape that didn't exist. The smoke was beginning to curl under the doorframe.
"Please," Guido begged, dropping to his knees. The underboss of Saint Denis, reduced to a weeping mess. "I have money. I can give you whatever you want. Just let me walk away."
Caleb looked down at the man. He felt no pity. He felt no triumph. It was just business. It was the removal of an obstacle.
"You already gave me what I want," Caleb said softly. "You gave me your job."
Caleb pulled the trigger.
The shot was loud in the small room. Guido Martelli fell backward, dead before he hit the floor, a single bullet hole perfectly centered in his forehead.
Caleb didn't linger. He grabbed the leather valise Guido had been packing, the underboss's emergency fund and operational ledgers would be incredibly useful for assuming control of the faction.
He slung the bag over his shoulder and sprinted back down the stairs, leaping over the bodies. The first floor was fully engulfed in flames now, the heat blistering. He burst through the front door, coughing from the smoke, and ran into the cool, damp air of the swamp.
The remaining guards had either fled into the swamp when their leader was killed or had perished in the fire. The safehouse was a roaring inferno, a funeral pyre for Guido Martelli's ambitions.
Caleb waded back through the muck to where Morgan was tied. He mounted up, the valise heavy but satisfying against his side.
He looked back at the burning house one last time.
Caleb turned Morgan back toward Saint Denis. He rode out of the swamp, leaving the fire to consume the evidence of his ascension.
When he reached back to the outskirts of Saint Denis, where the muddy tracks of the bayou finally met the solid, reassuring cobblestones of the city's edge, Caleb stopped Morgan from riding for a moment. He pulled back gently on the reins, bringing the mare to a halt under the flickering light of a lone streetlamp.
Morgan, of course, asked her rider why they suddenly stopped. She shifted her weight impatiently, her metal shoes clacking against the stone. She wanted to return to that beautiful stable at the mansion and enjoyed her fancy care, the brushed oats, the soft straw, and the stable boy she had thoroughly intimidated into submission.
She conveyed this through a series of sharp neighs and irritated snorts, tossing her head to rattle the bit. Only Caleb could understand her, thanks to his max level Horse Mastery.
"Why are we stopping?" she projected, her tone distinctly annoyed. "I want to get back to that beautiful stable. They give me apples there. I deserve brushing after carrying you through a swamp while you shot people. The air here smells like dead fish and factory smoke. The stable smells like apples. Why are we standing in the bad smell?"
Caleb, of course, chuckles, patting her damp neck. "Wait for a moment, girl," he said softly to her. "I wanted to check on this bag and see what is inside."
"Fine," she huffed, though she stood still. "But if you take too long, I'm going to start neighing loudly until people come to see what's wrong."
"You're a menace," Caleb said affectionately.
He unslung the heavy leather valise he had taken from Guido's dead hands and rested it across the saddle pommel. The leather was singed in places from his escape through the burning house, and it smelled strongly of smoke and fear.
He popped the brass latches and opened it.
Even in the dim gaslight, the contents were breathtaking. He saw stacks and stacks of cash bills, crisp, banded currency that Martelli had likely skimmed over years or hoarded for an emergency exactly like this. Alongside the money were several leather bound ledgers.
Caleb didn't bother counting by hand. He simply placed a hand on the stacks of money and willed them away. Caleb immediately stored the money into his system inventory.
A small notification pinged in the corner of his vision.
Deposited 75,000 dollars.
He whistled low under his breath. It was a staggering sum. Seventy five thousand dollars. Guido had been sitting on a small fortune, an emergency fund for exactly this kind of situation. Now it was Caleb's.
Yet, as the number registered, a bit of regret filled him. He stared at the empty space in the bag where the money had been.
He had killed Guido without asking him where he hides his other moneys or his secret treasury. A man like Martelli, an underboss of Saint Denis, definitely had lockboxes in banks, buried stashes, and investments hidden under dummy names. Seventy five thousand was just his "go bag."
Caleb sighed. It's already been done. He had been controlled by his anger a bit, anger at the audacity of the assassination attempt, anger at the disruption of his careful plans, and that's why he just shot him right then and there instead of interrogating him. A tactical error born of human emotion. He noted it, filed it away, and resolved not to repeat it.
After that, he moved his attention to the ledgers. He pulled one out and opened it, angling the pages toward the streetlamp.
He saw that it was filled with Guido's owned business reports and locations of several hidden wealth caches of his own. These weren't Bronte's businesses, these were side hustles.
Protection rackets on small grocers, a smuggling ring moving untaxed tobacco, and partial ownership in a few low end stores in the slums and around the city. The hidden wealth noted here was not much, as he put it as an emergency funds, a few hundred here, a gold bar there.
Caleb let out a tsk. There's no proof of ownership of these business within the ledgers, no deeds or signed contracts, which could make it easier for him to take over of it legally or semi legally.
The businesses are not much, but it is something, a foundation of street level control that operated independently of Bronte's main operations.
He put the ledgers back into the bag. It was intelligence he could use later, perhaps pass on to Doyle to expand their own network.
Before then, he goes to check his system notification. He had ignored the chiming sound it made the moment he had killed Guido, prioritizing his escape from the burning building. He opened the interface mentally.
The notification said that since he have killed Guido Martelli, a major player in the regional underworld, he have changed the course of authority and power in Saint Denis into an abstract course where anything can happen. He had essentially derailed the established narrative of the criminal ecosystem.
And because of that disruption and assertion of dominance, his Business and Leadership skills have leveled up from level 1 to level 2.
Leadership (Level 2) - Subordinates are 10% more loyal and resistant to intimidation.
Business (Level 2) - Weekly income from owned properties increased by 5%.
That was useful. But the next line was what truly caught his attention.
That the size of his system inventory have been expanded as well. It had grown from a spatial volume of 10x10x10 to a massive 50x50x50.
Reading this, Caleb let out a wide, genuine smile. His skills leveling up is great, providing passive buffs, but not that exciting in the immediate term. His system inventory size expanding, on the other hand... oh, that's the cream on the top.
After all, it means he could stash more items inside his inventory to make it much more secure and safe. He could store entire arsenals, weeks' worth of supplies, or massive amounts of illicit goods without ever needing a physical warehouse that could be raided by the Pinkertons or rival gangs.
He could even store much more bigger items than he could previously. Large boxes? Maxim guns? The possibilities for tactical deployment were immense.
"Alright," Caleb said, patting the bag now containing only the ledgers. "Let's go claim the position I was owed."
And so, after it's finished, he continue his ride, entering fully into Saint Denis and heading toward Bronte's mansion.
The city was quiet now, the earlier panic from the sniper shot having faded into the usual evening hum of the wealthy districts. When he arrived at the gates, the guards recognized him immediately and opened them without a word.
He entered the grounds and gets off Morgan, giving the reins to a stable boy who came running.
"Brush her down. Extra apples," Caleb instructed the boy, who nodded frantically and led the mare away.
Caleb then entered into the mansion. The cool marble and scent of expensive wax was a stark contrast to the mud and smoke of the bayou he had just left.
Bronte's butler was standing in the entrance room when Caleb entered through the double doors. The older man looked at Caleb, noting the mud on his boots and the faint smell of smoke clinging to his duster, but his face remained a mask of professional servitude.
"Mr. McLaughlin," the butler said, bowing slightly. "Mr. Bronte is expecting you."
The butler escorted Caleb through the quiet halls, moving past the study and toward where Bronte is currently. He was in his grand dining room.
The doors were open. Bronte was sitting alone at the head of a massive mahogany table that could easily seat twenty.
He was enjoying dinner, a plate of roasted quail and truffles, while having a premium tobacco cigar smoking gently in an ashtray beside his wine glass. When Caleb enters the dining room after the butler told Bronte of his arrival, Bronte immediately stood up.
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Name: Caleb Thorne
Age: 23
Body Attributes:
- Strength: 8/10
- Agility: 8/10
- Perception: 9/10
- Stamina: 8/10
- Charm: 8/10
- Luck: 9/10
Skills:
- Handgun (Lvl MAX)
- Rifle (Lvl MAX)
- Firearms Knowledge (Lvl MAX)
- Past Life Memory (Lvl MAX)
- Knife (Lvl MAX)
- Blunt Weapon (Lvl 2)
- Sneaking (Lvl MAX)
- Horse Mastery (Lvl MAX)
- Poker (Lvl MAX)
- Hand to Hand Combat (Lvl MAX)
- Eagle Eye (Lvl 2)
- Dead Eye (Lvl 4)
- Bow (Lvl 3)
- Pain Nullifier (Lvl 4)
- Physical Regeneration (Lvl 3)
- Crafting (Lvl MAX)
- Persuasion (Lvl MAX)
- Mental Fortitude (Lvl MAX)
- Cooking (Lvl MAX)
- Teaching (Lvl 3)
- Trilingual Language Proficiency - G, I, & C (Lvl MAX)
- Inventory System (Permanent - 10x10x10) → (50x50x50)
- Acting (Lvl MAX)
- Alcohol Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Treasure Hunter (Lvl MAX)
- Drugs Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Business (Lvl 1) → (Lvl 2)
- Leadership (Lvl 1) → (Lvl 2)
Money: 3,334 dollars and 10 cents
Inventory: 250,992 dollars and 61 cents, 11 gold nuggets, 70 gold bars, 1 Double Action, 1 Schofield, 2 Colm's Schofields, 1 land deed (Parcel), 1 Mauser, 1 Semi Auto Pistol, 1 Lancaster Repeater, 1 Old Wood Jewelry Box, 1 F.F Mausoleum small brass key, 1 Ruby, 1 Braithwaites Land Deed, 1 Broken Pirate Sword, 1 Milton's Safety Deposit Key, 1 Senator Pendleton Sealed Envelope, Proof Of Marlin-Thorne Firearms Co., 10 Dynamites, 1 LeMat, 1 M1899, 1 Carcano, & 1 Ownership deed of Doyle's Tavern
Bank: -