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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Vincenzo gestured toward the shattered front windows. "We control the mansion, but the city doesn't know it yet. We could hang Bronte's body from the balcony tonight and let the slums see who rules them. Or we could call a meeting of the capos in the dark."
Caleb, hearing that, shook his head slowly. He didn't want a chaotic, violent announcement that felt like a bloody street gang takeover. He was thinking bigger. He was thinking like a CEO.
He says he felt they should do it in a couple of days. "We wait," Caleb instructed, his voice regaining its sharp, authoritative edge. "We secure our holdings first. We make sure every ledger is in our hands."
Caleb looked at Vincenzo. "Because I want it to be more of a formal event in the day. Not a shadow meeting in the mansion under the cover of the night."
The capos looked surprised. The Italian mob had always operated strictly in the darkness, hiding from the light of legitimate society.
"Unlike the ones the old boss usually did in the dead of night," Caleb explained, his vision expanding before them. "I want to signal some sort of a new change I want to bring. Not just into this family, but into this city as well."
Caleb stepped away from the table, pacing slowly across the room. "We will still be the mob of Saint Denis. We will still run the docks, the gambling, and the smuggling. But we will not be the Italian mob anymore. We will be the Saint Denis mob. An organization that operates like a machine, not a feud. A business that stands in the light and controls the shadows. When we announce this, we announce it in the sunlight, to let the Mayor and the police know that a new, absolute authority has taken the throne."
Hearing that, the tension in the room completely vanished, replaced by a profound, awe struck respect. Everyone nodded their heads, agreeing and happy with the grand, ambitious vision that their Underboss, no, their new Don, had created.
The prospect of moving from street level thugs hiding from the law to powerful, legitimate seeming power brokers in the daylight was incredibly intoxicating.
"We are with you, Don Caleb," Vincenzo said, using the title naturally, without a shred of hesitation.
Caleb then told all of them that, for now, he would like to take a rest. The adrenaline of the long con was finally beginning to recede, leaving a cold, calculated exhaustion in its wake.
"So," Caleb continue, taking control of the immediate aftermath, "you men can stay in any of the guest rooms around the mansion tonight. This is your house now."
He pointed to Vincenzo. "Vincenzo, you have the operational lead. First, make sure the bodies of those who died tonight are being collected and then buried quietly. No police involvement. We handle our own dead."
"Understood," Vincenzo nodded, his mind already working on the logistics.
"While those loyalists that surrendered," Caleb continued, his eyes turning cold, "I want them to be stripped of their weapons and locked securely inside the warehouse at the docks first. Keep a heavy guard on them. I will meet them tomorrow to decide their fate. They either bend the knee, or they join Bronte."
"And the wounded?" Silvio asked, gesturing to a man holding a bleeding side.
"As for those that are wounded are to be treated immediately with the mob's personal doctor," Caleb finalized. "Wake him up if you have to. And for the payments, the money of the family will be used. Not a single man pays out of his own pocket for bleeding for me."
He handed the absolute responsibility of overseeing all of this to Vincenzo. "You have the floor, Vincenzo. Keep the perimeter secure."
Hearing that, Vincenzo nodded his head sharply, deeply honored by the immense trust placed in him. He turned and led everyone to do the tasks first, barking orders in rapid Italian, leaving the dining room and scattering to secure the sprawling estate.
When the heavy oak doors finally clicked shut, leaving Caleb completely alone in the ruined, blood stained dining room, the performance instantly dropped.
While Caleb was alone, he finally let out a fully big, genuine smile. It was a terrifying expression of absolute, unadulterated triumph. The impossible gamble had paid off perfectly. He had stolen an empire without losing a single man of his own inner circle, using the enemy's own paranoia to destroy them.
His smile widened as he also looked at his system interface, which had been chiming quietly in the back of his mind for the last five minutes.
He opened the digital screen in his mind's eye. The text scrolled rapidly, glowing with a bright, victorious gold.
[System Notification: Major Narrative Shift Detected.]
The system told him that due to him disposing of Angelo Bronte and officially becoming the new, uncontested head of the dominant crime family of Saint Denis, he had drastically changed the predetermined trajectory of the world.
The Italian mafia was supposed to fall to the Van der Linde gang, plunging the city into chaos. Instead, Caleb had usurped it, stabilizing the criminal underworld under a terrifyingly efficient, modern regime.
[Calculating Reward for Major Narrative Alteration...]
And so, in reward for that massive achievement, the system delivered beyond his wildest expectations. He received an instant upgrade to the MAX levels for all of his skills that hadn't reached the max levels yet.
Caleb watched in awe as the progress bars in his interface filled completely. He watched the two most critical categories for the position he just acquired got maxed out.
Business Skill: Level 3 ➝MAX.
Leadership Skill: Level 3 ➝ MAX.
And also, the final notification flashed brightly. His system inventory is upgraded from a 50x50x50 permanent space to a massive 100x100x100 permanent space.
Caleb became even more happy, letting out a low, victorious chuckle that echoed in the empty room. He had essentially become even more powerful than he ever thought possible in this era.
The expanded inventory meant he could store enough weapons, cash, and supplies to fund a small war without anyone ever seeing a single supply wagon.
But it was the skills that truly thrilled him. The two skills that will help him immensely in leading the mob, Business and Leadership, had become max level.
He didn't know exactly how strong the effect would be yet. With Persuasion and Acting at max level, he could lie to a man's face and make him believe it was gospel. With Leadership at MAX, would his men follow him into absolute, certain death without a second thought?
Would his very presence command the total obedience of a room? And with Business at MAX... the financial algorithms, market manipulations, and economic foresight he would possess would allow him to bleed Leviticus Cornwall dry through legal loopholes alone. He was no longer just a gunslinger, he was a completely optimized apex predator.
After that was done, Caleb closed the interface and walked out of the dining room, stepping over the shattered glass and debris.
He climbed the grand, sweeping marble staircase, his boots heavy with the fatigue of a brilliantly executed war. He bypassed the guest rooms and went straight to Bronte's master bedroom on the second floor.
It was a room which had now become his by right of conquest.
And saying it to be fancy is a profound understatement. Caleb pushed the double mahogany doors open and stepped inside. The bedroom in his mansion that he inherited from Guido Martelli's death was nothing compared to what Bronte had built for himself.
The room was vast, dominated by a massive, four-poster bed draped in crimson silk and gold threading. The floors were covered in thick, imported Persian rugs that silenced his footsteps entirely.
A massive crystal chandelier hung from the frescoed ceiling, illuminating walls lined with priceless oil paintings and antique weaponry. A large, ornate balcony overlooked the sprawling, manicured gardens below, offering a view of the entire city he now controlled.
It was the bedroom of an emperor.
Caleb walked over to the mahogany vanity, shrugging off his heavy shoulder holsters and letting his twin Navy Revolvers clatter loudly onto the polished wood. He unbuttoned his tailored vest and tossed his blood spattered jacket over a velvet chair.
He didn't bother to search the room for hidden safes, his high perception stats would find them tomorrow. Right now, he was utterly exhausted.
And Caleb goes to take a rest after a long, incredibly violent day. He fell back onto the massive, silk sheeted bed, staring up at the painted ceiling. He had many things to do tomorrow.
He had to interrogate Bronte, consolidate his new soldiers, begin the hostile takeover of Cornwall's remaining assets using the stolen deeds, and send a message to Mary-Beth that the war was finally over.
But for tonight, the guns were silent. The Underboss closed his eyes, drifting into a deep, dreamless sleep, the undisputed king of Saint Denis.
The next day, the morning sun pierced through the lingering, sulfurous smog of Saint Denis, casting long, golden rays through the towering French windows of the master bedroom.
Caleb slowly opened his eyes, the heavy fatigue of the previous night's blood soaked coup finally dissolving. He blinked against the bright light, taking a moment to simply lie still and process the monumental shift in his reality.
He woke up feeling profoundly, incredibly refreshed. He was sleeping in the softest bed he had ever slept in since arriving in this brutal, unforgiving era. The mattress, stuffed with premium goose down, yielded perfectly to his frame, while the crimson silk sheets felt like cool water against his skin.
It was an extravagant, almost sinful level of comfort that was even much better compared to his own bed in his past life in the modern world. Back then, he had known the sterile, manufactured comfort of modern mattresses, but this, this was the handcrafted, meticulous luxury reserved exclusively for the absolute apex of the Gilded Age elite.
Caleb let out a long, contented exhale, pushing the heavy gold-threaded duvet aside. After stretching his body up, feeling the satisfying pop of his joints and the smooth, painless operation of his high stamina muscles, he swung his legs over the edge of the massive four poster bed. His bare feet sank into the plush, imported Persian rug that covered the hardwood floor.
He walked over to the mahogany vanity, splashing some cold, clean water from a porcelain pitcher onto his face to wash away the last remnants of sleep. He dried his face with a thick linen towel, looking at his reflection in the gilded mirror. He didn't look like a weary outlaw anymore. He looked like exactly what he had become, a king.
He grabbed his clothes from the velvet chair where he had tossed them the night before. He goes to put on his sturdy leather boots, lacing them up with practiced efficiency, and then buttoned his tailored charcoal vest over his clean white shirt.
Before leaving the sanctuary of his new bedroom, his mind immediately shifted to the practicalities of his hostile takeover. Angelo Bronte was a paranoid, greedy creature who hoarded wealth like a dragon. Caleb knew for a fact that a man like that wouldn't trust all his liquid assets to the banks, not when he lived in a city teeming with thieves and rival gangs.
Before then, he goes to use his high perception stats to go check around the bedroom to find any hidden safe or secret compartments that Bronte might have made here. He stood in the center of the vast room, closing his eyes for a fraction of a second to let the system interface heighten his senses. When he opened them, the world sharpened into microscopic focus.
He slowly paced the perimeter of the room, his eyes scanning the ornate wallpaper, the heavy oak wainscoting, and the gaps between the floorboards. He wasn't just looking; he was feeling for hollow spaces, checking for slight discolorations in the paint, and searching for areas where the dust hadn't settled naturally.
So that maybe he could find something, he tapped his knuckles against the wood paneling near the massive stone fireplace. Thud. Thud. Thunk. The acoustic resonance shifted. He ran his fingers along the edge of the carved wooden mantle until he found a tiny, almost invisible latch disguised as a decorative rose. He pressed it, and a section of the paneling popped open with a soft click.
And soon, he found a safe, and just beneath the floorboards of the heavy armoire, a hidden compartment.
The safe was a sturdy, heavy iron lockbox embedded directly into the brickwork of the chimney. Caleb knelt before it. He simply placed his ear against the cold iron and slowly turned the brass dial, listening to the intricate internal tumblers falling into place with crystal clarity.
Click. Clack. Thud. Where the safe was, he opened it slowly, the heavy door swinging outward on well oiled hinges. Inside, stacked in neat, tight bundles wrapped in paper bands, was a small fortune in untraceable currency. Caleb counted it rapidly, his mind processing the numbers with the speed of his maxed Business Skill. He got 4,000 dollars cash from the safe.
He then moved to the armoire, prying up the loose floorboard he had detected earlier. In the hidden compartment, wrapped in oilcloth to protect it from the dampness of the humid city, he found more bundles of greenbacks. He counted them out and got 1,500 dollars cash.
It was a staggering amount of pocket change for one man to keep in his bedroom, but it was exactly the kind of emergency liquid capital Caleb needed to grease the wheels of his new empire. He didn't bother looking for a satchel to carry it.
He simply touched the stacks of money and willed the system to activate. He put all of it into his inventory, watching the massive sum vanish from the physical world and securely enter his expanded 100x100x100 dimensional space, completely safe from any thief, Pinkerton, or rival mobster.
After that was done, Caleb stood up, dusting off his knees, profoundly satisfied with the morning's harvest. Suddenly, the heavy mahogany door of the bedroom was knocked by the butler. The knocks were timid, hesitant, clearly carrying the sheer terror of a servant approaching a man who had just violently overthrown the household.
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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) ➝ (Lvl MAX)
- Sneaking (Lvl MAX)
- Horse Mastery (Lvl MAX)
- Poker (Lvl MAX)
- Hand to Hand Combat (Lvl MAX)
- Eagle Eye (Lvl 2) ➝ (Lvl MAX)
- Dead Eye (Lvl 4) ➝ (Lvl MAX)
- Bow (Lvl 3) ➝ (Lvl MAX)
- Pain Nullifier (Lvl 4) ➝ (Lvl MAX)
- Physical Regeneration (Lvl 3) ➝ (Lvl MAX)
- Crafting (Lvl MAX)
- Persuasion (Lvl MAX)
- Mental Fortitude (Lvl MAX)
- Cooking (Lvl MAX)
- Teaching (Lvl 3) ➝ (Lvl MAX)
- Trilingual Language Proficiency - G, I, & C (Lvl MAX)
- Inventory System (Permanent - 50x50x50) ➝ (100x100x100)
- Acting (Lvl MAX)
- Alcohol Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Treasure Hunter (Lvl MAX)
- Drugs Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Business (Lvl 2) ➝ (Lvl MAX)
- Leadership (Lvl 3) ➝ (Lvl MAX)
Money: 3,322 dollars and 60 cents
Inventory: 286,492 dollars and 61 cents, 11 gold nuggets, 74 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, 3 Diamonds, & Important Documents & Deeds Of Cornwall
Bank: -