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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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With that, Arthur turned on his heel. He didn't bother changing out of his sharp black tuxedo. He simply walked over to his massive warhorse, pulled himself up into the saddle, and spurred the beast forward, riding out through the wrought iron gates toward the heart of Saint Denis to finally face the woman he loved.
Caleb watched him go until the horse disappeared into the evening fog. With his brother's future hopefully secured, Caleb finally turned his back on the freezing winter wind and entered back into the sprawling warmth of the mansion.
The heavy oak doors clicked shut behind him, sealing away the violence of the docks and the cold of the streets. Caleb immediately went upstairs to the master suite. He needed to wash himself up.
The adrenaline of the shootout had completely faded, leaving him acutely aware of the dried mud, the scent of smokeless powder, and the microscopic splatters of blood that had ruined his charcoal suit.
He stripped off the ruined garments, leaving them in a pile for the staff to burn, and stepped into the washroom. He scrubbed the grime of the gunfight from his hands and face, washing away the evidence of the six lives he had just ended with mechanical efficiency. Once he was entirely clean, Caleb changed into a fresh, crisp white dress shirt and a dark, comfortable waistcoat.
He walked back downstairs, his stomach reminding him that he had spent the entire afternoon forging weapons and fighting mercenaries. He entered the grand dining room, where the household staff had already prepared a late, quiet meal for him.
Caleb enjoyed some lunch, eating entirely alone at the massive mahogany dining table. The silence of the room was a stark contrast to the deafening roar of the dual M1911s he had fired just an hour prior. He sliced a piece of roasted beef, his mind compartmentalizing the violence, shifting back into the cold, calculated logistics of running a criminal empire.
It was exactly at this time, as he took a sip of his dark coffee, that the heavy doors of the dining room opened.
Vincenzo, the scarred Italian Underboss, came marching into the room. He had changed out of his formal attire and was now wearing a heavy, dark leather coat, radiating the intense, brutal energy of a man preparing for a siege.
Vincenzo stopped at the edge of the dining table, bowing his head respectfully. He reported to his Don that his orders had all been completely, flawlessly done.
"Don McLaughlin," Vincenzo stated, his thick accent echoing in the quiet room. "The entire city is officially on high alert. Every capo has been briefed. The docks, the rail yards, and the bridges are heavily guarded by our soldiers. Nobody enters or leaves Saint Denis without the family knowing their name and their business."
Caleb nodded his head at that, deeply satisfied with the rapid, military-grade efficiency of his syndicate. He picked up a linen napkin, wiping his mouth deliberately, before setting it down beside his plate. He looked up at Vincenzo, his sharp blue eyes locking onto his second in command.
"Excellent work, Vincenzo," Caleb praised him softly. Then, he shifted the tactical board. He said to him that he wanted Vincenzo to be the one taking over the secondary objective of informing John and Javier of their new mission.
"I need you to relay the marching orders to John Marston and Javier Escuella," Caleb commanded, his voice a low, authoritative hum. "Tell them to gather a crew and bring some of our best boys down to the Grays' area in the west. They are to scour Rhodes, map the tobacco fields, and act as our invisible vanguard."
Vincenzo blinked, slightly surprised that Arthur wasn't handling the deployment of the gang's heavy hitters. "Mr. Morgan is not overseeing the scouting party, sir?"
"No," Caleb replied, leaning back in his chair. "Arthur has some highly sensitive, deeply personal business to attend to this afternoon in the city. He is off the board for the rest of the day. You are in command of the street deployments until he returns."
Vincenzo, hearing that he was being given absolute tactical control of the impending retaliation against the Grays, swelled with a terrifying, violent pride. He nodded his head deeply.
"It will be my absolute honor, my Don," Vincenzo swore, his eyes gleaming with the anticipation of bloodshed. "Marston and Escuella will be briefed and on the road to Rhodes within the hour. We will find out exactly who is backing those arrogant farmers."
Before taking another second of Caleb's time, Vincenzo turned sharply and took his leave, his heavy boots echoing down the marble hallway as he went to unleash the hounds of the syndicate upon the southern county.
Caleb sat in the quiet dining room, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock. The pieces were all moving perfectly across the board. The Grays were being scouted. Mary-Beth was safe. Arthur was confronting his past. The factory was churning out advanced weaponry.
Meanwhile, less than five minutes after Vincenzo had departed, the dining room doors opened once again.
This time, it was Antonio. The impeccably dressed head butler stepped into the room, holding a small, highly polished silver tray. Resting in the absolute center of the tray was a thick, cream colored envelope sealed with heavy red wax.
Antonio approached the table, his posture perfectly straight, and informed Caleb that a specialized, highly prioritized federal courier had just arrived at the estate's gates.
"Forgive the interruption, Don McLaughlin," Antonio murmured respectfully. "But there is an urgent letter from Senator Pendleton. It was dispatched via the express railway from up in Washington, D.C."
Hearing that, Caleb immediately motioned with his hand for Antonio to give him the letter. The timeline on the federal bounties was ticking, and he needed to know exactly how effectively his blackmail was working in the nation's capital.
Receiving the heavy envelope, Caleb picked up a silver butter knife from the table and smoothly sliced the red wax seal open. He pulled out the thick, embossed stationery of the United States Senate, unfolded it, and then began to read the handwritten content of the letter.
Pendleton's handwriting was frantic, completely lacking the usual arrogant, flowing cursive of a confident politician. It looked like the writing of a man who was desperately trying to save his own life from a ticking time bomb.
In the letter, it explicitly detailed that Pendleton had been working tirelessly, sweating blood on the floor of the capital, working incredibly hard to aggressively lobby the Department of Justice and the highest echelons of federal law enforcement to permanently erase the bounties of these specific men down south.
"Don McLaughlin," the letter read. "I have utilized every single favor, every shred of blackmail, and every ounce of political leverage I possess within the bureaucratic labyrinth of this city. The files on Arthur Morgan, John Marston, and the rest of your associates are currently being physically pulled from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency's primary archives under the guise of an 'internal federal audit.'"
Caleb smiled a dark, satisfied smirk. The corruption of the American government was a beautiful, malleable thing when you held the right strings.
The letter continued, outlining the financial realities of the massive cover up. Pendleton wrote that he, of course, had successfully gotten the absolute lowest price his corrupt contacts in the Justice Department had asked for, and that he had viciously negotiated the bribes down to be much cheaper than usual, entirely terrified of Caleb's wrath if he overspent the Don's money.
"However," Pendleton added, his handwriting growing even more frantic toward the bottom of the page. "I must humbly beg your indulgence. I still desperately need a fraction more time to convince several highly placed people in the Treasury and the Marshal's office. You must understand the magnitude of what we are doing. Clearing these specific bounties and completely erasing the legal warrants is a monumental task."
Pendleton explained the absolute largest hurdle he was currently facing. It wasn't the lawmen, it was the private sector.
"To erase warrants of this national magnitude requires silencing more people than usual. Specifically, the national bounty hunters' guilds and the independent Pinkerton contractors. These men have spent years tracking your associates, expecting a massive, life altering payday. When they find out the bounties have been officially rescinded by the government without an arrest, the bounty hunters will absolutely, definitely launch massive protests. They will demand congressional inquiries. They will threaten to expose the corruption. I have to physically pay off the guild leaders and the senior Pinkerton directors to keep their mouths completely shut and accept the loss."
After reading the dense, highly political content of the letter, Caleb completely understood the logistical nightmare the Senator was navigating. Paying off a judge was easy; paying off an entire industry of heavily armed, greedy bounty hunters required finesse and a massive amount of liquid capital.
Caleb's eyes flicked to the very bottom of the page, where Pendleton had timidly written the final, absolute sum required to grease the remaining palms and finalize the total erasure of their criminal records.
Caleb looked at the number of money needed. It was exactly 30,000 dollars.
Thirty thousand dollars. In 1900, it was an astronomical fortune that could buy a sprawling plantation or fund a small army.
Caleb just clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, a sound of mild, almost bored annoyance. For any other man on the planet, a sudden demand for thirty thousand dollars in bribes would be utterly ruinous.
But for the Don of Saint Denis, who had just extracted over three hundred thousand dollars from the city's elite in less than an hour the previous night, it was nothing more than an inconvenient operating expense.
He folded the letter and tossed it casually onto the silver tray. He looked up at his head butler, his expression entirely unbothered.
"Antonio," Caleb ordered, his voice sharp and decisive. "Go down to the primary vault. I want you to immediately wire thirty thousand dollars up to Washington, directed entirely to Senator Pendleton's secure holding accounts."
Caleb leaned forward, making sure the logistics were absolutely flawless. He didn't trust the federal banking system not to flag such a massive transfer.
"Do not just send a bank draft," Caleb instructed, narrowing his eyes. "Send it in the form of untraceable bearer bonds, a shipment of our sanitized gold bars, and raw, unmarked cash as well. Break the shipments up through our legitimate front companies so the Treasury Department cannot trace the sudden influx of wealth back to Lemoyne."
Antonio nodded, quickly pulling his notebook from his pocket to record the massive financial deployment. "Thirty thousand dollars in mixed, untraceable assets. It will be routed through the textile and shipping accounts immediately, Don McLaughlin."
"Make absolutely sure it is secure, Antonio," Caleb commanded, his voice dropping into a deadly, uncompromising register.
He knew that if this money went missing, the entire federal slate cleaning operation would collapse, and the Pinkertons would descend upon Saint Denis like a plague of locusts. "Ensure it is heavily guarded on the trains. Make sure it is entirely safe, and make absolutely certain that it truly reaches Senator Pendleton's hands to be used exactly as I instructed."
"You have my absolute word, my Don. The funds will reach the capital without a single hitch," Antonio swore, bowing deeply before turning to leave the dining room to execute the monumental transfer of wealth.
As the heavy oak doors clicked shut, leaving Caleb completely alone in the sprawling dining room once again, he picked up his cup of dark coffee. He took a slow sip, looking out the large windows toward the bustling, fog shrouded streets of Saint Denis.
The money was moving. The federal government was being bought. Arthur was chasing the love of his life, and the vanguard was riding south to scout the foolish, arrogant Gray family. The board was perfectly set, the pieces were in motion, and now, Caleb was simply waiting for the inevitable, absolute bloodshed that was about to rain down upon anyone who dared to stand in his way.
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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 MAX)
- Sneaking (Lvl MAX)
- Horse Mastery (Lvl MAX)
- Poker (Lvl MAX)
- Hand to Hand Combat (Lvl MAX)
- Eagle Eye (Lvl MAX)
- Dead Eye (Lvl MAX)
- Bow (Lvl MAX)
- Pain Nullifier (Lvl MAX)
- Physical Regeneration (Lvl MAX)
- Crafting (Lvl MAX)
- Persuasion (Lvl MAX)
- Mental Fortitude (Lvl MAX)
- Cooking (Lvl MAX)
- Teaching (Lvl MAX)
- Trilingual Language Proficiency - G, I, & C (Lvl MAX)
- Inventory System (Permanent - 100x100x100)
- Acting (Lvl MAX)
- Alcohol Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Treasure Hunter (Lvl MAX)
- Drugs Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Business (Lvl MAX)
- Leadership (Lvl MAX)
Money: 2,772 dollars and 60 cents
Inventory: 283,392 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, 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: -